Ken Meyers interviews guest Martin Grams Jr.!
WBCA Podcasts
City Talk with Ken Meyer (Martin Grams Jr.)
- Hello again, everybody, and welcome to another edition of City Talk here on WBCA. Thanks to organizations like Radio Spirits and Radio Archives, the Art of Old Time Radio has not been lost. And it's also not been lost because of the considerable efforts of the gentleman that's joining us for a little while today, Martin Graham's Jr. And Martin, it's great to have you on. You are very accomplished for such a young man. - Well, thank you. Pleasure to be on the show. - Well, I appreciate it. Now, when I was growing up, old radio was still around. I was around when the last two programs, yours truly Johnny Dollar and Suspense, went off the air. But you weren't even born yet. What got you interested in all these radio and television programs? - Oh, well, basically exposure. There was audio cassettes available in stores, and I got some for Christmas from my grandmother, and I got hooked on them for some reason, which verifies how good they are because the youngster at the age of eight or nine gets hooked on old time radio just by listening to them, not even knowing at the time what old time radio was. Basically, it was just exposure. Sort of like what you would today, if you ask people why, young people, why they like Twilight Zone or I Love Lucy or Andy Griffith, it's because of reruns on TV. So I credit that and that still got me hooked. - Yep, when I was growing up, the Lone Ranger and Sergeant Preston and the Yukon were still on their heyday. So I know what you're talking about. Nick Carter was going strong and counterspy, and all those great shows were still on the air when I was growing up. And I didn't know any other entertainment. It was just something else. I can still remember the first radio show I ever got. So I know what that means. What, when and what made you decide to write your first book, however? - Well, I had bought a bunch of broadcast logs. At that time, no one really wrote books on old time radio per se, not the kind that I did. There were broadcast logs, and a log would be title, air date, maybe a celebrity or two episode number. That's about it, a one line listing. And I noticed there was some conflicting material for all the logs of suspense. Everyone had done their own research. So I decided to put together and do some research on my own to do one that would be more definitive. It expanded into a, I guess a high school report for class and it was like 30 some pages. And then it, I decided to flesh it out into a book. And little did I know that when I wrote the book, everyone, when I went to an old time radio convention and people were flipping through the book, their mind was blown. It was not a 20 page spiral bound broadcast log. It was a 500 page book with plot summaries and background and history of the series. And from there, people just asked, what's your next book? And I guess I just got hooked into doing the research. So that's what kind of led to what presently is now over 40 books on old time radio. - Wow, that's amazing. And especially a show like suspense that was on different days and had different formats like an hour format for a while. And I would guess that in talking about suspense, it's hey day was when it had guest stars from Hollywood and they had a bigger budget like Bob Hope and Rosemary Clooney and William Powell and William Bendix and all kinds of other people. Was that more entertaining for you to listen to than when they kind of cut their budget, so to speak? - Yeah, the interesting part about suspense is that it had different sponsors and at times sustaining which meant the station, the network forked up the bill and of course budget goes up and down based on those what I call seasons, like season three, season four. The directors had a choice of what kind of material once in a while the sponsors did. An example would be AutoLite who said that after the first year, which was more horror, they brought in a different director and then said we want more true crime stories which was more to Elliot Lewis's choice choosing which of course led to a spin off called crime classics. And I found some people like Anthony Ellis like science fiction, so he'd do more Ray Bradbury story. So it varied back and forth and I think that's what makes the show just as unique. If you were taken by listening to Frank Sinatra being a psychopath in '45 or Bill Harrison, Alice Bay in a great drama around '51 trying to discuss by an accidental shooting that kills a kid and facing a lunch mob. And then you get these science fiction outer space aliens and monsters stories of the late 50s. There's such a diversity that if you listen to four or five at random, there's bound to be one that's gonna grab you and you wanna keep listening to more. - They also did repeats of some of the shows. The first show I got for instance was the very first broadcast of "Sorry Wrong Number" with Agnes Morehead. And if my information is correct, it was originally called "Death Overheard Speaking". Is that right? - Yes, something along that lines. And a lot of titles for scripts were done that way where the scriptwriter would create a title just to submit it. They didn't care what the title was gonna be because they just get paid for it. And sometimes during rehearsal or for whatever reason, there might be a more catchy or title or something less generic. And then the producer or director would make an adjustment or alteration to it, not uncommon. And so I'd say probably about one third of the episodes. If you do a digging far enough, you can easily find what the original title was gonna be before the broadcast title. - Now Agnes Morehead was very popular on suspense. And that one show, "The Sorry Wrong Number" show was done at least six or seven times, I believe. - Correct, seven times original. And then the eighth time, which was the last one, was a recording of the seventh slightly edited down for more commercial time and a short smaller time slot