Breaking Walls: The Podcast on the History of American Network Radio Broadcasting

I just phoned CBS news headquarters at 485 Madison Avenue. I’m told that they’ll resume scheduled programming at 10AM. NBC has canceled all programming until further notice. Mutual and The Blue Network are interspersing news throughout the day.

The Stock Exchange will observe two minutes of silence and Mayor La Guardia will be holding a rally in Madison Square.

As for me, I’ve been momentarily dismissed. I’m heading home to get some rest. Meanwhile, let’s listen to Bob Trout. Charles Shaw will report from London with a man-on-the-street reaction while Ned Calmer and Don Pryor will introduce French Colonel Morrison who’ll describe the area of the invasion landings.

This will take us to 6:30 AM.

As part of my job I’ve been sent by CBS to Union Square. I decided to stop by my high school alma mater, I’m at the Church of St. Francis Xavier on sixteenth street. They’re having a sunrise mass filled with prayer for our soldiers and other war workers. The people are stoic. Now isn’t the time to lose ourselves in emotion.

Sunrise is at 5:25AM. I hear American troops have turned the tide of battle at the Omaha landing point, with warships backing them up at sea.

Give a listen to the CBS broadcast. David Anderson, Arthur Mann, Paul White, and Edward R. Murrow have reports from London. Quentin Reynolds will describe Eisenhower’s speech to occupied Europe, while Bill Henry and Joe McCaffrey report from Washington.

The man you just heard was CBS news reporter Robert Trout. Born in Wake County, North Carolina on October 15th, 1909, he grew up in Washington, D.C., entering broadcasting in 1931 as an announcer at WJSV, an independent station in Alexandria, Virginia. In the summer of 1932 WJSV was acquired by CBS, bringing Trout into the young network.

He soon became an invaluable member of William S. Paley’s team, and was the first person to publicly refer to FDR’s radio programs as Fireside Chats.

On Sunday night, March 13th, 1938, after Adolf Hitler's Germany had annexed Austria in the Anschluss, Trout hosted a shortwave "roundup" of reaction from multiple cities in Europe—the first such multi-point live broadcast on network radio. Years later, journalist Ned Calmer remembered that moment.

Trout also played a key role in Edward R. Murrow’s development as a broadcaster. By the time war had come to the US, Trout was in New York and Murrow had put together the staff of international war correspondents known as the Murrow Boys.

At 4:15 AM eastern war time on the morning of Tuesday June 6th, 1944, Bob Trout was in the CBS newsroom at 485 Madison Avenue emceeing an overnight broadcast that brought the first eye witness account of the invasion from reporter Wright Bryan.

Bryan stood an imposing six-foot-five and covered the story from a transport plane dropping airborne troops. Later in 1944 Bryan was wounded and captured by the Germans. He spent six months in hospitals and in a POW camp in Poland before being freed by Russian troops in January 1945.

This broadcast took listeners up to 5 AM. eastern war time. Along with Wright Bryan, it featured analysis from George Fielding Elliot, commentary by Quentin Reynolds, and reports from John W. Vandercook and James Willard.

At 5AM over CBS Major George Fielding Elliot gave an analysis of the known information. Elliot was a second lieutenant in the Australian army during World War I. He became a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and later a major in the Military Intelligence Reserve of the US Army. He wrote fifteen books on military and political matters and was a longtime staff writer for the New York Herald Tribune.

After Elliot spoke, Richard C. Hottelet reported from London with the first eye witness account of the seaborne side of the invasion. Edward R. Murrow hired Hottelet that January. On this day he was riding in a bomber that attacked Utah Beach six minutes before H-Hour and watched the first minutes of the attack. He would later cover the Battle of the Bulge.

At 7AM French time, the Allies began deploying amphibious tanks on the beaches of Normandy to support the ground troops and sweep for defensive mines. American troops faced heavy machine-gun fire on Omaha Beach, the most heavily fortified landing point of the invasion. Roughly twenty-five-hundred U.S. soldiers were killed on the beach in the bloodiest fight of the day.

This fighting took the timeline to Eisenhower’s official announcement at 3:32 Eastern War time.

Tuesday, June 6th, 1944 at about 12:45 in the morning. We’re at Bill Pogue’s Bar on the Corner of 88th street and Columbus Avenue in Manhattan. I just finished a twelve hour shift. I need a nightcap before I go back into that low-hanging fog. Did you hear the President tonight? We took Rome. One up and two to go.

