"Deprecating Yet Loving Gestures": The Way It Was, 18 January

1929---"Deprecating yet loving gestures" is how an unnamed Chicago American critic will describe the takes when New York Daily Mirror columnist Walter Winchell makes his first known national radio broadcast---a special, 42-station appearance on NBC, conducting a kind of virtual tour of Broadway.

The broadcast leads to scattered guest appearances (on Rudy Vallee’s popular program, among others) and a brief gig as the announcer for Alexander Woollcott’s program. Those, in turn, lead to Winchell’s own first regular program, Before Dinner---Walter Winchell (CBS), sponsored by Saks & Company, a year and a half after that NBC appearance.

As early as January 1928, when Walter was still at the (New York) Graphic, Bernarr McFadden had asked public relations adviser Edward Bernays to investigate the possibilities of getting the columnist on the air, “as Mr. Winchell is very popular, and could talk on Broadway and New York plays, about which he is a unique authority.” Nothing came of this particular inquiry, but Walter made an appearance in the fall on a special broadcast boosting humourist Will Rogers’s mock presidential candidacy---Walter called for a more entertaining House of Representatives with some girls and a stage erected in the Capitol building---and was singled out by one radio critic for seeming "more at home before the mike than any newspaperman we have ever heard."

---Neal Gabler, in Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.)

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

1943: EXCUSES, EXCUSES---Now that Abner has found his daughter a job, the gents have to overtake Ulysses Quincy’s genius for alibis and convene a Golden Air Discussion Club meeting at Quincy’s home, since it’s his turn to host, on tonight’s episode of Lum & Abner. (Mutual.)

1943: THEY BANKED ON THE WABASH---That would be Theodore Dreiser’s brother, a carnival entertainer who changed one digit in the family name, became Paul Dresser, and became a popular songwriter (once stage star Sally Elliot made the songs, including “On the Banks of the Wabash,” popular during the Gay Nineties). The 1942 film hit, My Gal Sal, based on Dreiser’s recollection now becomes a radio musical, with Dick Powell as Dresser and Mary Martin as Elliot, on tonight’s edition of Lux Radio Theater. (CBS.)

1944: WHAT A REVOLTIN’ DEVELOPMENT THIS IS!---William Bendix (by now the star of radio’s The Life of Riley) is the student, Gracie Allen is his teacher, and the subject is culture. There are those who think this is something along the line of Bonnie and Clyde teaching finance, on tonight’s episode of The Burns & Allen Show. (CBS.)

1952: "I GOT TO HANG AROUND AND PRAY FOR A CLIENT"---And barely is that phrase out of our hero’s (Dick Powell) mouth to his girl’s (Virginia Gregg) ear when his prayer is answered---a lady wants protection for her reluctant husband, a retiree and recovering stroke victim, who has found oil on his property and since dodged a bullet or three, on tonight’s episode of Richard Diamond, Private Detective. (ABC.)