from 30 to 25 minutes. There was also, she did technically an eighth rendition because there was an LP record, which she did and recorded specifically for. She wanted to do the movie, but was disappointed when the producer believed it was Hal Wallace wanted Barbara Stanwick to play the role, 'cause he felt Stanwick had a bigger name. And then when they did a TV version in '55, Stanwick, sorry, Morehead wanted to do it again. But the producers didn't want her, they wanted Shelly Winters, 'cause again, she was a bigger name. So I think Agnes Morehead loved doing the radio rendition, but really wanted to do a screen rendition at one point. - I think two of the most terrifying broadcasts I've ever heard on suspense with Agnes Morehead was that one, of course. And another one that she did later on in the late '50s called Don't Call Me Mother. - Yeah, that's it, that's one of those underrated episodes. She did one in '49 called The Trap, which I thought was fantastic, where she's an old lady spinster in her house and she keeps thinking somebody's hiding in her house, which of course sounds ludicrous until stuff is being delivered to her house like airline tickets and a brand new empty suitcase. And halfway through the episode, she starts screaming in her empty house, I know you're living in my house, I know you're here somewhere, et cetera. And all she hears is in the distance, somebody whispering a low hop farewell to the, and then you realize it's not in her head. And that was just so creepy. - Wow, I gotta listen to that one, I haven't heard that. I gotta catch up on that one. (chuckling) It's just amazing the plots that they could come up with. And in the beginning, they used to use, when Romer Weins was involved, Joseph Kearns, who did a lot of old-time radio, was as he put it, "The Man in Black." - Yeah, that was standard for a lot of horror anthologies in that time. In the 1930s, you had The Witch's Tale, The Hermit's Cave, you had The Shadow as a creepy narrator for spooky stories, and even children's stories, there was always Mother, Hubbard, and so on, to have a narrator as a host, that way it could bridge all the stories to the show wasn't just a generic anthology. Anybody can say such and such mystery hour, or such and such mystery time, or such and such detective hour. So when they did suspense, to have the quote unquote, "The Man in Black" might be a bit generic by that point, but I think every option of having somebody as a spooky narrator, or even an omnipresent one, I could see that. So it worked out well, but I think eventually Romer Weins dropped that around the spring of '45 and just said, "We don't need the narrator." - Yeah, I think you're right. Now, another show that had a narrator, actually it had two different ones, and one of them lasted a long time, was the show "Innersank" them, with Edward Raymond Johnson and Paul McGrath took over from him when he didn't do it anymore. - Correct, yeah, Raymond Edward Johnson went into the service to serve his country, so they needed to get somebody to come in and fill in form for a spell. And of course, I think Barry Kroger did the one week, and then the next episode, Paul McGrath took over, but Barry Kroger is in the supporting cast. I think he was on call to still be a host if they hadn't found a permanent one by then, 'cause I don't think Kroger was meant to be a permanent new host. Raymond Edward Johnson was referred to as Raymond on the show, so he was a personality and received a ton of fan mail. When they brought in Paul McGrath, they didn't call him Raymond. In fact, they don't even have a name for him. - Right. - He's just a creepy host, 'cause they couldn't use the name. And then after the war, which was probably about a year or so later, Raymond Edward Johnson came back and he got an agent because behind the scenes, Raymond Brown hated dealing with agents because it jacked the price up, 'cause agents get a piece of the action. And said, "No, I'm not gonna deal with agents." And in reality also, Raymond Edward Johnson and the director, Raymond Brown did not get along well. So it was one of those scenarios where Raymond Edward Johnson figured, "All right, I'll go somewhere else. It's not like I need a weekly gig when there's other shows." So it never hurt either party. - Was Raymond Brown difficult to work with and for from what you were able to find out? - No, apparently he was easy. Raymond Brown had a method of speed. He figured if they really knew their craft, they don't have to do more than one or two rehearsals, which was almost unheard of for network broadcasts. And what I mean by that is, generally there'd be a sit-down read-through at the table, then they'd do a rehearsal, then they would do an actual dress rehearsal to polish everything. I said, "Sometimes they would do almost four rehearsals before the broadcast." Hyman Brown brought him in and they just did a quick rehearsal right off the bat and then did a permanent one. So he was able at one point to do, direct and produce 32 different programs in one week. - Whoa, that's amazing. It's absolutely amazing. One of the most terrifying inner sanctums I can remember off the top of my head, was one called "Beyond the Grave." From 1950 and it had Mason Adams in it, who was absolutely terrific. And he kept getting these phone calls that they thought he was guilty of a murder, but they murdering his wife, but they couldn't prove it. So they somehow rigged it so that he'd get these phone calls that would say, "You have four more hours to live." And I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I found inner sanctum to be the earliest ones. If you read the radio scripts, we're really horror and then it became more mystery. And I think practically about eight of the 10 years it was on the air. It really was just creepy murder mysteries where a man's conscience was bothering him, whether he was the killer or not. And that was always a formula that eventually got old by 1950, '51. Sadly though, we don't have many recordings