Drawing shadows on animated characters wasn’t something you saw a lot of in 1930, but Walt Disney’s staff gives it a try in a few scenes in Pioneer Days.
If you’re wondering what the song is when the natives are in a war dance, it’s “The Sun Dance,” written in 1903 by Leo Friedman. Carl Stalling used it, too, at Warner Bros. You can click on the arrow and hear it below, thanks to the wonderful people at the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive.
O what has come to so erase
All thoughts of peace from off this place?
Have they forgot that love ‘tis right
And not, is gain by show of might?
So laments the dove of peace (voiced by writer John McLeish) in Norm McCabe’s energetic wartime short The Ducktators.
Later, we see the dove amongst the olive branches (and jars of olives) weeping over war in verse:
Mercy me! Regretful sight!
O branch of peace, forestall this fight.
The dove’s entreaties are ignored by the marching jackboots.
The dove has had his fill of peace. A fist in face he will release. That’s giving it to old Adolf!
The civilians cheer. Excellent layout (by Dave Hilberman?).
Here’s a wonderful scene where the barnyard denizens tangle with the Gestapo ducks in a mass of swirling lines. Look at the perspective animation as one patriotic civilian jumps into the fight.
The Nazis become Trashzis.
We return to the dove, sucking on his peace pipe.
I hate war, but once begun,
Well, I just didn’t choose to run.
So I can point with pride and say
‘There’s three that didn’t get away.’
And the camera pans over to Mussolini, Hitler and Tojo in animal representation.
John Carey gets the rotating animation credit for this cartoon. I imagine Vive Risto, Izzy Ellis and Cal Dalton are at work here as well. The dove’s poetry is by Mel Millar.
Alois Havrilla is the answer to a trivia question. The question is: “Who did Don Wilson replace as the announcer on the Jack Benny show?”
When the change was made in 1934, Havrilla was the better known of the two. Wilson’s fame had come from announcing the Rose Bowl games on NBC in the early ‘30s. Havrilla was a top announcer and in 1935 received an award as the best radio announcer in the U.S. “from the standpoint of pronunciation, articulation, tonal quality, accent and general cultural effect.” Wilson went on to spend several lucrative decades with Jack. Havrilla ended up reading news at a small station in New Jersey and died in 1952 at the age of 61.
Wilson was hired when the Benny show changed sponsors from Chevrolet to General Tire. He was an inspired choice. Almost from the start, Jack had incorporated his announcer into the show’s banter. Wilson started off with the same “character” as Havrilla and Howard Claney before him—someone so enthusiastic about the sponsor’s product, he’d shoehorn it into the programme whenever possible (and inappropriate), usually as a pun based on a previous line of dialogue. But Wilson had the advantage of a friendly, up-beat and natural delivery (Claney, in particular, stiffly shouted at listeners) which made it easy to expand on his character. And when General Foods took over, Wilson was a natural spokesman. Everyone listening at home could picture a jolly fat man, quickly scooping up those six delicious flavours of Jell-O.
Jack and his writers used Donzie as the centre-pin of a number of radio shows either celebrating his anniversary in radio or with Benny. A particularly funny one was broadcast on January 10, 1954, where everyone but Jack insisted the show was “down” until Wilson came in and brought it up. Benny was not one to shy away from re-using whole bits of old programmes; the radio show in question contained routines from broadcasts in 1945 and 1949 (including the “down” running gag). So it was one of the ideas he borrowed from the radio days for a TV show. It aired January 13, 1961 and featured a walk-on at the end by CBS’ What’s My Line? host John Daly, who was also the vice president for news at ABC at the time the show was filmed.
CBS got out its publicity machine to plug this particular episode, making Wilson available for interviews. Let’s reprint three of them. First up is a United Press International story that first appeared in papers on December 30, 1960.
Honor, but No Pay Boost for Wilson On Anniversary
BY JOE FINNIGAN U. P. I. Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) — Don Wilson celebrates his twenty-seventh anniversary as Jack Benny's sidekick soon, but there's no salary raise in sight.
The rotund Wilson started with Jack on radio as part of the Benny “family” that included Dennis Day, Eddie (Rochester) Anderson and Phil Harris.
Day and Rochester appear occasionally these days on Jack's TV show but Wilson still hangs around as a regular and quite often the butt of Benny's jokes.
TO HONOR Wilson for years of faithful service, Benny thought it would be nicer, and CHEAPER to give Don a remembrance rather than something crassly commercial such as a salary boost. Tightfisted economy is Benny's onstage credo.
