Ah, but radio seems to have a kind of magic that draws people back—so long as someone wants to hire them. And that was the case of Tobe Reed.
When you think of the announcers on the Burns and Allen Show, you probably think of Harry Von Zell (in the television years) or Bill Goodwin (during the latter radio days). You likely don’t think of poor Tobe. When Goodwin graduated from the announcer to announcer-as-a-character, Tobe was brought in to announce and help out on the end commercial. Unfortunately, if Tobe had any comedic abilities, he never displayed them with George and Gracie that I recall (nor did he interact with them). He was a little formal sounding. But he was in demand. In fact, his “Scrap Book” show aired on ABC opposite Burns and Allen.
Reed won a full-time announcing job at KFRC in San Francisco in July 1936 when he replaced someone on the staff named Ralph Edwards. He left for Hollywood in June 1940 and was soon replacing Henry M. Neely on the Fitch Bandwagon. (Reed recalled he was replaced on KFRC by future game show mogul Mark Goodson. Trade papers at the time say it was KYA’s Bob Forward).
I was all set to post an article from after he got out of radio but, on a whim, I thought I’d check that wonderful old magazine Radio Life, which seems to have profiled everyone in radio in Los Angeles in the ‘40s. Sure enough, here’s an article from the edition of June 24, 1944.
Tobe Reed Refuses to Take Life Seriously, Relates Tales of His Radio and Reporting Success With Tongue-in-Cheek Chuckles1949 rolled around and Fred Allen and Edgar Bergen announced they were quitting broadcasting. Tobe got out, too. But not for long (I suppose the same could be said for Allen and Bergen). Here’s a National Enterprise Association column that appeared in newspapers on May 3, 1958. Poor Tobe must have had his first name misspelled more often than anyone on radio or TV. Even newspaper ads for Top Dollar placed by the network got it wrong.
I NEVER TAKE myself seriously," tall, sandy-haired, bushy-browed Tobe Reed chuckled. "I often look like I'm frowning because I'm near-sighted, and I make enemies because I can't remember names. A lot of people have me libelled as a guy with 'the wrong attitude'."
Actually, Tobe Reed, genial mike-man of suet) popular airshows as "Don't You Believe It", "Three of a Kind", "Duffy's Tavern" and "The Star and the Story", is a chap with a terrific sense of humor. Take, for instance, his answers to a CBS biographical questionnaire:
Question: Where would you prefer to live?
Tobe: Indoors.
Question: Any preference in clothes?
Tobe: Men's.
Question: Any serious illnesses?
Tobe: Normal mentality.
Question: What are your convictions regarding show business?
Tobe: I'm convinced that radio is better than working.
Trying to tie Tobe Reed down to a sober discussion of his' life and career IS fairly an impossibility. He's too full of fun. With typical humor, he tells how he bluffed his way into radio.
He had read once that the sound of a fire was produced over the air by crackling cellophane in to the microphone. So when he filed an application for radio work, and was asked to give his previous experience, he stated smugly that he was the man who thought of crackling cellophane into a mike to make the sound of a fire!
Newspaper Bluff
Before radio, Tobe continued with a laugh, he blithely bluffed his way into a newspaper reporter's job. He didn't know anything at all about being a reporter; he couldn't even type. So, unbeknown to the editor who hired him, he persuaded someone else to give him stories which he simply (so he says!) "colored" up a bit. The person who supplied him with the ready-made skeleton stories was none other than a reporter on a rival paper!
Reed maintains that his childhood ambition was "to become a man", but later, in college, his earnest ambition was to become a lawyer. He majored in philosophy, with the thought of taking an extensive sixteen-year law course that probably would have qualified him for no less than the Supreme Court. He entered college when still less than sixteen years old, and at seventeen, he was studiously assisting a learned psychiatrist.
But "things happened", as Reed himself puts it, and when he left the University of Washington, he became a reporter on the San Francisco Chronicle. During his four-year stint with the "press ", he had many memorable experiences.
At this point in his story he became serious for a moment to tell us of the times he interviewed prisoners at San Quentin. One afternoon he had occasion to spend several hours in "Death Row", the block of cells in which are interned the men who are condemned to die.
"The silence," related Reed with a grimace, "was ominous and overpowering. But as I stood there, I was startled to hear one of those stone-faced condemned men suddenly start to whistle the most cheerful tune in the world! It was the only sound he made before going to his death."
Some day, Tobe declared, he would like to do a series of broadcasts based on the simplicity and drama of such sounds as that convict's whistling. His chief desire concerning radio is to spin yarns, and he has an extensive supply of story ideas on which to base his narrations.
His First Broadcast
Resuming the story of his radio career, Reed laughed heartily and related this tale of his first big broadcast. Having made an inconspicuous debut on the airlanes as an announcer giving station identification, he was elated to be suddenly sent out to do a remote broadcast. Chuckling, Tobe commented at this point that, being new to radio, he thought 'doing a remote' meant some magnificent deed. "I contemplated getting a medal for it," he smilingly maintained. Actually, the "remote" turned out to be a pick-up broadcast from a big night -spot, with Reed emceeing a coast network show. It was his big moment! But two minutes before air-time, he accidentally locked himself in the men's room! A key couldn't be located in time, so the microphone was inserted through the transom' and, according to the fun-loving Mr. Reed, he started his radio career there, amid such unglorified surroundings!