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Only the German outlets that are saying the invasion has started. Paris radio just aired news bulletins and didn’t say anything. London radio told Hollanders to stay off bridges and roads, but that could be normal instructions. You want to know something? I don’t think the Germans are lying. I think this is it. This is D-Day, June 6th, 1944.

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It’s 3:30 in the morning on June 6th, 1944. I’ve just left CBS news headquarters at 485 Madison Avenue. I parked in Times Square on purpose. I wanted to see if there was any reaction. A few servicemen came out of a bar. I told them the news. They joined others in front of cabs who were tuned to either CBS or NBC. The news cutaway from band remotes sounded haunting.

There are scattered lights in apartment windows and one radio shop, closed for the evening, has a loudspeaker blaring CBS.

I won’t be sleeping tonight. I’ve been assigned to take the temperature of the emotions people are feeling. The long and short of it is that we still have no allied confirmation about a French coastline invasion. The president was on the radio last night with one of his fireside chats talking about the allies taking Rome. If he knew something about France, he didn’t tip his hand.

Bob Trout should be on the air right about now. Bob’s a good man. To kill time he was going to take his microphone into the CBS newsroom, giving a taste of what a nerve center is like with chaos brimming.

10PM New York time on June 5th was 4AM on the morning of the 6th in France. At that moment seven-thousand allied ships left England under cover of darkness. They were loaded with allied troops, primarily from Britain, the US, and Canada for Operation Overlord.

The soldiers were split up to invade five landing points along the coast of northern France. The beachheads were code named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Sword, and Juno.

At midnight, while I was drinking at Bill Pogue’s allied bombers were bombarding the coastline. Personnel carriers flew inland to drop off paratroopers. The paratroopers' job was to attack bridges and seize several key points to cut off the Nazi supply lines.

An hour later, while distracting the Germans at Pas-de-Calais, allied warships dropped anchor off the coast of Normandy to wait for dawn and provide cover for the landing ships.

By 2AM, more than thirteen-thousand paratroopers had been dropped into France, with four-thousand more flying in on gliders. They continued landing troops for the next two hours. The Germans saw the paratroopers, but failed to grasp just how big the invasion was to be.

By 5AM, Allied battleships had begun firing on the Nazi defenses while the first landing ships went ashore. German and Allied ships clashed in the first skirmishes at sea. As the sun rose, the landing operation was fully underway. The Allied battleships stopped firing as their landing boats approached the shore at 6:30AM, dubbed “H-Hour” for the designated moment of the invasion.

The landing ships were tightly packed together. Allied troops dealt with heavy gunfire. Many men were killed before they could reach the beach. Nevertheless, the Allies managed to land their troops, and the fight for the beaches began.

In Breaking Walls episode 151 it’s the spring of 1944 and Jack Benny’s sponsor, General Foods, thinks he’s in a slump. Benny got mad and it changed the broadcasting landscape forever. Tonight, we’ll find out how and why.

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Highlights:

• Benny's Early Radio Career in the 1930s and Ratings Peak

• Early Problems with General Foods

• Dennis Day Leaves for World War II

• Jack Fires General Foods, Signs with American Tobacco

• Dick Haymes Replaces Dennis Day as Singer

• The Importance of Benny’s Supporting Cast

• Jack’s Split Personality

• Danny Kaye Guest Stars To Play Jack in A Movie

• The Last General Foods Sponsored Show

• Looking Ahead to D-Day’s 80th Anniversary

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The WallBreakers:

http://thewallbreakers.com

Subscribe to Breaking Walls everywhere you get your podcasts.

To support the show:

http://patreon.com/TheWallBreakers

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The reading material used in today’s episode was:

• Sunday Nights at Seven — by Jack and Joan Benny

• On The Air — By John Dunning

• Network Radio Ratings — By Jim Ramsburg

As well as articles from

• Broadcasting Magazine

• Radio Daily

• Variety

And a massive special thank you to William Cairns for providing me with invaluable research on Benny’s 1940s run. William has a Jack Benny book on its way.

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On the interview front:

• Jack Benny, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Frank Nelson, and Don Wilson spoke with Chuck Schaden. Hear these full chats at Speakingofradio.com.

• Mel Blanc and Mary Jane Higby spoke to Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC’s The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these interviews at Goldenage-WTIC.org

• Jack Benny, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, and Don Wilson were with Jack Carney

• Dennis Day was also with John Dunning for his 1980s 71KNUS Radio program from Denver.

• Orson Welles spoke to Johnny Carson

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Selected music featured in today’s episode was:

• The Hut on Fowl's Legs — By Modest Mussorgsky

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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

Gerrit Lane

Jessica Hanna

Perri Harper

Thomas M. Joyce

Ryan Kramer

Earl Millard

Gary Mollica

Barry Nadler

Christian Neuhaus

Ray Shaw

Filipe A Silva

John Williams

Jim W.

