Breaking Walls

As we covered in the previous episode, number 143, of Breaking Walls, In Little Rock, Arkansas on September 4th, 1957, nine African-American students attempted to attend their first day of high school at the newly integrated Little Rock Central High.

The National Guard, on the orders of Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, prevented the students from entering the school.

The Governor then locked himself in his mansion, refusing to come out. President Dwight D. Eisenhower soon met with the Governor, and the National Guard was removed.

On September 23rd, the nine students entered Little Rock Central High for the first time, ignoring verbal abuse and threats from a crowd outside.

When the mob realized the students had entered the school, violence erupted, and seven journalists were attacked. As the situation deteriorated, school officials, fearing for the students’ safety, dismissed the Little Rock Nine at lunchtime.

The next day, President Eisenhower ordered paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division to escort the students to the building, signaling out those bent on disrupting the federal integration mandate.

Over the following days, Eisenhower federalized ten-thousand Arkansas National Guardsmen, removing them from the control of the Governor.

The Little Rock Nine were finally able to attend classes in late September, but they faced threats, verbal abuse, and hazing from both white students and adults alike.

On Thursday October 17th, 1957 NBC Radio broadcast a special with students from Little Rock Central High about their feelings on integration.

Although the conditions the Little Rock Nine had to endure were deplorable, when the Spring of 1958 came around eight of the nine had successfully completed the school year.

On Wednesday October 9th, 1957 at 8PM eastern time, The Bill Kemp Show took to the air over ABC. Bill Kemp was born on July 10th, 1921 in Toronto, Canada. An up and coming performer in the 1950s, his daily radio show ran weeknights at 8PM.

His show was the final in a twelve-hour daily live broadcast project by ABC called “The Live and Lively Radio Network.” ABC’s intention was to raise ratings by going back to live broadcasts in an era of taped shows. Interestingly, it was ABC that helped launch the non-Mutual Broadcasting transcribed primetime era with Bing Crosby’s Philco Radio Time in 1946.

Kemp’s show featured an orchestra, vocalist and guest stars such as Jonathon Winters. Kemp’s announcer George Ansbro remembered that Kemp once went laugh for laugh with Winters after a particularly successful broadcast, and continued the antics all the way to a nearby steakhouse.

Unfortunately, Kemp also developed a debilitating drinking problem. Merv Griffin and Jim Backus were called on several occasions to cover for Kemp during absences for "personal reasons."

One week after this broadcast on Wednesday October 16th, Queen Elizabeth II departed from Ottawa and arrived in Williamsburg, Virginia. The next day she was in Washington, D.C. While at the White House, Prince Philip received the gold medal of the National Geographic Society.

On October 18th, two U.S. Navy balloonists flew to an altitude of sixteen miles, landing near Hermansville, Michigan.

On October 19th, the Queen and Prince Philip attended an American football game in College Park, Maryland, and then visited a supermarket in West Hyattsville.

That same day a beauty pageant winner was killed en route to her coronation in a helicopter crash in Farmingdale, New York, while Montreal Canadiens’ star Maurice “The Rocket” Richard became the first player in National Hockey League history to score five-hundred career goals.

Stan Freberg was born on August 7th, 1926 in Pasadena, California. Shortly after graduating from high school, he found work as a voice actor in both radio and animation.

In 1957, now thirty-one, he was given his own thirty-minute comedy program on CBS, Sundays at 7:30PM eastern time from Hollywood. He debuted on July 14th, 1957. His cast featured Peter Leeds, June Foray, Daws Butler, Marvin Miller with vocalist Peggy Taylor, Billy May's orchestra, and the Jud Conlon Rhythmaires.

His comedic style was biting. He was a shrewd satirist who targeted mediocrity, complacency, and stuffed shirts. He specialized in lampooning American life. On his first show he ripped American capitalism with a long skit about two competing Las Vegas nightclubs, the El Sodom and Rancho Gomorrah, set in the near future.

The CBS higher-ups didn’t get it.