so we can relish everyone we have, but if we did have every recording, I think by 1950 we'd be sitting there going, "Yeah, I think we've heard this before. "It's just instead of..." And they did. They recycled the scripts by 1915. Instead of a man, it was a woman. Yeah, it was the protagonist and so on. They said they would tweak tiny things, but it was the same scripts they were recycling. - There were some great actors and actresses in that era. I'm thinking precisely of people like Manny Kramer, Mercedes McCainbridge, and one of the best ones, and I think he was used a lot on Intersanctum was Larry Haynes. - Yeah, they were all New York actors. So if you're familiar with New York productions versus Hollywood productions, you'd recognize the same voices after a while on all those New York productions. The funny part is you can listen to a show say Mr. Chameleon or Mr. King. And just listening to the supporting cast, you can already tell if it's from New York or not 'cause you'd recognize Larry Haynes and Mercedes McCainbridge and so on. I always found Mercedes McCainbridge to be one of the very few that I cannot catch the voice every time. Sometimes she'd use a certain voice and I go up. That's Mercedes McCainbridge. And then other times she'd use a voice and I never realized 'til they'd do the closing credits that that was her. - Come to think of it. I think it's her voice that called Mason Adams and said, "You have three more hours to live." - Yeah, she said once that whenever she needed pocket money or needed some money 'cause a lot of those New York actors did stage in New York. So they were free during the day to do the rehearsals, do a broadcast and then go back to doing the stage work. So it supplemented income 'cause you couldn't always really make a living doing stage work. And she said she recalled, Mercedes McCainbridge recalled contacting Hyman Brown on the phone and says, "Hey, I'm coming on to enter Sanctum tomorrow." And he'd go, "I don't have a role for you. I already cast it." She goes, "Well, I'll be an elevator boy. I need the money. I'm coming in." And she'd hang out there and he'd have to sit there and figure out what role she could get and squeeze her in. - Oh, wow. I interviewed her once and I mean, this is a completely awful radio but she played the voice of the demon in the exorcist. And she told me the only reason she got that role was because she was a heavy smoker and it made her voice deeper. - Yeah, there was also some interesting background to that. They never credit her name in the closing credits because they didn't want the voice of the demon to be revealed more like the old, they never told you who was Frankenstein and had a question mark on the closing credits and the old Frankenstein with Karloff. And somewhere along, she was okay with it until the roles and the guilds had some revised policies and because she wasn't in the closing credits, she stopped getting royalty checks. So then she had to go back to the producers that you need to change the closing credits moving forward and he said, "Oh, no, I don't have to." And she goes, "Oh, you wanna play that game." So then she sued them and now if you watch the movie, she's credited in the closing credits. - Yeah, that was quite a movie. I've had people say they've kept the most, the best horror movie of all time. I don't know if that's necessarily true but it comes pretty close. - Yeah, it's a pretty good one. - Yeah. All right, let's talk about the shadow and who knows what evil lurked in the hearts of men way back then. - Margo did. - Yeah, there were a couple different Margo's, there were a couple different shadows. One of the first ones that I never really cared for actually, I thought the best one was Brett Morrison but one of the early, early ones was Orson Wells. - Yes, Frank Reddick did the first. He was the spooky narrator on the program for a few years. Then when they brought it back, they made him a crime fighter like similar to the pulps. So they brought in Orson Wells who at that time was looking for, I mean, you could hear him uncredited on the early cavalcade of America's but he needed the money to fund the Mercury theater productions 'cause he was co-producer with John Hausmann. He was a shadow and sometimes the lore was, legend was that he would never go in and do rehearsals. He'd just walk in, grab his script and start right there while it was live. But in reality, he at the very least was looking over the script and knew exactly his roles and how to perform it in advance while he was at the theater. And he was always there before they went on the air. If you listen to the Orson Wells recordings in the beginning and closure where you hear the sound with the sinister smirk and then who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men, that's actually Frank Reddick from '30s who had to record the voice because Wells never could do that voice perfectly and they wanted to connect it to the prior shadow recordings, a shadow broadcast that people were used to hearing him as a spooky narrator. So Wells did it and then of course after that, Bill John Stone and John Archer and Steve Cortley and then Brett Morrison became the big one for the rest of the remaining of the run. - Yeah, I loved him. I thought he was, he had that sinister laugh that as good as I thought Bill John Stone was, he could not have compared to Brett Morrison. At least I thought so. - I'm one for story as well as production and I find Orson Wells' ears were more pulp feel and then you get to Bill John Stone where you've got mad scientists and the dead coming back to life and a little bit of variety, even including street murder mysteries. And then by the time you get to Brett Morrison, they seem to be almost more mystery than anything and it's very rarely that they would actually have like a real werewolf or a witch. It was more of somebody masquerading at best. You'd have a lunatic who'd be going or who escaped an asylum and is killing people going by nursery rhymes. - Oh, yeah. - It