Breaking Walls

The eighth-annual Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Broadway Theatre were held at the Plaza Hotel’s Grand Ballroom on March 28th, 1954. Broadcast on radio by NBC, it was emceed by Ben Grauer and Faye Emerson. ____________ The entire post-dinner awards ceremony took thirty minutes. Some of the plays and musicals of note that season were Ondine, Kismet, Can-Can, The Teahouse of The August Mo...

By March of 1954 Bing Crosby’d been in the public eye for more than two decades. He had numerous hit records, and won an Oscar for best actor in Going My Way in 1944. On Radio, Bing helped usher in primetime transcription with Philco in 1946. Crosby had been on CBS radio since 1949 and sponsored by General Electric since 1952. He was reluctant to star in a regular TV show, fearing overexposure. Th...

In March of 1954, Escape was still airing on CBS. Although it was frequently dropped and moved around the network schedule, it was popular and cheap enough to consistently come back. During its heyday, Escape was produced and directed by William N. Robson and Harry Bartell was a frequently featured actor. Les Crutchfield often penned scripts for the series. Escape’s original assistant director was...

Often written by the just-heard E. Jack Neuman, the fourth actor to voice Johnny Dollar, John Lund, grabbed the role in November of 1952. Lund had starred with Olivia De Havilland in To Each His Own, Marlene Dietrich in A Foreign Affair, and Betty Hutton in The Perils of Pauline. In spite of radio’s falling ratings, in March of 1953, Wrigley’s gum signed on to sponsor the show. On Tuesdays at 9PM,...

It Pays To Be Married was a daytime game show in which married couples told stories of obstacles they overcame to build a healthier relationship. They were later quizzed for cash and prizes. Hosted by Jay Stewart, it first came to Mutual’s airwaves on September 28th, 1953. On March 8th, 1954 the celebrity guests were Phil Harris and Alice Faye. By 1954 Harris and Faye were national icons. After ye...

You Bet Your Life, conceived by John Guedel and hosted by comedian Groucho Marx, debuted over ABC’s airwaves on October 27th, 1947. Three couples were brought onstage to be interviewed and quizzed by Groucho. Each couple was given twenty dollars and told to bet as much as they dared risk on four questions from a category of their choosing. The money would double with each successive step. Couples...

As radio audiences left for TV, Elliott Lewis continued to champion radio as a stronger dramatic medium. On Thursday January 1st, 1953, he and wife Cathy, debuted a new dramatic anthology program over CBS. It was On Stage. On Stage was geared for adults, showcasing an eclectic array of scripts across multiple genres. To get the show off the ground, the Lewis’ tabbed some of the best writers in rad...

On March 6th, 1954, 1952’s Democrat Presidential nominee, Adlai Stevenson gave a dinner speech at the Florida DNC. In 1952 Stevenson was a heavy underdog against Dwight Eisenhower. He carried only nine states, but did get more than forty-four percent of the popular vote. He was quick to lash out at the McCarthy driven political state of affairs. There were many who feared the Red Scare would destr...

As the United States entered March 1954, U.S. officials announced a successful hydrogen bomb test, while four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire in the House of Representatives chamber. Five were wounded. On March 9th, Edward R. Murrow’s news team produced a CBS See It Now episode, “A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy." They used excerpts from McCarthy's own speeches to point out his contradict...

In Breaking Walls episode 124 we pick up our 1954 mini series in February. We’ll focus on radio programming and national news from that month. —————————— Highlights: • Radio Billings Are Down. Now What? • Dragnet—Still Going Strong • Lee Deforest and The Hallmark Hall of Fame • Americana • Jack Benny Turns 39? 40? 60? • Guest Star and The McCarthy News • The College Quiz Bowl • Mr and Mrs North •...

Well, that brings February to a close, but for many of these topics, we’ve only just begun. Next time on Breaking Walls, it’s March of 1954, and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s four-year anti-communist tirade begins to come to a head. —————————— The reading material used in today’s episode was: • On the Air — By John Dunning • Network Radio Ratings — by Jim Ramsburg As well as articles from • Broadcasti...

Airing on CBS since 1949, Edgar Bergen’s 1954 Sunday at 9:30PM eastern rating was 4.7, twelfth overall. His show was sponsored by Lanolin Plus. On February 28th, the celebrity guests were the husband-wife duo June Allyson and Dick Powell. In the fall, Bergen’s show would go back to sixty minutes. It would air for two more seasons before Bergen wrapped up his radio run on July 1st, 1956. Bergen did...