Of course, everyone knows Jack is just the opposite in real life.
So, Benny turned over the Jan. 17 show to a live "memorial" to the slenderizing Wilson.
“I don't know of anyone in this business who would do this, to set aside a whole show and use the anniversary as a theme,” Don said, as he sipped on a calorie-free ginger ale in a Beverly Hills hotel.
“THE PROGRAM will constitute a flashback and show how our association came about,” Don added. “The program also will show the bigness of Jack.
“When I think back over the years and other comedians I've worked with, I remember that they were the only ones who got the laughs. But Jack started working me into his show right away and I became part of the laugh family.”
Recalling the time 27 years ago when he went to work for Benny in New York after an audition, Don said, “There's been an awful lot of water over the dam since then” as he laughed about Jack's threats to “fire” him.
“FOR YEARS, he threatened to fire me on the air and hire Harry Von Zell who worked for George Burns,” Don said with a nostalgic chuckle. And George would do the same thing to Harry.”
Even so, Don never fretted about the lack of job security working with the violin playing Benny.
“I'm just probably the luckiest guy in this business,” he said. “Let's face it, what better luck could a fellow have than to be associated with a top man like Jack all these years.”
Our next stop at the newsstand is at the Boston Globe for January 15, 1961.
Benny Salutes Don Wilson On 27 Years Of Association
One day last June, there was a great hullabaloo on the West Coast. Jack Benny put another show on videotape, but this particular one was special.
Benny saluted his announcer and supporting funnyman, Don Wilson, on the occasion of Wilson’s 27th anniversary with the Jack Benny Program.
Tonight, CBS viewers will see the anniversary telecast as it unfolds on Ch. 5 at 9:30 o’clock. The entire program belongs to Don, and well he deserves the honor.
* * *
“Jack has been very good to me,” said Don, in a call from the Coast a couple of days ago. “He goes out of his way for anyone, for that matter. He is very considerate.
“I remember the first time, and times after that, when I played Broadway. Benny made it very easy for me to tape the shows on the Coast. I had only to go back once a week to the Coast and Jack gave my show great publicity, which helped a great deal.
“Jack has had a long and successful career in radio and TV. Of course, his writers are second to none. It’s surprising how well the radio shows have stood up. This was evidence when some of the ones we made 10 and 15 years ago were brought out for repeats broadcasts.”
* * *
By way of explanation of why a show taped last June is showing this January, Don continued:
“Jack takes it comparatively easy these days. Last June we started taping TV shows for fall showing and 11 were put on tape. Our shows are taped before a live audience, and long before the present TV season closes we’ll have everything done. Along about May we’ll put shows for the coming season in the can and take time out for a fine Summer vacation during July, August and part of September.”
Don will watch the TV show tonight, on which he reigns as king. “Funny,” said he, “how you forget what transpired when shows are taped so far in advance. It will seem like a new show to me!”
Don and his wife live in an apartment building. They have a standard size poodle that is a prize winner, and a new addition—and apricot-color toy poodle is being groomed for the prize ring.
“You’d never know they are in the house,” continued Don. “They get along beautifully. Only one problem though:
“When we go to the movies, it has to be the outdoor kind. You see, we have to take the poodles with us!”
Wilson is a winner of every major award available to TV and radio announcers. He has been singer, emcee, announcer, sports commentator and actor.
He has had starring roles in “The Great Sebastians” (1959) at the Pasadena Playhouse; “Make a Million” (1958); on TV he impersonated a pompous confidence man in the Hollywood Bowl production of “The Vagabond King.” Also on TV, he has been on the Perry Como and Red Skelton shows.
Don is married to the former Lois Corbett, an actress, and it was she who interrupted Don on the phone to remind him about their taking poodles to the outdoor theaters. (E.L.S.)
Now to the Atlanta Journal of the same date.
Faithful Old Cue-Cardless Don Hailed on Benny Show
By ALAN PATUREAU Atlanta Journal TV-Radio Editor
It’s about time Jack Benny did something splendid for Don Wilson, his faithful second banana for 27 years. The golden-throated, oval-shaped one has the toughest announcing job on TV. But he never falters.
Wilson is the only announce in Hollywood who has to rattle off a formal commercial without a teleprompter or even a cue card for a crutch. He told me via phone recently as Benny prepared to make him King for a Day:
“Jack despises idiot sheets. He has never allowed one on his TV show and never will. So it all has to be in your noodle. That really puts the pressure on the announcer—and you can’t afford to fluff and make the sponsor mad. Yet a commercial is harder to commit to memory than any other speech.
