Radio vs Television, a Christmas Season Look

How much did entertainment change in living room after the television set was planted in it?

You can judge for yourself from these two columns by critic John Crosby ten years apart.

In 1949, the four TV networks were now broadcasting seven days a week (though not in all time periods) and despite a license freeze imposed by the FCC from 1948 to 1952, new stations were slowly going on the air.

But radio was still king. Witness the huge deal CBS made to get Jack Benny and other radio stars to leave NBC, stars people had been listening to for years. Radio had become a comfortable rut; Christmas shows featured repeats of well-loved old routines.

By 1959, network radio was considered something of the past. Advertising dollars had moved into television (now with three networks). Stations took back their time to put disc jockey and chatty housewife shows on the air. Even Benny was gone—gone permanently to television where his career continued on its merry way.

Here’s John Crosby on December 23, 1949 talking about the same old stuff on the radio, with the second half of his column an odd fantasy (Crosby was born in 1912; there’s no way his pre-teen years included network radio, let alone Frank Sinatra). Crosby had a fascination with Ed Herlihy (to the left). This may be the only radio column to include the word “ineradicable.”

The second column is from Christmas Day ten years later. By then, it seems Crosby was bored covering home entertainment; his paper even had another television columnist. Like the piece below, his columns started branching out into Broadway and other areas of entertainment.

Crosby was extremely critical of the banality and commercialism of television. His 1959 article is unusually buoyant for him; he appears hopeful the Payola and Quiz Show scandals would wash away what he sees as foul in the medium. Perhaps it was the holiday season talking. Within days, he was as cynical as ever about the ratings system and the viewing habits of the average American.

OLD-FASHIONED BOYHOOD
Now comes the time when the existence of Santa Claus is reaffirmed, when comedians dust off their Christmas routines, their Yule jokes, when “White Christmas” tinkles like silver bells from CBS to ABC, when Lionel Barrymore booms like an organ over Mutual and visions of sugar plums assault all the vice-presidents of NBC.
Christmas broadcasts, normally as traditional as plum pudding, offer a few new notes this year. Louella Parsons, for example will spend the day at the Allan Ladds. At 9:15 p.m. E.S.T. on ABC, she will tell her spent replete audience how a prominent Hollywood family passes the day. (Little swimming pools for the kiddies, I expect. A Cadillac carved out of solid emeralds for Mummy. Just like any normal American family.)
Overcome by seasonal spirit, WNBC in New York will broadcast an hour-long "Santa Claus Round-up" (3 p. m.) in which Ed Herlihy will interview Mrs. Claus, Ben Grauer will get a few pertinent comments out of Mr. Claus, and Bill Stern will describe the final loading of Santa's sled. Then H. V. Kaltenborn will analyze the implications behind Santa's yearly pilgrimage.
Out in far Hollywood, where Christmas falls every day, NBC (noon), will broadcast the Christmas morning activities at the homes of Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Phil Harris and Alice Faye, Gordon McCrae and Art Linkletter, each featuring the happy cries of the gilded children of these stars.
It'll be quite a holiday for the kiddies, all in all. For the tenth straight year, Amos of Amos ‘n’ Andy will explain the Lord's prayer to his daughter, Arbadella; a hidden microphone will broadcast the children's Christmas eve remarks to Santa from Macy's; Santa will visit the Quiz Kids on their broadcast (and I do hope they don't make a monkey of the old gentlemen); the three daughters of Red Foley—Shirley, 14. Julie, 11, and Jennie, nine—will help pop sing Christmas carols on the Grand Ole Opry program.
It all takes me back to my own boyhood Christmases which were as normal and American as any. boyhood could be. Up at daybreak, shivering a little in the frosty dawn, the microphone clutched securely in one childish fist, the script in the other.
“Wake up! Wake up!” I would shrill to my brothers and sister, directly following the NBC chimes. “This is Christmas day!”
This was the cue for the NBC symphony, huddled over in the far lefthand corner of the nursery to launch into “Adeste Fideles,” which in turn was the cue for my brothers and sister to roll over and yawn (always a different bit for the sound effects man) and the announcer to go into his bit.
“Good morning and Merry Christmas, one and all. This is Ed Herlihy, bringing you the normal American Christmas of a normal American family. And here are the Crosby kids . . .”

