Breaking Walls

In Breaking Walls episode 129 we honor the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Roswell incident by focusing on Radio and the mid-century flying saucer craze. —————————— Highlights: • World War II, Kenneth Arnold, Roswell, and “Project Saucer” • The Chicago Roundtable Attempts to Answer What Life on Other Planets Would Look Like • Sightings in The Spring of 1950 — Dimension X Launches • The 1950 Radio...

By 1955 radio’s days as America’s chief entertainment medium were over. However, while radio drama was dying out, UFO sightings were becoming more prevalent. Some were so outlandish they were hard to believe. Others were chillingly real. For example: On September 19th, 1961 Betty and Barney Hill had a widely known abduction experience. The Hills saw a huge flying disc while driving home one night...

Roy Rogers was born on November 5th, 1911 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He spent much of the early 1930s performing with groups like Uncle Tom Murray’s Hollywood Hillbillies, The Texas Outlaws, and The Rocky Mountaineers. In mid-decade he joined up with Bob Nolan to form the Sons of the Pioneers. By 1935, they were appearing in bit parts for Republic Pictures. Two years later Republic’s top cowboy, Gene Au...

Ralph Story was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan on August 19th, 1920. He served as a US Army Fighter Pilot during World War II and started a career in broadcasting after the war. His big break came in 1948 when he was hired to host and direct an early morning show on KNX in Los Angeles. Story's casual style and witty observations about life in LA won him national recognition. He went on to do various...

In October of 1952 You Bet Your Life was in the middle of its sixth season on the air and third over NBC. That month’s rating was 8.8, down significantly from its peak, but still good enough for fifth overall. The October 15th’s secret word was “water,” and the male member of the middle couple had a very unusual hobby.

Like with Germany, Korea was divided into occupation zones after World War II. The Soviets helped establish communism in the North, while the US supported the South. By June of 1950 fighting along the border had been going on for months. However on the weekend of June 24th, bulletins increased and it became clear a major crisis was underway. After a UN Security Council meeting President Truman‘s m...

On Saturday July 9th, 1949, Dangerous Assignment debuted on NBC starring Brian Donlevy as Steve Mitchell. Each week Mitchell was sent to a different location to crack into the bed of discontent and rout the perpetrators. Herb Butterfield and Betty Moran co-starred, with Hollywood regulars, like the just-heard Sam Edwards filling out the supporting roles. The initial Summer run ended on August 20th...

On April 7th, 1950, Edward R. Murrow broadcast the CBS Special “Report on Flying Saucers.” By then, Murrow was long-known for his journalistic integrity and tenacity in chasing down answers. A turbo jet that could fly up to six-hundred miles per hour didn’t exactly line up with witness accounts. Speed of travel aside, It wasn’t at all what Dr. Craig Hunter had described earlier. There were clearly...

On Sunday April 2nd, 1950 at 7:30PM eastern time, The Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show took to the air over NBC. The Harris/Faye show peaked in December of 1948 with a rating of 26, but by this month it was down 8.5. Harris resisted taking the program into TV, as his wife Alice Faye remembered. Elliott Lewis’ friendship with Phil Harris went all the way back to their days on Jack Benny’s program. O...

On Tuesday nights at 9:30PM eastern time in the spring of 1950, Fibber McGee and Molly was NBC’s highest-rated show. They’d stuck with NBC while stars like Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen, George Burns, and Gracie Allen jumped to CBS. Their 17.7 was fourth overall, but their rating fell by almost six points from the year prior. Opposite on TV, NBC aired The Life of Riley, while CBS aired Suspense. The da...

In the spring of 1950, network radio revenue was falling for the first time since 1933. There were now over twenty-six-hundred AM and FM stations vying for advertising dollars. The US also spent the first ten months of 1949 in a recession while TV was becoming a serious threat to both prime time Network Radio and Hollywood films. Over a hundred TV stations were on the air, and radio’s top fifty pr...

Until March of 1950, most reported UFO observations were seen from a great distance. On March 16th, a physician and pilot — Dr. Craig Hunter of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia — saw one close up. That same month, the Mutual Broadcasting System launched a series called 2000 Plus. Considered the first adult science fiction show in radio history, a month later NBC launched their own. Produced from Ra...

The University of Chicago Roundtable grew out of arguments had by professors at the faculty club. In 1931 they were convinced their forum would make for good radio. WMAQ agreed. The show premiered on February 1st of that year. It began running nationally over NBC on October 15th, 1933. The thirty-minute time slot allowed for little grandstanding. Professors rotated with each broadcast according to...

