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

The man you just heard is acting legend Vincent Price. Price’s only continuous radio role was as star of The Saint where he played Simon Templar. Leslie Charteris created the character as a suave private eye. He was a dapper dresser, equally at home at the wheel of a fast car, in an airplane, or on horseback. The Saint would also break the law if the result justified it. The show had begun on CBS in 1945. After a tour on The Mutual Broadcasting System, The Saint moved to NBC beginning on Sunday June 11th, 1950 at 7:30PM.

Games and sports speculation weren’t the only form baseball took on the radio. It showed up in drama radio as well, Like on The Saint’s September 3rd, 1950 episode. Lawrence Dobkin was Louie the Cabbie.

And of course, there were no two institutions in America somehow more intertwined in the twentieth century than baseball and comedy legend Jack Benny.

In 1946, Babe Ruth, always a heavy smoker, began to experience severe pain over his left eye and difficulty swallowing.

Tests were bleak. Ruth had an inoperable malignant tumor at the base of his skull. He was one of the first cancer patients to receive both drugs and radiation treatment simultaneously.

He lost eighty pounds and was discharged from the hospital in February of 1947. Baseball commissioner Happy Chandler proclaimed April 27th, 1947 Babe Ruth Day around the major leagues. At Yankee Stadium a number of teammates and others spoke in honor of Ruth, who briefly addressed the crowd of almost sixty-thousand. By then, his voice was barely more than a soft whisper.

Around this time, developments in chemotherapy offered some hope. Doctors treated Ruth with a folic acid derivative. He showed dramatic improvement. During the summer of 1947 he was able to travel around the country doing promotional work for the Ford Motor Company on American Legion Baseball.

On August 12th he appeared on Red Barber’s radio show.

The improvement was temporary. By late 1947 he was unable to help write his autobiography. In and out of the hospital in Manhattan, Ruth traveled to and from Florida that winter.

The next June 5th, 1948, a "gaunt and hollowed out" Babe visited Yale University to donate a manuscript of his autobiography to its library. There he met Yale’s baseball captain, future president George H. W. Bush. Eight days later he visited Yankee Stadium for the final time.

Ruth used a bat as a cane. Nat Fein’s photo of Ruth taken from behind, standing near home plate won the Pulitzer Prize and is one of the most famous Baseball photos in history,

Ruth made one final trip on behalf of American Legion Baseball, then entered Memorial Hospital.

George Herman “Babe” Ruth died on August 16th, 1948, at 8:01 p.m. He was just fifty-three. His open casket was placed on display in the rotunda of Yankee Stadium. In two days more than seventy-seven thousand people paid tribute. His Requiem Mass was held at St. Patrick's Cathedral; a crowd estimated at seventy-five thousand waited outside. Babe Ruth is still widely considered the greatest baseball player of all-time.

Tuesday, April 15th, 1947. 12:30PM. It’s damp and overcast. We’re at Ebbets field in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York. The visiting Boston Braves are playing the Brooklyn Dodgers on opening day. We can smell hot dogs, pretzels, popcorn, knishes, and beer.

Manager Leo Deroucher has been suspended by MLB’s offices for conduct detrimental to the team. He’ll have to sit out the whole season. Burt Shotton, known to be calm and steady, is managing the Dodgers. They’re expected to contend.

Red Barber is up in the press booth calling the action for CBS and Gladys Gooding is on the organ. Here with us are stadium celebs like the Dodgers Sym-phony and Hilda Chester the Cowbell Lady, along with more than twenty-six thousand others. These men, women, and children are wearing Dodgers caps, windbreakers, flannel jackets, letterman’s sweaters, sport coats, and suits. They’re Italian, African-American, Jewish, Irish, Polish, Norwegian.

At 12:45 the melting pot stirs as the Dodgers trot out of the clubhouse. There’s Second Baseman Eddie Stanky, Center Fielder Peter Reiser, Catcher Bruce Edwards, and pitcher Joe Hatten. Hatten warms up as one by one the rest of the Dodgers starters come out. Right fielder Dixie Walker. Left Fielder Gene Hermanski. Third Baseman Spider Jorgensen, Shortstop Pee Wee Reese.

