Breaking Walls

Don Wilson remembers Jack's brilliance, and explains how Jack Benny differed from most "funny" comedians in this clip.

In Breaking Walls episode 126 we continue our mini-series in April of 1954.

——————————

Highlights:

• Eisenhower talks fear

• Lum and Abner’s April Fools’ Joke

• The Eternal Light

• Nightwatch — A New CBS Real Police Show

• Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator

• Illegal Immigrant Fears

• Gildersleeve’s Dinner Party

• Easter Sunday and The End of The Whistler

• Jack Benny Holds a Seance

• The Army-McCarthy Hearings Begin

• Phil Harris and Alice Faye’s Red Cross Blood Drive

• Looking Ahead to May

——————————

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 used in today’s episode was:

• On the Air — By John Dunning

• Network Radio Ratings — by Jim Ramsburg

• The Complete Escape Log — By Keith Scott

As well as articles from

• Broadcasting Magazine

• LIFE Magazine

——————————

On the interview front:

• Parley Baer, George Balzer, Himan Brown, Phil Harris, Elliott Lewis, and Willard Waterman, spoke to Chuck Schaden. Hear their full chats at SpeakingOfRadio.com.

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

• Himan Brown, Bill Froug, and Betty Lou Gerson spoke to SPERDVAC. For more information, go to SPERDVAC.com.

• Elliott Lewis also spoke with John Dunning for his 71KNUS program from Denver.

——————————

Selected music featured in today’s episode was:

• Voodoo Dreams — By Les Baxter

• Manhattan — By Blossom Dearie

• Walking In The Air — By George Winston

——————————

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.

——————————

Thank you to:

Tony Adams

Steven Allmon

Orson Orsen Chandler

Phil Erickson

Jessica Hanna

Briana Isaac

Thomas M. Joyce

Ryan Kramer

Gary Mollica

Barry Nadler

Christian Neuhaus

Aimee Pavy

Ray Shaw

——————————

WallBreakers Links:

Patreon - patreon.com/thewallbreakers

Social Media - @TheWallBreakers

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

Next time on Breaking Walls, as the weather heats up in May of 1954, Brown vs. The Board of Education delivers a landmark decision. It decreed racial segregation within the U.S. School system to be unconstitutional.

Dixiecrats opposed the ruling, while many others felt it was an injustice rectified ninety-years too late. We’ll cover this and every other radio and national happening, as we move towards Memorial Day, 1954.

In April 1954, Phil Harris and Alice Faye were in the midst of their last season on the air. The husband-wife duo had been starring together on radio since 1946. Harris spent the better part of the last decade working with Elliott Lewis. They both worked under Jack Benny for years.

On April 30th, they presented a special Red Cross Blood Drive program. Opposite on NBC-TV, The Big Story pulled a rating of 29.5, while the season rating for Harris/Faye was under 3.3. With radio on its way out, RCA cancelled the show at the end of the season. The last episode aired on June 18th. By then, Elliott Lewis was getting sick of dealing with agency and network red tape.

For more information on The Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show, tune into Breaking Walls Episode 108: Halloween 1948—Dewey Vs. Truman. For more information on Elliott Lewis, tune into Breaking Walls Episode 113: A Week With Elliott Lewis in 1953.

In January 1953, Joseph McCarthy began his second term as U.S. Senator from Wisconsin as the Republican Party regained control of the Senate. McCarthy was made chairman of the Committee on Government Operations. This included a permanent subcommittee that allowed McCarthy to continue Communist investigations within the government. He appointed Roy Cohn as chief counsel and Bobby Kennedy as assistant.

McCarthy’s committee investigated the U.S. Army. They believed the Army Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth had been infiltrated. At the time, the investigation was largely fruitless. Then the Army accused McCarthy of seeking special treatment for Private G. David Schine, a chief consultant and close friend of Cohn's. Schine had been drafted the previous year.

The Senate decided that these conflicting charges should be investigated. South Dakota Republican Senator Karl Mundt chaired the subcommittee. John G. Adams was the Army's Counsel. Joseph Welch, Special Counsel.

