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Big Town 19xx.xx.xx Big Town Interview
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Big Town 19xx.xx.xx Big Town Interview
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- [00:01]
Richard Lamparski
Whatever became of Big Town? My name is Richard Lamparsky, and with me in the studio today, I think I'll let them introduce themselves. Their real name and the characters they played on that show. Ladies first.
- [00:14]
Fran Carlin
I'm Fran Carlin and I did Lorelei Gilbert.
- [00:18]
Walter Griset
I'm Walter Griset and I did Steve Wilson.
- [00:21]
Mason Adams
I'm Mason Adams, and I played Harry to Hack.
- [00:25]
Walter Griset
You sure did.
- [00:26]
Richard Lamparski
There's one character missing, Willie the Weep. We want to find out what happened to him.
- [00:30]
Fran Carlin
Oh, well, Willie the Weep, the man who played Willie the Weep died quite some time ago. But we'll always remember him because one awful moment I had been having some pictures taken with my Scotty and they had put him in the control room where the client's. You know, rather the client's room. So Willie, who cried all the way through it, was a marvelous character. And as soon as he came on, my dog went o and howled all during the show. Of course, those were all live shows, but they couldn't exactly take him out.
- [01:06]
Walter Griset
A bit of a critic, yes.
- [01:08]
Mason Adams
An empathic dog. I think one of the great things about Jerry McGill, who wrote the show, was his ability to create these marvelous characters like Willie the Weep and Mozart.
- [01:20]
Fran Carlin
Here's Mozart. Larry Haynes play.
- [01:24]
Walter Griset
Is Larry in the play?
- [01:25]
Fran Carlin
In Generation.
- [01:26]
Walter Griset
With Generation, I haven't seen it.
- [01:28]
Mason Adams
And this. You. You remember more about Mozart, I'm sure, than I do.
- [01:33]
Fran Carlin
He was a piano player and real kind of a tough character. But the one I loved when we talked about that, Bob Dryden did.
- [01:40]
Walter Griset
Oh, yeah, Clammy, Clammy, I remember him. That was one of Bob's specialties. He had a innate clamminess about him. And vocally I'm talking about only. Yeah, he's still going strong, thank goodness.
- [01:56]
Richard Lamparski
Any of you remember what year the show went on? I know you weren't on it at that time.
- [02:01]
Fran Carlin
Well, I'm trying to think. It went on here in New York. I would say around 42 or 43 with Ed Pauley and myself. And at that time, Ted Decor was playing Harry the Hack. And Ted went to California and then Mason came.
- [02:16]
Mason Adams
Excuse me. Wasn't it another cab driver was Harry's uncle.
- [02:20]
Fran Carlin
Harry's uncle. What was his name? Ted.
- [02:22]
Mason Adams
The question was something the Hack, Eddie the hacker, and I was his nephew came in when he came and harried.
- [02:31]
Walter Griset
I don't recall how many years prior to what you said, Fran, how many years before it had played out on the West Coast. But as you know, it was originated by G. Robinson and Claire Trevor in the Two parts.
- [02:44]
Fran Carlin
That's right.
- [02:45]
Walter Griset
But I don't know how long they played. But when they came east, of course, it was another story. And the characters remained the same, but different people were portraying them, that's all.
- [02:54]
Richard Lamparski
The earliest date I could find on the show was 1938, because that year it was one of the ten top rated shows in the nation. Big town, from the coast.
- [03:04]
Fran Carlin
From the coast.
- [03:05]
Richard Lamparski
I must say, as a fan, I told Fran Carlin this before, that she sort of looks like the Lorelai Kilburn I. I had in mind Roz Russell type.
- [03:17]
Fran Carlin
Oh, thank you. But they wouldn't let me do the television show because they said I wasn't the type that one ever can tell you.
- [03:24]
Richard Lamparski
And Walter Griset, you look like a managing editor of a big metropolitan daily. Harry the Hack. Now you don't look like Harry the Hack.
- [03:33]
Walter Griset
He sounds like him. That was important in those days.
- [03:36]
Mason Adams
Oh, that was it. That was the fun of radio.
- [03:39]
Richard Lamparski
You had a trusty monkey wrench, which I remember under the front seat, which came in handy.
- [03:45]
Mason Adams
It used to come in handy in these endings that Jerry would devise that were always. There was always a deus ex machina, as it were, like a monkey wrench, or somebody would run in and save the day.
- [03:57]
Richard Lamparski
Before we began recording, we were lamenting the fact that so many of those radio shows were not recorded because they were live. Your show was live, was it not?
- [04:06]
Walter Griset
Yes, it was.
- [04:07]
Richard Lamparski
You know, it's lost now because of posterity.
- [04:10]
Walter Griset
Unless someone took off an individual recording, that would be the only way that anyone would have it. There was no authentic, authorized recording of the shows at any time during the.
- [04:23]
Richard Lamparski
Time that I was.
- [04:24]
Fran Carlin
I don't think they have saved any scripts of any of the things that we've done or had any. They didn't have tape. It was acetate. And unless the performer took off an individual one speaking about it being live. We also had to do a repeat when we were on CBS. I think we went on 8 to 8:30, and then it was 12 to 12:30. And this caused a few problems because if you. I know several people would either go home and take a nap and the alarm clock wouldn't go off, or I think Dwight Wiest, who is our announcer and played Callahan. Remember Callahan the cop who was a friend?
- [05:07]
Walter Griset
Oh, yes.