* * *
Don’s delivery is usually flawless. Benny the idiot-sheet-hater, on the other hand, often hems and haws through his routines while he searches for the next word in the script. Ironic?
Tonight’s show (WAGA-TV at 9:30) is a half-hour salute to Wilson. He described it in confidential tones:
“I get the full treatment—dressed in royal robes and crown, and of course when I sit down on the throne I got crashing through the bottom, supposedly because of my weight . . . which is only 235 pounds, incidentally (steady for 30 of his 60 years; he was a 190-pound tackle in high school).
* * *
THEN WE USE THE FLASHBACK technique and show my audition for a job with Jack in 1934. It’s gagged up for that Jack hires me because I laugh at the right places in his jokes. Actually I had to beat out some pretty tough competition.
Don was a rising young announcer with NBC, New York, when Benny signed him to an exclusive contract. He had been “discovered” while helping Graham McNamee broadcast the Rose Bowl game of 1932.
He first assisted McNamee in the 1929 Rose Bowl when Roy Regals of California made his famous wrong-way run that led to a win for Georgia Tech. He was the only man in the booth who spotted when happened when Tech got its safety and that made him McNamee’s boy.
* * *
DON ALSO RECALLS WORKING THE Notre Dame-Southern Cal game in 1931 with Atlanta’s Bill Munday—“a wonderful man, give him my warmest regards.”
Wilson then grew nostalgic about his years with Benny: They were the first to rib their sponsors, the first to work their commercials into the program’s continuity and among the first with a singing commercial.
How does Don feel about having a whole show based on him? He let out a jolly chuckle.
“I’m thrilled pink—at last I think the time is ripe to ask Jack for a raise.”
Wilson carried on with Benny through the end of his TV series in 1965 and appeared on a few specials, though Bill Baldwin took over the straight announcing role. Donzie and Lois moved to Palm Springs where they hosted a TV show for a number of years until, in a move far too typical in broadcasting, they suddenly weren’t on the station any more. Wilson was 81 when he died in 1982.
Click on the arrow below to hear “The Don Wilson Story” on the Benny radio show of January 10, 1954. Mel Blanc, Frank Nelson, Hy Averback and Sandra Gould have uncredited supporting roles.
Here’s a re-post of a Toronto Globe and Mail story that was put up on the Golden Age Cartoons forum a number of years ago. At the time, there wasn’t too much about Bernie Brown on the internet. He won a couple of Oscars from 11 nominations as well as three technical achievement awards from the Motion Picture Academy for his sound work. He was employed on at least two bonafide history-making films. But cartoon fans know him as one of two people who got credit for musical scores on Leon Schlesinger’s cartoons during those barren years of the mid-1930s when the studio’s star was Buddy the Bland. He even received supervisory credit on two shorts—“Pettin’ in the Park” and “Those Were Wonderful Days” (both 1934)—though I can’t see him doing the work of a cartoon director as he doesn’t seem to have had any art experience. Brown recollected in a 1973 interview with historian Mike Barrier that story conferences with eventually-fired director Tom Palmer were woefully indecisive and it’s tempting to speculate that Brown mother-henned shorts that Palmer put into production in 1933. (Variety of April 9, 1934 also lists him as co-director of “Buddy of the Apes” with Ben Hardaway).
The Globe and Mail article blows off his cartoon work in one line. It doesn’t reveal Brown and cohort Norman Spencer connected with Schlesinger around the start of 1932 in a venture called Pacific Sound Track Service. When Schlesinger decided the following year to stop using the Harman-Ising staff and set up his own cartoon studio, Brown and Spencer moved over to handle the music (with Spencer’s son arranging the scores). Footnotes in Barrier’s Hollywood Cartoons quote animator Jim Pabian as saying Brown was “a very genial person,” though he got divorced during his time at Schlesinger, reportedly telling his wife of 12 years: “I’m tired of this married life—I want romance” (he remarried soon after). Brown left Schlesinger in 1936 to take over the sound department at Universal where his screen billing changed to “Bernard B. Brown” and he went on to a fine career. Hedda Hopper called him “that wizard of sound.”
This story ran in the edition of May 24, 1980. Bernard Bohn Brown was born in Lafarge, Wisconsin to Charles S. and Ida M. (Millison) Brown on July 24, 1898; his father was a photographer. The family was in Los Angeles by 1910. The 1920 Census lists Brown as being a musician in motion pictures (yes, silent pictures) and by 1930, he was the head of a special effects department, presumably at Warners. Before making music and sound his career, he had a job as a bill clerk for a wholesale drug company. He died in Laguna Hills, California on February 20, 1981.