was fun, but it's like the variety is what makes that show even after 260-some episode recordings out there, you still wanna hear more. - Yep, and again, Agnes Morehead was in that show in the early years. - Yep, Brett and she was with Orson Wells. She was more of a Mary to Boston Blackie-type character in the pulp magazines. - So knowing how late you got started into radio, who was some of the, I mean, first person I ever got to talk to was Julie Stevens, who played Helen Trent. But who were some of the people that when you first got started that you were able to actually talk to and get to know? - I never got to know any of them personally. I always thought I was intruding. Usually I'd write a letter, nowadays would be an email. Nowadays, it's a message through Facebook. You'd be surprised so you can track down on Facebook and a heartbeat. It's like forget writing letters these days. Basically, I just contact them, tell them, doing a book on it. We'd like to interview them for a brief spell. With their convenience, I can even do it by email. Back then it was by phone, not only 'cause emails was just barely coming into existence. I remember Roddy McDowell being the first person to talk to 'cause he did a suspense broadcast and how enamored he was to be able to work with Jeanette Nolan and he said he was blown away during rehearsals and here he is. So he had never worked with her before and he realized, "Oh my goodness, this woman can act." And he said, "I gotta learn from her." I then interviewed sound men, directors, writers, producers. I mean, I remember I talked to Ray Bradbury 'cause his stories were done on suspense and very nice guy. I probably interviewed about 200 people for the book just to get behind the scenes stories and details. I even interviewed Lucille Wallop, who, before that, when she was an earlier married name, was Lucille Fletcher, who wrote "Sorry Wrong" now. - "Sorry Wrong" number, yup. - They gave great little stories and stuff and then from there, it was like for each book I was documenting. I will tell you now it's gotten to a point where I rarely contact anybody because very few people are around and if I track down family relatives, I seem to know more than they do. So it's kind of complex and tricky because to be honest, everyone who did an interview with anyone who worked in radio back then now seems to be far more treasured because that might be all that we have left to compare and consult. - You know, one of the people that I never got to interview and I even had his phone member and I regret it to this day because he was in just about everything in radio and television was John Dainer. - Yes, I never got to interview him but I know John Dunning did and there's a recorded interview and Dainer was coughing, he said he had emphysema or something and so every so often he'd go off the phone for a sec, cough and come right back, when you could hear him coughing. He talked about being an animator at Disney Studios before going into acting at rate on radio. He did the owl sequences in Bambi, some of the alligators and hippo sequence in Fantasia, some Donald Duck cartoons. So he was an accomplished animator and then he talked about doing radio and so on and two weeks later he passed away it turns out he had something far worse than emphysema and he didn't know it. So case in point where sometimes when we do these interviews we got to either get them published or get the recordings available. So it's what preserves our legacy. - Yeah, he seemed like he would have been a great one. The only thing I've ever heard him close to an interview is there is a great documentary that a gentleman named John Hickman did on gun smoke and he's in part of that and he's interviewed and he was just fascinating to talk about how have gun or travel got started and his different roles in gun smoke. I even remember him as a judge in a Perry Mason broadcast on television. - We watch a lot of old TV and I don't think a month goes by that at least we're seeing one or two times where whether it be the rifleman, the love boat or a mission impossible and we look up and go, - Oh, there's John Dainer. - Yeah, yeah. - I will tell you that Suzanne, the Barabbas, they co-wrote the book on gun smoke, the radio TV. They focused more on TV than anything. It's more of an episode guy but they had contacted Harley Bear and people who were still around who had done radio for gun smoke and they contacted Conrad and Conrad said, "Oh, no, no, no, no." That was by the back of that. No one really cares about it, book, et cetera. And even Harley Bear gave them his phone number and said, "Tell him, look how he has to call you and talk to you." The book got published. They sent a complimentary copy to William Conrad anyway and the author said Conrad called them on the phone and apologized and said, "I did not realize this is what you were doing." He says, "You know, I do newspaper interviews and I see the articles." And he goes, "When you say you're doing a book, I had no concept until I see this. I apologize. I should have given you whatever info you needed." And they said, "Well, let's schedule a time so we can do an interview. At least we can get your memories and recollections of being on the show." He said, "Well, well, they never did get that interview." Oh, that's true. You know what? I contacted Conrad myself and he acted like he had no interest at all, kind of like Jack Benny. These guys, I got the impression that they didn't want to discuss the past. They just wanted to talk about what they're doing now. Some of them do that. It's their way of staying young and it's kind of like looking at old photographs. You know, if you gain weight or lost weight and you look at photographs from 10 years ago or 20 years ago and someone wants to talk to you about it, you kind of want to just brush it aside and say, "Oh, I was back then. No, no, no." So I can see their point of view at times. The trick is when you want to get an interview out of them I have found is