Breaking Walls

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BW - EP129—002: Radio, Roswell And The Flying Saucer Craze—The Chicago Roundtable Debate Jul 02, 2022

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The University of Chicago Roundtable grew out of arguments had by professors at the faculty club. In 1931 they were convinced their forum would make for good radio. WMAQ agreed. The show premiered on February 1st of that year. It began running nationally over NBC on October 15th, 1933. The thirty-minute time slot allowed for little grandstanding. Professors rotated with each broadcast according to their expertise. They sat at a triangular table, which put the speakers face-to-face. It had time-warning lights facing each chair and was built like a sloping pyramid, with a microphone at the top. If people really were seeing UFOs in the sky they had to be coming from other worlds. On December 19th, 1948 The Roundtable attempted to answer the question from a scientific point of view. There were no scripts, but Roundtable was the first show of its kind to issue a weekly magazine. It contained a transcript of the previous program, biographies of the participants, listener feedback, suggested topical reading, and a schedule of coming broadcasts. The University of Chicago Roundtable would air until June 12th, 1955, finally going off the air when NBC launched Monitor.

BW - EP129—001: Radio, Roswell And The Flying Saucer Craze—Kenneth Arnold And The Roswell Crash Jun 30, 2022

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Early on the morning of February 25th, 1942 several aerial objects were spotted over Los Angeles. It triggered the firing of thousands of anti-aircraft rounds. This was ten weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and Manilla. Initially, it was thought to be a Japanese attack, but shortly after Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox said it was a false alarm. The hysteria was blamed on a weather balloon. During World War II soldiers reported seeing metallic spheres in the sky. The allies dubbed them “Foo Fighters.” In 1946, numerous UFO sightings were reported in Sweden. Known as “Ghost Rockets,” they put the Swedish Defense Staff on high alert. No confirmation of what they were was ever achieved. All of these paled in comparison to what happened in Washington State in June of 1947. On June 24th a transport with thirty-two marines on board crashed near Mount Rainier, Washington. A private pilot, Kenneth Arnold, was flying from Chehalis (SHA HAY LISS) to Yakima on a business trip. Arnold had six years of experience flying in and around the rugged Mount Rainier terrain. He went off course to look for wreckage. On April 6th, 1950 he spoke with Edward R. Murrow about his experience. As the objects passed Mount Rainier, Arnold turned his plane parallel to their course. He timed their rate of passage. They moved from Mount Rainier to Mount Adams —a distance of about fifty miles—in one minute forty-two seconds. That put their speed at over seventeen-hundred miles per hour. That was three times faster than any manned aircraft in 1947. The next day Arnold told his story to a newspaper in Pendleton, Oregon. The military questioned Arnold on three occasions, doubting his experience. But, other pilots soon told of sightings. On July 4th, The Oregon Journal received a letter from an L. G. Bernier of Richland, Washington who saw three objects flying toward Mount Rainier about one half-hour before Arnold. Bernier suggested they might have been extraterrestrial in origin. Arnold soon agreed. The problem with simply dismissing what Arnold saw lies in the fact that he was a credible witness. Sure, he could have been seeing things, but here was a man both highly trained and highly observational. Two weeks later, the most speculated UFO crash of the twentieth century was reported in Roswell, New Mexico.

BW - EP128: June 1954—The End as We Knew It Jun 27, 2022

Show notes

In Breaking Walls episode 128 we wrap up our six month look at 1954 by ending in June with network cancellations. —————————— Highlights: • The State of Radio and The Union • The End of Escape with John Dehner • News with Frank Edwards on Mutual • Let’s Pretend with Arnold Stang • Autolite Drops Suspense • Goodbye To Jack Benny (For Now) • What’s At Stake in the Fall 1954 Midterm Elections • CBS Cancels The Lux Radio Theatre • The End of James Stewart’s The Six Shooter • Looking Ahead to July and Roswell —————————— The WallBreakers: http://thewallbreakers.com Subscribe to Breaking Walls everywhere you get your podcasts. To support the show: http://patreon.com/TheWallBreakers —————————— The reading material used in today’s episode was: • On the Air — By John Dunning • Network Radio Ratings — by Jim Ramsburg • The Complete Escape and Suspense Logs — By Keith Scott As well as articles from: • Broadcasting Magazine • LIFE Magazine • Newsweek • Radio Guide —————————— On the interview front: • Parley Baer, Ken Carpenter, Elliott Lewis, and Paula Winslowe spoke to Chuck Schaden. Hear their full chats at SpeakingOfRadio.com. • Herb Ellis, Virginia Gregg, Jack Johnstone, Elliott Lewis, and Herb Vigran spoke to SPERDVAC. For more info, go to SPERDVAC.com. • John Gibson, Elliott Lewis, Vincent Price, and Arnold Stang spoke to Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC’s The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these full interviews at Goldenage-WTIC.org. • John Dehner and Vic Perrin spoke with Neil Ross at KMPC. • Dennis Day spoke with John Dunning for 71KNUS. • Morton Fine was with Dan Haefele. • Orson Welles with Johnny Carson. • Jimmy Stewart with Larry King. • Jack Benny spoke with CBS. —————————— Selected music featured in today’s episode was: • Living Without You and Too Much Between Us — By George Winston • The Last Rose of Summer — By Tom Waits • Seance on a Wet Afternoon — By John Barry —————————— 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. —————————— 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 —————————— WallBreakers Links: Patreon - patreon.com/thewallbreakers Social Media - @TheWallBreakers

