Breaking Walls

This episode was originally released on 7/1/2018. While new episodes of Breaking Walls are on hiatus I'll be going back and posting the older episodes. ___________ In Breaking Walls episode 81, we spotlight the life and career of one of the twentieth century’s most famous comedians, Fred Allen. Amongst other comedians and entertainers, almost no one was beloved as much as him. His comedic feud wit...

This episode was originally released on 6/1/2018. While new episodes of Breaking Walls are on hiatus I'll be going back and posting the older episodes. ___________ Question? What do starlets Marlene Dietrich, Kay Thompson, Margaret Sullivan, and Loretta Young have in common? How about writers and directors Norman Corwin, Helen Deutsch, and Bill Spier. How about Danny Kaye, Mel Allen, Gerald Mohr,...

This episode was originally released on 5/1/2018. While new episodes of Breaking Walls are on hiatus I'll be going back and posting the older episodes. ___________ In Breaking Walls Episode 79, we present a detailed look at Orson Welles’ radio career through the end of 1941. Highlights: • Beginnings in Illinois and China — How they helped shape Orson • The Todd Seminary School — His first exposure...

This episode was originally released on 3/1/2018. While new episodes of Breaking Walls are on hiatus I'll be going back and posting the older episodes beginning with this episode on the birth of radio. —————————— In Breaking Walls Episode 77 we pick up our story on the history of American radio broadcasting, as a few ramshackle radio stations become large national networks, giving rise to an entir...

This episode was originally released on 2/15/2018. While new episodes of Breaking Walls are on hiatus I'll be going back and posting the older episodes. —————————— In Breaking Walls Episode 76, we pick up our story on the history of American dramatic radio after the sinking of the Titanic in April of 1912. The time between 1912 and 1922 saw three competing interests battle for control of the wirel...