Bernard Brown gave you talking pictures and crushed peanut shells He broke sound barrier in film BY STEPHEN GODFREY
BERNARD B. BROWN thinks he might have been able to save silent screen star John Gilbert. “He committed suicide because his career was over when the talkies came. He really had a high, squeaky voice,” says the first pioneer of film sound. “At Warner Brothers, we knew how to add low frequencies, so a tenor could sound like a high baritone. We could have applied it to Gilbert, but,” he shakes his head sadly, “he was at a different studio.” Probably no one has had more experience in making the high sound low, the loud sound louder, and everyone sound better than they really do than Bernard B. Brown, a bubbling, enthusiastic man known as Brownie to his colleagues. Beside him in the room where we sit is a rocking chair. It is easily the most comfortable chair around, but Brown is eyeing it with suspicion. “I'm staying out of that thing,” says a living historical document whose diverse activities since retiring from film include inventing a hair tonic and facial peel. “I don't believe in feeling old.”
He is in town this weekend to talk about his work in film scoring and sound engineering at Cineforum on Mercer Street, which will be showing three of his films. Highlights of his career include the orchestration of director D. W. Griffith's epic Birth of a Nation (1916); conducting and arranging in the first “talkie”, The Jazz Singer (1928); two Academy Awards, (out of nine nominations), one for developing the 10-track mixing system used in the Deanna Durbin film, One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937). Singers such as Miss Durbin, Bing Crosby and Nelson Eddy have had their singing voices transformed and their careers stregthened - sometimes despite their protests.
Brown's career began with a sensation. At the age of 16, just graduated from Hollywood High School and already an accomplished violinist, he applied to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In the first hour of his audition, he was moved from sixth to first violinist. But more importantly, he was chosen to assist conductor Carli Elinor, who had been asked to select music for a new film by Griffith, Birth of a Nation.
To get California audiences in the mood to see a three-hour epic — an unheard of length — of the deep South, pine oil was blown into the auditorium by a wind machine through real pine trees placed in front of a set depicting a Southern plantation, while the orchestra played Swanee River. That's not all they played, but unfortunately that's one of the few tunes Brown can recall. The original score has been lost.
“We didn't compose any music, apart from the occasional short bridge,” he recalls. “We chose segments from about 30 classics. I can remember only a few; we used Suppe's Morning, Noon and Night, the overture from Rossini's Semiramade, Southern tunes such as Dixie, and a tune called The Sweetest Bunch of Lilacs, which became a theme song.”
Playing in the orchestra every day was tortuous. “There was no intermission, remember, and because it as the war, catgut for violin strings was hard to find. We had to settle for fish line, which ate right into the fingers until we bandaged them up with adhesive tape.”
Joining Warner Brothers in the twenties, Brown became both sound man and musician. Some of the early recorded effects were crude but effective for their novelty. “I had to do sound for some really B-type films. I remember one where a man was bending down to pick up his wife’s earring, and she kicks him in the fanny. I got a Chinese gong for that one, and turned up the volume when it went off. People jumped up and screamed. It was a sensation.”
The first brief soundtracks, made of wax, added their own problems. “If you got one revolution out of sync, a man would be talking for a woman and the woman instead of the man. Then there'd be a loud scratch as the operator pushed it back into sync.”
Sound only started being treated seriously with the success of The Jazz Singer. There had been talking in shorter films before, but for the first time, camera and turntable were synchronized during production, and talking and singing were both put on the same wax record. And although only 10 per cent of The Jazz Singer boasted sound, Brown ensured that it seemed like more. "People remember the last thing they see, so we made sure a lot of that dialogue was at the end of the film." In The Jazz Singer, the back of Brown's brilliantined head can clearly be seen conducting the orchestra while Al Jolson mouths the song Mammy to pre-recorded music.
Paramount was fast matching Warner Brothers in the technology of transferring sound from discs onto the film itself. "We went to see Paramount's new film Old Arizona, and there was a scene where someone shoots a money box open with a .44. It was a tremendous cracking, and it really registered with Jack Warner, who was a little hard of hearing anyway. But it gradually sold him on the idea of a soundtrack on the film itself, and of course in a year or two the whole industry had converted to it.
Brown's work in the thirties included some pioneering sound effects — from the complex (he was the first to construct a "train effects machine") to the simple (he realized that the loud splintering of falling trees could be imitated by crunching peanut shells close to a mike).
