Breaking Walls

Between 12 and 2PM, news, religious, and war programming filled the radio dial. Standouts included the Salt Lake City Tabernacle Choir and Organ at noon on CBS, Soldiers of the Press at 12:30 on Mutual, and The Chicago Roundtable at 1:30 on NBC.

Ceiling Unlimited began as a series of informative dramas by Orson Welles in November 1942. It was sponsored by Lockheed Vega Aircrafts and showcased aviation's role in World War II. Welles walked out in February 1943 after a blowup with one of the ad agency men.

Author James Hilton took over. It became a Hollywood variety series in August 1943.

Joseph Cotten hosted with Patrick McGeehan as announcer and both Connie Moore and Nan Wynn providing vocals arranged by Wilbur Hatch.

This Easter episode took to the air at 2:00PM, from WABC, which at that time were still the call letters for CBS’ New York City Affiliate. The Blue Network’s New York flagship, WJZ aired Chaplain Jim U.S.A., while WEAF aired a play called “Those We Love.”

Saturday April 8th, 1944. New York City. It’s a rainy day before Easter and World War II news is dominating consciousness.

There are cracks in Germany’s foundation. On Tuesday April 4th, allied surveillance aircrafts photographed the Auschwitz concentration camp. Knowing this, the Nazis will spend the next four months using the gas chambers and incinerators to their full capacity. Twenty-thousand people could be murdered each day.

The Germans have lost five u-boats in three days on both fronts while simultaneously facing heavy fighting against the Soviets in Ukraine. They’ve been repeatedly forced to retreat.

On Good Friday, April 7th, Adolph Hitler suspended all law in Berlin and made Joseph Goebbels the sole administrator of the city.

On this day, April 8th, The Battle of the Tennis Court began in Burma, while Soviet forces invaded Romania. At the same time, U.S. bombers shelled Brunswick. The early 1944 Bombings of German cities gave German citizens their first hard evidence that the tide of the war had turned. And everyone in Europe knew a full scale Allied western invasion was coming.

Amidst the gloom, at 1:45PM from WEAF in New York, John McVane took to the air with NBC’s War Telescope looking at both war news and peacetime negotiation.

Saturday’s New York Daily News reported on the U.S. navy’s recent sinking of forty-six Japanese ships, while they shot down more than two hundred planes in a three day period. Inflation hadn’t risen in an entire year, as Americans looked forward to international air travel after the war. It made for an interesting Easter Sunday forecast.

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It’s 11:30AM on a rainy Easter Sunday, April 9th, 1944 in New York. We’re taking a ride inside a 1942 Oldsmobile B44 coupe. There have been no new automobiles manufactured in the U.S. since February 1942. All resources have been put towards the war effort.

We’ve just switched on the radio to CBS’s New York affiliate. Invitation To Learning is about to air.

First taking to the air on May 26th, 1940, it was chaired by Lyman Bryson with a rotating panel. Based on a class at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Invitation To Learning was developed at the suggestion of Stringfellow Barr, school president, who also served on the CBS Adult Education board.

By exploring classic literature, Barr contended that radio could be a keynote in liberal education. Three or four people had a spontaneous discussion about a particular book. For twenty-four years and more than twelve-hundred episodes, the show sparked as much debate amongst listeners and rival networks as the programs themselves. Notable guests included Norman Corwin, John Houseman, Eva LeGallienne, Herbert Hoover,, Hans Conried, and Lillian Gish.

Opposite on NBC’s WEAF was a commentary from Don Hollenbeck, while Mutual’s WOR broadcast an Easter Sunrise Service from the Hollywood Bowl, and The Blue Network’s WJZ broadcast The Hour of Faith.

In Breaking Walls episode 149 we’ll spend March of 1944 with Hal Peary and The Great Gildersleeve.

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Highlights:

• The Men And Women On The Front Lines of War War II in March 1944

• Hal Peary and the Birth of Gildersleeve on Fibber McGee and Molly

• The First Ever Sitcom Spin Off and The Great Gildersleeve Premieres

• Registering To Vote

• Mid March 1944 News with NBC War Telescope

• Gildy Wants to Run For Mayor

• The Campaign Photo

• A Night In A Foxhole

• Looking Ahead to Easter Sunday 1944

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The WallBreakers:

http://thewallbreakers.com

Subscribe to Breaking Walls everywhere you get your podcasts.

