Breaking Walls

At 4:30PM on Sunday October 31st, 1948, True Detective Mysteries signed on. The program had a rating of 10.7. It was Mutual’s number two show overall. Based on items from True Detective magazine, the series was sponsored by Oh Henry Candy bars.

Many of the stories unfolded from the criminal’s viewpoint: the show was much like Gangbusters in allowing the audience to witness the fatal mistakes that led to the culprit’s capture. Borrowing yet another page from Gangbusters, the magazine offered rewards of $500 (later $1000) for information leading to the arrest of real criminals. Clues were given after each broadcast: these were highly descriptive, focusing on scars and deformities, and the show resulted in many arrests.

By October 31st, 1948, The Mutual Broadcasting System’s flagship WOR in New York was approaching its twenty-seventh anniversary. It was argued that no station matched its signal coverage. WOR-Mutual was known for its cop shows, soap operas, and on Sundays, it’s mysteries.

At 4PM eastern time, House of Mystery signed on for General Foods. John Griggs was Roger Elliott, ghost hunter and scientist of the supernatural. The show was directed by Olga Druce, who guided the program along a fine line. Because House of Mystery was geared for children, it couldn’t be overtly gruesome or vulgar.

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The 1948 DNC convened in July with President Truman’s approval rating as low as 32%. Northern Democrats pushed for a strong civil rights platform, which the President was in favor of.

Conservative southern Dems were opposed. Moderates feared voter alienation. When the convention adopted the civil rights plank in a close vote, Southern Dems walked out and split off, nominating Strom Thurmond for President.

They became known as Dixiecrats, hoping to force a contingency in the House of Representatives, extracting concessions from either Truman or Republican nominee Thomas Dewey.

The post-war strikes didn’t end. On October 26th the Radio Writers Guild struck for fair wages and for RWG guideline adherence by ad agencies. Their focus was the coming new medium: Television. Negotiations would continue into 1949.

On Halloween 1948, the Presidential election was on everyone’s mind. The night before, Thomas Dewey ended his campaign at Madison Square Garden. He’d run against FDR in 1944, losing, but received 46% of the popular vote.

After President Roosevelt passed away, there were many who felt Dewey made a better post-war choice than Harry Truman. In the 1946 New York Gubernatorial election, Dewey won by nearly 700,000 votes, the most in New York history to that point.

Tuesday, November 2nd was the 41st U.S. presidential election in history. Truman was a massive underdog with South Carolina’s Governor Strom Thurmond opposing on the Dixiecrat ticket, and another FDR VP, Henry Wallace as the Progressive Party nominee.

Meanwhile in the Middle East, The Arab-Israeli war raged on. Fighting started the previous November. It ramped after Palestine was officially dissolved, and Israel declared Independence on May 14th.

Count Bernadotte of Visborg was assassinated in September by four members of Lehi, a Jewish Zionist group. One of whom—Yitzhak Shamir would go on to be the Seventh Prime Minister of Israel.

Operation Hiram ended on Halloween with Israeli forces claiming to have complete control of Galilee. The fighting would continue into 1949.

The Cold War was growing, with Americans investigating potential communist cells within the government, fearing the world could split into two distinct groups: those who supported democracy, and those who supported totalitarianism.

In 1934 Chicago was the center for radio production. Writer and director Wyllis Cooper created a program for NBC affiliate WENR that drastically altered the tone of horror. Cooper had been writing advertising copy in the late 1920s when he entered radio, working first as a continuity editor, then for NBC's Empire Builders.

His idea was to offer listeners a late-night terror program, at a time when other stations were mostly airing music. It emphasized crime thrillers and the supernatural. The first series of shows were fifteen minutes and ran on Wednesdays at midnight to local audiences. It was called Lights Out.

In April, the series expanded to a half-hour. The following year, it went national. Cooper stayed on until 1936 when he left to write film scripts in Los Angeles.

He wrote The Phantom Creeps and The Son of Frankenstein before returning for the final season of The Campbell Playhouse on CBS and The Army Hour on NBC.

Then in the Spring of 1947 a new opportunity arose in New York. Quiet Please debuted on Sunday June 8th, 1947 at 3:30PM over the Mutual Broadcasting System.