So, he destroyed Lawrence Welk in a skit that became known as “Wunnerful, Wunnerful.” Billy May’s orchestra played a Welkian arrangement of “Bubbles in the Wine” while Freberg—doing a credible Welk imitation—kept yelling, “Turn off the bubble machine!” until he was drowned in the foam.

Freberg “interviewed” the abominable snowman, presented a group of musical sheep, and staged a western skit, “Bang Gunley, U.S. Marshall Fields” spoofing the overdone sound effects of many classic films.

He attacked censorship, with Freberg attempting to sing Kern and Hammerstein’s “Ol’ Man River,” only to be stopped by a “citizens committee censor,” who sounded a buzzer at any line he found objectionable, leading to rewriting the lyrics as “Elderly man river.”

In August Sponsor Magazine reported that CBS thought network radio could see a return to sponsors buying full programs that fall. CBS was pitching The Stan Freberg show for ten-thousand dollars per week.

However, by October it was obvious that network comedy couldn’t return to its previous highs and The Stan Freberg Show was canceled after the October 20th episode.

In October of 1957, Algeria was in the midst of a war for Independence and control between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front.

The conflict began in November of 1954 and by October of 1957 was considered the world’s only active war of note.

It was a complex conflict characterized by guerrilla warfare and the use of torture. When the War finally came to an end in 1962 with France granting Algeria Independence, nine-hundred-thousand Algerian refugees fled to France in fear of the NLF taking revenge on them for siding with France.

The majority of Algerian Muslims who had worked for the French were left behind. Algerian authorities promised France they’d take no action against them. However, these Algerian Muslims were branded as traitors and many were soon murdered.

On October 14th, 1957 at 10:30PM Eastern Time, CBS radio broadcast a documentary on the first three years of the conflict entitled, “Algeria Aflame.”

In October 1944, in conjunction with the Jewish Theological Seminary, NBC began one of the longest-running religious programs in radio history. It was called The Eternal Light.

Then in its thirteenth year, The Eternal Light dramatized stories from ancient Judaea, along with contemporary works like The Diary of Anne Frank.

It was produced by Milton Krents. Many top New York radio actors appeared. NBC donated the air time and the Seminary paid for the show's production.

On Sunday October 13th, 1957 at 12:30PM eastern time over NBC’s WRCA in New York, The Eternal Light took to the air with a story on the Glastonbury Cows.

In Glastonbury, Connecticut in 1869, tax collectors asked two elderly sisters, Abby and Julia Smith, to pay their road taxes early. They did, but were surprised to find the town accidentally billed them a second time later in the year.

The Smiths were wealthy. Their father left his daughters a large land holding, investments and a farm. Their mother left them a sizable inheritance, as well.

When the sisters asked the town to correct the matter, the tax collector refused. When they tried to enter a Town Meeting to raise the issue, they were turned away because they were women.

The frustrated sisters paid the tax a second time, but their lack of political power infuriated them. They began attending women’s suffrage rallies. And as their frustration grew, so did their taxes.

In 1874, they were told they could not delay their taxes in exchange for a twelve percent interest charge – a courtesy afforded other taxpayers.

They became convinced that modern women needed a vote, and decided to stop paying taxes until they could. The tax collector seized seven cows to pay off back taxes. The sisters used a straw buyer to retrieve most of them, sparking much written debate. Critics who compared them to children only made their supporters more united.

The cows became celebrities. Knickknacks woven out of their hair sold like hotcakes at fundraising bazaars that promoted women’s suffrage. Julia published a popular book, Abby Smith and Her Cows.

This seizing continued through 1878. Eventually the sisters testified before Congress.

In 1878, at the age of 81, Abby died in July. The next year, Julia, age 87, decided to marry for the first time. Her husband began paying the taxes on her property, and she repaid him in a compromise of love.

Although many radio programs were being canceled, The Eternal Light would air on radio and then television until 1989.

On Friday October 4th, 1957 the U.S. received confirmation of the USSR’s launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial earth orbiting satellite.

It was a polished metal sphere twenty-three inches in diameter with four external radio antennas to broadcast radio pulses.