Stars over Hollywood broke one of radio's strongest prejudices: That Saturday daytime was a programming wasteland. When Paul Pierce, CBS production superintendent on the West Coast, announced plans to launch a star-packed dramatic series on Saturday morning, few observers gave it a chance. Getting movie stars to cooperate at 9:30 AM would be impossible, and no one would listen anyway. The stories...

During 1952 and 1953, the U.S. experienced an outbreak of roughly ninety-five thousand polio cases, with a death count of over forty-six hundred. Millions of dollars were invested in finding a vaccine. The first effective polio vaccine was developed in 1952 by Jonas Salk and a team at the University of Pittsburgh. On March 26th, 1953 Salk went on CBS radio to report the first round of successful t...

When Mr and Mrs North took to the air on Tuesday February 23rd at 8:30PM for CBS, it had radio’s sixth-highest overall rating. With a 6.1 it topped Dragnet, which aired in direct competition on NBC. Jerry and Pam North were average people who managed to solve murders. Jerry, played by Richard Denning, was a book publisher. Pam, played by Barbara Britton, was a housewife who loved cats, liked to pl...

Originating as a USO activity created by Canadian Don Reid for World War II soldiers, The College Quiz Bowl was developed into a radio show by Reid and John Moses. It debuted on NBC in the fall of 1953. Two teams of All-American Varsity students from different universities competed for prizes and recognition. On Sunday, February 21st, 1954 at 6PM eastern time, the ladies of Smith College defended...

In February of 1954, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy was touring the circuit, giving speeches entitled “Twenty Years of Treason.” He claimed that President Eisenhower didn’t want a whitewash government and the Democratic label was “stitched with the idiocy of Truman, rotted by the deceit of Acheson and corrupted by a Red slime of a White.” Indiana Senator William Jenner claimed democrats deliber...

In February of 1954, Jack Benny was in the midst of his sixth year on CBS, and his twenty-second in radio. Although his TV program was in the midst of its fourth season, his radio show was still airing in the familiar Sunday 7PM eastern time slot. It had a radio rating of 8.2, second-highest on the air. To many, he was simply the most famous comedian alive. February 14th, 1954 was Jack Benny’s rea...

During the 1953-54 season, NBC Chicago’s WMAQ and the Speech Department at Northwestern University, jointly broadcast a series of radio essays entitled Americana. Each episode explored a facet of American life or history and the characters who made it come alive. Hosted by Professor Martin Maloney, It followed the previous season’s The Meaning of America. The February 13th, 1954 episode was called...

The first voice you'll hear is that of Lee de Forest. The second is of Bill Froug. Producer/Director Bill Froug spent the early 1950s in charge of The Hallmark Hall of Fame. The show began in the 1940s as Radio Reader’s Digest before rebranding as The Hallmark Playhouse until 1953. With radio audiences leaving in droves for TV, the sponsor abruptly changed format. They brought in Lionel Barrymore...

When ABC radio took out a Broadcasting Magazine ad in 1954 touting their year-over-year sales growth, they juxtaposed theirs against the decline of the other three networks’ in the same period. It painted a bleak picture for the industry. In November of 1952, total network monthly advertising billing was fourteen million, four-hundred seventy-seven thousand dollars. The next year, advertising numb...

For those who wanted Breaking Walls episode 123 in the traditional format. ___________ In Breaking Walls episode 123 we open 2022 with a six-part mini-series on radio business and programming in 1954. We’ll begin with January, in a radio half-season that was for many, the end of the line. —————————— Highlights: • Ringing in the New Year with Fibber McGee and Molly • Gunsmoke’s Stage Holdup • Peopl...

Next time on Breaking Walls, we move into February and discuss polio, falling ratings points, and radio profit margins. ___________ The reading material used in today’s episode was: • The General: David Sarnoff & The Rise of the Communications Industry - by Kenneth Bilby • On the Air — By John Dunning • Network Radio Ratings — by Jim Ramsburg As well as articles from: • Broadcasting Magazine • LIF...

Back in July of 1935, head of RCA David Sarnoff asked friend and inventor Edwin Howard Armstrong to remove his experimental FM equipment from RCA’s Empire State Building Laboratory. RCA wanted to test its TV system. ___________ Armstrong saw FM as a revolutionary new communications service that would make AM obsolete. Sarnoff thought it an important advancement and wanted it to be TVs audio supple...

Amanda Randolph was born on September 2nd, 1896 in Louisville, Kentucky. Her father was a methodist minister and her mother a teacher, but she would find her calling in music, vaudeville, and eventually radio. ___________ A star by 1948, she led her own musical TV program for the DuMont network. It made her the first African-American woman with her own daytime TV show. ___________ Her sister Lilia...