And he supervised the first Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons for Warners. He also moonlighted with the Disney studios in the making of Fantasia in 1940.
But some of his most satisfying experiences were with singers, especially Deanna Durbin.
“Doug Shearer, who was the brother of Moira [sic] Shearer, the wife of MGM's boss Irving Thalberg, was a tennis partner of mine.” Brown is a devoted tennis player. “One day he said, ‘They had a screen test for Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin, and they've let Deanna go. This is your chance.’ I knew why they had let Deanna go. She had such a range that she kept hitting the high frequencies, and their equipment couldn't handle it, while Judy was sticking to the middle register. But I knew how to work with Deanna, and once I sold Warner Brothers on her, she became a star."
Miss Durbin had a problem that plagued her career. “Every day right at noon — and this was really strange, because she didn't have a watch — she would stop on the set and say ‘I'm hungry.’ I'd say, ‘Okay, Deanna, I'll go get some sandwiches.’ She'd say ‘Forget the sandwiches, I want a plate of spaghetti.’
Brown sighs. “That's why we never gave her any time off. She'd put on 10 pounds just like that.”
There was talk of Miss Durbin, who now lives in Paris, making a comeback. “I wrote her about four years ago, and asked if she'd like to work with the old gang again. She replied that she was in better voice than ever, and that she would consider making another movie as soon as she lost 30 pounds.”
Brown hasn't heard from her since.
Some singers appreciated him more than others. Bing Crosby refused to return to Paramount after making a picture for Warners unless they hired Brown to remake their scoring stage. “Bing had that deep, casual voice that made him sound as if he was singing in a rain barrel at Paramount. In their sound studio, they had up all these drapes which damaged the natural brightness in his voice. I just tore them down.”
Nelson Eddy was more of a problem. By 1939, Brown had switched studios, to Universal and vowed that “If Nelson Eddy comes to this studio, I'll make a new singer out of him.” When Eddy was contracted to make A Phantom of the Opera with Claude Rains in 1942, Brown had his chance.
“Eddy had no brightness, no character, no oomph. But I built a special studio, that gave timbre and definition to his voice.
“The first time he heard his voice played back on the set, he was furious. He thought we had hired a double.” Eddy was ultimately delighted with his new resonance. “But when he went back to MGM,” says Brown smiling, “he lost a bit of it.”
Brown retired from film in 1953 after a projected film company to be formed in Jamaica with his friend Errol Flynn fell through. (Of the recent allegations concerning spy activities by Flynn, Brown says “That's nonsense. I was so close to Errol I would have known. We played tennis nearly every day.”) Although he has kept up with new sound techniques, he doesn't think much of them. Mention a gimmick like Sensurround, and he looks depressed. The new lush sound of sci-fi films? “I went to Star Wars at Grauman's Chinese Theatre with some friends from Honolulu, and if they hadn't come from Honolulu I would have walked out,” he says. “It's just too much of everything. There's no clarity, no definition.”
Today, Brown keeps busy minding his real estate investments in Los Angeles and Palm Springs, wondering how to market his facial peel, playing tennis every morning at 6:30, and preparing his projected three volumes of memoirs. But still, film tempts him back.
“You know this Neil. . . Diamond?” he says slowly, as if he didn’t. “Well, he’s starring in a remake of The Jazz Singer. And just three days ago they phoned and asked me if I would consider supervising the sound.”
He rocks back in his chair, but it still doesn’t look remotely like a rocking chair. “I guess I can still remember where the music goes.”
The anonymous background artists at the Fleischer studio were called upon in several films to give the impression of speed during a pan. They would render part of their background blurry so it seemed the camera was moving quicker. Here’s an example from Parade of the Wooden Soldiers (1933), where the camera pans from right to left.
What’s really interesting about this sequence is the camera first pans from left to right, stops on the action, pans bottom to top, stops on the action, then does the right to left pan above, followed by a pan from bottom to top. I’d love to see what the whole background looked like. The camera eventually pulls back to reveal a full scene of the room, but a different background drawing was used when the camera begins to move out.
Here’s the centre part of the panned background a little later in the cartoon.
It might be unfair to call them “stock expressions,” but while watching The Old Grey Hare the other day, I noticed a couple of facial looks that are unmistakeable from the Bob Clampett unit at Warner Bros.
Here’s the difference between full and TV animation. Baby Bugs Bunny slides to a stop. A couple of seconds is taken up with Bugs’ feet sliding around before he zips behind a tree. TV animation wouldn’t bother with all those drawings. There’d be a zip of brush strokes and Bugs would immediately zoom behind the tree.