WildEyeWheel

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WallBreakers Links:

Patreon - patreon.com/thewallbreakers

Social Media - @TheWallBreakers

In the fall of 1944 after Jack’s switch to Lucky Strike, General Foods did move a show opposite Jack. It wound up being The Kate Smith Show.

The company uprooted Smith’s Friday program, countering Benny with a One-Hundred-Seventy-Thousand-Dollar ad campaign. While they did temporarily put a dent into Benny’s rating, Kate Smith lost forty-percent of her audience, dropping to ninety-third place in the overall ratings.

The following season General Foods moved her back to Friday, but Kate Smith never again had another Top-fifty show.

Well, that brings our look at Jack Benny’s show in the spring of 1944 to a close. I mentioned that Benny’s last episode for General Foods aired on June 4th, 1944.

Our next episode of Breaking Walls will move only two days into the future, for perhaps the most important day in broadcasting history.

Next time on Breaking Walls, we spotlight radio broadcasting on June 6th, 1944 to align ourselves with the Country’s heartbeat on the day the invasion of western Europe finally began.

The reading material used in today’s episode was:

• Sunday Nights at Seven — by Jack and Joan Benny

• On The Air — By John Dunning

• Network Radio Ratings — By Jim Ramsburg

As well as articles from

• Broadcasting Magazine

• Radio Daily

• Variety

And a massive special thank you to William Cairns for providing me with invaluable research on Benny’s 1940s run. William has a Jack Benny book on its way.

On the interview front:

• Jack Benny, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Frank Nelson, and Don Wilson spoke with Chuck Schaden. Hear these full chats at Speakingofradio.com.

• Mel Blanc and Mary Jane Higby spoke to Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC’s The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these interviews at Goldenage-WTIC.org

• Jack Benny, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, and Don Wilson were with Jack Carney

• Dennis Day was also with John Dunning for his 1980s 71KNUS Radio program from Denver.

• Orson Welles spoke to Johnny Carson

Selected music featured in today’s episode was:

• The Hut on Fowl's Legs — By Modest Mussorgsky

June 4th, 1944 was the last Grape Nuts Flakes sponsored Jack Benny Program. Jack took out a full page ad in Variety thanking General Foods and their agency Young and Rubicam for ten years of partnership. Six days later, the American Cigarette and Cigar Company deposited two hundred thousand dollars in a special exploitation account for the program.

On June 23rd they wrote to Jack stipulating some terms of the agreement. The program would be broadcast live coast-to-coast 7:00PM eastern war time, with a transcribed rebroadcast by transcription between 12:30 and 1:00AM New York time for West Coast stations.

In August, Benny left on a three-week USO tour of Australia and the South Pacific.

On August 28th, American Tobacco announced that Pall Mall’s product scarcity didn’t justify a twenty-five thousand dollar per week expenditure. Lucky Strike would sponsor the show. The following week they announced a comprehensive, multimedia ad campaign. It was estimated to cost over a quarter million dollars.

This changed the company with which Jack was signed from the American Cigarette & Cigar Company to the American Tobacco Company, and was made official on September 26th, 1944.

While the cast of Jack Benny became famous in their own right, Benny’s show had great guest-stars, as Dennis Day remembered.

On the May 28th, 1944 episode Jack is in talks with Warner Brothers to make a film about his life. Naturally Jack thinks he’ll star, write, and direct it. Unfortunately for him, Warner Brothers has other ideas. They want Danny Kaye to play Jack and Jack to play Jack’s father.

With Jack’s contract with General Foods nearing its close, the only thing left to do was count down the remaining episodes.

On May 21st, 1944, Jack and the gang discussed split personalities. Jack thinks it's ridiculous, but later realizes he has one too. In other news this episode marks the debut of the spoof commercial for Sympathy Cough Syrup. Its tagline “Sympathy spelled backwards is Yhtapmys” became famous.

By the Spring of 1944 Jack Benny’s cast had become its most familiar incarnation. Frank Nelson had begun to develop into Benny’s nemesis, as he remembered in this interview clip.

Phil Harris was a lovable and vain drunk. Mel Blanc could play any character imaginable. Others like Bea Benaderet, John Brown, and Sarah Berner rounded out the cast. Most importantly Jack was known to be the exact opposite of his character.

On May 14th, 1944 The Jack Benny Program was broadcast live at Camp Adair, Oregon.