Tralfaz Sunday Theatre—March of Time Forum Edition

A jug-eared man steps to the microphone at the “end” of a radio soap opera and yelps “Time Marches On.”

The visage was likely familiar to some viewers watching this on camera, and the voice to many, many more. It’s Westbrook Van Voorhis, narrator of The March of Time, the famous short film series that dramatized events in the news.

One episode released to theatres in 1947 involved Van Voorhis’ own profession—radio. “Radio Broadcasting Today” was an 18½ minute short that examined criticism of the industry that people today say was in its “Golden Age.” At the time, some carped at the banality of soap operas and quiz/audience participation shows, and bristled about sponsorship/ad agency interference to the point of ridiculousness.

The film has some neat little bits for old radio fans. There’s a recreation of part of a Fred Allen show (for some reason, I think I’ve seen this in an NBC promotional film) and a look at a sound effects man revealing how Fibber McGee’s closet unloaded itself. There’s a silent snippet of Jack Benny and Rochester in someone’s office. Radio critic John Crosby reads what sounds like one of his columns from 1947 but I have not been able to find it.

As for made-up parts, there’s a supposed dialogue involving two radio writers, a disc jockey pushing a silly-named product, an idiotic woman on a quiz show, a trio of women crooning about a product to a sponsor, and an imaginary soap opera at the end.

Oh, one other thing. The March of Time’s music was composed by Jack Shaindlin, who bundled his cues into a production library. Shaindlin’s Langlois Filmusic was used in industrial films as well as the first cartoons made by the Hanna-Barbera studio in the late ‘50s. When this short gets to the part before the soap opera spoof (“Don’t talk to me about love, you . . . VAMPIRE!”), a cue with a trombone is heard. “I know that music!” I said when I first watched this short. It was in a number of Quick Draw McGraw cartoons, and at least two with Augie Doggie.



One of the stars of the short, critic Crosby, wrote about the content in his column of October 3, 1947. He reveals the audience participation show was real (it was broadcast from the WOR studios). Then he critiques the show itself in his column of October 17th.

Radio in Review
“Is Everybody Listening?”
By JOHN CROSBY
Having participated rather innocently in the "March of Time" film about radio called "Is Everybody Listening," it's somewhat embarrassing to comment on it. I'll try to be as Olympian as possible. Historically speaking—and that's as Olympian as anything ever gets around here—the "March of Time" documentary on radio is the continuation of a polemic directed against radio since early 1946 by press, pulpit, literature (“The Hucksters", "Aurora Dawn", "The Big Noise"), the movies ("The Hucksters" again), educational and civic groups and ordinary listeners.
Again speaking historically, it's interesting to note the film was among the mildest of all the polemics. It at least attempted to present both the good and the bad in radio and the major portion of the film was devoted to pure journalism, explaining rather than railing against radio. In the light of these facts, it's odd the film should have stirred up quite a rumpus in the Industry. As the picture was being made, the National Broadcasting Company got into a bit of a panic and issued a directive (or perhaps it was just a memorandum), warning its troops not to co-operate. "Why," said NBC in effect, "should we assist in an effort to beat our brains out?" The memorandum (or directive) came too late. By that time most of NBC's prize comedians had posed for their pictures.
Now that the film is open for inspection (it hasn't reached my home town of Oconomowoc, Wis., yet so I assume it’s still doing the rounds), it’s hard to see what the fuss is about. Much of the film is factual rather than editorial. It points out that comedians are the most popular entertainers on the air, that Hooper is high priest of the industry (though his findings are sometimes questioned), that radio has been guilty of lapses of taste, and that radio has done horrible things with its give-away shows and its soap operas but also has contributed much to the nation's culture and education with its symphonies and documentaries and news programs. Few of these points are open to argument.