There’s an audible buzz as the Dodgers first baseman and final starter comes out. This man was born in Cairo, Georgia. The youngest son of a sharecropper, he was a four-sport letterman at UCLA, and an Army second lieutenant in World War II. His name is Jack Roosevelt Robinson and he’s the first African-American to play in the Major Leagues since Moses Fleetwood Walker in 1884.

Robinson tosses infield practice until Home Plate umpire Babe Pinell signals for the start of the game.

Robinson smooths the dirt in a playing path by first base and sets himself, knees bent, slightly crouched. His glove is on the ground and open. Boston’s Shortstop Dick Culler digs in. Brooklyn’s lefty Joe Hatten winds and delivers the pitch. Culler swings and slaps a ground ball towards third base. He digs out of the batter’s box as Spider Jorgensen charges in and fields the ball on a high hop, throwing slightly off balance towards first base. Robinson, right foot on the bag, stretches as far as he can, catching Jorgensen’s throw and getting Culler out by a step.

And just like that, a fifty-year old gentleman’s agreement between changing owners and the commissioner’s office, that had barred any dark skinned men from playing in the league, was dead. It died here in Flatbush at 1PM, on Tuesday April 15th, 1947 as twenty-six thousand people looked on, and wildly cheered.

Later, in the bottom of the Seventh inning, after an error while batting allowed him to reach second base, Robinson scored the Dodgers fifth run of the game on a double from Pete Reiser. The Dodgers would win five to three.

Although he was the subject of taunts, bean balls, spikes, and scuffles with opposing players and fans all season, Jackie Robinson had the faith of African-Americans and Brooklyn Dodgers fans, as well as the quickly-earned support of his teammates.

Robinson would go on to hit .297 with one-hundred-twenty-five runs scored, forty-eight extra-base hits, and lead the league with twenty-nine stolen bases en route to winning the Rookie of the Year as the Brooklyn Dodgers went ninety-four and sixty, winning the National League pennant.

As recounted by hall of famer Bob Feller, the summer of 1941 proved to be one of the greatest seasons in Baseball history. Ted Williams hit .401 for the Boston Red Sox — the last man ever to do so, while Joe Dimaggio hit in fifty-six consecutive games and won the AL MVP for the New York Yankees.

The Yankees met the surprising Brooklyn Dodgers in the world series. The Dodgers drew the most fans in baseball that year, but lost to the Yankees in five games.

Two months and one day after the last world series game...

Both players and citizens alike joined the war effort. The Dodgers drew 1.2 million fans in 1941. They still led the league, but drew only 661,000 in 1943. Many stars lost three seasons to World War II. A few would never return. Almost 420,000 Americans died during the war.

When the war finally ended, jubilation turned to atomic fears. Meanwhile in Brooklyn, the Dodgers drew 1.7 million fans in 1946 and again led The National League in attendance. It set the stage for the most important moment in Baseball history.

Jerome Hanna "Dizzy" Dean was born on January 16th, 1910 in Lucas, Arkansas, only attending school into the second grade. He made his professional debut in 1930 for the St. Louis Cardinals, sticking with the big club in 1932. The team was soon nicknamed the Gashouse Gang for their on and off field exploits.

Two years later Dean was the 1934 World Series team’s ace. His brother Paul was also on the pitching staff. For the next three years Dean won seventy-eight and lost just thirty-two. Paul won forty-three games of his own. The Cardinals biggest rivals in the 1930s were the New York Giants.

Even with Dean’s brilliance, his Cardinals won only one world series before arm troubles derailed his career. He then went into broadcasting, calling Baseball for radio, and then TV, from 1941 through 1965.

He had his own radio show for NBC in the summer of 1948. During that summer’s all-star break, the Brooklyn Dodgers fired their longtime manager Leo Durocher. Durocher signed with the Giants, who moved their manager Mel Ott to a front office position. All three New York teams missed the playoffs that year.

