$80 For Immortality

You do not recall him as the host of Night Quiz Court.

You do remember him, I would hope, from one of the most famous of all radio adventure show introductions which migrated to TV. It began with the William Tell Overture.

Yes, you know the words.

The Lone Ranger had several announcers over the years on network radio, but the most famous one is Fred Foy, who died in 2010.

The Ranger emanated from the studios of WXYZ in Detroit, which was also the home in 1947 of Night Court Quiz, a traffic safety programme where announcer Foy took contestants on a simulated drive through Detroit. Winners got cash.

Detroit was Foy’s home town. He attended Eastern High School and Wayne University before being stationed in Cairo during World War Two. He could be heard on Armed Forces Radio, and had begun his radio career as an actor on WMBC.

Foy chatted about his career to date to the Detroit Press Press of March 9, 1958.

Who Said Announcing’s Easy?
Foy's Spent Three Hours On One Line
BY MYRA MacPHERSON Free Press Writer
“ISN'T THAT the life?” you think, settling into your easiest chair. You're watching the smiling TV pitch man who throws in a word or two about his sponsor's beer just before the Tiger baseball game.
"What an easy way to make a buck," you think, reaching for a potato chip and waiting for the "play ball!" call.
The smiling man is Fred Foy and he can tell you a thing or two about his so-called simple job.
He knows one week he might earn $600—the next $80.
Although his free-lance announcing work is as precarious as betting the horses, he says he wouldn't trade it for any 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. desk job.
"When I'm working, I get paid well," he says, glancing around his spacious home.
"And I'm very busy. During baseball season last year I'd have day games, night games, double-headers, commercials for late evening shows and two or three recording jobs all in one week."
• • •
SITTING close by, Mrs. Foy adds:
“The children (Wendy, 3 and Nancy 7,) called their father ‘that man in a car’ they saw him so seldom.
“And I learned to knit beautifully,” she says, her needles clacking as she talks.
“Busy or not, I'm going to miss doing the games this season,” says Fred.
After two years, the sponsor has different plans for plugging their product. There will be no need for a commercial announcer.
• • •
“ITS SURPRISING how many people think you work only for the two or three minutes they see or hear you on radio and TV,” says Fred.
He used to get the Lone Ranger radio show off to a bullet-fast start with his "out of the West come the THUNDERING hoofbeats of the great horse Silver!"
For this, he would spend a good four hours.
“At 3 p.m. there would be the general read through of the script. Then a half hour spent timing the show. Then the production rehearsal to make sure the sound effects fitted in with the talking.”
A couple more hours work. A dress rehearsal. And the show would go on the air.
Fred's experiences with the Ranger radio show came in handy.
He was picked to yell "Hi Ho Silver" on the sound track as the Lone Ranger fades into the west in a newly filmed movie. For this he got $80.00.
• • •
FRED TRIES to explain the rather complicated system for paying announcers.
"You can't pin point the exact amount you make for each job. The set union scale is about $40 per half-hour local TV show. But your sponsor may pay you more if he thinks you're worth it.
“Sometimes the fee includes rehearsals, other times it's a flat rate,” he adds.
And sometimes there's a lot of preparation time at his own expense.
For one of his three minute car commercials, there's about an hour and a half rehearsal time. Fred walks to and from the car, opening doors and facing the camera while the lights are properly set.
• • •
FOR LOCAL one-minute spot commercials, the flat rate is usually $15.00 plus $7.50 for each hours work. A recent one minute radio truck commercial took all day because the voice had to be worked in with background music. In the contract for this commercial, Fred gets paid $45.00 every time it's re-used.
Although the fear of many announcers is catching a cold or losing their voices before a big job, Fred's baritone gives him little trouble. “I have to be careful about smoking too much, though.”
• • •
AND HIS wife adds:
“Many times he leave a party early so he can be well-rested for TV.” Thirty-seven-year-old Fred with 20 years announcing experience behind him says he can't imagine doing any other work.
He knows there'll come a time when his voice and fair-haired good looks may fade, but the Foys are prepared for that.
“In this business you can't live on every cent you make. We've been budgeting and saving all along.”

The Lone Ranger was in reruns, but Foy was still working in 1972. Here’s an interview from September 3.

