Breaking Walls

In 2003 singer and musician Jo Stafford, who had 10 top-5 hits between 1944 and 1959, sat down with musician Michael Feinstein to talk about her career.

During the conversation she touched on many subjects like her playing with the Pied Pipers, The Tommy Dorsey Band, and how she got her start on radio with her sisters.

The show starts with Dennis singing the hit from the score Pale Face entitled Buttons & Bows.

Well there’s nothing more thrilling to a red-blooded man on a crisp October morning than to be crouched beside a lovely lake with his trusty gun and a flock of ducks circling overhead. It's why Mr. Anderson asked permission of his wife yesterday to do just that. And so today we find him beside a body of water. Unfortunately, he’s at the kitchen sink with his trusty washcloth and a flock of dirty dishes. His retriever is our young hero Dennis Day who takes charge of each plate as it leaves the suds

The CBS Western Luke Slaughter of Tombstone came to radio at a time when both sponsorship and listenership were at an all-time low. The program lasted just sixteen episodes. It was nationally sustained by CBS, but local sponsors were able to sell some spots, including this one from the May 4th, 1958 episode, "Worth Its Salt," when O'Brien Paints ran a sixty-second spot. This is that commercial.

This is a snippet from Breaking Walls Episode 108: Halloween 1948—Dewey Vs. Truman

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On Halloween 1948, after Jack Benny signed off at 5:30 Pacific time, Phil Harris & Alice Faye signed on.

Benny’s famous bandleader joined The Fitch Bandwagon in 1946. In October 1948 he and starlet wife Alice Faye were given name billing. Rexall signed on as sponsor. That month, their rating was 21.2, fourth-highest on air, and a point higher than Benny’s.

Radio writer, director, and actor Elliott Lewis played Frank Remley, in a take on Phil’s real-life band member. Remley had worked Benny’s show, who often singled him out for critical comment.

Harris’ character was lazy, shiftless, stupid, and alcoholic, and Remley, though never given voice on Benny’s programs, became the point man for Harris’ virtues.

On the Harris show, the “Frank Remley gag” was expanded into a speaking role: Remley played the part in the first episode, but it didn’t work. Elliott Lewis turned the role into a comic masterpiece. The cast also featured Gale Gordon, Robert North, Jeanine Roose, Anne Whitfield, and Walter Tetley.

The show would peak in December with a twenty-six point rating. Writers Ray Singer and Dick Chevillat had to account for five-minutes of necessary cuts because of audience laughter.

This is a snippet from Breaking Walls Episode 108: Halloween 1948—Dewey Vs. Truman

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Halloween 1948 was windy in New York. While John Dewey headlined the New York Daily News, in Brooklyn, James Edward Heller penned a Daily Eagle editorial claiming the current generation of kids celebrated Halloween too feebly.

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.

On February 11th, 1929, the very first broadcast of The Edison Hour took to the airwaves over NBC's Blue Network from their WJZ New York City studios.

With Edison's company manufacturing radios, it was thought to be a good idea to help promote their product by bringing concert music to the air.

This special first broadcast was in honor of Thomas Edison himself, who was celebrating his 82nd birthday. Edison (seen here that very day with President-Elect Herbert Hoover, Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone) was in Fort Myers, Florida working on new rubber experiments.

During the broadcast, a feed was relayed to Florida where Edison addressed the American listening audience live on-the-air. This is what he said.

(Special thanks to Mr. Jerry Haendiges for supplying the full audio of the episode in fantastic quality).

At 8:30PM Pacific Time on October 31st, 1948, live from KNX Hollywood studios, Rocky Jordan re-debuted on CBS. It was a revival of A Man Named Jordan. It aired over CBS’ west-coast network and starred Hollywood character actor Jack Moyles.

Jordan’s code of ethics was rooted in practicality. He was strongly motivated by money, and his search for fortune was often wrapped up in dangerous adventure.

The main change from A Man Named Jordan was the moving of Rocky’s Café Tamborine from Istanbul to Cairo.

Writers Larry Roman and Corner Cool strove for authenticity and flavor: The Cafe was given no street or number, but the surrounding Cairo streets were real. Most of the information came from the Army’s Pocket Guide to Egypt. Roman and Cool were also aided at one point by Egyptian writer, Anderoux Bittar.

Ideas came from true tales in newspapers. Jordan usually got involved by happenstance. This brought him into contact with Capt. Sam Sabaaya of the Cairo Police, voiced by Jay Novello.

Original music was by Richard Aurandt, and Larry Thor handled announcing.

Famed radio announcer André Baruch served in the original invasion of North Africa during World War II and spent almost four years overseas before being honorably discharged as a major. Baruch was involved in the launching of the Armed Forces Radio Service and also helped thwart the messages of "Axis Sally."

Axis Sally was Mildred Gillars, a German-American woman who broadcast propaganda messages in Europe for the Nazi Party which were designed to crush the spirit and morale of American soldiers. These messages would emphasize the value of surrender, stoke fears that soldiers' wives and girlfriends were cheating on them, and point out that the Axis powers knew their locations.

American soldiers listened to Gillars' broadcasts for the entertaining music even as they found her attempts at propaganda "laughable." After the War, Mildred Gillars became the first woman in US history to be convicted of treason by the United States and on March 8th, 1949 was sentenced to ten to thirty years' imprisonment.

Gillars served her sentence at the Federal Reformatory for Women in Alderson, West Virginia. She became eligible for parole in 1959, but did not apply until 1961. She was released on June 10, 1961. Having converted to Roman Catholicism while in prison, Gillars went to live at the Our Lady of Bethlehem Convent in Columbus, Ohio, and taught German, French, and music at St. Joseph Academy, Columbus.

On December 13th, 1973, Chuck Schaden sat down with Bret Morrison for a chat about his life and career (full interview available here - http://www.speakingofradio.com/interviews/morrison-bret/). During the course of the conversation, Mr. Morrison spoke about how he unexpectedly got the role of The Shadow in April of 1943.

The Shadow was broadcast over the Mutual Broadcasting System from their flagship WOR station in New York. Broadcasts were done live before an audience at the still-active Longacre Theater at 220 W 48th St in the heart of New York City's theater district.

Chuck's full chat with Bret Morrison is available to stream for free at the above link. It's a great one.

John Bradley Gambling (4.9.1897 – 11.21. 1974)was the host from 1925 to 1959 of "Rambling with Gambling" on WOR. In an interview from 1970 he talks about how he was hired by WOR in 1925 and how his early-morning exercise program began.

As David Hinkley from the NY Daily News tells it, there was no indication when John B. Gambling arrived at WOR's New York studio on this chilly winter morning that he would handle anything other than the engineering for the three-year-old radio station.

But fate sometimes gets bored with the way things are expected to be, and on this day some say late February 1925, some say March 8 the hour for the morning exercise show was approaching and the regular announcer, alas, had a serious case of laryngitis.

So John B. cleared his throat and filled the breach, calling cadence for the exercises that comprised the backbone of a typical morning radio program in the Roaring '20s.

WOR took to the air from Bamberger’s department store in Newark, NJ on February 22nd, 1922. The station cost $20,000 to start. It transmitted at 250 watts, and was the nation's sixth licensed radio station.