Tobe Reed declared with a resigned smile that, after a three-year stint on the Fitch Bandwagon (during which time he travelled by plane some 200,000 miles!), radio listeners still associate him almost solely with that show.
In spite of his years as an outstandingly successful "driver" of the Bandwagon, however, Tobe confesses that he prefers classical music.
It was the strain of so much travelling that forced him eventually to forsake his emceeing spot on the Bandwagon show, and shortly after his departure, Uncle Sam called him to the colors. "I was in the Army just five days," he informed us, "then was given a medical discharge because of a bad heart."
Tired of living out of his suitcase, Reed came to California to settle down. He hopes some day to buy a house "on the highest hill".
"Right now," he frowned, "we live in a house that's just on a little knoll."
Married a Reed
Tobe is married to Bette Reed, a Beverly Hills girl whom he met during his Bandwagon travels. Because their names were the same, they found themselves continually being introduced to everyone as Mr. and Mrs. Reed. "We were practically married before we met, it seems," smiled Tobe. Last January they made the Mr. and Mrs. an actuality.
"Butch" is the ruler of the Reed domicile. He's a little five-year-old wire-haired terrier that Tobe maintains should really be named "Me too!" because that's the expression he always has on his face.
"Bette and I," smiled Tobe, "have decided that 'Butch' was meant to be a human, but just happened to turn out as a dog."
After so much night-life in his work, Reed prefers staying at home most of the time, but on their nights out, the young Reeds find fun at good stage shows and nice night spots. Tobe enjoys the "atmosphere "; he doesn't like to dance, and will seldom do so with anyone but his wife.
The ex-Bandwagon driver's favorite band now, we would say, is the plain gold wedding band he wears, with an inscription from his wife engraved on the inside. She wears a duplicate, and neither has removed the ring from his or her finger since the day they were married.
Tobe mentioned then that, although they have just been wed five months, it is coming close to the second anniversary of their first meeting. At the comment that he was starting married life off the right way, remembering such an important anniversary, Reed grinned and quipped, "Well, when you get hit by a truck, you're bound to remember it!"
Top $ Tops to Toby ReedReed was at the centre of a bizarre situation when a Top Dollar contestant suddenly refused to carry on. Alice Young had been told prior to the show that, for reasons not explained in Variety, the rules dictated she could not use the letter ‘J’ in trying to come up with the winning word. Reed told her as much on TV. She protested and finally, on camera, announced she would not play the game any more and walked out on the show.
By DICK KLEINER
NEW YORK — (NEA) — Stories about the demise of CBS-TV's "Top Dollar," which only started recently, are news to MC Toby Reed. In fact, he's inclined to doubt them, or, at least, call them excessively premature.
Reed says the sponsor and the network and the public all seem happy, so far, and he figures it'll catch on more and more as the weeks go by.
One of the most interesting features of the show is Reed, himself. He's an old-timer in radio—for five years, he MCd the old Fitch Band Wagon, when it was a Sunday night mainstay between Edgar Bergen and Jack Benny—but this is his very first TV.
He quit radio in 1949, investing in a successful West Coast plastics company. In 1951, he and his family moved East, "to show the kids some other kind of weather." They've all turned into rabid ski enthusiasts, and, for seven years he worked at his plastic business with very few thoughts about show business. But, inside, he was getting anxious to get back. So when his old friend, Hal March, brought up his name as a possible MC for "Top Dollar," he was happy to accept. And he loves being back.
"I'm in show business now," he says, "up to my hips. I guess I'm really a ham all the way."
Even though the public never knew his face, he finds that most people over 25 will remember his name and his voice. He's had a lot of "Where've you been?" letters, and he's loving every minute of his new, second career. He still has his plastics investment, but is now more or less the silent partner.
Two new pilot films of two potential TV shows are in the can—Marie Wilson's "Ernestine" and Hermione Gingold's "Theodora."
They keep turning out pilot films left and right, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into these test runs—most of which never get on the air. Marie says, "What TV needs is an automatic pilot film."
That was the least of Reed’s problems. Kleiner’s report of rumours of the demise Top Dollar were true, thanks to the Quiz Show Scandal which brought down money programmes one after the next, whether they were rigged or not. Dotto was suddenly pulled from the CBS schedule in 1958—a stand-by contestant had complained to the FCC about answers given to someone prior to broadcast—and a daytime version of Top Dollar was quickly shoved in its place on August 18th. For whatever reason, Reed didn’t host the daytimer; Warren Hull did. Reed’s nighttime version of Top Dollar then was bounced from the air on August 30th.
Reed seemingly vanished from television at this time and he eventually was hired by the San Francisco Chronicle to write a column which, presumably, spelled his name correctly.
Reed died March 3, 1988—the same day as the wife of another former KFRC’er named Don Wilson—having retired to Bermuda Dunes, not too far from the Wilsons’ home in Palm Springs.
As a child growing up around Tobe he was magical, that timber voice and quick wit. He and Bette were, to me, inseparable and both amazing when telling stories. Tobe's story of his nightly travel from Hollywood to Palm Springs, and the cop who chased him, was spellbinding to listen to. Truly miss
ReplyDeleteThanks, Unknown, for the story. I always like hearing about the announcers of the old days.
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