To support the show:

http://patreon.com/TheWallBreakers

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The reading material used in today’s episode was:

• On The Air — By John Dunning

• Network Radio Ratings — By Jim Ramsburg

As well as articles from:

• Broadcasting Magazine

• The Library of Congress

• The New York Times

• Radio Daily

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On the interview front:

• Ken Carpenter, Alice Faye, Shirley Mitchell, Frank Nelson, Hal Peary, Lilian Randolph and Lurene Tuttle spoke with Chuck Schaden. Hear these chats at Speakingofradio.com.

• Shirley Mitchell also spoke with Jim Bohannon in 1987.

• Howard Duff spoke to Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC’s The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these interviews at Goldenage-WTIC.org

• Don Quinn spoke with Owen Cunningham

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Selected music featured in today’s episode was:

• Besame Mucho — By Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra

• Danse Macabre — By Camille Saint-Saëns

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A special thank you to Ted Davenport, Jerry Haendiges, and Gordon Skene.

For Ted go to RadioMemories.com, for Jerry, visit OTRSite.com, and for Gordon, please go to PastDaily.com.

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Thank you to:

Tony Adams

Steven Allmon

Orson Orsen Chandler

Phil Erickson

Gerrit Lane

Jessica Hanna

Perri Harper

Thomas M. Joyce

Ryan Kramer

Earl Millard

Gary Mollica

Barry Nadler

Christian Neuhaus

Ray Shaw

Filipe A Silva

John Williams

Jim W.

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WallBreakers Links:

Patreon - patreon.com/thewallbreakers

Social Media - @TheWallBreakers

This is the trailer for The People's Recorder (https://www.peoplesrecorder.info/). Brought to you by the award-winning Spark Media, The People's Recorder is a national podcast on the 1930s Federal Writers' Project: what it achieved, where it fell short, and what it means for Americans today.

The Federal Writers' Project employed thousands of out-of-work writers across the country to document American life during a national disaster -- the Great Depression -- and “hold a mirror up to America.” What they produced was a series of state and city guidebooks and life-story interviews and recordings with everyday Americans. In creating the nation’s first self-portrait, they sparked questions about how we document history and whose stories get told.

The People's Recorder takes you on a journey with the people who lived it. We explore the Project’s legacy, what it achieved, where it fell short, and what it means for Americans today.

The first season of 10 episodes will take listeners on a wild ride across the country: undercover Black historians behind the frontlines of the Jim Crow South, documentarians of the Gulf Coast’s cultures, champions of indigenous history in the Midwest, and gurus of migration in the West. Episodes will drop monthly with bonus material released between each episode.

You can subscribe and download anywhere you'd get a podcast.

Hey everybody James Scully here, host of Breaking Walls. If you've been listening to this show for years on this RSS feed, I want you to know that you can also subscribe to the show on Youtube — https://www.youtube.com/@thewallbreakersllc.

I'm asking people who listen here on the RSS feed to subscribe on Youtube because Youtube offers the easiest path to monetizing this show.

I'm going to be fully transparent right now: There have been times in the history of this podcast that via RSS feed, Breaking Walls has had as many as 27000 - 30000 monthly downloads, but even with that, it's very hard to monetize the show via traditional podcast channels. However, I've been able to clear the monetization hurdles on Youtube, so please subscribe there. If you happen to listen on a computer or on a phone, I would appreciate if you listened via Youtube.

I'm also going into Youtube and slowly uploading all shows from Breaking Walls' archive in individual podcast playlists on Youtube. This way, everything that for years now has fallen off the RSS feed here doesn't matter. You can get all those archived shows FREE OF CHARGE on Youtube. Your listening for free will enable me to earn money, and I'd appreciate that very much.

So once again — https://www.youtube.com/@thewallbreakersllc

Keep getting out there, keep breaking those walls, and I'll catch you on the flip side.

On Sunday, March 19th, 1944 Germany forcefully occupied Hungary to prevent the country from making a separate peace agreement with the Soviet Union. Within two days, German authorities forced all Jewish businesses to close, sending hundreds to internment camps.

On March 20th, The Battle of Sangshak began in Manipur, India, while U.S. Marines landed on Emirau as part of Operation Cartwheel. The next day they linked with Australian troops on New Guinea's Huon Peninsula.

