Variety (Jan 1949)

Radio At Its Best Raflio'<; Nn 1 Tfilpnt P««pr« Where Will They Gome From? Uy AL SCHWARTZ & SHERWOOD SCHWARTZ , Hollywood. "jack McHope, very big comedian, counted ■ the money again Yes, it was all there. Nine hundred and eighty million dollars. ($980,000,000). He stuffed it hack into hi<i Dockets, sneered as he walked past NBC and entered PBS Ah CBS. What those grand initials istood for— Comedians Bought and Sold. This was a big day in the life of Jack McHope. As he walked into the building, they unrolled the red carpet for him. It was a lovely red carpet, six bleeding vice residents lying on the floor prostrate. He wiped his fpet on the softest one, announced that he was ready to do his first broadcast, and asked for a studio to be built around him. As McHope glanced at the Gruen Curvex control room, hp decided that he had made a wise move. Buying come- dians was a capital idea. Capital gains, that is. Ah, this was a great new trend. Yes, this was radio at its best. He opened up a folded usher and sat down. In a few moments his audience would be carried in Irom Pasadena. He looked at tonight's script and nodded in approval. The solid gol'd lettering was easy to read, and his face looked so ruddy in the red glow of the ruby periods. He clanced toward the bandstand, It was a good orchestra. : James C. Petrillo and his Non-Union Five. His vocalist was ready, too. He nodded pleasantly to Miss Truman. Yes, this was radio at its best. But his thoiights were interrupted by a Western Union boy who handed him a telegram. McHope gave the boy a tip, two cases of Walter Klein, and glanced casually at the contents of the wire. It said, "Dear Jack. Here ■ is our latest offer to return to your old nelwork. Nine- hundred and ninety million dollars ($990,000,000). ■ All SXira ?10,000,000? Jack was about to crumple the telegram and throw it away when he noticed a P. S. at the foot of the wire. "Enclosed please find fountain pen. Feel free to add as many zeros as you like." There was no doubt about it. This "was a fair offer. This was radio at its best. He wanted tp discuss,it with his agent so he turned to his script girl and said, "Get Jimmy on the phone."^ In silence she handed him a copy of Vabiety. McHope glanced at the headline and gasped. His agent, had just been bought by MCA for $5,000,000. Perhaps he should call MGA, But wait-^look at the headline on the next page. MCA had just been bought by William Morris; In tliat case he would call. William Morris. He was about to dial the phone, when he saw the headline on the fol-. ' lowing page. . "Polan & Rosenberg Complete Big Deal. TPolan buys William and Rosenberg buys Morris. Oh, well, if his a'gent wasn't available he'd call his ad- vertising agency: Gpod old-BBD & O. He dialed the number. A girl's voice Said, "Batten, Barton, Durstine & Rubicam." "Rubicam," he exclaimed. "What happened to the 0—r-where's Osborn?" . , The^rl replied, "Osborn was sold to Y & R. I think they wanted a vowel to break up: the monotony." ''Well, I've got to talk to somebody," McHope explained. "Who handles me now?" "Well, that's hard to say. Batteti just bought Ruthrauff & Ryan, Barton just .bought iFoote .& Gone, and Durstine is negotiating with Dancer & Sample." "What's happened to Beldlng, and Fitzgerald?" "I'm sorry," she replied, "I'll have to hang up now. I was just bought by Phil Spitalny and his All Girl Or- chestra. I'm being billed as TiUie & her Magic Type- writer." By CARROLL CARROLL J_ Speed Riggs and F. E . Boo ne [ _ There was a click on the Other end of the phone. Mc* Hope hung up the receiver. So now the buving bug had hit the advertising agencies. Where would this all end? He needed something to steady his nerves. He walked over to the cigaret machine and dropped 20c. into the ijUCKy strike slot. Out came a package of Camels in a n J * ? wrapper. Bewildered, he looked at a notice pasted to the package. "Starting next week there will be no more cigarets. Speed Riggs has just made a down payment on F. E. Boone." Wliere would this spending spree stop? Who could give mm advice about his hew offer? Well, aS a last resort *'°!|"" turh to his writers. He pu.shed a button which 5 ^ manhole cover on Sunset Blvd., and seconds later his writers appeared before him. rAM/^'^5''?J^^^ sP^a'' to when he suddenly WB,« ? J- ' writers were acting peculiar. They cWo ■ *>" the same rug as he was, and with their Sloes on,' too. h^^^'^^t^^^ * moment of heavy silence, and then his vnnr Jf^ter spoke up. "This is the last time we answer your buzzer," he told McHope. •'What?" McHope gasped. swJ?'" ''hoed the others," that's the Ir.st time we an- martJ."?'' We have just been bought on the open "larKei for 12i^c. a pound," Eond ''"ying spree had sunk to this level. It was a ripi comedians.. But agents, advertising agen- "es and now writers—it was too much. now ""'^ person left that he could turn to wo'IJih"*'''* studio, and rushed home. His wife door Th^ advice. He knocked on her bedroom thp nin ^""^ n° answer. He rushed in. There on inLaii"* .^^^ n°te. With sinking heart he read the VearVtL „.I^arling," it said, "we've had 10 wonderful •ne llfootooo.''"'"