It is one of the most poignant and ineradicable memories of my memories of my childhood that we always got Ed Herlihy. We wanted Ben Grauer like every normal American boy. I used to write Santa every year for Grauer but we never got him. The O'Reillys, rich kids from the right side of the tracks, they got Grauer. They got the Philharmonic and a much better time break on CBS, and all the best stars like Bing Crosby. (We always got Sinatra.)
Gads, how it all comes back to me now! Opening the presents under the tree. Actually, we didn't. A sound effects man had a record which sounded much more like the tearing of Christmas wrappings than the real thing. Our happy cries of delight at the presents, being careful not to get too close to the microphone. I remember the gaily trimmed cables running across the living room, the electricians festooned, as was the custom, with mistletoe, Herlihy losing his place in the script and fluffing the words “Santa Claus.”
Today, it all sounds like a dreadfully old-fashioned Christmas. Today we have television. The modern child, I expect, will have to wake up with full makeup to the sight of cameras instead of the traditional Yule microphones. Probably have to rehearse for three solid weeks. We never rehearsed more than a couple of days.

A SOLID SOBER CHRISTMAS
I think the Christmas shows this year have been absolutely wonderful. This has been the year of the moral awakening; the year Hulan Jack and Bernard Goldfine and Charles Van Doren were called to account; the year of great soul-searching, not simply on the part of television but of the country at large. And all this moral rebirth seemed to come to a head in Bach's shattering "Magnificat" played by the Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Bernstein on "Ford's Startime" the other night.
It was a lovely show to look at as well as listen to and the cast, which included Marian Anderson, the St. Paul's Cathedral Boys' Choir of London, the Schola Cantorum under Hugh Ross, and Joseph N. Welch was terribly impressive. "Startime" is a fine program and this Christmas program marks a high point in its, I trust, long career.

On a much less exalted level, Dinah Shore's Christmas show was a lot of fun and very pretty and moving. I particularly enjoyed a duet between Dinah and Charles Laughton, acting as two pukka pukka colonials, singing "We Won't Be In England for Christmas," a witty satiric song. She’s a marvellously gifted and versatile performer, Miss Dinah, and just seems able to tackle anything. A moment after the English number, she was back—ah, the wonders of tape—in a white ball gown singing "White Christmas." Later Donna Attwood, the skating champion, was very seasonal and captivating on ice—that is, if skating captivates you as it does me.
There is always a tendency to get a little sticky at Christmas time and at least one of the special shows, "Once Upon a Christmas Time," didn't manage to fight down the urge. This one, based on a story by Paul Gallico, had orphans and kindly bumbly old Charles Ruggles and even dear old Kate Smith and it got so tinselly you could hardly stand it. “It’s going to be the ding dangdest parade you ever did see,” shouted old Charley at one point, and I shouted “God bless us every one” at him in my excitement.
Otherwise, though, it's been a quiet, sober Christmas season. Even the Christmas cards seem more subdued and more religious in tone, as if the lessons of the last year had left their mark. At any rate they've scared the daylights out of everyone. Incidentally, on WQXR, the carols are in stereo and they sound more solid and Christmasy than ever.
Is it a trend of the times or has Christmas affected my judgment? Well, one symptom of the times, one tiny pulse beat that may yet develop into something, is off Broadway. Down in Greenwich Village, a big hit is "Little Mary Sunshine" which is a sort of spoof of all the Sigmund Romberg and Rudolf Friml operettas, especially "Rose Marie." It’s got the Northwest mounties and “The Indian Love Call.” I don’t happen to think it’s quite as great and charming as everyone else does but it is charming and sweet and fresh and gay.
Its chief charm—now pay attention here—is its innocence. There is a great thirst in the populace, I feel strongly, for innocence of this nature. Heaven knows there is no great need to satirize Rudolf Friml at this period in our history, so the appeal must lie elsewhere. Greenwich Village is full of these charming period pieces. Not far away "Leave It to Jane," an ancient Jerome Kern musical, is running. "The Boy Friend," another period piece, closed not long ago after a long run. "Once Upon a Mattress," which went on Broadway, is not a period piece but it's a sort of updated fairly tale with the same sort of whimsey and charm.
It may be the sentimentality of the season has warped my reason but I seem to direct a revulsion on the part of the public against plays of southern degradation, of wild sexual perversion. 1959 may be remembered as the year they booed Tennessee Williams as he left a movie house playing his "The Fugitive Kind." (He booed right back.)
Of course, even while finding all this sweetness and light fraught with significance, it's my duty to report another small trend in show business. Cannibalism—that's the trend. At least that was the theme of Alfred Hitchcock's not-at-all-seasonal program the other day with Robert Morley and, just this week, "Suddenly Last Summer," which features cannibalism and Elizabeth Taylor, opened in the movie houses.
And with that Yuletide thought, I'd like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas.