The year is 1935. No TV, no PC, no cell, no video games, no You Tube, no My Face.
I am eight years old. What a wondeful time to be alive.
So many books to read. And loads of time to read them.
Whenever I am asked where my imagination came from, the answer is basically the same. Every time I cracked open a book or turned on my radio I was giving my imagination a workout and building a base for the career path I eventually took.
What a blessing to be born in a world with no distractions to keep a young mind from developing imaginatively and creatively. It was not that I was visually deprived. The stories in those books and the dramas enacted on radio were received in high definition on the flat screen of my mind. And all the while my imagination was growing.
I saw movies without going to the movies and in 1935 watching a movie was not as simple as turning on TV or slipping a DVD into a player. I saw movies on Lux Radio Theater. For example "Sorry Wrong Number" starring Agnes Moorehead, was memorably created in one hour just using voice and sound effects. I listened and was riveted. Subsequently I watched the film version with Barbara Stanwyck and I didn't enjoy it as much. No film could capture the suspenseful narrative of that story better than my own mind.
Much of today's television had antecedents in the early days of radio. American Idol? In 1935 anyone who owned a radio listened to Major Bowes Amateur Hour. Jeopardy? In 1935 there was Dr IQ. A page with a mike roamed the studio audience for contestants. Thus came the phrase, " I have a lady in the balcony doctor." Correct answers were worth between $25 and $100 plus a box of Mars Bars or Milky Ways. Every Saturday morning one could listen and see Grand Central Station for a fascinating tale plucked from the millions of stories in the city. Those episodes rivaled anything now on TV. Before there was Cheers there was Duffy's Tavern ," where the elite meet to eat'"
At the age of eight I never had attended Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds, or Yankee Stadium. Yet I had a seat to all Dodger, Yankee, and Giant games, right behind home plate. My hosts who described every detail of the game were Red Barber for the Dodgers, Mel Allen for the Yankees, and Russ Hodges and Frankie Frisch for the Giants. How I loved listening to those games; I even kept score. Some away games were re- created on ticker tape. I saw and enjoyed all the action and was never troubled by the short delay in reality. Hey, President Reagan got his start as a communicator doing ticker tape re-creations on radio.
Like housewives and many college students hooked on soaps, I was addicted to adventure serializations on radio. My radio, a Philco Superheterodyne sat on a table next to my bed and from five in the afternoon to seven I was glued to it. Before frozen TV dinners there were warmed up radio suppers which I ate while listening. Until this day I believed Superheterodyne to be a word coined by an advertising copywriter to convey superior radio reception, like the word "halitosis" made up to mean bad breath. But much to my surprise there is a word Superheterodyne: "a form of radio reception in which part of the amplification prior to demodulation is carried out at an intermediate supersonic frequency produced by beating the frequency of the received carrier waves with that of locally generated oscillations." Well you knew that didn't you. Despite the dictionary definition my little Philco performed big time.
When you tuned in to radio you made a commitment Listening was not optional. Listening was mandatory. So as you put your imagination through a workout when listening to radio, you were also shoring up your ability to listen. And any executive will tell you that one of the biggest shortcomings in business is the inability to listen.
Some of the radio programs I regularly followed:
What Star Wars was to film, Buck Rogers was to early radio. Brought to you by Cocomalt.
"Hiyo Silver...away" so opened the Lone Ranger brought to you by Silvercup Bread, made with a whole cup of real milk. To the sound of Silver's hooves and the stirring William Tell Overture, the Lone Ranger,"Kimosabi" to his trusted companion Tonto, galloped into my home every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Tom Mix rode a horse named Tony and was sponsored by Ralston. It was said the oats in Tony's bucket tasted better.
Jack Armstrong, the All American boy from Hudson High induced me to try Wheaties.
From the inner seal of a jar of Ovaltine and 50 cents for S&H, I got a nifty Little Orphan Annie decoder ring and a code for sending secret messages.
I can still hear that creaky door on the opening of Inner Sanctum, the program that scared the hell out of my brother and me huddled on my bed and afraid to breathe.
Sundays at five were reserved for the Shadow or Lamont Cranston and his live-in companion Margot Lane. "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows heh,heh,heh" Sponsor, Blue Coal. I was hardly the target audience but I will always believe that Blue Coal was superior fuel.
I Love a Mystery was a suspense series featuring Jack, Doc, and Reggie.
Renfrew of the Mounted opened with the chilling howl of a wolf in the Canadian Rockies.
Omar the Mystic offered secret Mystic handcuffs which I sent for. No sooner did I unwrap the package than I tried my new trick by inserting a finger in each end of a bamboo tube. Never was I able to solve how to extricate my fingers from the friggen thing and had to be cut out of bondage by the school nurse.
At that young age I was very interested in sponsors and their advertising on the programs I loved, an addiction that stayed with me and eventually helped shape my career.
I also enjoyed comedy and variety shows on radio. I listened to Eddie Cantor, Bob Hope , Jimmy Durante, Fibber Magee and Molly. But the best of them in my estimation was Jack Benny and his ensemble featuring wife Mary Livingston, announcer Don Wilson, singer and foil Dennis Day, valet and straight man Rochester. and periodically Artie Auerbach who played Mr. Kitzel and could be counted on to say in a strong Yiddish accent, "Pickle in the middle with mustard on top." Much of Jack's comedy was built around his penuriousness. I heard that original and historic airing which became arguably the most famous 30 seconds of silence on radio. Jack was accosted by a mugger who demanded "Your money or your life." After what seemed and eternity Jack responded, "I'm thinking. I'm thinking."
Fast forward 40 years and I'm writing Jell-O commercials which Jack performed on TV. Could a star struck kid have a better dream come true.
Henry Morgan aired on radio one night and the next morning became the talk around the water cooler. Morgan,a fresh voice for radio was kind of a Steve Martin type comedian, more satire than big yuks. One night he spoofed the the popular John Jay Anthony (advice giver a la Dr. Laura) by asking a distraught female caller,"Madam when did you first realize your husband had left you?" The reply, "We were using less butter in the morning". That bit epitomized Morgan's syle of humor. I've borrowed from it ever since.
By stoking my imagination and simultaneously developing appreciation of the creative process, little did I know that I was charting a course for the future.
With the demise of radio drama you would think there would be no way to replicate the experience of my early years. Not exactly the case. Slip an audio cassette into a tape player and listen to a great book on tape. Get the best of reading and radio. The 21st Century version of boot camp for the imagination.
Wonderful! All of them. Including this last one. Did you keep a diary from the time you were five, do you have perfect recall, or do you make all this stuff up? You remember more old brand names than durrent ones that I can name today. Morgan once spent what seemed like fifteen, but was probably more like three minutes dropping a coin on the table, because he liked the sound it made. I was disappointed o find out that he was not a particularly nice man.
Posted by: peter | August 29, 2007 at 03:41 PM