BW - EP128—010: June 1954—Looking Ahead To July And Roswell Jun 21, 2022

Show notes

Well, this brings our six-month look at 1954 to a close. Jack Benny again had radio’s highest-rated show the following season in what would ultimately turn out to be his swan song. Benny’s last new radio episode aired in May of 1955. Joseph McCarthy would finally be censured by the Senate in December. He never recovered from that political storm, and died three years later, ravaged by disease and addiction, at the age of forty-eight. Although in some ways the Red Scare ended in 1954, the cold war was just reaching its height. But fears of nuclear bombers were only half the reason people were looking up. It’s time we focused on the other. Next time on Breaking Walls, in honor of its seventy-fifth anniversary, we examine our places in the universe with the utterance of a single word: Roswell.

BW - EP128—009: June 1954—The End Of James Stewart's Six Shooter Jun 17, 2022

Show notes

Even with James Stewart leading the cast and Jack Johnstone directing, without a national sponsor cancellation was around the corner for The Six Shooter. Unlike with CBS, it was uncommon for NBC to sustain shows for long. Stewart had turned down sponsorship from Liggett and Myers Tobacco. The Six Shooter would be canceled after the June 24th, 1954 episode. Thirty-nine shows were produced. Parley Baer played parts in many episodes. The next year Baer would work with Johnstone on CBS’ Yours Truly Johnny Dollar. In the finale Ponset falls in love with Myra Barker. He proposes, but at the conclusion they realize married life isn’t possible so long as Ponset still has wrongs to right and people to save. In the end, Britt rides off into the sunset. Fortunately for radio fans, the entirety of The Six-Shooter’s one season survives. For more info, tune into Breaking Walls episode 122.

BW - EP128—008: June 1954—CBS Cancels The Lux Radio Theatre Jun 15, 2022

Show notes

At network radio’s height, no dramatic show was more popular than CBS’ Lux Radio Theatre. Between 1936 and 1954 it never finished lower than eighth in the ratings, and it was radio’s top show between 1947 and 1952. Ken Carpenter announced. Radio’s best supporting talent, like Paula Winslowe, worked opposite Hollywood's biggest stars. Mondays at 9PM eastern was appointment radio, and CBS built the rest of its powerhouse Monday schedule around Lux. It helped shows like My Friend Irma, Inner Sanctum, Screen Guild, and Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts reach new heights. It was also radio’s most-rehearsed show. All the players were expected to be available for an entire week leading up to the live Monday broadcast. John Gibson, best known as Ethelbert on Crime Photographer, remembered the schedule. Vincent Price, one of the only Hollywood stars contractually allowed to do as much radio as he wanted, remembered working the show. A TV version of Lux premiered in 1950. Near the end of the radio run it was estimated that Lux had gone through more than fifty thousand pages of script, five-hundred stars, fifteen-hundred supporting players, twenty-thousand music cues, and twenty-thousand sound effects. In 1954 Lux was still rated fifth overall with a 6.2, but even radio’s most famous dramatic show wasn’t immune to the times. Towards the end of the season it was announced that CBS and Lux would be cutting ties in June. All that was left was to put a bow on one of the most successful shows in radio history. Lux would run one more season, moving to NBC where it was still a top-four show. The Lux Video Theatre also shifted to NBC. It ran until 1957 before changing formats and bringing in Rosemary Clooney as star. In its final season in 1959, the show became The Lux Playhouse before being canceled.

