Breaking Walls

On June 6th, 1954 Jack Benny closed his broadcast for the end of the season. Jack was going to headline in Dallas. The show featured a semi-rare appearance from Mary Livingston.

Although radio audiences were rapidly waning and Benny was a TV star as well, he kept his radio program going. Out of home listening was adding an additional forty percent to primetime radio audiences. That means Benny’s 8.2 1954 rating was actually closer to 11.5.

In the early 1980s, radio actor/writer/producer/director Elliott Lewis was a guest of John Dunning's Old-Time Radio program for 71K Newstalk Radio in Denver, CO.

During the course of the conversation the two were talking about the need for ad execs to be less paranoid and to butt out of the creative process more often.

By June of 1954, the thirty-six year-old Elliott Lewis was producer/director of four shows and the star of two. His peers affectionately dubbed him “Mr. Radio.” Perhaps most prominently, he’d been producer and director of Suspense since the fall of 1950.

Program sponsor Autolite preferred to keep its commercials humorous, feeling that the change of pace shocked the audience to attention. Each 30-minute episode required over five-hundred total hours of work from fifty people. With Lewis at the helm, Suspense was able to stave off some of the decline in ratings other shows succumbed to. This was partly due to his partnership with Morton Fine and David Friedkin.

Although the series, now airing on Mondays at 8PM, was still heard by roughly 12.5 million people each week, at season’s end Autolite decided to discontinue their sponsorship after six years.

The last Autolite Suspense episode was “A Terribly Strange Bed” on June 7th. Adapted by Morton Fine, it guest-starred Peter Lawford as an English cop in France who wins big at a gambling table, gets drunk, and ends up in a hotel room in a booby-trapped bed. Featured in this episode as The Croupier was Vic Perrin.

After the episode climax, announcer Harlow Wilcox signed off for the two-hundred-forty-sixth and final time. Elliott Lewis left the production after July 27th. Suspense would remain a sustained show until finding multiple sponsorship in late 1956.

Unfortunately for Lewis, his other shows would soon be canceled. Phil Harris and Alice Faye went off the air on June 18th. Crime Classics on June 30th. Broadway is My Beat on August 1st. And On Stage on September 30th. For more info on Elliott Lewis’ career, tune into Breaking Walls episode 113.

Originally broadcast as The Adventures of Helen and Mary, radio’s preeminent children’s show first took to the air on September 7th, 1929 over CBS. It became Let’s Pretend on March 24th, 1934.

Hosted by “Uncle” Bill Adams, it was in many ways the brainchild of Nila Mack, who penned, produced, and directed each show.

Ms Mack was born in 1891 in Kansas and became an ingenue on Broadway and in vaudeville. She arrived at CBS in 1928, and in August 1930 assumed control of the show. Mack felt the best way to tell a children’s story was to let the children tell it. Acting talent could play a lead one week and a character part the next.

She soon became CBS director of children’s programming. One of Ms. Mack’s staples was her open door policy. Any child could audition. She was responsible for developing two generations of some of the best child-turned-adult acting talent in radio history, like Arnold Stang.

Radio Guide wrote that Ms Mack instantly knew if a child had it. If so, he or she would be given a small part and slowly work their way up to lead roles.

Perhaps Newsweek said it best in 1943: “Let's Pretend is filled with kings and queens who ride talking horses through enchanted forests. It has maidens who must be rescued from witches, dragons, and dwarfs. Its characters travel in coaches, wear purple robes through emerald halls into jade rooms, and drink from golden goblets.” Cream of Wheat became the sponsor that year. It was a partnership that lasted until 1952.

At 2PM on Saturday June 5th, 1954, Let’s Pretend signed on the air over CBS in New York. Unfortunately, Nila Mack passed away from a heart attack on January 20th, 1953, but the show kept on. In its final two years the Nila Mack Award was given to the top players. The show would air until October 23rd, 1954. And thanks to Ms Mack, men and women like Arnold Stang were able to have long careers.

