September 4, 2008
We had another program in this series a few weeks back. “The Adventures of Dick Cole” was a half-hour kids show based on a character in Blue Bolt Comics and syndicated in the 1940s by Charles Michelson through World Broadcasting System, Inc.
In program two, Dick and his pal break up a ring of thieves operating in town. Is a cadet at Farr Military Academy involved? Will Dick and his pal escape from the clutches of the gang? Listen and find out…
The show was transferred from an original World Broadcasting System vinyl transcription.
April 20, 2008
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.
“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.
In this post, an unusual 16″ record that isn’t a radio show, as I initially thought when I saw the disc. This is a soundtrack record that originally accompanied a filmstrip to promote “The Townsend Plan” and is number 2 in an apparent series of these presentations.
The program is a bit dull in the first ten minutes where they go through many economic facts and figures, but picks up when the plan is actually explained and they address questions about the plan from everyday folks. The dry, authoritative style would be something that comedians like the Firesign Theater would poke fun at in later years. “A flag will wave on high only so long as the people beneath it are provided for!”
The Townsend Plan was a proposal by a physician, Dr. Francis Everett Townsend, that guaranteed a monthly pension of $200 per person (over $3,000 in 2007 dollars) with the stipulation that the money be spent by the recipients within a month. The plan would have been paid for by a 2% tax on all business transactions. The basic idea was to stimulate the economy by placing more money in circulation and end the Depression.
Townsend clubs sprang up all around the country and the Plan gained considerable attention, leading to the enactment of Social Security Act in 1935. Townsend continued to lobby for the plan, since he still opposed Social Security and many other aspects of the administration’s handling of economic policy.
This disc would appear to date from the late 1930’s since it discusses the disadvantages of the Social Security Act and how the Roosevelt administration is using preparations for war as a means to lift the economy - it might have been produced as part of Townsend’s push about the plan that lead to amendments to the Social Security Act in 1939. The filmstrip and disc were likely used as informational programming by Townsend clubs to recruit new members or to motivate members to lobby their representatives.
You can read more about the Townsend Plan at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Townsend_plan .
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