On Wednesday March 22nd, the US OSS began Operation Ginny II, intending to cut German lines of communication in Italy, but once again failed when the team landed in the wrong place and were captured.

Volcanic rock of all sizes from Mount Vesuvius began raining down from the sky, forcing massive evacuations.

German soldiers killed several civilians in Montaldo, Italy who were part of an Italian resistance group. The next day the group planted a bomb, killing thirty-three SS members in Rome. The Nazis swiftly retaliated, killing three-hundred-thirty-five people accused of helping the cause.

Meanwhile, allied forces withdrew from Monte Cassino and the offensive was called off in favor of Operation Strangle, a series of air maneuvers aimed to cut German supplies from the Italian front.

That Friday, March 24th, 1944, the Mutual Broadcasting System broadcast a special recording made by marine Technical Sergeants Fred Welker and Keene Hepburn.

During the early part of the war Dr. Harold Spivack, Chief of the Music Division of the Library of Congress, and Brigadier General Robert Denig, wartime director of Marine Corps public information, formulated a plan to give a few Marines recording devices to take into the field so the public at large would understand what these men were experiencing. Recordings began in late 1943.

By Sunday March 26th, 1944, with Easter only two weeks away, Gildy had decided to run for mayor. Naturally, he needed a good campaign photo to go with it. By this time, Peary had become a film star, starring as Gildersleeve in both shorts and feature-length films.

As the first day of Spring approached, Gildersleeve contemplated running for Mayor of Summerfield on March 19th.

Shirley Mitchell voiced Leila Ransom. Ken Carpenter, by then a famous announcer, was the Kraft spokesperson.

On Wednesday March 15th, 1944 during battle, the allies dropped nearly one-thousand tons of bombs and two hundred thousand rounds of artillery on the Monte Cassino Monastery, while trying to storm the building. They were unable to dislodge the Germans.

The allies were having more success sinking submarines. Over the next forty-eight hours Allied forces sank one Japanese and three German subs.

On Thursday at a National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics seminar in Washington, D.C., NACA personnel suggested a jet-propelled airplane be developed.

On Friday the 17th Mount Vesuvius erupted, destroying nearly ninety American aircraft and displacing twelve-thousand italians, while Soviet forces took Dubno and Zhmerynka.

The Soviets were set to begin their third Narva Offensive on Saturday as German soldiers began massacring people in both Romania and Italy.

The Germans were facing heavy bombing at home, and all of Europe knew an allied invasion was coming.

NBC’s War Telescope took to the air over WEAF in New York at 1:45PM.

By December of 1941 The Great Gildersleeve was such a hit that Kraft ordered thirteen weeks of repeats for eight more west-coast NBC stations to air Thursdays at 6:30PM beginning in January. The program would now air on sixty total NBC stations.

Summerfield was a pleasant slice of rural Americana. Most of the action took place in an eight-block area. There was a city park with an old-fashioned bandstand and a large reservoir that would soon come to play a major role. On October 18th, 1942 Gildersleeve would be appointed water commissioner, beginning an illustrious career that might be described as doing nothing at all.

The Great Gildersleeve’s rating cracked the top fifty in the first year. It rose to twenty-fourth in 1943, and by November it was pulling an 18.1. In the middle of March 1944 it was up to 19 points, good for fifth overall on Sundays.

On March 12th at 6:30PM eastern time, The Great Gildersleeve took to the air with an episode on the importance of registering to vote.

In his early twenties, Walter Tetley was already a radio veteran, having worked on The Children’s Hour, The Fred Allen Show, Raising Junior, and many other programs. As Leroy, he was a perfect deflater of Gildy’s tender ego. "Are you kiddin’?” he would snarl, bringing out the inevitable Gildersleeve retort—“Leee-eee-roy!” To Leroy, Gildy was simply “Unk,” a guy whose performance was usually out-stripped by his intentions. "What a character!” Leroy would bleat as he caught his uncle in the fib of the week. He later worked with Phil Harris and Alice Faye.

By 1944, then thirty-seven, Lurene Tuttle was one of the most versatile actresses on the air, capable of playing any part that required any age, and almost any dialect.

Lilian Randolph played Birdie Lee Coggins, housekeeper and voice of reason.

Of note, this recording came courtesy of the Armed Forces Radio Service. At this time, Howard Duff, still an unknown actor, was working for the AFRS and recutting many shows to get them on the air for enlisted servicemen around the world.