Breaking Walls

Labor Day is a U.S. federal holiday celebrated on the first Monday in September to honor and recognize the contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United States.

As trade unions and labor movements reached their peak during the Industrial Revolution, the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor organized the first parade in New York City. In 1887, Oregon was the first state to make it an official public holiday. By the time it became an official federal holiday in 1894, thirty states in the U.S. officially celebrated Labor Day.

On Labor Day in 1957, LIFE Magazine’s cover featured Major David Simons and his hot air balloon flight, also talking about the asiatic flu threat.

Meanwhile, The Saturday Evening Post wrote about the drastic toll life without parole prison sentences wrought and a warden’s plea for drastic reform in the American concept of punishment.

Originally hosted by Gene Autry, Just Entertainment was in 1957 hosted by sidekick Pat Buttram.

Pat Buttram was born in Addison, Alabama on June 19th, 1915. The seventh child of a Methodist minister, he was set to follow in his father’s footsteps when, just before his eighteenth birthday, he attended the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago.

Station WLS sent an announcer to the fairgrounds for a remote broadcast interviewing fair attendees, and the announcer picked Pat as a "typical" visitor from the South. To everyone's delight and surprise, his comic observations and bits of country wisdom kept the announcer and the audience in stitches. WLS hired him for their National Barn Dance program, giving him a nation-wide audience. Pat soon became friends with Gene Autry.

He went to Hollywood in the 1940s, appearing in more than forty Gene Autry pictures and became a regular on the Melody Ranch radio program. He later played Mr. Haney on CBS-TV’s Green Acres.

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On September 1st, 1957 at 10:30PM eastern time over NBC, The American Forum of the Air signed on with a talk on the dangers of nuclear testing.

The day prior a nuclear test was conducted in Nevada, only roughly three hundred miles from Los Angeles.

Later that month, The Rocky Flats Nuclear Plant, just fifteen miles northwest of Denver, Colorado experienced a major plutonium fire, which caused plutonium, americium, and uranium contamination within and outside its boundaries.

Six years later, on August 5th, 1963 in Moscow, thanks to worldwide fallout level side effects and concerns, the Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed. Ratification came from the Soviet Union, U.K., and the U.S.. It limited testing to underground facilities. The U.S. and USSR were, at that time, responsible for eighty-six percent of all nuclear tests.

August, 1957.

We’re driving east on Route 50 from West Sacramento in a 1957 Ford Skyliner. The convertible costs roughly three-thousand dollars, has a Y-block Thunderbird V-8 engine and two-hundred-twelve horsepower.

It’s got something else too: car radios have become Standard. U.S. Radio Magazine will soon state that fifty-five percent of all peak listening came from cars. Auto-rating measurements are underway, but still ineffective.

Radio stations are having a good year. Sixty percent of National stations expect their total revenue to grow. Total radio revenue is expected to increase three percent year-over-year. A median station in 1957 is expected to make nearly one-hundred-three thousand dollars in revenue, with a profit of eleven-thousand five-hundred dollars.

Urban stations are enjoying higher numbers thanks to higher populations and more national ad spots, though local sponsors are paying eighty-seven percent of ad costs.

Programming accounts for thirty-three percent of all expenses.

Gunsmoke was dramatic radio’s highest-rated show, with its Saturday afternoon repeat broadcast attracting even more listeners than its Sunday evening primetime installment. Somewhere between four and five million people were still tuning in from their homes. When factoring in car and transistor radios, nearly ten million people were listening.

Meanwhile, Major David Simons just piloted the first hot-air balloon to reach over one-hundred-thousand feet of altitude, skirting the outer rim of our atmosphere.

With the experiment lasting more than twenty-four hours, it was the precursor to manned space flights.

On August 28th, the Major appeared on LIFE And The World over NBC radio in conjunction with the September 2nd, issue of LIFE Magazine.

The rocket age, the Cold War, integration and civil rights are all upon us, while radio drama hangs on for dear life.

Tonight, we’ll step into a portal to a time with Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, and Fibber McGee and Molly. And along the way, we might just remember where we’ve been, so we know where we’re going.

