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

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Created by Irving Brecher, the best-known incarnation of The Life of Riley came to the air Sunday January 16th, 1944 at 3PM eastern time over The Blue Network. It starred William Bendix as Chester A. Riley and was sponsored by The American Meat Institute.

Riley was easily exasperated, but difficult to defeat. The difficulty increased by degrees with the flimsiness of Riley’s cause.

Bendix was born on January 14th, 1906 in Manhattan, New York. He came out of the New Jersey Federal Theater project, a latecomer to the profession, beginning at thirty when the grocery store he was running went out of business. His film career began in 1942. He was often the hooligan with the heart of gold. Riley was his most famous character.

It co-starred the previously heard Hans Conreid as Uncle Baxter with John Brown as both Riley’s friend Gillis and the undertaker, Digger O’Dell. Paula Winslowe was Riley’s long-suffering wife Peg. Sharon Douglas was Babs and Conrad Binyon played Junior.

The Life of Riley proved popular enough that in June of 1944 it was moved to Sundays at 10PM. When the series returned for the fall, its October 1944 rating was 4.7. On Sunday, October 29th, 1944 Junior was dared by his friends to visit the haunted Sherman house. He ropes Riley into going with him. Jeanette Nolan guest-stars on the show as Mrs. Sherman, who isn’t a ghost, but is in fact a widow who lost her husband in the War and became a shut-in afterwards.

Beginning in the fall of 1945 it moved to NBC where it was a mainstay for six seasons. It peaked in 1947-48 with a rating of 20.1, good for fourteenth overall that year.

A TV version debuted in October of 1949, first with Jackie Gleason as Riley and later with William Bendix playing the familiar role for five years.

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Edgar Bergen came to the attention of American audiences on Rudy Vallée’s NBC Royal Gelatin Hour on December 17th, 1936. Five months later NBC gave Bergen his own show Sundays at 8PM. He was an instant smash hit.

Don Ameche worked with Bergen in those years. He was emcee on December 12th, 1937 when Mae West was the guest for an innuendo heavy skit called “Adam and Eve.” Over the next six seasons his show was never rated lower than fourth. Twice it was the country’s top program.

In October of 1944 Bergen’s rating was 22.5. Roughly eighteen million people tuned in on October 29th when the guest was Orson Welles for the first of back-to-back appearances on the show.

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On the October 29th, 1944 episode of The Jack Benny Program, an Allen's Alley spoof rekindles Benny's love/hate relationship with Fred Allen.

This episode had a rating of 19.8. Roughly sixteen million people tuned in.

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Well, we’re back where we started, but we’re not the same. I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that when you run on the treadmill to oblivion, you don’t always go where you want, but you get in shape doing it.

When I began Breaking Walls ten years ago I envisioned it as a sit-down interview show. Over time it slowly morphed into on the scene reporting, and eventually a history of U.S. Network Radio Broadcasting. When I made this programming switch permanent in February of 2018 I didn’t know how long I’d be able to keep it up. In many ways these documentaries have been a means of teaching myself the business of broadcasting in order to use the past to inform the present. They’ve also been about teaching myself how to be a good writer, sound designer, and narrator.

My life has undergone many changes in the past six and a half years. I now have paid work in the world of audio thanks to Breaking Walls. This paid work is encroaching upon my time and honestly, it’s paid. It needs to be a priority. This is a long-winded way of saying that I need to take a break from the treadmill. So, for the next three months Breaking Walls is undergoing a change.

Don’t worry! I’m still going to put out new content. You’ll still see an episode 156 of Breaking Walls, which, incidentally, will feature shows from Halloween 1944. Rather than contain my narration and sound design as one giant documentary, they’ll be standalone radio shows with the usual information written into the description of each track.

I’m also going to continue to post the Breaking Walls archives to Youtube, and post additional content on Patreon.com/TheWallBreakers. On Patreon the next episode will drop early as one giant playlist of shows.

I’ve been on the fence about how and when to pause. Eighty months is a long time to run on any treadmill without a break. Given that this was the tenth anniversary of the launch of Breaking Walls, I feel like it’s a good time to give myself that break. You never know, when you close one door — even temporarily like this is — what good things can come in through a window or a side. My plan is to come back to documentary-style episodes of Breaking Walls on January 1st, 2025.

(Half Pause)

The reading material used in today’s episode was:

• On The Air — By John Dunning

• Gleason's Second Honeymoon — By Pete Hammil

• The Great One: The Life and Legend of Jackie Gleason — By William A. Henry

• Network Radio Ratings — By Jim Ramsburg

As well as articles and features from

• Broadcasting Magazine

• Ephemeral New York

• The Library of Congress

• Naval History and Heritage Command

• The New York Times

• The Sydney Morning Herald

(Half Pause)

On the interview front:

• Don Ameche spoke with Chuck Schaden. Hear this full chat at Speakingofradio.com.

• Mel Allen and Edgar Bergen spoke to Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC’s The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these interviews at Goldenage-WTIC.org

• Norman Corwin spoke with John Dunning for his 71KNUS program from Denver.