BW - EP128—007: June 1954—What's At Stake In The Fall 1954 Midterm Elections Jun 14, 2022

Show notes

On Sunday June 13th, 1954 at 6PM Eastern, The American Forum of the Air signed on Mutual with a discussion on the 1954 midterm elections. The featured Senators were Republican Homer Ferguson of Michigan and Democrat Mike Monroney of Oklahoma. The two political parties had deep divides within on key issues. While many Republicans were conservative, they didn’t support Joseph McCarthy’s communist raids. Northern democrats were likely to be liberal and in favor of the underway de-segregation. Many southern Dems were known as Dixiecrats and upset at the recent Brown vs. Board of Ed. ruling. The 1954 elections were held on November 2nd. The Republicans would lose both the House and Senate, a direct result of anti-McCarthy backlash. The elections caused a divided government that continued to the end of Eisenhower’s presidency. Republicans wouldn’t retake the Senate until 1980 and the House until 1994.

BW - EP128—006: June 1954—Goodbye To Jack Benny (For Now) Jun 12, 2022

Show notes

On June 6th, 1954 Jack Benny closed his broadcast for the end of the season. Jack was going to headline in Dallas. The show featured a semi-rare appearance from Mary Livingston. Although radio audiences were rapidly waning and Benny was a TV star as well, he kept his radio program going. Out of home listening was adding an additional forty percent to primetime radio audiences. That means Benny’s 8.2 1954 rating was actually closer to 11.5.

BW - EP128—005: June 1954—Autolite Drops Suspense Jun 08, 2022

Show notes

By June of 1954, the thirty-six year-old Elliott Lewis was producer/director of four shows and the star of two. His peers affectionately dubbed him “Mr. Radio.” Perhaps most prominently, he’d been producer and director of Suspense since the fall of 1950. Program sponsor Autolite preferred to keep its commercials humorous, feeling that the change of pace shocked the audience to attention. Each 30-minute episode required over five-hundred total hours of work from fifty people. With Lewis at the helm, Suspense was able to stave off some of the decline in ratings other shows succumbed to. This was partly due to his partnership with Morton Fine and David Friedkin. Although the series, now airing on Mondays at 8PM, was still heard by roughly 12.5 million people each week, at season’s end Autolite decided to discontinue their sponsorship after six years. The last Autolite Suspense episode was “A Terribly Strange Bed” on June 7th. Adapted by Morton Fine, it guest-starred Peter Lawford as an English cop in France who wins big at a gambling table, gets drunk, and ends up in a hotel room in a booby-trapped bed. Featured in this episode as The Croupier was Vic Perrin. After the episode climax, announcer Harlow Wilcox signed off for the two-hundred-forty-sixth and final time. Elliott Lewis left the production after July 27th. Suspense would remain a sustained show until finding multiple sponsorship in late 1956. Unfortunately for Lewis, his other shows would soon be canceled. Phil Harris and Alice Faye went off the air on June 18th. Crime Classics on June 30th. Broadway is My Beat on August 1st. And On Stage on September 30th. For more info on Elliott Lewis’ career, tune into Breaking Walls episode 113.

BW - EP128—004: June 1954—Let's Pretend With Arnold Stang Jun 07, 2022

Show notes

Originally broadcast as The Adventures of Helen and Mary, radio’s preeminent children’s show first took to the air on September 7th, 1929 over CBS. It became Let’s Pretend on March 24th, 1934. Hosted by “Uncle” Bill Adams, it was in many ways the brainchild of Nila Mack, who penned, produced, and directed each show. Ms Mack was born in 1891 in Kansas and became an ingenue on Broadway and in vaudeville. She arrived at CBS in 1928, and in August 1930 assumed control of the show. Mack felt the best way to tell a children’s story was to let the children tell it. Acting talent could play a lead one week and a character part the next. She soon became CBS director of children’s programming. One of Ms. Mack’s staples was her open door policy. Any child could audition. She was responsible for developing two generations of some of the best child-turned-adult acting talent in radio history, like Arnold Stang. Radio Guide wrote that Ms Mack instantly knew if a child had it. If so, he or she would be given a small part and slowly work their way up to lead roles. Perhaps Newsweek said it best in 1943: “Let's Pretend is filled with kings and queens who ride talking horses through enchanted forests. It has maidens who must be rescued from witches, dragons, and dwarfs. Its characters travel in coaches, wear purple robes through emerald halls into jade rooms, and drink from golden goblets.” Cream of Wheat became the sponsor that year. It was a partnership that lasted until 1952. At 2PM on Saturday June 5th, 1954, Let’s Pretend signed on the air over CBS in New York. Unfortunately, Nila Mack passed away from a heart attack on January 20th, 1953, but the show kept on. In its final two years the Nila Mack Award was given to the top players. The show would air until October 23rd, 1954. And thanks to Ms Mack, men and women like Arnold Stang were able to have long careers.

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