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

Well, that brings our look at the launch of The CBS Radio Mystery Theater to a close. We’ve spent the past five months making our way forward in time from 1957, to 1963, to 1973, and finally 1974.

But, next month on Breaking Walls we’ll head back to the middle of radio’s golden age and focus on one of the most successful comedians of all-time.

Next time on Breaking Walls, it’s February of 1944 and between entertaining troops, smashing box office numbers, and notoriously carousing, the man jokingly referred to by friend Bing Crosby as “ol trowel nose,” Bob Hope, is radio’s top comedian. For the first time in six years of Breaking Walls episodes, we’ll focus on the man who always reminded us to say, thanks for the memories.

The reading material used in today’s episode was:

• On The Air — By John Dunning

• The CBS Radio Mystery Theater, An Episode Guide and Handbook to Nine Years of Broadcasting — By Gordon Payton and Martin Grams, Jr.

As well as articles from:

• The Cleveland Plain Dealer

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On the interview front:

• Himan Brown, Larry Haines, Mary Jane Higby, Joseph Julian, and E.G. Marshall spoke with Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC’s The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these interviews at Goldenage-WTIC.org

• Joan Banks and George Petrie were with SPERDVAC. For more info, go to SPERDVAC.com

• Mason Adams spoke with Chuck Schaden. Hear these chats at Speakingofradio.com

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Selected music featured in today’s episode was:

• January Stars — By George Winston

• Amid Flowers, Beside the River, Under a Spring Moon — By Elizabeth Hainen

• Perfida — By Jimmy Dorsey And His Orchestra

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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

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.

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Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 28th, 1974 — CBS 'Theater's' Brown Burns about Serling

"I'm proud of every minute we're on the air...and I'll stand up for every single show I do." Speaking of The CBS Radio Mystery Theater was Himan Brown, executive producer of the nationwide show that premiered January 6th and has garnered good ratings.

His comments were the beginning of a rebuttal to negative remarks made about the show and The Zero Hour on these pages June 16th by Rod Serling, who narrated the latter program, which was dropped by Mutual last Friday.

Brown burned. “My stories have complete relevancy to all that's going on now--exorcism, reincarnation--all stories of the moment. We're doing contemporary stories with the best writers and actors in the business. I think radio drama, contrary to what Serling says, is here forever and a day--and never will be off the networks again."

Serling has written TV shows, movies, and books, but his only previous radio drama was written while he was a summer replacement at WLW in Cincinnati.

"It’s all sour grapes. Serling's relationship to radio has been a total failure," Brown said. “His criticism of his own show is a complete slur of his own integrity, because in the past he lent his narrative name or talents to what he wrote. The implication is that he was much involved with the stories on The Zero Hour and that's a fake.”

Brown believes in Mystery Theater with all his heart. “It took me fifteen years to sell it, but it's been a happy fulfillment."

The show has gone so well that Brown has a verbal renewal to go into a second year. He wouldn't discuss it, but Brown admitted that he has packaged a two-hour weekly Sunday drama series for CBS Radio that would debut early next year.

Getting back to Mystery Theater, Brown admitted that he can't bat one-thousand on the series. "But I'll bat eight-hundred." He produces, directs, edits scripts, casts the shows and signs the checks.

“The show has gone far beyond anything I ever hoped for. People are listening seven nights a week. The minute we put on the first repeats, the stations' switchboards lit up.”

The first year's contract calls for one-hundred ninety-five new shows and one-hundred seventy repeats.

Usually produced in New York, the program will invade Hollywood for talent there for the recording of eight mysteries, beginning August 5th.

Born in Manhattan and with degrees from City College of New York and Brooklyn Law School--although he has never practiced law--Brown moved into TV production when radio drama fell by the wayside some fifteen years ago.

Now, with The CBS Radio Mystery Theater, he's back home. "It's the greatest homecoming a man could possibly want." — Raymond P. Hart

Although Rod Serling was disappointed with Mutual broadcasting’s treatment of The Zero Hour, as covered in the previous episode of Breaking Walls, in 1974 Himan Brown’s Mystery Theater won a Peabody Award for helping to usher in a new era of radio entertainment.

It would run for eight more years until finally going off the air on December 31st, 1982. More than fifteen hundred episodes were produced. Most survive in listening quality.

On Monday January 21st, 1974 the just-heard Joe Julian co-starred with Paul Hecht, Joan Banks, Mary Jane Higby, Tony Roberts, and George Petrie in Murray Burnett’s story “Dead for a Dollar” on The CBS Radio Mystery Theater.