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On June 1st, 1957 after three seasons as a five-a-week serial, Jim and Marian Jordan joined NBC’s Monitor in short segments. The Monitor service had been airing for two years, offering NBC affiliates a full weekend block of available programming.

In New York, On Sunday September 1st, NBC’s WRCA began airing Monitor at 12PM. That day Fibber and Molly told a version of their origin story. In 1958, tests found that Marian had a terminal form of cancer. She continued to work as long as possible. The couple had vignettes on Monitor until September of 1959.

Fibber McGee and Molly were the subject of Breaking Walls episode 103.

If you’d have tuned into WCBS in New York on Sunday, September 1st, 1957 you’d have heard news reports at the tops of most hours. Concerts and other music programs filled the dial between 11:30AM and 4:00PM. At 4:05 The CBS Radio Workshop signed on with the network’s first dramatic offering of the day.

Next up was Suspense. In 1957 William N. Robson was in the middle of a three year run as director. CBS had found multiple sponsorship for the series in late 1956. Ten months later, it was airing on Sundays at 4:35 from WCBS in New York, and at 4PM from KNX in Los Angeles.

By 1957 Robson had more than twenty years of experience writing, producing, and directing radio shows. The September 1st episode was called “The Man From Tomorrow.” It starred Frank Lovejoy and Joan Banks. At that time, they’d been married for seventeen years.

One thing that was most certainly successful: CBS’s handling of radio during the oncoming TV era. A large part of this was because of chairman William Paley’s belief in the medium. By 1957 he’d been head of CBS for thirty years.

At the CBS company convention in November of 1957 upper management predicted that radio was becoming fashionable again.

This is the trailer for RED ODYSSEY, a Lovecraftian horror story you will never forget. Premiering September 8 wherever you get your podcasts from Denouncer Media (https://denouncermedia.com/).

"I Was Thirteen" by Taras Shevchenko, translation by John Weir.

Edited by Benton Hodges

Music by Jacob Zeranski

Sound Mix and Design by Manas Kunder

Right now, experience New York City like you’ve never before. Will you make the right deal? Or fall to greed? But whatever you choose, just make sure you get out in time.

Out now on your favorite podcast app, Burning Gotham — The 2022 Tribeca Select audio soap opera about the fastest growing city in the world, and the opportunists who shaped it.

Find out more at BurningGotham.com

In Breaking Walls episode 142 we feature one of Brooklyn’s native sons, Bill Gargan, who made more than sixty films, and good money on radio in the 1950s.

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Highlights:

• Brooklyn’s Native Son

• Hollywood and An Oscar Nomination

• The War and Being a Radio Detective

• Martin Kane

• Launching Barrie Craig

• Radio Ratings in 1954

• Hollywood vs. New York

• Hay is For Homicide

• Ghosts Don’t Die in Bed

• Throat Cancer and Thereafter

• Looking Ahead to 1957

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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

• Why Me? An Autobiography — By William Gargan

• The Big Show — By Martin Grams Jr.

• Network Radio Ratings — By Jim Ramsburg

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On the interview front:

• Parley Baer, Himan Brown, Lawrence Dobkin, Betty Lou Gerson, Virginia Gregg, Herb Ellis, and Herb Vigran spoke to SPERDVAC. For more info, go to SPERDVAC.com.

• Bing Crosby and Lurene Tuttle spoke with Same Time, Same Station.

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

• Parley Baer and Himan Brown also spoke with Chuck Schaden. Hear their full chats at Speakingofradio.com.

• Connee Boswell spoke with Lee Philip.

• Ernest Konoy spoke with Walden Hughes for Yesterday USA.

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Selected music featured in today’s episode was:

• The Man With The Golden Arm — By Elmer Bernstein

• String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op. 96 — By Avi Avital

• Pyramid of the Sun and Voodoo Dreams — By Les Baxter

• Living Without You — By George Winston, who recently passed away

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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

While this brings our look at the life of William Gargan to a close, we’ll be staying in this time period for the next episode of Breaking Walls.

