rand’s esoteric otr

Continuing our episodes of “The Two Daffodils” with comedians Duke Atterbury and Ken Gillum in snappy, vaudeville style comedy and song.  The series was syndicated by the Continental Broadcasting Corporation of Hollywood in 1930 or 31.  In this episode, Ken sings “Don’t Be a Fool, You Fool” and the show includes a visit from Little Oscar and an insurance salesman routine.

I have six more episodes in the series I’ll be posting in the coming weeks.

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Another episode of “Leatherneck Legends”, a program for Marine Corps recruiting. “The Man Was at Samar” relates the story of a brutal Marine expedition in the Philippines. The host of the show is Tiny Ruffner. A local announcer would have read a commercial script for the Marines at the end of the show. An Orthacoustic transcription produced by NBC’s Radio Recording Division and pressed by RCA, matrix WD7-MM-4204.

This is the other side of the disc in the previous post, so, my apologies again for the “thuds” in the first couple of minutes of the show due to damage to the disc.

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“Leatherneck Legends” was a dramatic public service program intended to boost recruitment for the Marine Corps by enacting famous stories from the Corps’s history. In this episode, “The King’s Mistake”, a self-declared “King” on an island finds out the meaning of “American citizen” when he robs and kills a merchant ship trader. The recruiting announcement for the Marines would have been added by a local announcer; the host of the show is Tiny Ruffner. An Orthacoustic transcription produced by NBC’s Radio Recording Division and pressed by RCA, matrix WD7-MM-4203.

This pressing would appear to date from the late 1940s, judging by the matrix number, but it may be a re-release of the show. The RadioGOLDINdex lists this series as being pre-war and I’d tend to agree, based on the dramatic style and sound quality.

My apologies for the “thuds” in the first couple of minutes of the program - the disc had some heat damage and is slightly warped.

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In this post, “Hildegarde’s Radio Room”, AFRS Pgm 26 in the series, originally broadcast on NBC, October 16, 1945 as “The Raleigh Room”. The guests include Jackie Keck of “The Aldrich Family”, Ned Sparks, Hank Greenburg, and Paul McGrath, the host of “Inner Sanctum”; the music is by Harry Sosnick and his Orchestra.

Hildegarde got her start in vaudeville and first gained fame in Europe, signing a contract with the BBC in the 1930s. She returned to the US in the late 1930s and gained a Time magazine cover and even had a lipstick and nail polish color named after her. Walter Winchell dubbed her “The Incomparable Hildegarde”. Her signature song was “Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup”, written by her manager and companion of twenty years, Anna Sosenko. Sosenko’s NY Times obituary noted,

“No one knows why she and Hildegarde parted in the mid-1950’s, but they eventually made up. Two days after she turned 85, Hildegarde was performing at the Russian Tea Room in 1991 and, of course, offered a rendition of her 1934 signature song, ‘’Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup.'’ She observed that it was a song she never grew tired of singing. Ms. Sosenko, who had composed it and was one of many friends and well-wishers in the audience, brought down the house when she countered, ‘’But I’m tired of it.'’”

By the late 1940s, Hildegarde was the highest paid caberet singer in the world, released dozens of LPs in the 50s and 60s and sold out Carnegie Hall on her eightieth birthday. The Wisconsin Historical Museum has a photo of Hildegarde appearing on her radio show, circa 1945, on this page. There’s also info on a record Hildegarde made to promote her home state that included the song “My Milwaukee”.

Hildegarde has a wonderful singing voice, but the constant smiling and upbeat tone and that little laugh can get a bit grating sometimes, at least to me.

Post updated with corrected date of Oct 16th. - 28 April 2008

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In this post, we take a listen to an episode of the popular panel quiz show, “Information Please”, originally broadcast on October 15, 1945 and rebroadcast as program 85 in the series on the Armed Forces Radio Network.  Listeners who stump the panel with their questions get a War Bond.

Clifton Fadiman plays host to panelists writer John Kieren, newspaper columnist Franklin P Adams, concert pianist Alex Templeton and violist William Primrose.  The first question on the show is “Who was described in song as ‘celebrated, cultivated, underrated’?”

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Another offering in the 1930’s Transco syndicated series, “Nonsense and Melody” featuring comedians Gill and Doemling.

Program 12 in the series continues a visit to Paris. The vocal group sings “In a Park in Paris in the Spring” and there’s a comedy sketch about Napoleon. The female vocalist sings “No, No Baby, Don’t You Do That to Me”.

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We continue in our offerings of “Nonsense and Melody”, a mid-1930s Transco syndicated musical comedy program featuring the comedians Gill and Doemling.  The program takes place on a cruise ship and a tour of Europe.

In episode 11, the gang continue their tour of Paris.  Gill and Doemling go window shopping and to a bar.  The vocal group, which is similar to the Rhythm Boys, sings “Mimi”; the female vocalist Jean sings “He’s My Man”.

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Another episode of “Front Page Drama”, dating from circa July 1934.  Program 70, called “The Night of Nights”, looks at a businessman who is being duped by a fake medium who is exposed by the businessman’s partner and a professor.  The play is a fictionalized story based on an article in that week’s “American Weekly” magazine that dealt with new scientific techniques being used by fake mediums.  Note that the sound and overall volume of the show improves as it progresses.

“Front Page Drama” (at least the 1930s episodes) is one of my favorite series.  The stories are sometimes hokey and melodramatic, but are really well written little 15 minute pieces and you can often recognize well-known radio actors in bit parts.  As noted in a previous post, the series was sponsored by Hearst newspapers as a way to promote “American Weekly” that was distributed with the papers each week; it was something like the “Parade Magazine” of its day.

In future weeks, I’ll be posting more shows from early 1936, when production and distribution of the show shifted from General Broadcasting and Brunswick Records to RCA.

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Continuing from the previous post, here’s program #24 of “America’s Famous Fathers”. In this episode, Col. Theodore Roosevelt and the wife of author John Phillips Marquand debate the role of fathers in the household.

Roosevelt relates some fun and interesting stories about his own father, President Roosevelt. Howard Lindsay, who normally was host of the show, was ill and unable to appear, so announcer Ray Green conducts the interview. The program was syndicated by the Kermit-Raymond Corporation and the commercials were added by a local announcer; the show appears to date from circa 1941.

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“America’s Famous Fathers” is an obscure syndicated radio that dates from around 1941; I haven’t been able to dig up much information about it, but the label indicates that it was distributed by World Broadcasting and syndicated by the Kermit-Raymond Corporation. The commercials were added locally to the program.

The show seems to be connected to the hit Broadway play “Life with Father”, which opened at the Empire Theater in November 1939 and ran for over 3,000 performances. The premise of the radio is that the co-author and star of the play, Howard Lindsay, would play host to “famous fathers”. Program #24, in the next post, takes the form of a conversation and interview about fatherhood, while the program in this post, #12, features Lowell Thomas telling a dramatized story about two men that are stranded after their airplane crashes. Ray Green is the announcer.

I’m not sure I quite understand the concept behind the series - the show in the next post, with Col. Roosevelt, is a conversation about fatherhood, but this episode with Lowell Thomas doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the topic of fathers.

If anyone has further info about the series, leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll add some info the post. I’m wondering if it may have had a limited regional distribution in the Northeast because of the connection to the Broadway show or activity by the sponsor only in certain areas of the country.

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