Baby Elmer Fudd crawls—except when he’s sneaking. Sneaks go on tippy-toes, so Baby Elmer does, too. Bent logic.
Ah, the oversized eye whites! You’ll see it in Kitty Kornered and other Clampetoons.
Um, Bugs is looking a little too lovingly at that rear end.
The half close-eyed dopey look. Again, seen in Kitty Kornered and elsewhere.
Manny Gould doesn’t get credit in this cartoon. Neither do Virgil Ross or Rod Scribner. Bob McKimson does. I suspect they all animated on this one. I like the purple in the background. Leon Schlesinger would have approved. Purple’s a funny colour, he said.
Everyone’s heard them. Back in the ‘60s, they came from speakers of TV sets while the letters ‘N’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ snaked onto the scene at the end of a programme.
The NBC chimes weren’t new then. They went back to the days of network radio, in fact, before network radio.
It’s likely we’ll never learn where the idea of using chimes to signal radio programming came from. There are too many conflicting claims and have been for 90 years. But it certainly wasn’t NBC, founded in late 1926. WSB in Atlanta claimed to have invented the idea. In the September 5, 1925 edition of Radio Digest (page 7), there are pictures of the chimes and an article which reads:
When one once hears the famous three-note chime of WSB it is not forgotten. Its three-note mellow tone chime is known most everywhere. The station has used this instrument as their call and signing off symbol ever since broadcasting was started more than three years ago.
Indeed, included in a squib on radio station identifications found in the Baltimore Sun of November 19, 1922 is the revelation: "When listening to Atlanta, you can either recognize it by the three gongs or else the Southern drawl of the announcer."
But there was a competing claim in the magazine’s edition of December 26, 1925 (pages 6 and 10). WOR in Newark, New Jersey, owned by the Bamberger Department store, began broadcasting in 1922. The pertinent part of the Digest story:
The WOR chimes are a well known trade mark of the station. They are the original chimes used in broadcasting, and have been copied by a number of stations in one form or another for signing off and on....
J. Seabeck is the announcer. Listen to him some time and you are sure to come back for more. His clear enunciation and the tone of his voice are pleasing to the ear. It is seldom that Radio fans can listen to such a wonderful announcer. And when he sounds the chimes and you hear: "One of America's Great Stores," you know you are in for a treat.
When exactly either of the two NBC networks began using chimes to signal network cues is unclear, but the use of the chimes is referred to in this Boston Globe feature article of February 3, 1930. At the time this story was written, NBC was using seven chimes, not three. Most of this article has little to with chimes, but it is notable the writer talks about F.D.R’s infirmities. The chief announcer of WEEI at the time has a fascinating history you can read at this web site. Eddie Gisburne left the station in 1936 just before management changed hands. The old “quit-before-you-get-fired” move has evidently been going on in radio for some time.
HOW RADIO TALKS ARE TIMED TO THE EXACT SECOND
Announcer’s Task to Keep Them on Schedule not an Easy One—With Programs Shooting in From All Sides Ingenious Devices Are Needed to Keep Them on TimeBY JOHN BARRY
The radio announcer glanced at his timed program sheet as the orchestra was swelling to a final crescendo. Mary Whoozis was scheduled to follow the orchestral number with a solo. The announcer looked across the room for Mary. She was gone.
Ten seconds more and the orchestra number would finish. An allowance of two to five seconds’ pause had been made between the finish of the orchestral number and the introduction of Mary Whoozis.
Where was Mary?
Just two to five seconds to get her to the microphone. The announcer knew where she was. It was a habit of hers to step out into the ante room and watch the program through the plate glass window until her presence was required. But she was not at the window. The announcer could not signal to her with a wave to come in.
What to do? Back to Dulcet Tones
There is a provision for that in the studio. Just as the last note of the orchestra was sounded the announcer bellowed, “Mary Whoozis, get in here quick. You’re on the air.”
And Mary rushed in. In dulcet tones again, the bellow forgotten, except for a bit of a glare in his eyes, the announcer introduces Mary Whoozis.
And though you listeners were tuned every minute to the program, every second, you didn’t hear the announcer shout at Mary, and you couldn’t know there had been any slip in the program.
It was done with a little push button known as “Artists Call,” placed at the announcer’s desk for just that purpose. In the midst of a program the announcer can press that button and as long as he holds it down with his finger nothing can go out on the air. He can say anything he wants. There is no interruption of the carrier wave, so that you set does not sound “dead,” or anything like that. Many Gadgets Needed
It is one of the gadgets necessary to keep radio programs on time. And with programs shooting in from all parts of the compass today they must be on time.
