Brave New Radio: The Way It Was, 27 January

FEATURED BROADCAST:
THE CBS RADIO WORKSHOP:
BRAVE NEW WORLD (PART ONE)
(CBS, 1956)

With old-time radio as known rounding third and heading for home, so to say, one of its finest hours (well, half-hours, but leave us not get technical) launches tonight, picking up mostly where its distinguished predecessor program (Columbia Workshop) left off and opening with one of the most challenging adaptations in the history of the art.

Aldous Huxley himself narrates a two-part radio adaptation of his futuristic tale of benign tyranny, in which the world would become dominated by, among other things, drug pacification, psychic collectivism, indoctrination trance, and artificial and dehumanised reproduction in hand with forced sterilisation, all of which culminate in a state the future social and cultural critic Neil Postman (in Amusing Ourselves to Death) will describe as not being denied human rights but not much caring.

What [George] Orwell feared [in 1984] were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.

---Neil Postman, from Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. (New York/London: Penguin Books, 1985.)

And, in due course, the journalist Christopher Hitchens will note thus, introducing a new publication of Brave New World in 2003:

Aldous Huxley absolutely detested mass culture and popular entertainment, and many of his toughest critical essays, as well as several intense passages in his fiction, consist of sneers and jeers at the cheapness of the cinematic ethic and the vulgarity of commercial music . . . But if he were able to return to us, and cast his scornful and lofty gaze on our hedonistic society, he would probably be relatively unsurprised at the way things are going . . .

The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle, and Huxley assists us in attaining this valuable glimpse of the obvious, precisely because it was a conclusion that was in many ways unwelcome to him.

There is a certain tone of that unwelcomeness in Huxley's becalmed narration throughout this program.

Brave New World is a fantastic parable about the dehumanisation of human beings. In the negative utopia described in my story, man has been subordinated to his own inventions. Science, technology, social organisation, these things have ceased to serve man. They have become his masters.

A quarter of a century has passed since the book was published. In that time, our world has taken so many steps in the wrong direction, that if I were writing today, I would date my story not six hundred years in the future but at the most two hundred. The price of liberty, and even of common humanity, is eternal vigilance.

Two years before he will amplify that thought in the remarkable Brave New World Revisited, Huxley deploys it on behalf of an understated---and quietly chilling---mind translation of his famous negative utopia that calls for, and receives, unforced and unadorned performances from a cast that includes some of old-time radio's most memorable performers---including Sam Edwards (Meet Corliss Archer; Father Knows Best; Gunsmoke; Dragnet; Fort Laramie; Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar; others), Gloria Henry (numerous programs), Bill Idelson (Vic & Sade), Byron Kane (Famous Jury Trials), , Joseph Kearns (Suspense; The Burns & Allen Show; The Adventures of Sam Spade; The Jack Benny Program; others; he would later work as a castmate of Gloria Henry in television's Dennis the Menace), Jack Kruschen (One Man's Family), Charlotte Lawrence (Just Plain Bill; Our Gal Sunday), Vic Perrin (Gunsmoke; Fort Laramie; others), and the First Lady of Radio herself, Lurene Tuttle (The Great Gildersleeve; The Adventures of Sam Spade; Suspense; The Whistler; Hollywood Hotel; Dr. Christian; One Man's Family; Those We Love; numerous others).

Announcer/host: William Conrad. Music: Bernard Herman. Writer: William Froug, adapted from the novel by Aldous Huxley.

AIRWAVES . . .

1927: THE SEED OF CBS---A concert violinist turned talent agent, Arthur Judson, and his partner George Coats launch United Independent Broadcasters, Inc. Within less than two years it will become William S. Paley’s Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS)---and the story will prove anything but simple. We bring you now to invaluable radio historian Elizabeth McLeod.

. . . [T]he more you look at [Judson's and Coats's] activities during this period, the more you have to wonder how they managed to stay out of jail, let alone how they managed to stay in business.

Judson was originally less interested in starting a radio network than in finding a new outlet for his roster of musical artists.* His first venture in this direction was the Judson Radio Program Corporation, formed in 1926. His idea was to act as a middleman between sponsors and networks -- an independent packager of radio programming, using talent under contract to the company. He approached David Sarnoff with this idea in the fall of 1926, but was shown the door almost immediately---the better for Sarnoff to help himself to the idea, and use it as the basis for the NBC Artists Bureau.