That same summer Gordon McLendon founded a U.S. radio network called the Liberty Broadcasting System. McLendon built the network up to nearly five-hundred affiliates, second in size only to the Mutual Broadcasting System. His success led to restrictions on Major League Baseball broadcasts in minor league franchise areas and blackouts within a seventy-five mile range of major league cities.

It was a disaster for the network, which folded on May 16th, 1952.

In 1939 the just-heard Mel Allen became the New York Yankees radio announcer. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama on February 14th, 1913. While attending the University of Alabama he became the public address announcer for the Crimson Tide football team.

In 1933, when radio station WBRC asked Alabama coach Frank Thomas to recommend a new play-by-play announcer, he suggested Allen. Allen graduated from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1937. Shortly after he took a train to New York City for a week's vacation. While there, he auditioned for a staff announcer's job at CBS. CBS’ top sportscaster, Ted Husing, had heard many Crimson Tide broadcasts. Allen was hired for forty-five dollars per week.

Although he was calling Baseball, Allen continued to announce other shows on the Network. He was CBS announcer for the Duffy’s Tavern pilot, which aired on Forecast July 30th, 1940.

After Ruth and Gehrig retired, Joe DiMaggio became the next Yankee legend. The Yankees main rival, the Boston Red Sox, were led by fellow future Hall-of-Famer Ted Williams. Norman Corwin riffed on this rivalry during his production of “Between Americans”, for Screen Guild Theatre which aired the night of December 7th, 1941. Both players missed three seasons in the mid 1940s while at war. Ted Williams missed most of two more during the Korean conflict.

In forty-four seasons from 1921 to 1964, The New York Yankees won the World Series twenty times. The dynasty began with Babe Ruth’s sale from the Boston Red Sox after the 1919 season.

Ruth learned his craft in an orphanage in Baltimore, making the Red Sox as a teenager in 1914. He quickly established himself as the best left-handed pitcher in the American League, but he could hit a ball further than anyone had seen.

Over the next few seasons, the Red Sox slowly converted him into an outfielder. In 1919, he broke the Major League record, hitting twenty-nine home runs. The Red Sox drew 417,000 fans to Fenway Park, but they finished in sixth place. After that season, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Ruth to the Yankees. The Red Sox had won five of the first fifteen world championships. They wouldn’t win another for eighty-six years.

The 1919 Yankees were competitive. They finished seven games out of first place and drew 619,000 fans to the Polo Grounds. But the stadium’s main tenant was The New York Giants. The Giants drew 708,000 fans.

Neither team won the pennant. The National League was represented by The Cincinnati Reds, while the American League champions were the Chicago White Sox. The White Sox lost the series five games to three under suspicious circumstances, and eight men — including Shoeless Joe Jackson — were barred for life for throwing games.

Baseball needed a hero and Babe Ruth, now in the nation’s biggest city, was that man. In 1920, his first year with the Yankees, the team drew 1.2 million fans. The Giants drew 929,000 fans. Giants manager John McGraw wasn’t happy with Ruth’s popularity. McGraw was a savage competitor who’d been involved in baseball since the late nineteenth century. Grantland Rice’s show once dramatized a story about McGraw. Meanwhile in Brooklyn, The Robbins drew 613,000 people to Ebbets Field in Flatbush. New York was the capital of baseball.

The Giants and Yankees would meet in three straight World Series, and the Yankees would open up Yankee Stadium in the Bronx in 1923. Throughout the course of his legendary career, Babe Ruth hit .342 with 714 Home Runs, a lifetime on-base percentage of .474, and a lifetime Slugging percentage of .690.

Bill Stern interviewed The Babe for his March 22nd, 1946 Colgate Sports Newsreel. Any conversation about Ruth’s Yankees always included teammate Lou Gehrig, who was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 1939 and forced to retire. Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech was broadcast on Independence Day, 1939. His disease is now also known by his name. Lou Gehrig passed away on June 2nd, 1941.

He was thirty-seven.