The two central broadcasting points of the National Broadcasting Company are now synchronized so that a local station such as WEEI can jump from Red to Blue net work and back—providing the jump is made on time.
When the WEEI announcer says, “And now the voice of the press,” and the Globe man goes on the air, how many realize that for five minutes before that introduction the Globe man has been sitting with a telephone receiver glued to his ear, waiting for the word “Go,” so there will be no interruption in your enjoyment?
We found Ed Gisburne, veteran radio man and announcer of Station WEEI, one morning this week in the State House, sitting with a telephone receiver at his ear, a microphone before him. He was about to introduce a speaker of the Department of State and was waiting for the signal. We waited until the broadcast was over and asked Ed Gisburne how all this timing was achieves. How, for instance, did the speaker who had just been on the air finish his talk in time for the next program? Speakers Without Sense of Time
“That one was easy,” said Ed, “he was just reading a speech. Whenever a new speaker comes to the microphone we always tell them that it takes about two minutes to read over the air one page of double spaced typewriting. Sometimes a speaker appears with several pages too many. They must be edited down to the required length.
“A new speaker has no sense of time, or the time requires to read his speech, so here at the State House I have a signal for the man at the microphone. Two minutes before his time is up I hold up two fingers. One minute before the time is up I hold one finger. It usually works.
Speakers accustomed to the microphone have no trouble. Most of Boston’s politicians are able to keep within their time, although many have a tendency to say too much, rather than to say emphatically and understandably, a little.
“I have seen Senator David I. Walsh step up to the microphone without a note and ask how much time he had been allotted. I told him 11 minutes. He took out his watch, held it in his hand and started to talk. On the dot of 11 minutes he completed his peroration, and no one would know he was without the usual written preparation.
“Mayor Curley can do the same thing. But there are few with such a sense of time and command of the language as this and most speakers need a carefully prepared manuscript.
“This hasn’t much to do with timing, but here’s an incident that made time hang as heavily as anything I ever saw behind the microphone. It was the time Gov Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York spoke here for the Massachusetts First Voters League.
Gov Roosevelt was badly crippled at the time and could not stand without assistance. He gripped a bar at the microphone on that occasion and literally hung by his hands for 50 minutes while he made his speech. It was one of the grittiest things I had ever seen in radio.”
Edward A. Gisburne could well appreciate Gov Roosevelt’s position. Gisburne wears the Congressional medal of honour for his bravery at Vera Cruz, where he lost a leg. You ought to see him play golf on his good leg. He belongs at Wollaston and breaks 90 any day.
At the present time Gisburne is in charge of the new State House studio of WEEI. It has only just opened, but will be one of the special features of radio within a few months. Through the Boston Globe’s radio news service, arrangements have been made to broadcast State news direct from the State House as it happens in some of the big events of the Winter. Joining New York
Right now the State House studio is being used in a campaign of education, telling the people of Massachusetts about the business of State, a very forward-looking step in radio.
Ed Gisburne’s voice brings to the listeners of station WEEI the first local program each morning, “Good Morning, E.B.,” and Mr Rideout is on the air.
“Joining New York” brings to the local stations one of the biggest problems in timing, according to Gisburne. Orders are not to let a local program run over its time limit when a New York program follows. And to obey that order the local program and the New York program preceding the hook-up must be synchronized, if possible.
This is the way it is usually done: The Boston WEEI announcer sits in his own studio with a Boston program going out on the air. Clamped to his head is a pair of earphones, through which he hears the New York program going out in New York, but not in Boston. On the stroke of the hour another New York program begins. Boston’s own studio goes silent and the New York program is broadcast over WEEI.
The Boston announcer has the disconcerting problem of listening to two different programs from two different studios at the same time and he must announce one of them. It is something like that stunt of patting the top of your head with one hand and rubbing your stomach with the other at the same time.
But it works. Just as the Boston announcer hears the New York announcer begin his final statement, the Boston man begins his. They finish together. The Boston announcer pulls a switch. Boston is off the air. The chimes from New York are sounded and Boston has joined New York.
By the way, one man in the National Broadcasting Company’s studios in New York has the exclusive job of sounding the seven chimes. That is all he has to do. He listens to both N. B. C. programs, the one originating in WEAF and the one originating in WJZ. They are synchronized so that the seven chimes at 15-minute intervals, as is customary in both programs, are heard by two great radio audiences.