Its radio signal was easily detectable by amateur radio operators. Its sixty-five degree orbital inclination gave it a flight path that completely covered all parts of the inhabited earth.

While traveling at peak speed, the satellite took 96.20 minutes to complete each orbit. It transmitted on the bandwidth of roughly twenty and forty megahertz. These signals were monitored throughout the world and continued for twenty-one days until the transmitter’s batteries died on October 26th.

The satellite's success was unanticipated by the U.S., setting the space Race into orbit as part of the Cold War.

That same day, Bring Crosby signed on with The Ford Road Show for five minutes over CBS, announced by Ken Carpenter.

The next Wednesday, October 9th, The Lovell Telescope was activated in Cheshire, England, while a Boeing B-47 Stratojet bomber crashed in Orlando, Florida killing all four military officers on board.

On October 10th, a nuclear reactor fire on the north-west coast of England released radioactive material into the air, as President Eisenhower hosted breakfast at the White House with Ghanese minister to France, Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, who’d been recently refused at a Howard Johnson’s in Delaware because of his race.

The next day an IBM computer at MIT Computation Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts calculated the last stage of the R-7 Semyorka rocket that carried Sputnik 1.

On Saturday October 12th, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, arrived in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, for a royal visit. On the fourteenth, the Queen opened the Canadian Parliament, the first monarch to do so.

Unit 99, first aired over ABC’s KFBK Sacramento on August 23rd, 1957. The radio station was part of the McClatchy media empire along with The Sacramento Bee and other radio and TV stations, as well as newspapers in the Western U.S.

The show was born from Jack Webb’s Dragnet mode of realistic police portrayals, then furthered by shows like Night Watch which removed the script, followed actual officers, and made the drama real.

Tony Kester directed the show under the auspices of the Sacramento police department. It featured Police Chief James B. Hicks as host and sergeant Dan Meredith recording his nightly police beat, interviewing witnesses of various crimes and police calls.

Unit 99 ran until June 13th, 1958.

At 12:45PM on Wednesday October 2nd, Game one of the 1957 World Series took to the air. It pitted The Milwaukee Braves against The New York Yankees from Yankee Stadium in The Bronx.

Bob Neal and Earl Gillespie were on the call for NBC Radio, while Mel Allen and Al Helfer telecast the game.

The upstart Braves were led by future hall-of-famers Hank Aaron, Eddie Matthews and Warren Spahn. The defending champion Yankees were led by Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and manager Casey Stengel.

The Braves moved to Milwaukee from Boston after the 1952 season, leaving beantown to the Red Sox, finishing in the first division the previous four seasons before breaking through and winning the 1957 NL pennant.

The Yankees were playing in their twenty-third world series in thirty-seven seasons.

The Braves would win the series four games to three. The next year the two teams would meet again, this time with the Yankees taking the series in seven games.

The following day, comedian Artie Auerbach, best known for playing Mr. Kitzel on The Jack Benny Program passed away of a heart attack.

That same day New York Times columnist Jack Gould criticized NBC for attempting to televise the World Series in color.

In Breaking Walls episode 143 we begin a mini series on radio and the world in the fall of 1957.

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Highlights:

• LIFE and The World

• The Man from Tomorrow

• The American Forum of the Air

• Atomic Testing

• Pat Buttram and Just Entertainment on Labor Day

• Ray Bradbury and the End of X-Minus One

• Ms America

• The Hattie Cotton School Bombing

• Biography in Sound

• Howard Miller and Steve Allen

• The End of Family Theater

• The Grand Ole Opry

• Meet The Press and The Right of Self Determination

• CBS Still Doing Drama on Sundays

• Bing Crosby’s Road Show

• School Integration

• The Dodgers and Giants Leave New York

• Looking Ahead to October and Sputnik

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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 for today’s episode was:

• On the Air — By John Dunning

• Network Radio Ratings — By Jim Ramsburg

As well as articles from

• Broadcasting Magazine

• The Los Angeles Times

• The New York Times

• Radio Daily

• U.S. Radio Magazine

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On the interview front:

• Lilian Buyeff, Mary Jane Croft, Sam Edwards, Herb Ellis, Bill Froug, Jack Johnstone, Jeanette Nolan, and Herb Vigran spoke to SPERDVAC. For more info, go to SPERDVAC.com.