Judson and his associate Coats then decided to try to start a network of their own, and they had everything they needed to do it except money, radio stations, and any knowledge of the broadcasting business. So they went right ahead and had certificates printed for stock shares in United Independent Broadcasters and divided them up among themselves -- and then without the slightest idea of how to start a radio network, Coats hit the road to find affiliates. The idea was that UIB would pay each affiliate a flat rate of $500 for a guarantee of ten hours per week of broadcast time---and most stations of this era being shoestring operations, most of them jumped at the chance---even though the network didn't exist anywhere but on paper. With nothing but promises, Coats signed up a dozen affiliates---but still didn't have any way to deliver on the promises.

The big problem was raising the money to lease the network lines from AT&T---and this was where Coats got lucky. In the spring of 1927, Coats managed to convince the president of the Columbia Phonograph Corporation to buy $163,000 worth of time on the new network---and pay cash up front for it. The idea was that Columbia Phonograph would then resell this time, in ten-hour units to other clients. The Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting Company was set up as a paper corporation to handle this work---with its stock divided up among a number of additional investors, none of whom had anything to do with Judson, Coats, or UIB. The only link between the two corporations was the contract for Columbia to buy the time from UIB.

Columbia handed over the money with no guarantee that Coats and Judson would ever get the network off the ground, but they were able---perhaps with a bit of political arm twisting---to get AT&T to lease the necessary lines. Meanwhile, Coats and Judson finally realized they knew nothing about broadcasting, and sold Major J. Andrew White 200 shares of stock in UIB in order to get access to his expertise. However, even White was unable to do anything meaningful in the way of lining up clients because of the clumsy arrangement with Columbia---no sponsor wanted to share sponsorship credit with another company for its programs. It was perhaps because of this that "Phonograph" was apparently not used on air.

When the new network finally signed on, there were three corporations involved---Judson Radio Program Corporation, which assembled the programming; United Independent Broadcasters, which arranged for the network lines; and, Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting Company, which fronted the cash and made its contract talent available for broadcasting. None of these three corporations had any control over the others, and all were most concerned with their own interests. Columbia Phonograph lost $100,000 on the project over the first month of the project, sold no sponsors whatsoever, and dropped out. That cut off the cash flow before the network was a month old. They did, however, leave their name behind---figuring any advertising is good advertising---and also retained the block of time they had bought, to be used for their own "Columbia Phonograph Hour," at that time the only sponsored program on the chain.

It was here that George "Kingfish" Coats saved the network. With a mountain of debt, no source of income, no future prospects, and no assets other than a pile of essentially worthless stock certificates, Coats sold a Philadelphia millionaire named J. H. Louchheim an interest in the company and got him to agree to put up the money to keep it running. Loucheim then pooled his shares with a minority interest Coats had sold to the Levy brothers---owners of WCAU---and took a controlling interest in UIB, with Judson and Coats retaining most of the rest of the stock, as well as control of the Judson Radio Program Corporation, which had a five-year contract to produce programs for the network. A few sponsors signed on---very few---but the losses continued to mount.

Over the next eight months, Louchheim flushed a fortune into UIB, and lost it all---although he got plenty of additional stock certificates to show for his investment. Finally, in September of 1928, Loucheim---by this time ready to kill Coats on sight---jumped at the chance to dump the whole soggy mess into the lap of a snappy-dressing 27-year-old millionaire whose family's company---Congress Cigar Co.---was one of the few Columbia sponsors. William Paley then convinced his father and several of his uncles to join him in the venture---and took a three month leave of absence from the cigar business to see if the new purchase was worth anything.

One of the first things the new owner did was clean up the messy corporate structure. The Columbia Broadcasting Company was dissolved, but its name was kept---and on 1/3/29, United Independent Broadcasters officially changed its name to Columbia Broadcasting System Inc. Judson and Coats retained Judson Radio Program Corporation, along with their minority interest in the new CBS---but from here on, Paley was in control. The network lost over $380,000 thru the end of 1928, but it would never have another losing year.

---Elizabeth McLeod, "CBS: In the Beginning," 20 September 2002.