How would you like that job? Bell ringing. The New York announcers used to do the chime beating, but the problem of timing became so acute it required one man in a room fitted out with ship’s chronometers and split-second watches, to keep the programs on time.
New York programs are very carefully rehearsed and timed in sections and then in full—a regular dress rehearsal. It is an expensive proposition, but necessary to keep the chain on time.
Boston, on the other hand, has its rehearsals by sections, but not many full-dress rehearsals. The sections are rehearsed, such as the song, the musical number, the playlet. Each is timed. The times are added, leaving two to five seconds’ pause between numbers and announcements. If a scheduled half-hour program adds up to 32 minutes, a bar of music is cut here or perhaps a second chorus there.
The timing applies to most professional programs. Amateur entertainers and speakers have different treatment. The biggest program in radio history, that which preceded the Legion convention and included pick-ups from all parts of the United States, ran about 12 minutes overtime because of amateurs, speakers who insisted on adding a word of two, despite instructions.
Announcers don’t rave a great deal about some of the amateur speakers. If the speakers follow instructions, everything is all right, but many, according to Ed Gisburne, lose their heads the minute they are told to go ahead.
“Please don’t touch the microphone,” Gisburne always tells a newcomer, “it is very sensitive and might be broken at the slightest touch.”
“No, of course not,” the nervous speaker wouldn’t think of touching it.
And then he is introduced. With a death clutch he grabs for the “mike,” invariably. Perhaps you can explain it?
“Women are much more nervous than men,” said Announcer Gisburne, “they generally sit before the mike waiting to be introduced, thinking of the size of the audience. Women of 10 [often?] say, ‘If WEEI has an audience of 3,000,000 and only a small part of that number are listening in now there are probably 500,000 listening to me.”
Here is Ed Gisburne’s advice to these speakers, and it applies equally as well to some of the ranting, shouting politicians of the air.
“Your largest audience is probably five persons, a family of five. In most homes there is only one person listening, perhaps two. Talk to those groups and not any bewildering mob of millions. They don’t exist as far as you success on the air goes. It is up to you to attract, entertain, instruct, convince just one or two persons. Talk to them.”
Long before you are awake, the radio day of Station WEEI begins, down in Weymouth, where an engineer starts up the rectifiers and amplifiers, checks voltages and currents, and listens over the permanently operated telephone lines to the NBC studio in New York.
The first sound of the day is a test tone, 1000 cycles, from New York. It sounds like a long whistle. Only the operator in Boston hears it. The program is about to begin.
Over the telephone comes a warning to be ready. The WEEI announcer gives his station call. The switch is pulled and New York is on the air with the Tower Health exercises at 6:45. When New York is on the air, operators and announcers at WEEI hear it on a loud speaker in the operating room.
Time, tide and radio wait for no man. If you’re on the air, you must be on time.
It would seem logical to escape from a mental hospital, you would saw the bars off your cell door. Or you would climb over a gate at the outside wall. That’s what Screwy Squirrel does in Happy-Go-Nutty (1944). Except he doesn’t need to. The door and gate are both open. But one must follow the routine for the sake of following a routine, mustn’t one? That can be a definition of insanity, can’t it? No one wonder Screwy was locked away.
Some dry brush strokes help Screwy in his getaway.
Ray Abrams, Ed Love and Preston Blair are the animators in this one.
Here’s a re-post of a Toronto Globe and Mail story that was put up on the Golden Age Cartoons forum a number of years ago. At the time, there wasn’t too much about Bernie Brown on the internet. He won a couple of Oscars from 11 nominations as well as three technical achievement awards from the Motion Picture Academy for his sound work. He was employed on at least two bonafide history-making films. But cartoon fans know him as one of two people who got credit for musical scores on Leon Schlesinger’s cartoons during those barren years of the mid-1930s when the studio’s star was Buddy the Bland. He even received supervisory credit on two shorts—“Pettin’ in the Park” and “Those Were Wonderful Days” (both 1934)—though I can’t see him doing the work of a cartoon director as he doesn’t seem to have had any art experience. Brown recollected in a 1973 interview with historian Mike Barrier that story conferences with eventually-fired director Tom Palmer were woefully indecisive and it’s tempting to speculate that Brown mother-henned shorts that Palmer put into production in 1933. (Variety of April 9, 1934 also lists him as co-director of “Buddy of the Apes” with Ben Hardaway).
And he supervised the first Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons for Warners. He also moonlighted with the Disney studios in the making of Fantasia in 1940.
