It’s Time to Smile - September 30, 1942

Note:  This show contains some racial stereotyping themes that may be offensive to some listeners.

Update:  Blog listeners Randy Watts and georgezarr identified the venue for this show as Camp Callan, which was located near San Diego, California.

 

Finally this week, a bit of a mystery.

Here’s “It’s Time to Smile”, sponsored by Ipana and Sal Hepatica and featuring Eddie Cantor with guest Ida Lupino.  (Sorry for the skip in Lupino’s introduction.). The program was originally heard on NBC on September 30, 1942. 

The show starts out with Cantor and announcer Harry Von Well discussing women in defense work and the Army.  Cantor talks about his family working in defense plants and Cantor says he’s hired a maid to help out, leading to a brief appearance by Hattie McDaniel, introduced as an Oscar winner for “Gone With the Wind”, doing some unfortunate jokes about her boyfriend.

The show was carried live from a military camp and the disc seems to have originated with the military organization associated with the show.  The mystery is which camp they’re actually at.  In the announcer’s opening, it sounds like he’s saying “Camp Kullin, California”, but I can’t find any record of such an outpost.

Anyone else have some thoughts on this one?

Our show was transferred from an original 16” lacquer created for the military.  Since it’s a two-sided disc, I’m guessing this is a dub.

This particular episode of the series appears to be previously lost.