This is the first confirmed bulletin to take to the airwaves on the morning of D Day, June 6th, 1944 at 3:30AM Eastern War Time.

NBC newsman Robert St. John made the announcement from the New York newsroom: "Men and women of the United States, this is a momentous hour in world history. This is the invasion of Hitler's Europe—the zero hour."

On June 4th, 1954 at 10PM, The Frank Edwards news program signed on from WOR in New York. During this month there were more than one-hundred-twenty major American cities with significant unemployment. The Secretary of Commerce officially announced the country was in a recession.

Meanwhile, Vietnam was given technical independence within the French Union. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (DUH LUSS) felt the U.S would have to send troops to Southeast Asia to prevent Communist expansion.

In other news, on June 6th the San Francisco Chief debuted. On June 13th, NASCAR held its first ever event in Linden, New Jersey. It was won by Al Keller. That same day, the last steam locomotive ran on the Maine Central Railroad. And on Flag Day, June 14th, the words “under God” were officially added to the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

As Escape and shows like it were canceled, there were fewer opportunities for radio’s west-coast actors on network sustained programs.

This episode, “An Ordinary Man” was written by Kathleen Hite and starred John Dehner and Virginia Gregg, with Tony Barrett, Edgar Barrier, and Harry Bartell. It aired on June 3rd, 1954.

Escape would be canceled on September 25th. Gregg, Bartell, and Dehner would continue to work together on shows like Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, Gunsmoke, Frontier Gentleman, and Have Gun, Will Travel.

For more info on John Dehner’s career, tune into Breaking Walls episode 101.

By June 1954 network radio drama was facing huge sponsor disinterest. Shows canceled in the first half of the year included The Quiz Kids, Dr. Christian, Front Page Farrell, Bulldog Drummond, Rocky Fortune, Ozzie and Harriet, and The Six Shooter.

ABC, CBS, Mutual, and NBC reduced ad sale charges for the sixth consecutive year. It was an attempt to offset TVs broadening market share. It didn’t work.

For the first time in sixteen years revenue fell. The only category to see an increase in sales was local advertising, and even that rose less than one percent.

In 1948, radio’s top show was heard by roughly twenty-eight million people. In 1950, by twenty million. In 1952, by fourteen million. And in 1954, by roughly nine million.

West-coast radio actors, like Herb Vigran and Herb Ellis were moving into TV, but television was already going through budgetary changes.

By the summer of 1954, more than sixty percent of U.S. homes had a TV set. I Love Lucy pulled a rating of nearly sixty. Radio’s top show, People Are Funny had a rating of 8.4.

Along with oncoming transistor sets, nearly thirty million cars now had radios, but there was still no system to measure this audience. The next year it was estimated that out-of-home listening added an additional forty percent to at-home audiences. People Are Funny’s actual rating was closer to twelve.

But these incidentals didn’t matter to the industry’s character actors. Network production habits were changing. More and more documentaries and news were airing from New York, more and more drama was airing from Los Angeles.

Things would be tougher by the end of the decade, but we’re not there yet. Tonight, we’ll head to June of 1954 as network radio reaches a point of no return.

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As June got underway, the Army-McCarthy hearings dragged on. This early focus was on the continued testimony from McCarthy attorney Roy Cohn, cross-examined by Ray Jenkins.

After lunch Vermont Republican Senator Ralph Flanders compared McCarthy, his own party mate, to Adolph Hitler. He accused him of “axe-happy attempts to divide the country and split the Republican party.” He also compared McCarthy to Dennis The Menace. Flanders speculated that if McCarthy were a double-agent for the Communists, he would have been doing a perfect job. Later on McCarthy accused Flanders of being a senile, racist, religious bigot.

On the May 30th, 1941 Memorial Day episode of Lum & Abner, the duo take a holiday from their duties at the Jot ‘Em Down Store. Lum has recently given a Memorial Day speech at the school house. In this episode of the serial, Abner stops by Lum's home to talk about how the speech went.