Quiet Please elevated the genre to high art. For the weekly lead, Cooper cast Ernest Chappell, The Campbell Playhouse announcer. He proved a natural, playing Scotsman, oil riggers, drunks, and archaeologists. They were every-men who got tied up in the otherworldly.

Few supporting voices could be afforded or deployed. Those few were part of New York radio’s elite like Frank and Claudia Morgan. The cast was told to play it straight. It resulted in an almost dream-like study in horror, like on October 27th, 1947 when Quiet Please presented “Don’t Tell Me About Halloween.”

In March of 1948, CBS executive Davidson Taylor sent an internal memo expressing his interest in purchasing the Mutual-sustained series for CBS. Taylor had a keen eye for talent, but nothing materialized. Quiet Please shifted to ABC in September of 1948, but never found sponsorship and went off the air on June 25th, 1949.

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Mystery is My Hobby originally came to Don Lee’s west coast airwaves in April of 1945, before going full network over Mutual that October as Murder Is My Hobby. It starred Glenn Langan as Barton Drake, a police inspector and the author of the book Mystery Is My Hobby. Drake combined his professions by collecting material for stories while he solved crimes.

The program went off the air in July of 1946, but returned the next summer under the Mystery title. Barton Drake was now a writer who worked with the police. Each episode was presented as cases from his book.

The October 29th, 1947 episode was called “Death Speaks with Ten Fingers,” and guest-starred Barney Phillips, Gloria Blondell, Ken Christy, and Jean Vander Pyl, who was later famous as the voice of Wilma Flintsone.

Written and directed by Robert Arthur and David Kogan, The Mysterious Traveler first aired over the Mutual Broadcasting System on December 5th, 1943.

Mostly sustained, the show was heard on virtually every night of the week. There were frequent gaps in its runs, but it was always good for a revival. It was cheap to produce; there were no major film stars to pay, and plenty of New York radio actors willing to work for union scale. With that said, it was popular enough to spawn a comic book and magazine.

Maurice Tarplin played the title role with a good-natured malevolence. The traveler mostly narrated from an omniscient perch. He came to his listeners in the night, riding a phantom train. The opening signature was the distant wail of a locomotive whistle, fading in gradually until the rumble of the train could be heard.

The stories ran from crime drama to wild science fiction. David Kogan later recalled that he broke into radio with Bulldog Drummond, Shadow and Thin Man scripts. He met Robert Arthur in Greenwich Village, suggesting they team up. The pair developed Dark Destiny, which aired on Mutual from August 26th, 1942 through March 11th, 1943.

They came up with the Mysterious Traveler concept and prepared three sample scripts. Norman Livingston bought it for WOR. As independent producers, they were paid a flat rate for the whole package. Any money they saved by using the same actor in multiple roles went into their own pockets, so they used the best character actors in New York radio. Kogan also directed the series.

This episode, “Death is My Caller” featured Santos Ortega, Agnes Young, Ted Jewett, and Neil O’Malley.

Along with The Mysterious Traveler, Kogan and Arthur also wrote a season of Nick Carter, The Strange Dr. Weird, The Sealed Book, and later Murder By Experts. The Mysterious Traveler would air until September of 1952.

By October of 1947, nearly eleven million babies had been born in the U.S. since the end of World War II. Young parents were staying home with their children. Movie attendance bombed.

The 1947-48 season had the largest radio audience in history. Homes with radios jumped 6%, car radios 29%.

NBC, CBS, ABC, and Mutual added nearly one-hundred fifty affiliates. Ninety-seven percent of the nation’s AM stations were now linked to one of the big four. Network revenue topped $200 Million.

World War two had created fundamental changes in society. While men of all races and creeds were overseas spilling the same colored blood, women mobilized and took charge of the workforce. When veterans were discharged, they returned home with different ideals, and what we’d now call PTSD.

As new cars, roads, and homes brought young families to the suburbs, racial descrimination came to the forefront in the face of the G.I. Bill, where a much higher percentage of white Americans were having their applications accepted.

On October 29th, the national civil rights committee delivered a report to the White House. The document made thirty-five specific recommendations, including asking the President to create a permanent Federal commission on civil rights. President Truman said that he’d study the report with great care and recommend that all citizens do the same thing.