• John Scott Trotter spoke with Same Time, Same Station.

• Jackson Beck, John Gibson, Larry Haines, Mary Jane Higby, Jim Jordan, Joe Julian, Mandel Kramer, Jan Miner, Arnold Moss, Bill Robson, and Guy Sorel spoke to Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC’s The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these interviews at GoldenAge-WTIC.org.

• Parley Baer, Ken Carpenter, Bob Hastings, Jim Jordan, and Herb Vigran spoke with Chuck Schaden. Hear their full chats at Speakingofradio.com.

• Roberta Bailey-Goodwin spoke with John Dunning for his KNUS program from Denver

* Norman Macdonnell was with John Hickman for his Gunsmoke documentary

• Jack Kruschen and George Walsh spoke with Jim Bohannon in 1987

• Ray Bradbury spoke with Jerry Haendiges

• Ernest Kinoy spoke with Walden Hughes

• Ben Grauer spoke with Westinghouse for their 50th anniversary

• William S. Paley gave a speech on November 20th, 1958 in New York

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Selected music featured in today’s episode was:

• Scarborough Fair, Shenandoah, and Autumn Stars — By Michael Silverman

• The Last Rose of Summer — By Tom Waits

• Corrina, Corrina, Old Friends, and Where Are You Now — By George Winston

• Death Runs Riot — By Matthias Gohl

• This Room is My Castle of Quiet — By Billy May and His Orchestra

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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

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

Next time on Breaking Walls, we continue our 1957 mini series by picking up in October with Sputnik, Algeria, Queen Elizabeth’s royal tour, and dying radio drama.

——————————

The WallBreakers:

http://thewallbreakers.com

Subscribe to Breaking Walls everywhere you get your podcasts.

To support the show:

http://patreon.com/TheWallBreakers

——————————

The reading material for today’s episode was:

• On the Air — By John Dunning

• Network Radio Ratings — By Jim Ramsburg

As well as articles from

• Broadcasting Magazine

• The Los Angeles Times

• The New York Times

• Radio Daily

• U.S. Radio Magazine

——————————

On the interview front:

• Lilian Buyeff, Mary Jane Croft, Sam Edwards, Herb Ellis, Bill Froug, Jack Johnstone, Jeanette Nolan, and Herb Vigran spoke to SPERDVAC. For more info, go to SPERDVAC.com.

• John Scott Trotter spoke with Same Time, Same Station.

• Jackson Beck, John Gibson, Larry Haines, Mary Jane Higby, Jim Jordan, Joe Julian, Mandel Kramer, Jan Miner, Arnold Moss, Bill Robson, and Guy Sorel spoke to Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC’s The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these interviews at GoldenAge-WTIC.org.

• Parley Baer, Ken Carpenter, Bob Hastings, Jim Jordan, and Herb Vigran spoke with Chuck Schaden. Hear their full chats at Speakingofradio.com.

• Roberta Bailey-Goodwin spoke with John Dunning for his KNUS program from Denver

* Norman Macdonnell was with John Hickman for his Gunsmoke documentary

• Jack Kruschen and George Walsh spoke with Jim Bohannon in 1987

• Ray Bradbury spoke with Jerry Haendiges

• Ernest Kinoy spoke with Walden Hughes

• Ben Grauer spoke with Westinghouse for their 50th anniversary

• William S. Paley gave a speech on November 20th, 1958 in New York

——————————

Selected music featured in today’s episode was:

• Scarborough Fair, Shenandoah, and Autumn Stars — By Michael Silverman

• The Last Rose of Summer — By Tom Waits

• Corrina, Corrina, Old Friends, and Where Are You Now — By George Winston

• Death Runs Riot — By Matthias Gohl

• This Room is My Castle of Quiet — By Billy May and His Orchestra