generally to appeal to by sending them a copy. Like for me, I send them a copy of my book and to give them an idea of this is what I do. And then that usually convinces them, but also when they hesitate, I usually tell them the Ingrid Bergman story. And the story is that she's in the kitchen making breakfast one morning and her daughter is at the kitchen table. Teenage daughter getting ready to go to high school finishing breakfast and she finds an envelope on the table among the mail and she says, "Mom, there's a publishing company. "They want to publish your memoirs. "You're going to write them, right?" And Ingrid Bergman, who had all her children out of wedlock, said, "No, no, no, no, my life is my own. "No, no, no, no, no, no one needs to know." And the daughter sat there and said, "Look at her mom's straight face." He said, "Mom, if I don't hear it from your words, "I'm going to hear it from others." And went off to go to school. And Ingrid Bergman said later that afternoon, she sat in front of a typewriter with a cup of hot tea and typed chapter one. And so when I tell that to a lot of them, they kind of realize, "Yeah, I think it might want to be better in my words "than someone else's." In other words, it's going to be written. He might as well get involved. - One of the things I'll always remember in my life, when I worked at WBZ Radio in Boston, we did a whole weekend of old time radio live down on the Cape. And we got the whole Jack Benny cast, except of course, for Jack and Mary. But we had Don Wilson, we had Frank Nelson, we had Dennis Day, and we had Mel Blank, we had the Fred Allen cast, and they were just so great to work with and enjoyed doing this stuff over again and being in front of an audience. They loved it. - Oh yeah, and even you go to the old time radio conventions, and you can clearly see that a lot of them loved coming back year after year on their own dime. Raymond Edward Johnson, he did one show, came in and did a little one-man drama on stage for 15 minutes, standing ovations, tears down his cheeks. He had multiple sclerosis. And even towards the end, years later, they were bringing him in at his request and at his expense, he was lying on a hospital bed, and they were bringing him in, lowering the microphone so he could still do a one-man performance on stage because he wanted to. - Yes, I remember, I was at some of those conventions. Jay Hickerson in New Jersey did some of those. And I remember that specifically, as a matter of fact, I was there then. - Yeah, oh, and he was a great guest. He gave stories and was very candid. It was always nice to have friends of old time radio convention. It was probably one of the best radio gatherings. And I think they brought in at one point, they were bringing in about 800 people on a weekend who were just fans of old time radio meeting their stars and idols. And in many cases, they were supporting cast members that they had heard the names, but never really knew. And after that, they got a deeper appreciation. So now when you mention Peggy Weber or Parley Bear, they know who those people were. Where normally today, youngster would go, okay, I hear Peggy Weber, but who is she? All you can say is, oh, she did a bunch of radio. - Yeah, a bunch of it, like, for years and years. And I always thought just went out of my head. They always did recreations. - Oh, I know. A name that you might not associate, but know the voice when you hear it, was Harry Bartell. - Yes, nice guy. He did a lot of TV and radio and sometimes supporting roles in movies. Always had a recollection or memory for almost every single thing that he ever did. Whether it was, if you mentioned Dragnet, he had seven or eight stories. If you mentioned, even a TV appearance on "Have Gone with Travel," he had a story of how he injured his foot well, 'cause there was a rock on the ground and he jumped off the balcony and didn't realize there was a rock. His memory was sharp and keen all the way to the very end. - You know, it's funny you say that because I just finished, I know it's a little late, but I just finished reading the book by Michael Hayden, my name's Friday. And there's a lot of stuff in there about Jack Webb and Harry Bartell and some of the actors that Jack Webb didn't want to use for one reason or another, like a Larry Dopkins who's in loads of stuff. But he was ever on Dragnet. - Yeah, that's a great book on Dragnet. In fact, I think that's about the only book on Dragnet. Mike found a bunch of materials, a friend of mine. He's actually presently president of the Metro Washington Old Time Radio Club. And I think he's done, almost done serving his year, so he's passing it on to the next person. And I asked him about a couple of years ago, you're gonna update your Dragnet book 'cause there's a ton more material. And his statement was that the contract with the publishing house kind of maintains the rights to be able to do the next Dragnet book and then the publishing house closed down. So now he's kind of in limbo because he can and can't do something he would like to do. So regrettably, all you can do is magazine articles on the subject. So we're to presently a couple of us are trying to figure out a way to get around it so we can get a book published that's even more expanded more detailed regarding Dragnet and get his involvement. So we're waiting for him to be done serving his time for the Old Time Radio Club so his time is more free to do at that kind of project. So hopefully we'll be able to get an expanded one 'cause that one's out of print now and hard to find too. - Yeah, well, I read it on an outfit called Bookshare. And I mean, I love the show and I'm sure everybody that's listening will remember the appearance that Jack Webb made on the Johnny Carson show when they did kind of a comedy spoof on Dragnet way back in 1968, it was hysterical. I thought it was great. - Yeah, and Mike's done a lot of research. His recent book on Dean Martin Jerry Lewis came out. He did one on Superman, the radio show and those are about as thorough as they get. On my bookshelf, I have probably six, 700 books on Old Time Radio and there's books like that what Mike does and what I try to do. And they're about as thorough as they get on those subjects so you never have to have any other book on the same subject. - It's nice to know as I said in the beginning that old radio and the interest in it is still there and still alive because basically it's, when you listen to radio now, you know that it's a lost chart. It's just not around anymore. I mean, it's around but barely like XM radio and stuff like that. - Yeah, the internet today actually gives a big wider platform and more exposure. I always thought young kids, this is an opportunity to get them exposed to Old Time Radio like they would be exposed, like I was exposed instead of audio cassettes, just do it as podcasts. 