The hearings were telecast nationally on both ABC and the DuMont network. Eighty million people saw these hearings that lasted thirty-six days. They began on April 22nd. CBS Radio was there. Early in the hearings, a photo of Private Schine was produced, with Joseph Welch accusing Roy Cohn of doctoring the image to show Schine alone with Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens.

Cohn and Schine both insisted the picture was unedited. Welch then produced a wider shot of Stevens and Schine with Colonel Jack Bradley and McCarthy aide Frank Carr. This lie hurt McCarthy’s side.

McCarthy was quickly losing steam and allies. His policies were turning up little evidence. His “list of two-hundred known Communists” never materialized and this turn of attention to the Army was a political gamble. It wouldn’t work and later would cost McCarthy his position in the Senate.

As The Jack Benny Program moved into the spring of 1954, the comedian was still seen as a ratings boon. Through the years, Benny made little tweaks to his team without losing his audience.

Bob Crosby replaced Phil Harris as bandleader in the fall of 1952. In 1954, Mary Livingstone, always a victim of stage fright, began to record her lines at home. Joan Benny or Jeanette Eymann played the Mary role for the audience, and the real Mary was dubbed in for the broadcast tape.

If a household had both a radio and TV they could tune into Benny’s CBS radio show at 7PM eastern time on Sundays, and then switch over to his TV show, which aired at 7:30. Benny’s 1949 deal with CBS helped make the network the 1950s powerhouse.

For more info on Benny’s landmark deal and the CBS talent raids which followed, tune into the Breaking Walls episodes 108, 109, and 110.

April 18th, 1954 was both the first day of Passover and Easter Sunday. In Los Angeles, the weather was warm and foggy. The front page of The LA Times predicted record crowds at Easter services.

The Major League baseball season was underway. It would be three years before Los Angeles imported the Dodgers from Brooklyn. Two days prior, V.P. Richard Nixon told the press he feared the U.S. would be forced to send troops to Vietnam.

That evening, at 7:30PM over CBS’ KNX, The Whistler signed on the air, guest-starring Betty Lou Gerson and John Stephenson.

The Whistler had been one of west-coast radio’s most-famous regional programs since its launch in 1942. For much of its run it was sponsored by Signal Oil.

​​Voiced by Bill Forman, the Whistler’s narration omnisciently taunted the characters. Stories were often told from the guilty party’s perspective. Their guilt was known, but the outcome was in doubt. The Whistler character was so popular that Columbia Pictures made eight films between 1944 and 1948. Dorothy Roberts whistled the notes.

The Whistler would finally go off the air after the September 8th, 1955 episode.

Willard Waterman had been portraying Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve since the fall of 1950 when Harold Peary left the program.

In the spring of 1954 The Great Gildersleeve was airing Wednesdays at 8:30PM eastern time over NBC. Kraft had sponsored the program since its debut in 1941. The show’s 5.8 rating was good enough for fourteenth overall, and NBC’s fourth-highest program. It easily beat out CBS’ 21st Precinct, airing opposite at the same time.

On April 14th, Gildersleeve hosted a “Dinner Party for Bronco’s Boss.” Parley Baer played Mr. Hammond. In the fall, Gildersleeve shifted formats, becoming a weeknight fifteen-minute serial, before returning to a half-hour in the fall of 1955. The last Great Gildersleeve radio episode would air on March 21st, 1957.

For more info on the show’s transition from Peary to Waterman, tune into Breaking Walls episode 120.

In 1954, CBS Radio’s documentary unit presented a special feature series on a variety of hot-button topics. On April 11th, illegal Immigration from Mexico was their focus.

Today, the term Wetback is rightfully one of derision and insult. It might have privately been considered the same in 1954, but in the mainstream it was used to describe anyone who swam into the US from across the Rio Grande River.

At the height of Red Scare Mania, the fear was a communist spy could pose as a Mexican migrant. The next day in New York City, Bill Haley and the Comets recorded the ground-breaking single, “Rock Around The Clock.”