Variety (December 1950)

26 RADIO-TELEVISIOX P^HIETY Wednesday^ D^cembet 27, 1950 WPIX now has 11 editors and newsreel photogs working under the supervision of Walter D. Engels, which the station claims gives it the largest fulltitne video newsreel organization among the N/ Y. outlets . . . Eyron n.. ^Ic- Kinney joined Galkins & -Holden, Carloek, McClinton & Smith, as, a radio-TV producer-director. He formerly produced radio and TV shows for . the Veterans Adminis- tration Central Information Office . and. prior to that, .was. with Du- Mont and the Americah Theatre Wing . Pilot film in a ‘ Red Ryder” series for TV was screened for agency and network execs this week by the William Morris Ofr ‘fice, in association with Stephen Slcsinger . . . Lena Horne makes her video debut Jan, 20, on Max Liebmah-s“Y6ur Show of Shows” via NBC.: She’il sing, femcee add do a sketch with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca . . . Steve Previn, formerly associated with several Hollywood producers, has joined DuMont and is now directing“In- side Detective’* . . . Carl King, who appears on DuMont’s “Captain Video” and emcees “Mayfair Jirntinee,” ha been handed a third emcee chore, , on .: , WOR-TV’s “King’s Crossroads.” Variety \vaS misinformed last week that John Gibbs had Signed Paul Lukas for a hew series of video shows and Wendy Barrie to an exejusive radio-TV pact, Lukas has been. set for a series of dra- matic. shows by Pick-deVry Pro- duclions and Miss Barrie remains under contract to packager Martin Goodman. ’ \ iVBC-T V producer Carolyn Burke to Coast for.a "week, including visit to parents in Portland, Ore- Jack Weir, of NBC’s video sales department,, and Jane Allerdiiig, receptionist in the department, who first met through working to- gether, revealed their engagement over the weekend. Norman and Irving Pincus hit a . parlay with their two TV shovvs: -^‘Adventure.s of Ellery Queen” ’’(DuMont) named by TV Guide as best tele mystery for 1950. and their “Mr. I, Magination” (CBS) labeled best children’s show of the year by Look mag . . . Hope Miller into lead femme opposite William Gargan in “Martin Kane” (NBC), tomorrow (Thurs, ). •finishing on the right side of the ledger, for the first time in its his- tory, L, A. Rams will ask 15% more for television rights to the 1951 pro grid ganies. Additionally,, pact will have to be: on a term deal of three to five years. KNBH, which lost $61,000 on this year’s games,will get first refusal • . . Kraft will sponsor Bob Raisbeck’S KEGA-TV package “The Buggies,” starting Jan. 18 ... Currie’s Ice iCreani .js dropping “Space Patrol” to take over bankrolling of “Take 15” oh KLAC-TV tomorrow (27) on a five-day-Avcekly basis. Ewing Sisters, Don Burke and the Van ; Alexander Trio are starred , , . CarroH Righter, star of the KLAC- TV “Star Gazing” program, has been set as astrological columnist; in 30 newspapers around the coun-; try by Enterprise Syndicate.' First column appears Jah. 8 in Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles i Times, Detroit Free Press, Boston ; Traveler and San Fraricisco j Chronicle among other papers . . . ' Package of 13 J. Arthur Rank pix, ' selected as the best of the 65 ; beamed .so far this year, has been selected by KECA-TV for re-run- ning in 1951 . . . “Wild . Bill Hickok” vidfilm series starring Guy Madison and Andy Devine gets under way today at Hal Roach , studios, Pi.K are being made for sale on a regional basis by Sid Siuitli, With Tommy Carr direct- ing:' Lois Gavzer poins the NBC tele production staff here . » . Ernie Simon bowed, with a half-hour talent hunt show on WGN-TV Friday (22) . . . TV Forecast, Chi video fan mag, picked up the tab on WNBQ for Milton Berle’s . Christmas party oh NBG , . . Chi I public library reports tele viewihg ! has cut down book circulation 1.8% since the first .of the year [ . ABC will kine Herb Laufman’s “Your Problem Panel” next week . Commonwealth Edisoh is pick- ing iip the Youles’s “Weathermah” show on WNBQ Wednesdays arid Fridavs. Standard Milling “Gere- sota Flour I will continue tO bank- roll the series other nights. Inside Stuff More than a dozen Paramount personalities have completed a special “Voice of America” program which will be broadcast throughout •Italy as a New Year greeting to that country on the night of Dec. 30. Esti- mated listenihg audience is 10,000,000. Titled “The Curtain Rises," the half-hour show was