'Cause kids, they listen to all these podcasts like guest talks and radio shows. And so I thought this is an opportunity but I've seen very little momentum in trying to put old time radio in front of the kids even if it's like the best of like sorry, wrong number and say, here listen to this, let me know what you think of this. And if they really get hooked, then you give them the next best one. And after you get them five or six of them, I'm pretty certain they would become hooked. Granted, there's millions of them all over the internet now but they just don't know what to look and where to look to find them. - Plenty of stuff on YouTube, I'll tell you that. My stepson and stepdaughter, when I first got to know them and the lady that I eventually married, we used to sit around the fireplace at night and listen to a suspense and they loved it, absolutely loved it. And I like it because you can use your imagination and nobody can tell you you're wrong because they don't know what someone so looked like. They don't know what Jack Benny's vault actually looked like. They don't know what Matt Dillon actually looked like on radio except by listening to his voice. They could form their own image and I like that, loved it. - I know at conventions, there's a lot of people who still do reenactments up on stage or recreations if they can of some old radio shows but there's one in particular held every June for people who like horror films. Now it's catered to Boris Karloff Bela Lugosi horror films, not today's horror movies. So as a result, around midnight or get right before midnight, one night during that, every year during that convention, they dim the lights down like almost all the way but kissing no one trips over and they play an old horror, old time radio broadcast and they'll introduce and talk about it for two or three minutes. And I got to tell you, that is still popular. When I say popular, I mean, there's probably 200 people in there and these are not people who go to old time radio conventions and they like to hear an old horror drama at around 1130, 1145 once a year in a darkened room. So it's amazing. And those are people who paid admission to go in there and see that and listen to it. - Now you host a gathering yourself, do you not? - Correct, every year in September, although this year it's in August 'cause the schedule's got funky. We do the Mid-Atlantic nostalgia convention and a large crew of a staff volunteer and I put it on. We bring in about 4,000 people on a weekend, fills both floors of the hotel. 200 vendors selling old time radio, vintage movie posters, lobby cards, toys, collectibles, board games, stuff like that. We bring in a little more than a dozen Hollywood celebrities. Usually one or two who did old time radio. We do radio and dramas on stage. We have slideshow seminars and a lot of them are old time, about old time radio. Usually historians who are revealing what they recently discovered in archeological diggings. An example would be like the Whistler. The last time we had our convention, there were two historians who discovered that the Whistler was actually being broadcast, not out of New York and Hollywood with New York and Hollywood actors, but there was a third run coming out of Chicago with Chicago actors. And they were giving details about the discovery because there were some recordings that were throwing them for a loop like, "Who the heck is playing this Whistler in this recording? When did this one air? This broadcast date don't match." And then they discovered it was coming out of Chicago. So they did that little history, but it's basically a three day film festival. And it's all, there's, I'd say one third of it's catered to old time radio and old time radio fans love it because with the conventions solely fixed on old time radio, pretty much gone by the wayside by now, we've been able to keep the torch going. - Yeah, it's funny you mentioned the Whistler 'cause I seem to recall hearing somewhere, maybe it was the first broadcast that Gail Gordon was an aerator. Does that bring a bell with you at all? - Yeah, he was for a very, very, very short time in California. And it's not uncommon. Sometimes actors go on vacation, sometimes they get busy with filming the movie and they're gonna be unavailable. Depends on the errors too 'cause by the 50s, they were starting to record, it was almost becoming industry standard to record them in advance. So it was at the convenience of the cast versus having to be there and do it live. So I mean, even if you listen to suspense, Joseph Kearns was never the man in black for every episode. You had Ted Reinhardt doing it for a couple of times. You had Barry Kroger playing the role of the man in black for a few times. - Hello, Wilcox. - Yeah, he was an aerator. I actually was a spokesperson for the program for one of the sponsors. - Yeah, auto light, yep, yep, auto light and also with Fiverr McGee and Molly. I should ask you this off the air, but can you get in touch with people like a Gloria McMillan or Michael Hayden, for instance? I wonder if Hayden would do an interview. - Oh yeah, he would. I can send you the email, just send