Early on the morning of February 25th, 1942 several aerial objects were spotted over Los Angeles. It triggered the firing of thousands of anti-aircraft rounds. This was ten weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and Manilla. Initially, it was thought to be a Japanese attack, but shortly after Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox said it was a false alarm. The hysteria was blamed on a weather balloon....

In Breaking Walls episode 128 we wrap up our six month look at 1954 by ending in June with network cancellations. —————————— Highlights: • The State of Radio and The Union • The End of Escape with John Dehner • News with Frank Edwards on Mutual • Let’s Pretend with Arnold Stang • Autolite Drops Suspense • Goodbye To Jack Benny (For Now) • What’s At Stake in the Fall 1954 Midterm Elections • CBS Ca...

Well, this brings our six-month look at 1954 to a close. Jack Benny again had radio’s highest-rated show the following season in what would ultimately turn out to be his swan song. Benny’s last new radio episode aired in May of 1955. Joseph McCarthy would finally be censured by the Senate in December. He never recovered from that political storm, and died three years later, ravaged by disease and...

Even with James Stewart leading the cast and Jack Johnstone directing, without a national sponsor cancellation was around the corner for The Six Shooter. Unlike with CBS, it was uncommon for NBC to sustain shows for long. Stewart had turned down sponsorship from Liggett and Myers Tobacco. The Six Shooter would be canceled after the June 24th, 1954 episode. Thirty-nine shows were produced. Parley B...

At network radio’s height, no dramatic show was more popular than CBS’ Lux Radio Theatre. Between 1936 and 1954 it never finished lower than eighth in the ratings, and it was radio’s top show between 1947 and 1952. Ken Carpenter announced. Radio’s best supporting talent, like Paula Winslowe, worked opposite Hollywood's biggest stars. Mondays at 9PM eastern was appointment radio, and CBS built the...

On Sunday June 13th, 1954 at 6PM Eastern, The American Forum of the Air signed on Mutual with a discussion on the 1954 midterm elections. The featured Senators were Republican Homer Ferguson of Michigan and Democrat Mike Monroney of Oklahoma. The two political parties had deep divides within on key issues. While many Republicans were conservative, they didn’t support Joseph McCarthy’s communist ra...

On June 6th, 1954 Jack Benny closed his broadcast for the end of the season. Jack was going to headline in Dallas. The show featured a semi-rare appearance from Mary Livingston. Although radio audiences were rapidly waning and Benny was a TV star as well, he kept his radio program going. Out of home listening was adding an additional forty percent to primetime radio audiences. That means Benny’s 8...

By June of 1954, the thirty-six year-old Elliott Lewis was producer/director of four shows and the star of two. His peers affectionately dubbed him “Mr. Radio.” Perhaps most prominently, he’d been producer and director of Suspense since the fall of 1950. Program sponsor Autolite preferred to keep its commercials humorous, feeling that the change of pace shocked the audience to attention. Each 30-m...

Originally broadcast as The Adventures of Helen and Mary, radio’s preeminent children’s show first took to the air on September 7th, 1929 over CBS. It became Let’s Pretend on March 24th, 1934. Hosted by “Uncle” Bill Adams, it was in many ways the brainchild of Nila Mack, who penned, produced, and directed each show. Ms Mack was born in 1891 in Kansas and became an ingenue on Broadway and in vaudev...

On June 4th, 1954 at 10PM, The Frank Edwards news program signed on from WOR in New York. During this month there were more than one-hundred-twenty major American cities with significant unemployment. The Secretary of Commerce officially announced the country was in a recession. Meanwhile, Vietnam was given technical independence within the French Union. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (DUH...

As Escape and shows like it were canceled, there were fewer opportunities for radio’s west-coast actors on network sustained programs. This episode, “An Ordinary Man” was written by Kathleen Hite and starred John Dehner and Virginia Gregg, with Tony Barrett, Edgar Barrier, and Harry Bartell. It aired on June 3rd, 1954. Escape would be canceled on September 25th. Gregg, Bartell, and Dehner would co...

By June 1954 network radio drama was facing huge sponsor disinterest. Shows canceled in the first half of the year included The Quiz Kids, Dr. Christian, Front Page Farrell, Bulldog Drummond, Rocky Fortune, Ozzie and Harriet, and The Six Shooter. ABC, CBS, Mutual, and NBC reduced ad sale charges for the sixth consecutive year. It was an attempt to offset TVs broadening market share. It didn’t work...