Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers 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.
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers 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 ma...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers 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...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers 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.
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers 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...
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 Fitzg...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers 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 p...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers 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 ...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers John Herbert “Jackie” Gleason was born on February 26th, 1916, on Chauncey Street in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The younger of two children, his brother Clement died from meningitis at fourteen in 1919. Six years later his father left the family. Gleason’s mother Mae got a job as a subway attendant for the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation. Jackie spent his youth hustling pool and performing in class plays. He quit high sc...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Broadcast over WMCA in New York, New World A’ Coming was based on the work of journalist Roi Ottley. Ottley was a journalist for The Amsterdam News from 1931 to 1937 before joining The New York City Writers' Project as an editor. In 1943 Ottley published New World A-Coming: Inside Black America, which described life for African Americans in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s. The book won the Life in America prize and a Peabody Award. ...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers The man you just heard is Norman Corwin. The piece of his, which Orson Welles is narrating, that you’ve heard thus far throughout this episode of Breaking Walls, is “New York: A Tapestry For Radio.” The first broadcast of this piece originally aired on May 16th, 1944 as part of a City Trilogy within CBS’ Columbia Presents Corwin. That version had Martin Gabel as narrator. One year later it was rebroadcast with Welles taking over f...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers It’s February 1944 and we’re in the U.S. Fleet Post Office at 80 Varick Street. 80 Varick Street is in the Hudson Square area of Manhattan just north of Canal Street and southeast of the Holland Tunnel to New Jersey. The street itself is named for Richard Varick, an early New York lawmaker, landowner, and mayor from 1789 to 1801. The Fleet Post Office was established on July 1st, 1943. Previously, mail addressed to naval personnel...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Our first stop is January, 1944. We’re at Central Park. By 1944 Central Park, nearly one-hundred years old, was in the midst of renewal. Parks Commissioner Robert Moses had spent the past decade developing playgrounds, ballfields, handball courts, and other working class elements. In 1943 the restoration of the Harlem Meer was completed. "Please Keep off the Grass" signs, which had once dotted the meadows, were a thing of the past...
https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers I’ve mentioned a few times before within Breaking Walls episodes that I try to be as unbiased as possible. I want Breaking Walls to be a true documentary, so I leave the op-eds for everyone else. But this is my tenth anniversary as a podcaster so I’ll share. I spent the first ten years of my life living in a house where the people there were born between 1918 and 1989. It was in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. There was a park across the street. Around 1900 that pa...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers That brings our look at the early years of Suspense to a close. Suspense would remain a hollywood production until the waning days of radio drama in 1959 when Bill Robson was directing it and this happened. Ordinarily here’s where you’d get a sneak peek at next month’s episode of Breaking Walls. Next month’s episode, however, is significant. Sometimes you’ve got to go back to the beginning in order to know where you’ve been. Next ...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Back on December 2nd, 1943 when Suspense first became sponsored by Roma Wines, the script chosen for the first Roma episode was “The Black Curtain” starring Cary Grant. Of the performance Grant said, “If I ever do any more radio work, I want to do it on Suspense, where I get a good chance to act.” The just-heard Lurene Tuttle felt the same way about acting in radio. On November 30th, 1944 Grant was back on Suspense for a repeat pe...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers By November of 1944 Suspense was pulling a rating of 10.4. There were now more than eight million people tuning in. Roma wines was satisfied as Suspense was providing stiff competition to The Frank Morgan Show running opposite on NBC Thursday nights at 8PM eastern time. On November 9th Lena Horne guest-starred in a Robert L. Richards script called “You Were Wonderful” about the murder of a nightclub singer in South America. Horne ...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Speaking of actors playing roles on Suspense that went against their usual type, on September 28th, 1944 Gene Kelly guest-starred in an episode called “The Man Who Couldn't Lose.” Kelly, already known as a singer and actor, became famous in For Me and My Gal, Du Barry Was a Lady, and Thousands Cheer. However, it was his dramatic debut in Pilot No. 5 where Kelly played an antagonist that portended this appearance on Suspense. In “T...