This episode was originally released on 2/1/2018. While new episodes of Breaking Walls are on hiatus I'll be going back and posting the older episodes beginning with this episode on the birth of radio. —————————— Highlights: * Why the Blizzard of 1888 played such an important role in the need for wireless telegraphy * Who Was Heinrich Hertz? What experiment made him the father of Hertzian Waves? *...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers The February 17th, 1950 episode of Broadway is My Beat took Danny Clover to Greenwich Village. By the early 1950s, the sound effects men working in radio had begun to refine their craft to a fine art. In September of 1987 Jack Kruschen and Shirley Mitchell were guests of Jim Bohannon on his radio show. They remembered some of those...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers The February 10th, 1950 episode of Broadway Is My Beat took Danny Clover to the wrestling matches in search of a missing woman. At that time New York City’s top wrestling promoter was Roderick James "Jess" McMahon. The patriarch of the McMahon wrestling family, Jess McMahon spent several decades as a sports promoter of all kinds, in...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers As Broadway Is My Beat was taking to the air on February 3rd, 1950, snow was on the ground. Three inches had fallen on the 1st. That Friday, nuclear physicist Klaus Fuchs was arrested by agents of Scotland Yard. He was charged with providing American atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union. The next day, U.S. Army Lieutenant General...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers In November of 1949 Broadway is My Beat returned to the air on Saturday evenings. It remained there until late January of 1950. The show couldn’t find national sponsorship, though companies like Ford were buying single episode sponsorship to promote their products. Beginning with the February 3rd, 1950 episode called “The Lieutenant...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Network radio opened 1949 fresh off its fourteenth consecutive year of record earnings. Total network revenue exceeded Two-hundred-ten million dollars. Broadway Is My Beat first took to the air over CBS from New York on February 27th, 1949, It starred Anthony Ross and was directed by John Dietz. Dietz was a prolific radio man in the...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Well we’ve reached the end of our look at Yours Truly Johnny Dollar and New York City in January of 1956. It would be impossible to tell a complete story on either subject within one episode. For more info on the history of Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, please tune into Breaking Walls episode 102. As far as New York City goes, don’t wo...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Despite a loyal audience, by January of 1956 it was clear that Yours Truly Johnny Dollar was failing to attract any kind of national sponsorship. The road to would have been difficult. Airing at 8:15PM weeknights on CBS radio, it was up against CBS’s own TV schedule, with Burns and Allen broadcast at 8PM eastern time on Mondays, The...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Lawrence Dobkin played several roles in “The Todd Matter,” including Bill Powers. He was a longtime member of AFRA. Roberta Bailey-Goodwin remembered many of the actors that appeared with her father on Johnny Dollar. Although not in this particular Dollar episode, Virginia Gregg was an oft-featured character actress and close friend...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Production was done for these serial episodes of Yours Truly Johnny Dollar in a single day. Bob Bailey was paid three-hundred-dollars per week. Adjusted for inflation, a single week’s work on Dollar paid a little less than thirty-five-hundred dollars. Between October of 1955 and November of 1956, fifty-five serials would air. To pen...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers It’s 6PM on Wednesday, January 11th, 1956. I’m at Colbee’s Restaurant on the ground floor of the CBS headquarters at 485 Madison Avenue. I’m about to have a bite to eat with the man you just heard, Mandel Kramer. Yesterday at Edwards Air Force Base in California, U.S. Air Force First Lt. Barty R. Brooks died in the crash of a F-100...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers The man you just heard is Hans Conried. Famous for both his dramatic and comedic portrayals on both radio and TV, By January of 1956 he’d been involved in radio for two decades. Here he is on the February 24th, 1956 episode of Yours Truly Johnny Dollar. By early 1956, those still involved in dramatic radio had advanced the medium’s...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers The weather on Monday January 9th, 1956 warmed throughout the day. It hit forty degrees Fahrenheit by nightfall. The front cover of The New York Daily News featured a photo of patrolman Ray Cusack, who rescued many children from a fire in Hempstead, New York. Dwight Eisenhower was still undecided on whether or not to seek a second t...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers It’s a little after midnight on the morning of Monday January 9th. We’re at P.J. Clarke’s on the corner of 55th street and 3rd avenue, getting warm the best way we know how. The weather is nasty outside. It’s about fifteen degrees with freezing rain and gale force winds. Clarke’s is a bar from another time. It’s wonderfully trapped...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers It’s a cold, rainy Sunday evening on January 8th, 1956. We’re heading south on Riverside Drive in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. On the air is NBC’s Monitor with a New World Today discussion about the differences in American life in the past twenty years. The United States is changing. Psychiatry is on the rise as the cold war rages o...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers At a CBS radio meeting in September 1955 at 485 Madison Avenue, John Karole VP of Sales, predicted CBS’s time sold would be more than the other three networks combined. Radio affiliates were given a Segmented Selling Plan. The plan offered a five-minute segment for twenty-one hundred dollars. Frank Stanton, President of CBS, boasted...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers On the Sunday, December 31st, 1944 episode of The Jack Benny Program, it’s New Year’s Eve and Jack resolves to be friends with Fred Allen in 1945. For more information on Jack Benny in 1944, including how and why he changed sponsors, please tune into Breaking Walls Episode 151 which covers Benny’s 1944 in great detail.

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers At 9PM on Monday, December 25th, 1944, The Whistler, broadcast from KNX, went on the air over CBS’ regional West Coast Network. The Whistler’s narration acted as a modern version of the Greek chorus, omnisciently taunting the characters. The narrator proved so popular that it was adapted into eight film noirs by Columbia Pictures be...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers The General Mills sponsored Lone Ranger from WXYZ in Detroit first began airing on January 31st, 1933. The next year it became one of the cornerstone programs which led to the formation of the Mutual Broadcasting System. The show moved to the Blue Network in 1942 and would remain on the network after it became ABC in 1945. The Chris...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers At 4PM eastern time on Christmas Day, CBS broadcast the third annual Elgin watches Christmas party for the men and women in the Armed Forces, guest-starring Jack Benny, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Ginny Simms, and many others. It was hosted by Don Ameche and the announcer was Ken Carpenter. Don Ameche had been...