Radio legend Joan Banks played secretary Kay Woodhouse. George Petrie played Jason Grant. He’d been appearing on radio since the early days of the Great Depression. Mary Jane Higby played Denise Grant. She’d come to New York City from Hollywood in 1937.

By the time The CBS Radio Mystery Theater debuted, the men and women associated with the show had been involved with each other for nearly forty years.

Mary Jane Higby grew up in Los Angeles and remembered Hollywood before it was a radio hub. She was once called Queen of the soaps.

Joan Banks, who later married Frank Lovejoy, remembered the New York hangouts. There she spent time with men and women like the oft-heavy Larry Haines. These men and women were usually overbooked. Joan Banks went to the west coast in 1948.

It was about then that Television came into the picture. E.G. Marshall was a part of it from the start. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before radio began to decline, as Joe Julian remembered. But nearly twenty years later, thanks to Himan Brown, CBS was back in the radio drama business in 1974.

On Thursday, January 10th, 1974 the crew of Skylab 4, which had been orbiting the earth for more than fifty days, was granted a day off. The week prior, during a televised news conference Mission commander Gerald Carr said he missed cold beer and football.

That same day the U.S. carried out three simultaneous nuclear explosions as part of Operation Arbor in Nevada.

January 13th was Super Bowl VIII Sunday. The defending champion Miami Dolphins faced off against the Minnesota Vikings at Rice Stadium in Houston. More than seventy thousand were in attendance.

That evening. Floyd Kalber signed on for NBC’s news with coverage of potential peace between Egypt and Israel, brokered by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Looking for a solution to the ongoing Middle East crisis, Kissinger spent ten hours meeting with Israeli officials, hammering out a proposal for a peace settlement with Egypt. He next flew to Cairo to present the document to Anwar Sadat.

After meeting Sadat, the plan was to return to Tel-Aviv with Sadat’s version of the proposal for Israel’s acceptance or rejection.

This was good for President Nixon, who despite an eighteen day birthday vacation in California, and an insistence that he would leave the past behind and focus on 1974, couldn’t seem to shake Watergate, the energy crisis, and continued high inflation.

On Saturday, January 12th, 1974, the just heard Mason Adams starred alongside Joan Loring, Tom Keena, Sam Gray, and Alan Manson in the seventh episode of The CBS Radio Mystery Theater.

This aircheck comes from WOR and it's a mystery in the truest sense of the word.

Joan Lorring, who voiced Hedy, was at the time of this broadcast forty-seven years old. She’d already been nominated for an Academy Award in The Corn Is Green in 1945, and won a Donaldson, the predecessor of the Tony, in 1950 for her portrayal of Marie Buckholder in Come Back, Little Sheba.

On radio, her career spanned the gamut. She starred as Judy Foster in the second season of A Date With Judy, played on Suspense in the 1940s, in Theater Five in the 1960s, and finally on The CBS Radio Mystery Theater in the 1970s.

Later this year she appeared in Burt Lancaster’s neo noir mystery film The Midnight Man.

The New York Daily News was unenthusiastic in its review of the first two episodes, however the third episode caught their attention.

On the evening of Tuesday, January 8th, 1974 The CBS Radio Mystery Theater took to the air with their third installment, called “The Bullet,” guest-starring the just-heard radio, TV, and stage legend Larry Haines.

Larry Haines had been involved with New York radio for decades. The same month he was starring in this episode of The CBS Radio Mystery Theater he spoke with Dick Bertel and Ed Corcordan for WTIC’s The Golden Age of Radio.

Also featured in this cast was Evelyn Juster, Martin Newman, Danny Ocko, Leon Janney, and Ralph Bell. It was written by radio writing legend Sam Dann.

Tuesday, January 8th, 1974.

It’s a cold night in Brooklyn, New York. There’s snow in the forecast. We’re driving north on Shore Road, towards the Belt Parkway in a 1973 Ford Maverick. Thanks to the oil crisis, smaller cars like the Maverick are becoming increasingly popular.

On January 2nd, President Nixon signed a law lowering the maximum speed limit on U.S. highways to fifty-five miles per hour. It conserved gasoline during the embargo. Highway fatalities dropped twenty three percent over the next year. The limit remained in effect for thirteen years.

Unfortunately for Nixon, the Watergate scandal wouldn’t go away. Citing executive privilege, on January 4th, Nixon refused to surrender over five hundred subpoenaed tapes to the Watergate Committee.

On this night, Tuesday January 8th, John Chancellor signed on with news and updates from NBC.

On this day, New York City instituted measures against gas shortage abuse.

The day after this broadcast, Representatives from the twelve member nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries finished a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, voting for a three-month freeze on oil prices.