emceed by Isa Miranda, with Hal Wallis, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Betty Hutton, JOan Fontaine, William Holden, Dorothy Lamour, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, William Bendix, Ruth Hussey, Lloyd Nolan, William Deiharest and Walley Westmore featured* Recorded in Italian on the Paramount lot, show was produced by Lew Danis of the “Voice of America’s” Italian division, who flew to the Coast from N Y. especially for this purpose. Continued from page 21 Hollywopd Deal is being dickered for Rupert Hughes, author, wit and radio emceC, to make his television debut oh KTTV with a quarter- hour Sunday night commentary .. . . Altliougli admitting television was a major factor in the team’s Chicago Danny O’Neil opened with an- other show on WBKB last week. Latest offering, tagged “Danny O'Neil at Home,” went into the Tuesday and Thursday 6-6:15 p.ih. slot for Leo Rose stores. Pianist Bud Griesc and Gus Rhodes are also taking part . . . Saih Singer’s puppet package, “Paddy the. Peli- can,” returns to WENR-TV next Saturday (30) replacing “Shirley and Bedelia.” which moves into the Tuesday and Thursday 5:45- 6 p.m. spot opened with Marshall Field & Co. dropping “Uncle Mistletoe” on those days . . . .Paul Visser, of the Chi NBC agriculture department, will unreel a kine of the special NBC telecast last month from the International Live Stock ExposUion before U. S.Dept. of Agriculture specialists in Wash- ington, Jan 3 . . . Borrah Minnc- vitr.h’s Harmonica Rascals guest- ing on ABC's “Don McNeill TV C^lub” tonight (Wed:). Sarira wound two new film plugs of Pure Oil Go. to be used o;i NBC’s “Who Said That.” Super- vising were Pure Oil ad manager Oliver Goldsmith and Clair Calli- han of Leo Burnett agency . . . The pitch was flatly turned down, lie declared. ■ : Siragusa Stands Pat, Too When apprised of Stanton’s de^ nial at the conclusion of his speech, Siragusa enlarged upon the details ■ of the offer. He toM reporters he • had phoned CBS in May, 1949, to I ask board chairman William S. Pa- ley to postpone or cancel a sched-.^ uled closed circuit medical color telecast in Atlantic City. Paley was I hot available so the call was switched to Stanton, Admiral prexy 'said. ; Stantoh toltl him the test had al- ready been set up and could not be abandoned. Then, aceordihg to Siragusa, CBS exec asked, “Why j don’t you and two or ■ .three other j manufacturers bail me out of this I thing?” Siragusa said he asked Stanton how much CBS had Invest- 1 ed in its color system. “Stanton ; said $3,000,000. I laughed and said it wasn’t worth $30.” ' Siragusa ad mil ted Stanton had called him about the advance copy . of the talk. “I told him I had talked j with a man who said he was Frank ; Stanton, and recalled the circum- • stances to him,” Admiral exec said. , Radio Reports, Inc., has just released the latest issue of its Radio-TV Personalities Digest; Tome lists more than 800>names of people and programs (coihmentaitors, gabbers, Mr.-and-Mrs. shows, forums, news- casters, women commentators, etc.) on the webs and local stations in AM, TV and FM. For each stanza it catalogs the Working address, station, broadcast time, format, etc. In addition to the network airers, special sections are devoted* to New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, New England, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washingtori areas. Civil service examinations for the position of senior electrical en- gineer of WNYC, N, Y., will be held shortly. Post pays $6,900 an- nually. . / Applications will be issued and received at the Municipal Civil Service Commission from Jan. 10-25. Pulitzer’s ‘Mate’ continued from page 23 marine, which eliminated the need for any expensive sets, it’s still dif- ficult to figure how Rathvoh and Edgar Peterson, regular producer , on the “Pulitzer” series, brought in i the film for the reported $30,000 budget. But they proved it could be done, and the project’s success should go far towards luring other major Hollywood producers into i vidfilm work, 1 Schulberg based his yarn on the I 1943 Pulitzer prize news stOry ; penned by George Weller of the ! Chicago Daily News. It told of a pharmacist’s male aboard the sub forced to perform an emergency appendectomy, oh an enlisted manr Medico had never been close to an operating room before, which pro-, vided a starkly suspenseful story peg for both Weller and Schulberg. As