If you’ve tuned into Breaking Walls episodes before, you know I rarely editorialize. I’m just the messenger bringing the news. The origins belong to men and women who gave radio their blood, sweat, and tears through radio’s highest highs and lowest lows. I grew up in a home with my grandparents and great-grandparents listening to The Golden Age of Radio. It was a hobby and nothing more.

By the time I was a sophomore in high school, I came to a crux: Do I attempt to live out my childhood dream of being on the pitcher's mound in game seven of some future World Series, or do I focus on getting into one of the top art colleges in the country? I chose the latter. But it wasn’t an easy choice.

My high school art thesis centered around a rhetorical question: “What does it mean to me to be an American?” Since age eight Baseball has been one the strongest answers.

For those tuning in that aren’t baseball fans, I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can say to make you feel emotion towards the game, but I can also try.

Take this clip for instance. It’s Wednesday, October 4th, 1995 and those damned New York Yankees are back in the playoffs for the first time in fourteen years. The Yankees captain is Don Mattingly. A beloved family man from Evansville, Indiana, for six seasons he was arguably baseball’s best player. Though only thirty-four, a bad back made him a shell of his former self.

Mattingly played seventeen-hundred-eighty-five regular season games before getting the chance to play in the playoffs. If you’ve watched enough baseball — especially with the Yankees — you know that ghosts are always around the corner.

And that’s essentially what tonight’s episode is: A ghost story. Some ghost stories are scary and some are sentimental. Sometimes, they’re a little of both.

In Breaking Walls episode 137 we celebrate the Irish by focusing on St. Patrick’s Day on the air.

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Highlights:

• Fred Allen — The End and the Beginning

• Beat the Band

• Burns and Allen at the NYC Parade

• Bill Stern’s Sports Newsreel

• Dennis Day Returns from the Navy

• Fred Allen is King For a Day

• Elliott Lewis and Broadway Is My Beat

• The Death of Fred Allen

• Ending with Jean Shepherd

• Looking Ahead to Opening Day

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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 for today’s episode was:

• Treadmill to Oblivion and Much Ado About Me — By Fred Allen

• On The Air — By John Dunning

• Network Radio Ratings — By Jim Ramsburg

• The Museum of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia of Radio — By Christopher H. Sterling

As well as articles from

• The New York Daily News

• The New York Times

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On the interview front:

• Fred Allen was interviewed by Tex and Jinx on NBC Radio — November 24th, 1954

• Goodman Ace, Tallulah Bankhead, Jack Benny, Mort Greene, Jim Harkins, George Jessel, Doc Rockwell, Donald Vorhees, Pat Weaver, Roger White, and Herman Wouk spoke for Biography In Sound — May 29th, 1956

• Dennis Day and Phil Harris spoke to Chuck Schaden. Hear these full chats at SpeakingOfRadio.com

• Dennis Day and Elliott Lewis spoke to John Dunning for his 71KNUS program from Denver.

• Morton Fine was with Dan Haefele

• Jack Kruschen with Jim Bohannan in 1987.

• Orson Welles on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson

• George Burns spoke to Barbara Walters

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Selected music featured in today’s episode was:

• The Sails of Galway — By W.B. Snuffy Walden

• Overture on Hebrew Themes, Opus 34 — By Andre Moisan

• Someone To Watch Over Me — By Blossom Dearie

• The Minstrel Boy — By Jacqueline Schwab

• Swing into Spring — By Benny Goodman

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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

Briana Isaac

Thomas M. Joyce

Ryan Kramer

Earl Millard

Gary Mollica

Barry Nadler

Christian Neuhaus

Aimee Pavy

Ray Shaw

Filipe A Silva

John Williams

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WallBreakers Links:

Patreon - patreon.com/thewallbreakers

Social Media - @TheWallBreakers

Well, that brings our look at St. Patrick’s Day to the close, but not to worry the green fields of the mind will remain in April.

Next time on Breaking Walls, in honor of Major League Baseball’s opening day, we take a trip to the batter’s box and bring our radios with us. We’ll tell and hear baseball stories from some of the most famous broadcasters and players in American history.