* "^^""^ ^ do-Artie Shaw offered frohf^iip^* ''i*™ desert him. He still had that offer he vMiIy\.J^^ grabbed the phone. "Quick, operator," yelled, "Get me NBC. I have to sign a contract." in<ii hl I'" ^''^ operator answered. "NBC and CBS have " ''°"8ht by ABC." «nd dlM' «dieu. Jack McHope sank to the floor to bp h • , something? The poor man had Graurmn- ^^^y Arable's footsteps because *st Lawn Theatre hail just been bought by For- Was this radio at its best? .Catroll Carroll Hollywood. The networks are now courting each other's top talent by showing off with capital half-gainers and other finan- cial flip-flops. This is against the day when television comes coyly around that corner. But their big radio prob- lem (if they mean to stay in radio, and I'll bet ' they do) remains unsolved. Pretty soon they're going to have to find, and train, talent to take the place of the giant personalities who chalk up the big audiences, when those giants finally allow themselves to be seduced by the stiff ray of TV, or (with tiieir annuities rolling in) figure they've earned the right to settle down, live quietly on a modest mil- lion a year, and let younger blood" worry about how to cut 40 golden sec- onds from an air-tight six-minute' avalanche of yoks. ■ It doesn't make much difference what siphons off the gaffers—television, annuities or the law of diminishing returns. Sooner or later they will have to be replaced and the longer the delay before new recruits are found and cpnditioned, the harder it's going to be to find people who will amass the great audiences that offer tremendous per- sonal loyalty only to tremendously capable personalities. , CBS is building shows, properties, and successful ones. But no network has gone very far toward bringing onto the horizon performers who indicate they possess that spark that lights up a person and makes him-a person- ality. An actor can arbitrarily be billed as a star. But until he becomes successful at playing "himself," it's tirir likely he'll ever become a star personality. He may be great in a part. But the greater he gets the harder he competes against himself as a personality. Because the better he portrays the fictitious character that he's been cast as, that is to say the better he works, the more he submerges himself into something someone else created. There are few package owners, today, who would let an actor like Hal Peary take away a character like Gilder- sleeve. And. the character is not owned by Peary but, I , believe, by the Kraft Foods Co. and/or Needham, Lewis & ■Brorby. There are few men like Jack Benny who would ' allow his characters to go into business for themselves, using as' capital the characteristics he created for them. How many times has. Charlie McCarthy tried to break away from Bergen? Or vice-versa? Arthur Godfrey is, perhaps, the only valid new person'-, ality commanding a truly big and loyal audience to come to prominence on the radio scene in the last couple of years. But to call Godfrey new to radio is stretching the ' meaning of the word new. Henry Morgan, Danny Kaye and Robert Q.'Lewis are still trying to get one-solid click. Arnold Stang is still coming up tiie hard way and may make it, if he doesn't get his own show too soon.' I Radio Needs ThoBe Namea j There will always be a place in radio.^or new shows, new vehidles with new, amusing and lovable characters. But the entire level of radio listening, will slowly lower to daytime level with the gradual disappearance tit the great, affectionately held, cornerstone of radio, the personalities who strengthen its power as an advertising medium. The Hopes, the Aliens, the Bennys^ the Durantes, the Burns & Aliens, the Crosbys (Bob and Bing), are the red corpuscles of radio's life-blood, Amos 'n' Andy have been successful a long time. So has Fibber McGee. And while they bear character names instead of their own,' Freeman, Gosden and Charlie Correll and Jim Jordan are the characters they play because they created, or help to create them.' lived With them, wrote them, and helped to write themi for so many years that the artist became the picture. Some may say nothing happened when Ed Wynn, Jack Pearl and Rudy Vallee, once the giant, dominating per- sonalities of radio who commanded vast audiences, retired. So Proudly We Hail By JUSTIN MILLER (President, National Assn. of Broadcasters) Washington. The Broadcasters' Creed, preamble to the Standards of Practice, states in part: "We bjBlieve . , . that it is our obligation to serve the people in such manner as to reflect, credit upon our profession and to> encourage aspiration toward a better estate for all mankind." ■This is an expression to which Vauiety would subscribe,. I am sure. Variety can, in this instance alone, perform noble service in American broadcasting by keeping those who guide the destinies of the world's greatest system of mass communication alert to their responsibilities. Variety has done this in the past through frank criti- cism. We would hope that this policy of examining broad- casting's contributions and shortcomings, and reporting them fairly, will continue through the years. The broadcasters who belong to the National As.sn. of Broadcasters have promulgated standards for the conduct of their business. Even some broadcasters who do not be- long to the NAB subscribe to them, and we welcome their participation. This is a sincere effort on the part of American radio, after laudable self-examination, to improve continually its presentations to the public. By objective chronicling of radio's performance, publications such as Variety can do much to make this creed and these Standards not only symbolic of broadcasters' aspirations, but living instru- ments of a great profession. They went but the industry continued to grow. But as they were retiring, radio was developing likely newcomers. Wynn; Pearl and Joe Penner gave way to the domination of Eddie Cantor, Burns & Allen, Jack Benny and others who grew and carried on. Then, new strength could still be recruited from vaudeville, burlesque and the New York musical comedy stage.. Some of it was Bob Hope and Red Skelton. And as these new personalities came along they worked their way up through guest-shots and