• Bob Hope spoke with Dick Cavett

• Gene Tierney spoke with Mike Douglas

• Fred Allen spoke with Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg

(Half Pause)

I’d like to thank Chuck Schaden, the late Dick Bertel, the late John Dunning, and SPERDVAC. Without these people and their tremendous work I’d never have been able to do a single episode of Breaking Walls. I’d also like to thank Dr. Joseph Webb for opening the door for me into this world.

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On Christmas night, 1944, Fred Allen was one of the guests on Information Please when the show aired on NBC at 9:30PM. The Christmas broadcast came from the St. Albans Naval Hospital in Queens.

The hospital was commissioned in 1943 on the site of a golf course. At its peak it housed more than forty-five hundred patients.

After the war, the hospital workload increased, but in the spring of 1973, the Navy decommissioned the hospital and turned it over to the Veterans’ Administration. More recently it evolved into the Veterans Administration St. Albans Primary and Extended Care Facility. A portion of the hospital site became Roy Wilkins Park in the 1980s.

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What you’re about to hear is the Sunday, December 24th, 1944 at 3PM WMCA broadcast of New World A’ Coming. It’s a Christmas musical show. For more info on New World A’ Coming, please tune into the previous act on this series within this episode of Breaking Walls.

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Edgar Bergen came to the attention of American audiences on Rudy Vallée’s NBC Royal Gelatin Hour on December 17th, 1936. How could ventriloquism work on radio? Perhaps Rudy Vallée himself put it best the night Bergen debuted.

Five months later NBC gave Bergen his own show Sundays at 8PM. He was an instant smash hit. Don Ameche worked with Bergen in those years. He was emcee on December 12th, 1937 when Mae West was the guest for an innuendo heavy skit called “Adam and Eve.”

Over the next six seasons his show was never rated lower than fourth. Twice it was the country’s top program. In November of 1944 Bergen’s rating was 22.7. Roughly eighteen million people tuned in on November 5th when the guest was Orson Welles for the second of back-to-back appearances on the show.

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers

Jubilee first took to the air on October 9th, 1942 transcribed by the Special Services Division of the War Department, then by the Armed Forces Radio Service. It featured Jazz and Swing bands and filled an important gap in the musical history of radio, gearing itself towards African American men stationed overseas. Jubilee luminaries included Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lena Horne, Ethel Waters, and Ella Fitzgerald.

Most of the shows were recorded before live audiences in Los Angeles. This particular episode featured bandleaders known for their New York flavor, like Claude Hopkins. Songstress Ida James was emcee. Mel Allen, later the famed voice of the New York Yankees, announced.

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In October 1944, in conjunction with the Jewish Theological Seminary, NBC began one of the longest-running religious programs in radio history. It was called The Eternal Light. The dramatized stories from ancient Judaea, along with contemporary works like The Diary of Anne Frank.

It was produced by Milton Krents. Many top New York radio actors appeared. NBC donated the air time and the Seminary paid for the show's production.

As part of this second episode, which aired on Sunday, October 15th, 1944, listeners heard about the founding of Temple Emanuel, the first reform Jewish synagogue in New York. It was formed in 1845 in a rented hall near Grand and Clinton Streets in Manhattan's Lower East Side.

By 1944 the congregation had moved to its current location, at 1 East 65th Street, just off Fifth Avenue, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

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The woman you just heard is Gene Tierney. She was born on November 19th, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York. Raised in Connecticut, she excelled in poetry, took up student acting, and eventually spent two years attending school in Switzerland, where she learned to speak French.

On a family trip to the West Coast, she visited Warner Bros. studios, where her cousin Gordon Hollingshead worked as a producer. Director Anatole Litvak, taken by her beauty, convinced Gene to take a screen test.

Warner Brothers wanted to sign her, but her father convinced her to stay home, enter society, and become a theater actress. She studied acting in Greenwich Village and soon found herself getting increasing roles on Broadway along with reviews about her acting prowess and natural beauty.

Eventually Gene’s father set up a company to fund her acting interests. She met Howard Hughes, who became a lifelong friend. In 1940 she starred as Patricia Stanley on Broadway in The Male Animal. Features in Life, Harper's Bazaar, and Vogue soon followed.

Darryl Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox, saw her both acting and later dancing at The Stork Club, and signed her to a contract. She debuted later that year in a supporting role, opposite Henry Fonda, in Fritz Lang's western, The Return of Frank James.

By 1944 she’d made eleven films. That Autumn she wrapped up filming of Laura opposite Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, and Vincent Price. Before its premiere in November she guest-starred on Duffy’s Tavern on Friday, September 22nd.

The brainchild of star Ed Gardner, Duffy’s Tavern debuted as part of CBS’s Forecast pilot series in 1940. It was hailed by critics as the most-original comedy of 1941.

The fictitious bar was allegedly located in Manhattan on 3rd avenue and 23rd street. It was the “eyesore of the East side” where the “elite meet to eat.”

Duffy never made an appearance, but his frequent phone calls were a constant source of anxiety. Gardner’s heavily New York-accented Archie has inspired several characters in the years since, like Moe in The Simpsons. Eddie Green was Eddie, Marvin Miller announced, Sandra Gould was Miss Duffy, and Charlie Cantor was Finnegan.

In September 1944 the show moved to NBC. This was the season’s second episode. It pulled a rating of 11.3. Roughly nine million people tuned in.