an email to remind me. I'll send you his email or I'll just carve and copy it straight to him. So then you've got his info. These actors and all historians, there's a plenty of historians. They're always willing to sit there and talk about the stuff that they've discovered, where they dig, how they dig it, what they find. There's one I know he practically lives at the Library of Congress five days. He hasn't the last year for obvious reasons, but he's waiting for me to reopen, but just to go through, he does nothing, but goes through microfilm and box is constant and he's just documenting everything and anything that no one's documenting, even if you've never heard of the radio program before. - Yeah, if you could send me away to either a phone number, send me a phone number or a way to get in touch with Hayden, I would, 'cause I love that dragnet book too. I thought it was a great book. And according to the book, Webb wrote a book called The Badge, where he went along on police rides. - Yeah, and I don't know, Mike would know more about that. A lot of times the people never really wrote the books themselves, sometimes that's ghost written. So I would check with Mike to find out if he was lending his name to it or if it was a memoirs. A lot of times it could be, it was also a scenario where say Jack Webb would talk to somebody for over the phone or sit down as an interview for two, three, four hours once or twice a week for two or three weeks. And someone else wrote the book and it was easier because Webb was just too busy putting together a show every week. - Yeah, it's funny, I can remember an interview that he did when he was a guest with Art Linkletter on Art Linkletter's house party. And Linkletter asked him, he said, "Have you been on a lot of police rides?" And Webb said, "Yes." And Linkletter said, "How did you like them?" And he said, "They were terrifying." So, it's a great, now you wrote some books on television as well. - Oh yes, did some for the Time Tunnel, did one on the Twilight Zone, which won a lot of Best Book of the Year Awards, surprisingly. - Wow. - Including awards I never knew existed. Did one on Half Gun Will Travel, which also was done on radio. I led three lives, TV show I've always been fondly enjoying. Yeah, I've just always done it. I prefer to do books on old time radio and the majority of what I have written is about old time radio shows. I prefer just to take one show and massively do research and somewhere along the line, I've realized I have so much material, it's gonna be an 800 page book like I did for The Shadow or The Green Hornet. And with all the archives and documents and tracking down family relatives. An example would be for The Green Hornet, when we were going through George W. Trendle's paperwork, we found conception sketches of what the Hornet mask would look like because around 38, he licensed the character for two cliffhanger serials for Universal Studios. And Fran Stryker, who co-created the program, told Trendle, "Well, they wanna know what the mask looks like. "You know, I've always been saying he wears a mask, "I don't say exactly what kind." So they started doing conception sketches so they can send it to Universal. And 'cause until then there really was none, not even a conception sketch for collectibles and stuff. So it was a scenario where I was going through them and if someone had sent me these conception sketches, I would have been laughing my butt off saying, "That is so ludicrously stupid, some of these." No, this is not it. But being that it was in George W. Trendle's archives, it was legit. So we scanned them and put them in the book. So there's always interesting oddities if you dig far enough and go to the sources. And none of this stuff's a course on the internet. You have to really do the legwork. It's amazing what you can find. And I think I always make the fans happy when they find stuff like that and oh, look at this, you know? - Yeah. - Now, when we celebrated at BZR 50th anniversary, we had, and I can't remember the gentleman's name now, but we had one of the actors who was one of the green hornets. And I think one of the early ones was Al Hodge, who eventually played Captain Video on television. - Correct, yeah. In fact, when they were talking about possibly doing a TV version at the time, he wanted to do that one as well, figuring he could double his money 'cause Captain Video was quite cheap. I think the budget was 25 bucks an episode. And he wanted to do the rate of the TV version and Trendle was like, well, I don't know, can you do it for less? (laughing) The business end and the production end is quite entertaining. I tend to say that the recordings are fascinating to listen to, but equally, if not more fascinating is the history behind the scenes. - Oh, absolutely. In fact, you've just written, as I understand it, a book on, or a couple of books are gonna be written on the Lone Ranger from radio and television. - Correct, we wrote four books. The books two, three, and four are kind of in rough draft, so there's a little bit of work to be done. The first one is done in at the last of the proof readers' hands. They always polish it to make me look like an English professor. (laughing) And so in the next month, it's gonna go to the graphic designer, and then probably a month or two later, it'll be indexed, and then uploaded to the print-on-demand system where people can get a copy. It'll be another 800-page book, but there was so much material on the Lone Ranger that I've said we cannot confide it to one book, especially when, if you think about it, when you put a plot summary for the episodes, and there was 32, 3400 radio broadcasts at three episodes of page, you'd do an 800-page book just as an episode guide alone. (laughing) So we decided to break it up, and the one that gets published next year is called the Lone Ranger, The Early Years, 1933 to 1937. And the reason we chose the first five years for the first book is because they never started recording the episodes