1931: THE CHATTERING CLASS?---Classified as a soap opera but truly more of a dialogic comedy---symbiotically related in that manner to such serial/quasi-serial comedies as Easy Aces and Vic & Sade---Clara, Lu & Em, the title referring to the three ladies/neighbours/friends who gossip incessantly and plot almost likewise on behalf of various interests and passions, premieres on NBC's Blue Network.

Perhaps it will fall to history to classify the quietly absurd show properly, but Clara, Lu & Em proves groundbreaking daytime programming anyway so far as old-time radio is concerned, when it moves to daytime within a little over a year: it is the first daytime show to break the dominance of household hints, cooking, and other such daytime programming; and, it gives Colgate-Palmolive-Peet---which sponsors the show for Super Suds---the honour of beating the redoubtable Procter & Gamble to the proverbial punch as the first soap manufacturer ever to sponsor a daytime serial.

Little else will remain known of Clara, Lu & Em beyond its three co-stars---Louise Starkey (Clara; succeeded later by Fran Harris), Isabel Carothers (Lu; succeeded later by Dorothy Day), and Helen King (Em; succeeded later by Harriet Allyn)---and few episodes will survive to the post old-time radio listening era, but its standing as a genuine shaft of comic brilliance amidst a daytime milieu dominated by doom, gloom, and drama queening will remain inscrutable.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE GREEN HORNET: HIT AND RUN (ABC, 1948)---An insider about to expose the commission's involvement in a liquor smuggling racket he wants to leave is run down and killed by a potentially stolen taxicab---the moment he crosses the street from the Daily Sentinel offices, after exposing the racket to Britt Reid (Jack McCarthy) and Lenore Case (Lee Allman). Kato: Raymond Hayashi. Axford: Gil Shea. Writer: Fran Striker.

THE HALLS OF IVY: WELLMAN'S NOSE AND THE CHARTER DAY CEREMONIES (NBC, 1950)---Hall and Victoria (Ronald and Benita Colman) can't just shake off the mishap of board of governors chairman Wellman's (Herbert Butterfield) broken nose as a dinner guest: he's the key man for Ivy's Charter Day ceremonies the day after. Meanwhile, Victoria can't just shake off a magazine reporter assigned to the festivities who can't help reminiscing to her about what her film-days visit to the troops on Anzio meant to them. Merriweather: Willard Waterman. Maid: Gloria Gordon. Writer: Don Quinn.

THE LIFE OF RILEY: JUNIOR IS IN LOVE (NBC, 1950)---Riley (William Bendix) and Peg (Paula Winslow) learn the hard way that it wasn't Junior (Scott Beckett) in his bed early every night this week. The (misinterpreted) evidence: a bracelet he inadvertently left among the bric-a-brac he used to fake his sleeping form, but they also misinterpret the manner in which he acquired it---and why. Babs: Sharon Douglas. Writers: Alan Lipscott, Ruben Schipp.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1885---Jerome Kern (composer: Treasury Hour; The Pause That Refreshes; Command Performance), New York City.
1888---Harry Frankel (Singin' Sam, the Barbasol Man; singer: Reminiscin' with Singin' Sam), Hillsboro, Ohio.
1895---Violet Heming (actress: The Right to Happiness), Leeds, Yorkshire, UK; Harry Ruby (composer: Thirty Minutes in Hollywood; Great Moments to Music), New York City.
1905---Howard McNear (actor: Gunsmoke; Fibber McGee and Molly; Frontier Gentleman), Los Angeles.
1908---Hot Lips Page (Oran Thaddeus Page; trumpeter: Milt Herth Trio; The Floor Show; Eddie Condon's Jazz Concert), Dallas.
1912---Benay Venuta (as Benvenuta Rose Crooke; actress/singer: Benay Venuta's Program; Shell Chateau; The Abbott and Costello Show; Duffy's Tavern; Freddie Rich's Penthouse Party; Take a Note), San Francisco.
1916---Merrill Mueller (reporter: NBC Stands By; Morning News Roundup; The Navy Hour), New York City.
1918---Skitch Henderson (as Lyle Russell Cedric Henderson; conductor: The Pepsodent Show with Bob Hope; Philco Radio Time; Songs By Sinatra), Halstad, Minnesota.
1921---Donna Reed (as Donnabelle Mullenger; actress: Lux Radio Theater; Star and the Story; Silver Theater), Dennison, Iowa.
1924---Sabu (Dastagir; actor: Confidential Closeups), Mysore, India.