THOSE RADIO DAYS: WHEN LISTENING WAS THE RULE : Woody Allen’s ‘Radio Days’ Evokes Recollections by a Man Who Took an Active Part in That Significant Era

There were radio days and radio days--Woody Allen’s in Rockaway, Farmer Pete’s in Iowa, Pat Casey’s in Boston, Lulubelle Mae’s in Biloxi, Spike’s in Laramie, Aunt Carrie’s in Eagle Rock.

What gripped radio’s first audiences was the medium, not the message. Content mattered less than the distance over which a program was heard. Fans in the East would stay up until 3 a.m. to try to pull in Chicago, and if they succeeded they bragged about it next day. “Radioplause Cards” were sold (24 cards for 25 cents) for writing messages to stations logged in the course of a DX (distance) hunt.

Thus: “Heard weather report at 1:30 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday morning. Came in clear.” The stations responded with post cards verifying that they had indeed broadcast this or that at the time noted; and these cards, like the foreign hotel stickers that once illuminated the luggage of travelers, became showoff items, trophies to be displayed on a wall.

Amazement at the marvel of the medium itself soon was absorbed by a growing awareness of programs and personalities. Dramas, comedies and soap operas took over. Their substance and quality were often expressed by their very titles: “Heartthrobs of the Hills,” “Young Widder Brown,” “Molly of the Movies,” “Houseboat Hannah,” “Moonshine and Honeysuckle,” “The Ukulele Lady,” “Just Plain Bill,” “Pretty Kitty Kelly,” “Portia Faces Life,” “Kate Hopkins, Angel of Mercy.”

In “Radio Days,” the delirious addiction of young Woody Allen to an adventure series about a Masked Avenger is not overstated. Radio on occasion could grip audiences with an intensity that television, with all its power and penetration, has never quite equaled.

Examples: For months, between 7 and 7:15 p.m. every weekday across the country, street cars, buses, subways and taxis carried very few passengers because almost everyone was home listening to Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, both white, portraying Harlem blacks. Movie houses advertised that their films would be interrupted to pipe in “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” Stores installed loudspeakers for their customers. When, in a protracted sequence, Amos was tried on a charge of murder, several major newspapers carried daily accounts, and even the august New York Times ran details of a plot development on its front page.

For sheer impact, it would be hard to trump “The War of the Worlds,” which actually created panic in the streets. The simulated running account of an attack by Martians intent on destroying the Earth so electrified listeners that thousands living in the reported beachhead (young Woody’s New Jersey) fled the area. Those working in radio, including myself, were totally unprepared for the reaction. I happened to direct the program which immediately followed the Martians on CBS--a bland little documentary on America’s railroads. We rehearsed right up to air time, and, unaware of what was going on in the world outside the studio, we transmitted our show to rooms that had just been emptied by Orson Welles and a company of actors. Next day I learned that the network’s telephone switchboards were swamped for hours, and that the last call, received after 2 a.m. by a weary colleague in master control, went as follows.:

Gruff voice: Was it you guys who broadcast that Mars program?

Yes.

Gruff voice : Well, let me tell you something, mister. My wife got so scared that she ran screaming through the house, threw open a door and fell down a whole flight of stairs.

Ominous pause. Then:

Gruff voice : Jeez, man, it was a wonderful program!

The memories of Woody Allen’s radio days are mostly warm and funny, a series of loving caricature, but there was also a serious side to listening, and not all of Woody’s childhood contemporaries and their elders went bonkers over Captain Midnight, Superman and Sgt. Preston of the Yukon. A whole large segment of programming opted for deeper stuff. In 1937 alone, both NBC and CBS produced competing Shakespeare programs in what was called “The Battle of the Bard.” NBC engaged John Barrymore to streamline and narrate the more familiar of the plays. “Hamlet” was butchered down to 45 minutes, including opening and closing announcements; “King Lear,” “Macbeth” and both “Richards” were likewise undone. CBS, more culture-conscious, not only gave longer shrift to Shakespeare’s kings, but also dealt generously with living bards like Archibald MacLeish.

Unlike daytime soaps, which emanated from studios the size of bedrooms and whose musical resources consisted of Hammond organs played with unvarying dreariness, poetic drama was given regal array. In 1937, MacLeish’s “The Fall of the City” was broadcast live from the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York City, whose drafty interior could have accommodated Caesar’s legions with the U.S. Marine Band thrown in. The production required four directors: one to conduct a crowd of extras, another to handle sound, a third to direct the actors (including Orson Welles and Burgess Meredith)--and a fourth to coordinate the work of the other three. In 1941 a radio drama on the American Bill of Rights went out over all four networks simultaneously; it presented 12 major stars of film, stage and radio, two symphony orchestras a continent apart and, speaking from the White House, President Roosevelt.

Radio wasn’t kidding when it reached out. One of my own wartime series--radio dramas, not spectaculars--was short-waved live from London, with a lineup that included Edward R. Murrow as associate producer; Benjamin Britten, composer (opening and closing themes, background music, transitions--six whole scores) and the RAF Symphony Orchestra, which at that point was the Royal Philharmonic in uniform.

Naturally, response to programs of that kind was far different from the boisterousness of Woody Allen’s family and neighbors, as depicted in his film. Indeed, among ethnic groups represented in mail returns, a high proportion of thoughtful letters came from the very Jewish element of the population depicted in “Radio Days.” Many of the letters I received following my own broadcasts, were, I felt, better written than the scripts on which they commented.

For every listener’s recollection, there is probably a matching one by people who worked in radio. One of my favorites was the Homeric reportage of Herb Meadow, now a successful movie and TV playwright in Hollywood. When Herb was a kid, he worked, at $5 per week, for WMIL (Morris Investment and Loan), a 100-watt station in the heart of Brooklyn. On July 4, 1930, the community planned an Independence Day parade down Pitkin Avenue, and local sponsors rushed to sign up for commercials to be spotted throughout Herb’s eyewitness description of the event. But a torrential and unrelenting downpour canceled the parade, and not a single marcher marched. Nevertheless Herb, on his own, feeling it would be a pity to lose revenue by canceling the commercials, went on the air with an inspired and detailed account of the parade, describing units, floats and the onlooking crowd.

What happened next cannot be told here because we have run out of space.

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