Breaking Walls

This is a snippet from Breaking Walls EP92: Radio and Coney Island (1906 - 1960)

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Late in 1956, CBS was able to sell individual commercial breaks for Suspense at reduced prices. On November 4th, 1956, the show moved to Sunday afternoons at 4:30. Now directed by William N. Robson.

On June 9th, 1957 Suspense broadcast a play called “The Green and Gold String” starring Vincent Price as a Coney Island fortune teller. Although Price was a film star, he’d long had a clause in his contract for radio.

And then I sing working file.

Well, this brings our six-month look at 1954 to a close.

Jack Benny again had radio’s highest-rated show the following season in what would ultimately turn out to be his swan song. Benny’s last new radio episode aired in May of 1955.

Joseph McCarthy would finally be censured by the Senate in December. He never recovered from that political storm, and died three years later, ravaged by disease and addiction, at the age of forty-eight. Although in some ways the Red Scare ended in 1954, the cold war was just reaching its height.

But fears of nuclear bombers were only half the reason people were looking up. It’s time we focused on the other.

Next time on Breaking Walls, in honor of its seventy-fifth anniversary, we examine our places in the universe with the utterance of a single word: Roswell.

On August 14th, 1982, Parley Baer was a guest of SPERDVAC (https://www.sperdvac.com/) along with John Dehner, Virginia Gregg, Peggy Webber, Harry Bartell, and Vic Perrin.

Throughout the course of the interview, they told many stories about Jack Webb, including this great one by Parley Baer about his eight-year feud with Dragnet's creator.

Even with James Stewart leading the cast and Jack Johnstone directing, without a national sponsor cancellation was around the corner for The Six Shooter. Unlike with CBS, it was uncommon for NBC to sustain shows for long. Stewart had turned down sponsorship from Liggett and Myers Tobacco. The Six Shooter would be canceled after the June 24th, 1954 episode. Thirty-nine shows were produced.

Parley Baer played parts in many episodes. The next year Baer would work with Johnstone on CBS’ Yours Truly Johnny Dollar.

In the finale Ponset falls in love with Myra Barker. He proposes, but at the conclusion they realize married life isn’t possible so long as Ponset still has wrongs to right and people to save. In the end, Britt rides off into the sunset.

Fortunately for radio fans, the entirety of The Six-Shooter’s one season survives. For more info, tune into Breaking Walls episode 122.

On the June 7th, 1950 episode of The Halls of Ivy, it’s a lazy Saturday morning. The college staff members who live on faculty row are enjoying their free time. Professor Quinn-cannon is trimming a hedge, Professor Warren is transplanting some flowering quince, Professor Heslip is weeding his lawn, and Dr William Toddhunter Hall, Ivy’s president is upstairs in his bedroom fast asleep. Of course, that doesn't last very long.

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The Halls of Ivy premiered coast-to-coast on NBC on Friday January 6th, 1950 at 8PM eastern time. NBC programmed the show opposite the evening’s highest-rated show: ABC’s The Fat Man. The program debuted with a rating of 9.

Don Quinn was a master of quips and puns, but much of the actual writing was left first to playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee, and later to Milton and Barbara Merlin. Quinn acted as editor and creative director.

For the half-season, The Halls of Ivy pulled a rating of just 6.5. It was ABC who had reason to celebrate. For the first time since its 1927 inception as NBC‘s Blue Network, it placed five programs in a night’s Top Ten.

At network radio’s height, no dramatic show was more popular than CBS’ Lux Radio Theatre. Between 1936 and 1954 it never finished lower than eighth in the ratings, and it was radio’s top show between 1947 and 1952. Ken Carpenter announced. Radio’s best supporting talent, like Paula Winslowe, worked opposite Hollywood's biggest stars.

Mondays at 9PM eastern was appointment radio, and CBS built the rest of its powerhouse Monday schedule around Lux. It helped shows like My Friend Irma, Inner Sanctum, Screen Guild, and Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts reach new heights. It was also radio’s most-rehearsed show. All the players were expected to be available for an entire week leading up to the live Monday broadcast. John Gibson, best known as Ethelbert on Crime Photographer, remembered the schedule.

Vincent Price, one of the only Hollywood stars contractually allowed to do as much radio as he wanted, remembered working the show. A TV version of Lux premiered in 1950.

Near the end of the radio run it was estimated that Lux had gone through more than fifty thousand pages of script, five-hundred stars, fifteen-hundred supporting players, twenty-thousand music cues, and twenty-thousand sound effects.

In 1954 Lux was still rated fifth overall with a 6.2, but even radio’s most famous dramatic show wasn’t immune to the times. Towards the end of the season it was announced that CBS and Lux would be cutting ties in June. All that was left was to put a bow on one of the most successful shows in radio history.

Lux would run one more season, moving to NBC where it was still a top-four show. The Lux Video Theatre also shifted to NBC. It ran until 1957 before changing formats and bringing in Rosemary Clooney as star. In its final season in 1959, the show became The Lux Playhouse before being canceled.

Have you been enjoying Breaking Walls? If so, give the show a quick rating on whatever platform you listen, especially iTunes.

On Sunday June 13th, 1954 at 6PM Eastern, The American Forum of the Air signed on Mutual with a discussion on the 1954 midterm elections. The featured Senators were Republican Homer Ferguson of Michigan and Democrat Mike Monroney of Oklahoma.

The two political parties had deep divides within on key issues. While many Republicans were conservative, they didn’t support Joseph McCarthy’s communist raids. Northern democrats were likely to be liberal and in favor of the underway de-segregation. Many southern Dems were known as Dixiecrats and upset at the recent Brown vs. Board of Ed. ruling.

The 1954 elections were held on November 2nd. The Republicans would lose both the House and Senate, a direct result of anti-McCarthy backlash. The elections caused a divided government that continued to the end of Eisenhower’s presidency.

Republicans wouldn’t retake the Senate until 1980 and the House until 1994.

This is an excerpt from an episode of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show in 1973 featuring Jack Benny. In this clip Jack talks about his love of the violin.