Breaking Walls: The Podcast on the History of American Network Radio Broadcasting

In September of 1957, Bing Crosby, now fifty-four years old, was gearing up to host the Edsel TV special and generating praise for his recent dramatic role as Earl Carlton in Man On Fire. He’d won an Academy Award, had his own radio show since 1931, and championed the widespread use of Prime Time, network transcription. The Ford Road Show featuring Bing Crosby debuted on September 2nd, 1957. It ai...

The man you’re listening to is William Froug. He was instrumental in bringing the CBS Radio Workshop back to the air. CBS was still airing dramatic programming on Sunday afternoons. In 1957 Froug became the VP of Programming. He took the position against his will. The CBS Radio Workshop, a reimagining of the old Columbia Workshop had debuted with the critically acclaimed two-part adaptation of Ald...

On Saturday, September 14th, 1957 The Grand Ole Opry signed on from WSM and the Ryman Auditorium. WSM is a fifty-thousand-watt clear channel station located in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded by the National Life and Accident Insurance Company, the station’s call sign stands for We Shield Millions. WSM first signed on October 5th, 1925. The next month on November 28th, The WSM Barn Dance took to the...

The man you just heard is Herb Vigran, being interviewed by Chuck Schaden in 1984. He’s about to be featured on Family Theater. The show was created by Patrick Peyton of the Holy Cross Fathers. Mutual Broadcasting donated time under four conditions: It had to be a drama of top quality; strictly nonsectarian; feature a film star; and Father Peyton had to pay the production costs. Peyton met Loretta...

At 10:45 AM central time on the morning of September 11th, 1957, Howard Miller signed on from WBBM with fifteen minutes of music, and an interview with Steve Allen. Howard Miller was born on December 7th, 1912 in Chicago. From 1945 through 1949 he was WIND’s program director before beginning an eighteen year run as the Windy City’s top-rated morning DJ. In between he acted in Jamboree!, Senior Pro...

On Saturday September 7th, 1957 Marilyn Van Derbur was crowned 1958’s Miss America in Atlantic City. She was a twenty-year old Phi Beta Kappa scholar at the University of Colorado, She later moved to New York City, becoming the TV spokeswoman for AT&T’s Bell Telephone Hour and hosted ten episodes of Candid Camera, as well as five Miss America Pageants. In 1975 she established the Marilyn Van Derbu...

The man you’re listening to is one of the most celebrated authors of the 20th-century: Ray Bradbury. By the spring of 1955 he’d authored more than one-hundred short stories and one novel, Fahrenheit 451, born out of a collection of earlier works. These stories were published in magazines like Astounding Science Fiction, Street and Smith, Weird Tales, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and The Saturday Even...

Labor Day is a U.S. federal holiday celebrated on the first Monday in September to honor and recognize the contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United States. As trade unions and labor movements reached their peak during the Industrial Revolution, the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor organized the first parade in New York City. In 1887, Oregon was the fi...

On September 1st, 1957 at 10:30PM eastern time over NBC, The American Forum of the Air signed on with a talk on the dangers of nuclear testing. The day prior a nuclear test was conducted in Nevada, only roughly three hundred miles from Los Angeles. Later that month, The Rocky Flats Nuclear Plant, just fifteen miles northwest of Denver, Colorado experienced a major plutonium fire, which caused plut...

August, 1957. We’re driving east on Route 50 from West Sacramento in a 1957 Ford Skyliner. The convertible costs roughly three-thousand dollars, has a Y-block Thunderbird V-8 engine and two-hundred-twelve horsepower. It’s got something else too: car radios have become Standard. U.S. Radio Magazine will soon state that fifty-five percent of all peak listening came from cars. Auto-rating measurement...

In Breaking Walls episode 142 we feature one of Brooklyn’s native sons, Bill Gargan, who made more than sixty films, and good money on radio in the 1950s. —————————— Highlights: • Brooklyn’s Native Son • Hollywood and An Oscar Nomination • The War and Being a Radio Detective • Martin Kane • Launching Barrie Craig • Radio Ratings in 1954 • Hollywood vs. New York • Hay is For Homicide • Ghosts Don’t...

While this brings our look at the life of William Gargan to a close, we’ll be staying in this time period for the next episode of Breaking Walls. Next time on Breaking Walls, it’s the fall of 1957 and the world is in transition. Both the Civil Rights movement and the space race are underway. We’ll begin a four-month arc, covering all things through the lens of radio for the month of September.

After Barrie Craig went off the air, Gargan continued to occasionally host Family Theater. He also made films Miracle in The Rain and The Rawhide Years. He starred on the west-coast stage in a version of The Desperate Hours for Randy Hale and went to Europe to film thirty-nine episodes of The New Adventures of Martin Kane for Ziv Productions. In 1960 Hale was set to cast Gargan on stage in The Bes...