But this isn’t why we’re here. As Mutual Broadcasting was getting back into radio drama with The Zero Hour, longtime director Himan Brown finally convinced CBS to give him a nightly hour of time to produce new eerie radio plays.

Tonight, we’ll go back to January 1974 and study how this moment in time came to be.

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In January 1974 Himan Brown was sixty-three years old, having been on the air since the age of eighteen. Brown is noted for having created Bulldog Drummond, Grand Central Station, Dick Tracy, and Inner Sanctum Mysteries. He was itching for the chance to create new dramatic radio.

CBS executive Sam Digges was fifty-seven, and close friends with Brown, but the CBS network board could perhaps have been a harder sell for a program that was to air every night of the week. CBS hadn’t produced any dramatic shows since September of 1962. Over the eleven years since, numerous technological advancements had been made. In order to produce a show that was to air every night of the week, a dedicated studio would be developed. They used Studio G on the sixth floor of the old CBS Radio Annex on East 52nd street.

The writers would be paid three-hundred fifty dollars per script. That’s a little more than two thousand dollars today.

As Himan Brown mentioned, in New York City CBS aired news, so Mutual Broadcasting’s flagship WOR picked up the series just one month after Mutual began airing The Zero Hour.

Acting talent would work for SAG-AFTRA scale. Actor E.G. Marshall was tabbed to be the host. In 1973 Marshall was known for his prominent role in the 1957 Twelve Angry Men, and on TV’s The Defenders.

As a host, he harkened back to the Golden Age of Radio when characters such as The Man In Black, The Whistler, The Mysterious Traveler, and Raymond hosted macabre programs.

The CBS Radio Mystery Theater would debut on Sunday January 6th, 1974 with Agnes Moorehead starring in “The Old Ones Are Hard To Kill.” Two-hundred eighteen stations carried the series, including twenty-one which were not CBS affiliates.

In Breaking Walls episode 146 we spotlight the Jay Kholos, Elliott Lewis, and Rod Serling series The Zero Hour in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of its debut on the Mutual Broadcasting System in December of 1973.

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Highlights:

• Radio Drama Coming Back in 1973

• Jay Kholos Conceives The Zero Hour — Rod Serling Will Host

• The Zero Hour Is On the Air

• WRVR and Selling Radio Shows In the 1970s

• Nixon On The Hot Seat

• AFTRA’s Moving Goal Posts — Kholos Must Sell The Zero Hour’s Rights

• Selling The Zero Hour to Mutual

• Elliott Lewis and Jay Kholos Leave The Zero Hour

• Mutual Cancels The Zero Hour and Rod Serling is Disappointed

• Life After Radio Drama

• Looking Ahead to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater

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The WallBreakers:

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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:

• On The Air — By John Dunning

• A Pictorial History of Radio’s First 75 Years — By B. Eric Rhoads

• The Radio Career of Rod Serling — By Martin Grams Jr’s

The archive from Digital Deli’s Zero Hour page.

As well as articles from:

• The Arizona Republic

• The Associated Press

* The Cleveland Plain Dealer

* Pacific Stars and Stripes

• The San Mateo Times

• The Van Wert Times Bulletin

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On the interview front:

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

• Howard Duff, Elliott Lewis, Les Tremayne, Janet Waldo, and Paula Winslowe spoke with Chuck Schaden. Hear these chats at Speakingofradio.com

• Mary Jane Croft, Byron Kane, and Elliott Lewis spoke with SPERDVAC. For more info, go to SPERDVAC.com

• Jay M. Kholos was interviewed by Yours Truly, James Scully in January 2018

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Selected music featured in today’s episode was:

• Caravan — By Eighty Drums Around The World

• What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve — By Nancy Wilson

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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

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.

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WallBreakers Links:

Patreon - patreon.com/thewallbreakers

Social Media - @TheWallBreakers

Although The Zero Hour went off the air in the spring of 1974, the people involved didn’t stop working.

Rod Serling always kept a full schedule. His final radio performance was part of Fantasy Park. A fantasy rock concert aired by nearly two-hundred stations in 1974 and 1975.

Always a heavy smoker, on May 3rd, 1975, Serling had a heart attack. A second heart attack two weeks later forced doctors to agree that a risky open-heart surgery was necessary. On June 26th, Serling had a third heart attack on the operating table and died two days later at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York.

He was just fifty. His funeral and burial took place on July 2nd in Seneca, New York.

Elliott Lewis would continue in Television, before again working with Mutual on radio dramas at the end of the decade.

Jay Kholos continued innovating, eventually forming the theater company, Orchard Street Productions, in 2001. These days he lives in Nashville, where Kholos writes music and scripts for his own productions, while Orchard Street also licenses musicals and plays for local, regional and North American tours.