The Last Radio Voice of the Lone Ranger
By PHILIP NOBLE
Gannett News Service Special
"A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty 'Hi-o, Silver!,' the Long Ranger."
The last man to say those stirring words on radio was Fred Foy, the last voice of the Lone Ranger and presently the Announcer of the Dick Cavett Show. Foy stumbled into immortality after World War II when he joined an especially creative radio station in Detroit which organized the Lone Ranger, Sergeant Preston and The Green Hornet — three of the biggest shows in radioland.
He did all of the announcing for The Lone Ranger and occasionally played a mean varmint. In the mid-fifties, the Masked Man rode off to television and this forced Foy to different fame and fortune.
Foy and I rendezvoused in a subterranean room at the Cavett Studios. After kicking out a goldbricking cop, we talked about the golden old days and the plight of the modern announcer.
Q: Your job is a pretty soft touch, Isn't it?
A: I guess a lot of people think it is. It always seems like such a simple thing to the layman. I guess they think that all you do is walk into the studio and just pick up the script and read the words. But it entails a lot more than that. You do have to rehearse.
Q: There aren't many jobs, though, that are worth the kind of money you make for the kind of effort you put out. A: For the effort involved, perhaps there are jobs that take a good deal more work to earn the dollar, but in this business you can't be assured of long-term employment. You have to look forward to today, and not worry too much about tomorrow. You can have a marvelous show and suddenly, like with Dick Cavett right now, if the ratings aren't good you are looking for a new job in a month. I've become so accustomed to this over the years that I just don't think about it any more.
Q: When you were doing the Lone Ranger show, did you realize you were taking part in an important piece of Americana?
A: No, it's surprising, but I really didn't. These shows originated from WXYZ in Detroit, which was a local radio station. Even though I would close every night with the ABC identification—"Fred Foy speaking. This is the ABC Radio Network"—I still did not have the feeling that it had any national effect. I knew it was going out to the country —on the network, but somehow—because I was working in a local area and not in New York City—I had the feeling the show wasn't going too far.
Q: Who played the Lone Ranger when you were there?
A: Brace Beemer. Brace Beemer was the longest-running Lone Ranger. He started in the 1930's after the first Lone Ranger was killed in an auto accident. They broke Beemer's voice in gradually by having the Lone Ranger mortally wounded so he could not speak for a while and then he finally said one word, then another word, and so on.
I think Brace would have been the only hero character on radio that you would not have been disappointed in if you met him in person. He was the picture of what you would imagine the Lone Ranger to look like—a tall, handsome, rugged outdoorsman.
Q: How come he never made it on television?
A: When it finally came to the day when they decided to do it on TV, they tested him but Brace was not youthful any longer. He had already been the Lone Ranger for 20 years.
Q: Who was the man behind Tonto?
A: Tonto was played for a number of years by John Todd. He was a short, bald-headed Irishman, an ex-Shakespearian actor and a marvelous man.
Q: I suppose they kept Todd out of sight then?
A: I don't know whether they publicized the fact he was an Irishman. And, of course, we never had a studio audience for the show. We had a little sponsor's section which could seat maybe 10 people and sometimes you could have visitors — but never any children because it would shatter all of their illusions.
Q: Do you think Tonto could be played as a wooden Indian today?
A: It's a character that should remain in the storybooks, I guess. Don't forget, the Lone Ranger was the hero and Tonto his "faithful companion." I do remember a similar circumstance when we doing the Green Hornet. Cato was the Green Hornet's right-hand man. But when the war came on, they had to change the character of Cato from a Japanese valet to a Filipino valet.
Q: Do you miss radio?
A: Yes, I do. Namely because it was in many ways easier than television. You could be very comfortably dressed, unshaven if necessary, because there was no one around. It was more relaxing and a hell of a lot simpler.
Q: What makes Ed McMahon of the Johnny Carson Show so successful? How is it that he has achieved a status that no other announcer has?
A: I don't think he's done anything that no other announcer has. I think it's the old story of being in the right place at the right time and getting the lucky break to work with someone like Carson—which then leads to other areas. It's the old snowball effect—one thing leads to another.
Q: Essentially, you are just another pretty voice in the business, aren't you?
A: Yes, but strangely enough, in today's market, they aren't looking for the pretty voice any more. They are looking for the unusual voice, I am speaking commercially now. They feel that beautiful tones that used to enchant people on radio are not what's in demand at the moment. They get the off-beat voice.
Q: What are the problems in your business? How far can you expect to go?
A: As far as "success" for an announcer, that word today is sort of passe'. The announcer, per se — in the big days of radio when you were a network staff announcer — held a certain prestige and class because he was called upon to do everything. Today however, this has all really vanished because radio itself has changed so much. You have disc jockies and newsmen and what they call reader-writers, who write and announce their own material. The picture has entirely changed. An announcer — the term really doesn't hold that much today. What the announcer has to try to become is a personality and how far he can go depends on Lady Luck.

When I watched the Cavett show, I didn’t realise the announcer was Fred Foy. He never had that tone of urgency recalled so well from the opening of The Lone Ranger TV show. I wasn’t the only one. In this review of the Les Crane TV show in early 1965, Bert J. Reesing of the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote:

One rather interesting bit brought out by Crane involved the show’s announcer, Fred Foy. His is only an off-stage voice. Crane asked if the voice was familiar to anyone in the audience. No one recognized Foy’s voice. So Crane asked “Fred, give us your sign-off in the last radio show you announced.” Fred Did. “The fiery horse with the speed of light . . . etc.,” he said. It was surprising how many persons remembered. Foy then told the audience he believed the “ ‘Lone Ranger’ was retired on his ranch in Oxford, Mich.”

The reaction would likely have been different if he introed him as the host of Night Quiz Court.