In September of 1954 as the last new episode of The Lone Ranger was broadcast, Barry Craig, Confidential Investigator took to the air on Tuesday September 7th at 8:30PM eastern time with an episode called “Ghosts Don’t Die in Bed.” Betty Lou Gerson played Ruth Adams. Virginia Gregg played Mrs. Dunn. The series announced its cancellation at the end of this episode, but a month later it was back on...

On Tuesday August 31st, 1954 as President Eisenhower addressed the American Legion, it had been a busy ten days for American aviation. On Sunday, August 22nd, Braniff Airways’ Douglas C-47-DL Skytrain crashed during a flight from Waterloo, to Mason City, Iowa. Twelve of the nineteen aboard died. The next day, A U.S. Air Force Lockheed C-130 Hercules flew its first flight at Burbank, California. An...

After eleven orders of thirteen Barrie Craig installments, production of the show moved from New York to Hollywood with the July 6th, 1954 episode. The August 24th episode was called “Blood Money.” The west coast broadcasts were supported by people like Joan Banks, Olan Soule, Parley Baer, Howard McNear, Herb Vigran, Virgina Gregg, Betty Lou Gerson, and Lawrence Dobkin.

By 1954 ninety-eight percent of homes had a radio set. There were still nineteen million U.S. houses that could only be reached by radio. Procter & Gamble led the way with over fourteen million dollars spent, and forty companies, including General Foods, Colgate-Palmolive, Liggett & Myers, Campbell’s Soups, S.C. Johnson, and Coca-Cola spent at least one million dollars on radio advertising. Howeve...

When Bill Gargan was fired from Martin Kane he planned to star in a Broadway rendition of Doctor Knock. In late September of 1951, Gargan signed a one-million-dollar contract that made him the exclusive property of NBC for the next five years. The deal required him to participate in a minimum of four guest spots on radio and TV each year. At the same time, Gargan was invited by Frank Folsom of RCA...

In 1949 Bill Gargan appeared in Dynamite for Paramount Pictures. It would be his last film until 1956. On March 3rd he appeared on Guest Star. That year he was in New York City when he phoned acquaintance Frank Folsom of RCA. Folsom invited Gargan for lunch. He went to the fifty-third floor of 30 Rockefeller Center. Inside were executives from BBD&O, The New York Stock Exchange, and others. During...

During the War, Bill Gargan led a USO group that featured Paulette Goddard, Keenan Wynn, and accordionist Andy Arcari. They toured China-Burma-India. He spent four months overseas in some of the poorest and worst conditions of the War, putting on shows and flying in various prop planes despite a lingering ear infection, drinking whatever alcohol he could to help keep sane. When Bill finally got ho...

William Gargan appeared in more than fifty films in the 1930s. In between, he and Mary’s second son, Leslie, was born on June 28th, 1933. The Gargans bought the late Jean Harlow’s house at 512 North Palm Drive for twenty-seven thousand dollars. They’d live there for the next quarter century. Bill’s parents passed away in the middle of the decade. Gargan soon signed a Warner Bros. two-year contract...

William Dennis Gargan was born to an irish-american Catholic family in Brooklyn, New York on July 17th, 1905. His parents—Bill and Irene—had seven children, but only Bill and his brother Ed survived infancy. Ed was four years older than Bill. The pair were close. Bill’s mother had been a teacher, but his father was a book maker and a gambler, which didn’t sit well with Irene’s parents. Gargan’s da...

In Breaking Walls episode 141, we finish a three part series on the radio career of Orson Welles by picking up as he left The United States for Europe in the late 1940s. For full appreciation, tune into episodes 79 and 104 before hearing this. —————————— Highlights: • Macbeth, HUAC and Leaving the U.S • Harry Alan Towers, and Harry Lime • Othello and The Black Museum • Song of Myself and Theatre R...

It seems fitting that the way in which Orson Welles described Alexander Woollcott is the same way many who knew Welles would have described him. That’s going to bring our look at Orson Welles’ radio career to a close. We’ve now covered Mr. Welles in long form three times — in episodes 79, 104, and now 141. We also covered his time as The Shadow in depth in episode 131. Is this the last time we foc...

On Sunday January 1st, 1956 NBC’s Monitor broadcast New World Today. 1956 was a Presidential election year. At the time of this broadcast, Dwight Eisenhower, who’d had a heart attack in September, was still debating whether he would run for a second term. He’d decide in February, eventually winning re-election. After the censuring of Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954, the Red Scare had subsided, ove...