scripted45iy the latter and per- formed by the standout cast, the show sustained maximum dramatic impact, often reaching that “heart- in-the-moutli” atmosphere. Fact that the story actually occurred during the war, with enemy sub- chasers in the immediate area, added to the suspense mood. Donlevy and Raymond were fine as the skipper and exec officer of the sub, but it was Phil Shawm, as the young and inexperienced med- ico, and Hickman, as his patient, who scored most solidly. Jenks turned in a nice bit as the sub’s cook, wdth the all-male supporting cast rating top honors. They in- cluded, in addition to Hale, Harold Lloyd. Jr., Bill Mauch, George Con- rad. Richard Bartlett, Steve Wayne, Robert Payne, Bob Strickland, John Tuggle. M. B. Scheidy, John BaiKM’ and Bill Lechner. Schlitz, which bankrolls the se- ries, added to its excellent com- mercial.s by confining its plug to a single, tasteful blurb at the mid- way point. Instead of its being a commercial, it w'as a neatly-execut- ed Christmas greeting to the audi- ence, Slat AFRA Continiied from page 20 Who's at the (And It's Not The First Broadway Comedian to Be Featured at the Metropolitan Opera House in tne iMonoinging of Frosch the Jailer in the New English Versibh of DIE FLEDERMAUS Chi Stations Continued from page 22 Liles its mail order pitches in this 5 to 6:30 a.m. prograni. If Starkey catches on as expected, station plans to expand his schedule. Il’Y Victor’s midnight to 6 a m. disk stint on WGN is heavily lard- ed with both folk music and m.o. spots. Clear channel 50,000 w^atter has always made a strong pitch for the non-metropolitan dialers with its noon hour “Market Reporter” show and its 6 a m. “Farm Hour.” Although the Chi NBC key— WMAQ—hasn’t as yet succumbed to the folk talent trend, it is giving thought to expanding its far-tar- geted programming. Station beams its daily “Town and Farm” show, aired at 6:15 to 6:45 a.m. and em- ceed by Everett Mitchell, to both the rural and city audience. Lloyd Biirlingham’s “This Is Farming” is aired Saturdays at 7 p m. Significantly, Quaker Oats, which has cut hack several of its AM show's to move into teevee, siiU re- tains the half-hour Saturday “Maa On the Farmshow on Mutual for its fafni feeds division. Ellis Chalmers, farm equipment mahu- facturer, coptinueswith NBC’s “Na- tional Farm and Home Hour” in the 12-12:30 p.m. slot on Saturdays, On the same web, the cross-the- board 6:45 to 7 a.m. Alex Drier newscast for Sinclair Oil is written with the farm audience in riind. Bentley to WHAN Spencer Bentley^ recently • southern rep of Harry S. Goodman Radio Productions, has resigned ta b^ecome general manager of the Charleston Broadcasting Co., which operates WHAN at Charleston, S. C. He wdll make his home there, moving from Deal, ,N. J* Bentley, who last appeared in radio in such shows, as “Stella Dallas,” “The Sheriff” and -‘Mister Keane,” previously was on the legit stage in N. Y. Later he was cona- mentator for Paramount newsreel and chief announcer at WNEW» N. Y. nications will be about as effective as they were the morning of the show'.” In its editorial, the publication points out that broadcasters meet every month; that the top person- nel in this area are in a position to recommend to both civilian de- fense and city authorities the best possible means to “cope w'ith an- other w'eather crisis or disaster that may strike at any time,” Commenting on the broadcast- ing industry’s role during the Thanksgiving snow', AFRATHOTS quotes “Col. William G. Hummell, w'hose 112th Engineers were called out to battle the snows as saying ‘without radio we could not have alerted our troops. Radio broad* cast an urgent message to our men, asking they report. We were not able to reach them directly because telephone lines were, jammed.’ ” AFRATHOTS urges that the broadcasters’ committee put into effect a program, w'hereby weather, bulletins, police and fire instruc- tions and other pertinent facts be brought to the public’s attention during a crisis and thus prevail upon the public not to jam tele- phone wires wdth calls to police# fire, W'eather, and other key agen- cies during a disaster. The American Chantcuse from Paris MILT mt • iiORKE DIAZ find hU OrchtstrO «n^ hit CnttmbI# Special New Year-s Bve Party SUNDAY/ DECEMBER 31ST Courtiky off M-C-M Now oppoarieo with DONALD OXONNOR In “THE MILKMAN” (Univeriol-Intornational) Mioiiement WILLIAM WORRIB AOeNCY