Americans were organizing. In the year after VJ Day, more than five million struck for better wages and benefits. This hurt key sectors of the economy and stifled production. Consumer goods in high-demand were slow to appear on shelves and in showrooms, frustrating Americans who desperately wanted to purchase items forsaken during the war.

It caused the largest inflation rise in the country’s modern history, and the Taft-Hartley Act, limiting the power of Labor Unions.

President Truman was seemingly at odds with Congress over every domestic policy and his approval rating sank to 32%. Reelection the following year seemed unlikely.

The U.S. War Debt topped two-hundred-forty billion dollars. Emerging as one of the world’s leaders, America was expected to have the largest hand in rebuilding Europe.

News outlets reported that, to create European stability, Americans should resume sacrifices they made during the war. Not agreeing to do so could result in political enemies taking over the continent.

That October, as the major networks were enjoying the largest ratings in radio history, one network, The Mutual Broadcasting System, was still struggling to grab audiences. Airing out of WOR in New York, The Shadow was the network’s most-listened to program. While it pulled a rating of thirteen — strong for a show airing on Sundays at 5PM easten — it was nowhere near radio’s top fifty.

Mutual’s top stations — WOR in New York, WGN in Chicago, and Don Lee’s KHJ in Los Angeles — all boasted powerful signals and had equal shares in the network. And, while Mutual reached four-hundred affiliates in 1947 and would add another hundred over the next year, many of these were small stations in rural areas. This limited their advertiser appeal.

Mutual was run as a cooperative, rather than a corporation. As families left cities and farms for the suburbs, the network’s shared programming structure left it at a distinct disadvantage against NBC, CBS, and ABC. Those three networks would use their soaring revenue to move into TV. Although some Mutual affiliates developed television programming, the full network was never able to launch into TV.

That’s not to say MBS didn’t have quality programming. Just the opposite, and with Halloween around the corner, tonight we’ll delve into Mutual’s horror, mystery, and suspense shows of the late 1940s.

In Breaking Walls episode 131 we spotlight Orson Welles’ time as The Shadow in 1937-38.

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Highlights:

• Orson Welles’ on The March of Time and The Columbia Workshop

• The Shadow as Narrator

• Les Misérables

• WOR and Network Radio In The Fall of 1937

• The Shadow Launches With Orson Welles

• Jeanette Nolan and The Temple Bells of Neban

• Early Reviews

• Agnes Moorehead and The Three Ghosts

• The Circle of Death

• The Mercury Theater Leaves The Shadow

• Orson In The Fall of 1938

• Looking Ahead to Halloween with Mutual Broadcasting

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Subscribe to Breaking Walls everywhere you get your podcasts.

To support the show:

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The reading material used in today’s episode was:

• This is Orson Welles — by Peter Bogdanovich with Orson Welles

• Citizen Welles — by Frank Brady

• On the Air — By John Dunning

• The Shadow: History and Mystery of the Radio Program — By Martin Grams Jr.

• Network Radio Ratings — By Jim Ramsburg

• Discovering Orson Welles — by Jonathan Rosenbaum

• WOR: The First Sixty Years

As well as articles from

• Billboard

• The New York Times

• Variety

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On the interview front:

• Agnes Moorhead spoke to Chuck Schaden. Hear the full chat at SpeakingOfRadio.com.

• Rosa Rio and William N. Robson spoke with Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC’s The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these full chats at Goldenage-WTIC.org

• Jeanette Nolan spoke with SPERDVAC. For more info, go to SPERDVAC.com.

• Agnes Moorehead and Orson Welles spoke with Dick Cavett.

• Orson Welles also spoke with Peter Bogdanovich, Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin, and Dinah Shore.

• Jack Poppele spoke with Westinghouse.

• And Walter B. Gibson, Rosa Rio, Ken Roberts, and Sidney Sloan spoke for the 1984 documentary, The Story of the Shadow

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Selected music featured in today’s episode was:

• Teenage Brain Surgeon — By Spike Jones 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

Briana Isaac

Thomas M. Joyce

Ryan Kramer

Earl Millard

Gary Mollica

Barry Nadler

Christian Neuhaus

Aimee Pavy

Ray Shaw

Filipe A Silva

John Williams

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WallBreakers Links:

Patreon - patreon.com/thewallbreakers

Social Media - @TheWallBreakers