Next time on Breaking Walls, it’s the fall of 1957 and the world is in transition. Both the Civil Rights movement and the space race are underway. We’ll begin a four-month arc, covering all things through the lens of radio for the month of September.

After Barrie Craig went off the air, Gargan continued to occasionally host Family Theater. He also made films Miracle in The Rain and The Rawhide Years. He starred on the west-coast stage in a version of The Desperate Hours for Randy Hale and went to Europe to film thirty-nine episodes of The New Adventures of Martin Kane for Ziv Productions.

In 1960 Hale was set to cast Gargan on stage in The Best Man, but a bout with Laryngitis forced Gargan to get some tests on his throat done.

It was throat cancer. Doctors were forced to remove his larynx On November 10th, 1960. A breathing stoma was cut into the bottom of his throat. A man whose voice made him famous no longer had one.

For a time he was depressed. Friends Bing Crosby, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Alice Faye, and many others came by. It helped. Gargan couldn’t bear the thought of not speaking again. He made his first vocal lesson through The American Cancer Society in January of 1961.

It took him more than a year, but by the following February he was making progress. The ACS was looking for a Southern California Vice Chairman for their 1962 drive. Gargan agreed to serve.

In 1963, he met President Kennedy. He had a meeting set with the President for November 23rd. It was one that President Kennedy never made it to.

By then his brother Ed was ill with diabetes and emphysema. He passed away in 1964. That year, Gargan was hired by the ACS for their full-time national staff.

Within three years, Gargan mastered esophageal speech. He wouldn’t use a vocal amplifier and worked tirelessly to be able to speak in both low and high tones.

Bill thanked his wife Mary for refusing to let him give up and for his faith that kept him asking why. That’s what he titled his autobiography, Why Me?

By then he knew the answer. Bill Gargan spent the next two decades raising money, awareness, and the spirits of fellow cancer patients around the country.

On February 16th, 1979 while on a flight between New York City and San Diego following a tour lecturing for the ACS, Gargan suffered a fatal heart attack. He was seventy-three. William Dennis Gargan is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in San Diego, California.

In September of 1954 as the last new episode of The Lone Ranger was broadcast, Barry Craig, Confidential Investigator took to the air on Tuesday September 7th at 8:30PM eastern time with an episode called “Ghosts Don’t Die in Bed.”

Betty Lou Gerson played Ruth Adams. Virginia Gregg played Mrs. Dunn. The series announced its cancellation at the end of this episode, but a month later it was back on the air in a twenty-five minute format for another thirty-nine episodes recorded in Hollywood.

The last Barrie Craig episode aired on September 30th, 1955, replaced thereafter with the science fiction series X-Minus One, produced in New York. One-hundred-ninety-two episodes were broadcast.

On Tuesday August 31st, 1954 as President Eisenhower addressed the American Legion, it had been a busy ten days for American aviation.

On Sunday, August 22nd, Braniff Airways’ Douglas C-47-DL Skytrain crashed during a flight from Waterloo, to Mason City, Iowa. Twelve of the nineteen aboard died.

The next day, A U.S. Air Force Lockheed C-130 Hercules flew its first flight at Burbank, California.

And on August 25th, U.S. Air Force Captain Joseph C. McConnell, the top-scoring American jet ace in history, died in a crash when his F-86H Sabre fighter-bomber malfunctioned during a test flight at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

Meanwhile, Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator took to the air with a play called “Hay is For Homicide.”

Parley Baer played Jake. Also heard in the cast was Jack Moyles, Vivi Janiss, and Joyce McClusky. Arthur Jacobson directed the production. Airing opposite Barrie Craig at 8:30PM eastern time was High Adventure over WOR-Mutual, Stop The Music over CBS, and Watkins Committee Testimonies concerning Senator Joseph McCarthy on ABC.

McCarthy would be censured by the senate in December. Senator McCarthy and the Red Scare has been covered extensively on episodes 123 through 128 of Breaking Walls on the first six months of 1954.