supporting , parts, were surrounded with strength'and had a; chance; to try their tricks pn radio, to grpw and become radio i wise. None of. them went right in to compete with the. toppers nor did any one become an overnight smash... No Incubating Grounds I Today ■ there's. no more vaudeville (that doesn't stem from star radio acts making p.a.s) except the pitiful little group that looks with its last hungry gasp toward tele- vision. There's no burlesque that can deliver an act for anything but a smoker, and if the musical comedy .stage produces anyone who looks at all: possible the find' is snapped up by Hollywood. If not, and a network gets the,, unhappy IndividuaL it generally weighs the poor hopeful down with a show bearing his name^nd makes him com^ pete on the bigtime, nighttime network without any train- ing, any break-in, or any writer and producer who will take the time and trouble to work out what the man can do best on the radio. Usually the new boy is given what the writer can most easily write. • ArtLsts new to radio cannot be expected to carry shows.- I still say what I said in Vamety on Aug. 15, 1945. "This practice is thrusting stardom on a great many people who might eventually win it but may forever lose it because, they are in too much of a hurry to grab a hunk of rain- bow." The only thing that's changed is that the stars are not now so" anxious "to grab a hunk of rainbow." Now the networks, in frantic competition, are too anxious to blow up a fla-shy star, and as a result stoke up a clinker! :; Where then, and this will continually be asked until something is done -about it, is new talent to be trained?^ Some say the job is iip to the advertising agencies. This is palpably ridiculous. _^ The agencies are :in the business of .booking known values for advertising purposes not ere-' ating and nurturing talent: This leaves .the talent agen- cies and the networks. Each says it's the other fellow's job. Since only two talent agencies are financially equipped even to think of going into any project requiring the time and money required for star training, it looks as if It's.up to the networks, if the job is to be done. To mention CBS again, it's trying. But, it is concen- trating on properties, not. people. Any editor will tell you it's people—names-T^that make news.. Any theatre man will tell you it's names that make boxoffice, and unless anyone thinks that bigtime; nighttime radio is soon due to sink to a daytime level, something had better be done to guarantee the continuance of something big in the evenings when the personalities that now make bigtime radio what it is have started to rest on their big fat bankbooks. Need for Talent .Questing The networks have stations all over the country. It is at the level of these stations that they must start their personality searches. But the search must not foe done as a stunt with sponsors, fanfare, prizes and an almost po.si- tive guarantee of obscurity to the winners. It must be a slow, careful, painstaking search . . . a lot of experi>- mentation; a lot of trial • and error by competent writers, and producers; people with know-how,-.'and it -must be done on the local level; then on the regional. level and always before audiences. There must be a lot of good local audience shows, live ones before the -findings are ready for network testing. Because it is only by per- forming in front of people that personalities can learn what to do and what not to do on the bigtime, nighttime scale. Nobody wants anything arty, but in a town like Dallas, Where there is a great interest in the theatre and a lot of nearby colleges^ .a network. would be weU advised to open a workshop with scholarships for young people who show some chance of becoming personalities. These stu- dents mustn't be rushed,- and above all, they must be handled by people who know what they're doing . . , people who will be as eager to help a talented new person turn into a new personality, as he might be to help ^n established personality survive week after week. The difference is,' the personality who came to radio with experience knew something about himself. The youngster who may become a personality must be allowed to find out about himself under sympathetic—-almo-st motherly help. Sounds pretty dreamy . . . and it is, But it's the kind of dreaming someone had better make come true. It just takes the plain oldfashioned kind of research and' development any great industry does year»in, year?out in its own laboratories to protect and improve its business. The technical men in radio keep experimenting in honest research, and with re.sults. What they find isn't much use if the entertainment side doesn't keep up! Radio and pictures, between them, have practically wiped out their own source of supply. Now television is coming and radio and pictures each hoggishly hoard their best talent for the new medium, but spend no money on salaries. .■ So, beyond some endowed and carefully ad-, ministered way of developing; teaching, . training and maturing new talent . -, ; the only hope, that the whole, radio-television world won't eventually shrivel up into a silly master-of-cermony, audience-participation-giveaw9y type thing ... is the hope that the combined weight of disembodied television, radio and pictures will cause a. renaissance of the theatre bred by a desire on the part of people to look at .flesh and blood. Then what was once called "the road" may be reborn just as radio, alone, caused the lecture and concert business to boom. If this happens to the theatre we'll start again to develop a new crop of troupers who know what they're doing and why. It's gonna take a long time. Can radio afford to wait?