The picture, it must be admitted, had one glaring weakness which was immediately seized upon by everyone in the industry. The portrayal of a sponsor who was more interested in his singing commercial than in the program he sponsored was so badly overdone it lacked any semblance of reality. On the other hand, the portrayal of a giveaway show which sounded like an even more badly done lampoon was a filming of an actual program (Tiny Ruffner and his "Better Half"). In radio, it's hard to tell where reality stops and lampoon begins and "March of Time," I think, may be pardoned for not detecting this hairline distinction.
The portrayal of large advertisers as a combination of tyrant and idiot has gone too far, I confess, but radio is occasionally as guilty as anyone else in this matter. The other night on "Curtain Time" (that's one of your shows, N.B.C.), a young slip of a girl tackled an old ogre of an advertiser and within a matter of minutes had him cooing like a dove. This was accomplished by tying a grey sock filled with goose grease around his neck to cure a sore throat. In gratitude for this messy remedy, which I’m sure is not endorsed by the American Medical Association, he increased his account by another ten million or so. N.B.C., in this case, was guilty not only of overstatement but also of biting the hand that feeds it.
The current national magazines are running a rather alarming ad which will bring the singing commercial into the homes of the 14 people in the United States who don't own a radio. The ad consists entirely of a sheet of music entitled "Serenade to the Man Who Drives a Car." Music by Stephen Foster," it says on the heading. "Lyrics by Commercial Solvents.”
With those last four words the industrial age reaches its apex. Lyrics—not by Gershwin, not by Hammerstein, not by Berlin—by Commercial Solvents, mind you, The corporate age now has become a fitting successor to the Renaissance when Pope and de Medici alike were not only patrons but practitioners of the arts. It won’t be long, I feel, before industry will be able to dispense with the services of Stephen Foster and the rest of that tatterdemalion crew. "Music by Proctor," "Lyrics by Gamble." That's the next step.
The review of the "Hit Parade" will be turned over to Dun and Bradstreet. "Radio in Review" feels incapable of passing judgment on anything as large and impressive as, say, General Motors.

Radio in Review
The Better Half
By JOHN CROSBY
"The Better Half" (Mutual 9:30 p.m. E.S.T. Saturdays) has one curious distinction: it was selected for immortality in the "March Of Time" film short on radio as one of the horrible examples of contemporary broadcasting. All things considered, it was an excellent choice. As a matter of fact, I suggest they bury this part of the film in the Time Capsule in Flushing as a sort of permanent record of at least one phase of our life and times. The program contains most of the ingredients of all the audience participation shows—quizzes, wild practical jokes, gags, and, of course, uproarious laughter. No record of our time would be complete without something of this kind.
"The Better Half is a sort of quiz contest between husbands and wives in which the loser is forced to pay a penalty. At least I think that's the idea. There is such bedlam on the show it's hard to tell what is going on. In the "March of Time," the losing husband was placed in a box with holes in it. Every time he stuck his neck out, his wife beat him over the ears with what I gathered was an upholstered stick of some kind. A great many other punishments are inflicted on the program, all of them showing a certain weird and horrible ingenuity. The other day a husband was blindfolded and then asked to kiss a pretty girl who turned out to be his wife. A dirty trick.
Tiny Ruffner, the master of ceremonies, keeps the uproar moving briskly with a certain rough humor, most of it on the topic of matrimony. "How long," he will ask, "have you two been living as cheaply as one?"
"Twenty-one years."
"It's ridiculous, isn't it? I mean trying to live as cheaply as one."

Mr. Ruffner, a man of infinite joviality, usually refers to the wife as "the old ball and chain," asks rather intimate questions about the couple's home life and laughs uproariously at the answers which consist largely of those deprecatory cliches which married couples learn early in married life. Since Ruffner must have heard them all several dozen times, the laughter is a triumph of sheer will power.
As a quiz master, Mr. Ruffner is almost too kind-hearted; wherever possible he arranges that all the contestants win. The band for example, played "Sunrise Serenade" and a bewildered wife who was supposed to guess the title, suggested "Swanee."
"That's close," said Mr. Ruffner, on what grounds I wouldn't know. "What rises in the morning?"
"Sun In The Morning," said the lady wildly.
He gave her a dollar anyway.
The punishment—the husband beaten over the head, the man kissing his own wife—is, of course, the nub of the show. It appears to satisfy the audience, but it doesn't satisfy me. What, I ask myself, are the consequences of these marital jousts after the show? What exactly does a husband who has been lammed over the head with a stick do to his wife when he gets her home? Get a stout board from the woodshed and retaliate, do you suppose?
What thoughts pass through the mind of a woman on the way home in the cab as she coldly gazes on the husband who had agreed blindfolded to kiss some pretty lass? Even though they dealt him the wrong queen at the last moment, his moral guilt is established; the suspicions which lie so close to the surface of every wifely mind could easily bubble to the top to poison a relationship which is at best delicate.
On second thought, in place of burying a motion picture of the show, they had better bury the whole show.