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Bill Spier recovered from his second heart attack in the fall, just in time for cooling weather, Friday night football games, and autumn dances. While Suspense aired all-year-round, it was perfect for brisk evenings. With Spier’s musical aptitude, a swelling orchestra had become a Suspense staple. Lud Gluskin and Lucien Morawek worked together to produce and conduct haunting, functional scores. Morawek told Radio Life that Spier w...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers The man you just heard is famed actor Vincent Price. While Price was a film star, he had a unique contract which allowed him to act in as much radio as he wanted. By early June 1944 Price was thirty-three years old and had starred on Broadway and appeared in more than ten films. On Thursday June 1st and then again on Monday June 5th for the west coast, Price appeared with Ida Lupino in an episode of Suspense called “Fugue in C Min...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers In May of 1944 Orson Welles appeared on Suspense three times. The first of which was on May 4th in “The Dark Tower,” a play originally written by George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woollcott. Adapted for Suspense by Peter Barry, Woollcott had died in January of 1943. In many ways, the play is a satire of Welles’ friend, John Barrymore, and it's ripe with innuendo and other inside humor. Featured in this episode as Jessica was Jeanett...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers The man you just heard is Joseph Cotten. In 1944 he was guest-starring on various shows while also hosting Ceiling Unlimited. On March 23rd, 1944 Cotten starred in “Sneak Preview” written by Robert L. Richards. It’s a story about a film director who becomes a temporary detective as he tracks down a double agent. Richards is perhaps most famous amongst Suspense fans for his 1946 script, “The House in Cypress Canyon.” Richards, Joe ...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers The man you just heard is Hans Conried. In late 1943 he was thirty-six years old and all over radio. When Suspense moved to Hollywood, Conried quickly became part of William Spier’s trusted circle of character actors, often playing more than one part. Conried honed his craft in the 1930s. To Bill Spier’s credit, he did his best to allow them the time to have parts on other shows. Spier’s rehearsals were known for their loose atmos...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Bill Spier’s Hollywood Suspense episodes got good reviews. He returned to New York for seven more shows while he got the green light to move Suspense to the West Coast. The first permanent Hollywood show was “Fear Paints a Picture” on April 13th, 1943. John Dickson Carr continued as writer until June, but Spier began to look for other voices, like Lucille Fletcher, who followed up “The Hitch-hiker” with “The Diary of Sophronia Win...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Willam Spier was born on 10/16/1906 in New York City. He began his career as an editor at Musical America Magazine, eventually becoming its chief critic. His radio career began in 1929, when he produced and directed The Atwater-Kent Hour, a Met Opera presentation. He soon became a valuable member of BBD&O’s growing staff of radio writers & directors. In 1931 Spier went to Hollywood to direct one of the first big budget rad...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers In July of 1940 CBS’ Lux Radio Theatre was scheduled for its summer hiatus. Lux aired sixty-minute condensations of films Mondays at 9PM. Pulling a rating of 23.7, it was CBS’s highest-rated show and Monday’s most-listened to program. Head of CBS William Paley and Program Director Bill Lewis wanted to use the vacated time slot to attract both audience participation and potential sponsors. At that time, CBS’s story editor was Willi...
Thank you to those who recently supported the show at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers. If you support Breaking Walls for as little as $1 a month, you'll get each episode's show early and in one long documentary. Each month's episode takes me somewhere between 30-60 hours of work time to complete and supporting through the Patreon does a LOT to help me keep doing the show and paying for hosting and other costs. I’ve been doing the show since February of 2018 and I’m honestly not sure how ...
Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers By 1944 Norman Corwin had free rein over his productions. In six years he’d gone from a network rookie to the most-lauded creator on the air. He was now the poet-laureate of radio, a nickname which would stick with him the rest of his life. That March, The Columbia Workshop was rechristened as Columbia Presents Corwin for a twenty-two week run. At 10PM eastern time on Independence Day 1944 Corwin broadcast "Home For the Fourth." I...
Words at War was an anthology of war stories “told by the men and women who have seen them happen.” It was produced in cooperation with the Council on Books in Wartime, promising “stories of the battlefronts, of behind-the scenes diplomacy, of underground warfare, of action on the seas, and of the home front.” Each show was to be “a living record of this war and the things for which we fight.” Debuting on June 24th, 1943 from New York, during its first year on the air despite being given a late-...
The man you just heard was Raymond Edward Johnson. He is best-remembered for being the longtime host on Inner Sanctum Mysteries on CBS. After returning from the War, Johnson left the show to pursue more diversified acting interests. However by then, NBC had launched their own mystery program which Johnson often found himself appearing in. It was called The Molle Mystery Theater. Launched on September 7th, 1943 and sponsored by Molle Brushless Shaving Cream, Mystery Theater was hosted by Bernard ...