until February of '38 on a regular basis. There was a business decision to get it syndicated. Up until then, it was just live. So most people know very little, if anything, of the first five years, and there is a totally different rendition of The Ranger, and the early years he was much darker, laughing at danger, Lone Ranger, gunning down Mexicans, shooting the villains, had a little bit of romance, played the guitar and sang. There's different versions that they played around with until they settled on the type of Ranger we are familiar with. So we decided just to document the first five years in its entirety with scans of historical documents and archival materials to verify and back up the facts. And then hopefully every two or three years, we'll get another volume out with the next five years and continue that route, just a matter of just getting those polished. - You know, it's funny. I've heard bits of those early recordings, especially the opening, and they just sounded pretty bad. I mean, those gunshots, oh my God. When I grew up, it was Brace Beamer and Fred Foy and all that, and some of that stuff was just bad. It was bad, no other way to put it. - Oh yeah, they took out, in the early days, they would actually, for like horse hooves, they'd actually beat their chests. And by the time they got to '38, at least they were doing coconut shells. And then I always say by 1948, they got the production polished. And an example was by then, they had morphed to using plungers and three different types of gravel and a particular trough that they had set up, where it would be everything from sand to rocks to little bits of gravel. And so they literally got it to perfection. Bullet shot, red shots actually had ricochets. You could almost smell the gunpowder. But in the early years, they just took a roller and smacked a box or something, and that was the gunshots. - That's funny because I remember talking to an engineer, I think his name was Frank Camanita, out of special recordings in Detroit. And I commented to him about how good the sound effects was. And his remark to me was, yeah, you could actually see the moonshine at night. (laughing) So, I kind of like that. In all your research, what, if any, is one thing that surprised you that you never knew or never thought was possible? - You know, I get asked that a few times. I find almost every show I do research or something that's kind of almost jaw-dropping. And when I say jaw-dropping as in, when I interview the family, I discover, oh yeah, father not only started and created in that radio show, but he ran a nudist camp off the side for a few years of business venture and things like that. I rarely put any of that material in a book. That's the very, very few .001% of information I never put in the books because it really takes away from what the books are meant to be. But I'd say if anything that was the biggest was probably when I did a book on truth or consequences. Bob Barker wrote the forward, but it was really primarily on the radio show. And almost everyone, whenever I do research, I will find a skeleton or two. It's not that difficult if you dig far enough. And you do real, real research. And it's amazing, but for Ralph Edwards, who created truth or consequences and hosted it, I guess my big surprise was there is no skeletons. He truly was a patron saint. And he's probably the first person in maybe over 20 years and 40 some books that I have never found a skeleton in the closet. And so if anyone ever says, well, you know, you know, someone mentions Aussie Nelson, and I can tell you a couple of things that make your jaw drop. Someone says, Jack Webb, I could tell you a couple of things and you'd laugh your butt off. Someone says, Ralph Edwards, and all I can say is patron saint. - Hmm, interesting. I had a chance to meet him as a matter of fact, when they were promoting the People's Court, which he was responsible for starting. And of course he here in Boston is known primarily for helping set up the Jimmy Fund. And I have one truth or consequences, radio broadcast where they did kind of, this is your life episode. It was a Christmas show done in 1947 where they honored a gentleman who was in the hospital and they switched to his hometown and interviewed everybody and they sang Christmas curls and all that. It was very heartwarming. - Oh, yes. That's probably like one of the quintessential broadcast that I always tell people they should listen to. I did a write up on my blog, which is excerpts from my book and I had pictures of him and what it looked like when he was holding a transcription disc in the 80s when he was still alive and they tracked them down. As for the Jimmy Fund, that was one of three or four different charities that when Ralph Edwards trying to avoid lottery laws would have asked people to donate money to enter a contest like the Walking Man Contest with Jack Benny. And it turns out each one was actually helping to fund the startup for a charity, Jimmy Fund being one of them. Another one, believe it or not, and you can credit Ralph Edwards for raising the funds was for the American Heart Association. - Ah, yeah, he was quite a gentleman. We had him on the phone as a matter of fact in the early 70s and then getting a chance to meet him when he came to promote the People's Court was really, I look back on some of that stuff and it seems like it's not possible because I mean, they were just such great people, just such great people. And what else can I say? Listen, I want to thank you for taking some time to come on and do this program. If you can hold on a minute when we get finished, I'd appreciate that. But listen, good luck to you. You're quite a remarkable young man and I'll tell you a great interview. I could talk to you for hours and hours. Unfortunately, the program is in there long. But, pleasure to be on the program, don't mind at all. I appreciate that, my friend, and maybe we can do this again sometime and that will do it for this edition of City Talk. [BLANK_AUDIO]