- [05:08]
Fran Carlin
Well, Dwight was exhausted and he had a little hotel room and he asked the girl to wake him up at 11:30. So she woke him up at 11:30 the next morning.
- [05:20]
Walter Griset
Oh, no.
- [05:21]
Fran Carlin
Ted de course had to go on and do the announcing do the commercials and play Eddie at that time, that was kind of in the beginning.
- [05:29]
Mason Adams
There's a wonderful story about the time that Ed Begley was playing Charlie Chan and Leon Janney was playing his son. And Ed failed to show up for a repeat. I guess this was over at wor. And at the last minute, Leon Janney, who was playing the sun, doubled for Charlie Chan in the opening part of the show. And then Begley came in and completed it. Oh, my goodness. When he called his mother up after the show, Leon did and said, well, Ma, what did you think? She said, oh, you could do better than that.
- [06:05]
Walter Griset
Well, that was one of the problems, I think, of radio in those days, was a repeat show. And if it wasn't the case of somebody going to take a nap, somebody perhaps was playing in a Broadway show. And the connections were a little short on either end. I can remember when I was doing crime doctor, when we had an 11 o'clock repeat and when the curtain would go down on the show in which we were at that point doing Sunday night performances, I had to have a special cab waiting for me, which was fine. If the cab didn't get stuck on 45th street, bring me over to CBS. And many of the time I literally skidded into the door of that studio just in time for the queue line. And it got too close for comfort. And I finally decided that I had one give up one or the other, and I had to make my choice. But those things happen too frequently to be funny.
- [06:59]
Fran Carlin
Sometimes even some of the daytimes, if you were on early in the morning, had a repeat in the afternoon, which became very confusing.
- [07:08]
Richard Lamparski
His mom, Pepperoni's family, I think, too.
- [07:11]
Mason Adams
Not while I was on it, no. But it had originally, I think, way back in the 30s.
- [07:17]
Richard Lamparski
That was in case you did your wash in the morning. You could listen to it in the afternoon for the night.
- [07:24]
Walter Griset
Well, many of them did, too.
- [07:26]
Richard Lamparski
One of the actors or actresses that worked on radio told me this, and I don't remember who it was, that for a while they were recording these programs off the air. The networks were on big metal discs of some kind. And she said the reason they. It may have been Ma Perkins, Virginia Payne. She said, the reason they're not in existence is during the war. Somebody got the bright idea that they should contribute all of these to the scrap metal drive. So there went all of your efforts all those years. Isn't that a shame?
- [07:55]
Fran Carlin
Well, I was wondering about. There were so many recorded shows, too, that we used to do. I used to do Blackstone The Magic Detective and a lot of the shows which are playing now, like the Shadow and the Green Hornet were all recorded, but I guess they were recorded on. They called acetates because they didn't have the tape.
- [08:13]
Mason Adams
Have you heard any of them?
- [08:14]
Fran Carlin
No, I haven't.
- [08:15]
Mason Adams
I wonder what the quality is like.
- [08:17]
Fran Carlin
Very good. I got it.
- [08:18]
Richard Lamparski
I've heard a few. They're really quite good. Amazing.
- [08:22]
Fran Carlin
They're having an awful time, though, I gather, trying to find out, because the actors are supposed to get a small residual. And so they've had groups of actors meeting up in our office and they track them down. Track them down. And who played it.
- [08:37]
Walter Griset
Yes.
- [08:38]
Richard Lamparski
Fortunately, we have a recording here today because Carlin brought one along of an original Big Town show. And if our engineer is ready. Well, this is. This is how the show began. Big Town.
- [08:55]
Walter Griset
Lever Brothers Company, makers of Lifebuoy health soap, present Big Town. Extra. Extra.
- [09:02]
Fran Carlin
Here's Steve Wilson in story of reckless.
- [09:05]
Walter Griset
Driving, capture, death at the wheel. Extra. Extra. Yes, Lever Brothers Company, makers of Lifebuoy health soap are proud to present Big Town, the story of fighting editor Steve Wilson of the Illustrated Press, whose newspaper Creed stands for freedom and justice against the forces of intolerance and evil. The power and the freedom of the press is a flaming sword that it may be a faithful servant of all the people. Use it justly, hold it high, guard it. Well.
- [09:48]
Richard Lamparski
Does that take you back?
- [09:49]
Fran Carlin
Oh, it certainly do. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.
- [09:54]
Walter Griset
Wasn't that. Fran, Wasn't that particular tape made to commemorate the award for the safety driving?
- [10:02]
Fran Carlin
Yes, it was the National Council on Safety. And we had gotten an award, so I had it taken off. Plus the fact that my husband Dwight, was on a vacation and my husband, Casey Allen, announced it. So we. I had it taken off the air. But they had given us a big testimonial dinner because Jerry was quite a man of his time. It almost. What they're doing now is that he thought the kind of ruthlessness on the highway and the murder that took place that this should be a crusading editor's job to do. And he'd do it once a year. And it always had a tremendous impact.
- [10:41]
Richard Lamparski
I must say that our audience might be interested in this. This is the first program I've done where I asked the audience to write in and say, you know, what would you like to hear? Who would you like to know? Whatever became of what show, what character, what? And the first time I got a letter from the person because Fran Carlin wrote in and said, here I am, and I know where they are and let's get together.
- [11:03]
Fran Carlin
Yes. I had heard so much about you from Wester Ralston and Julie Stevens, who had told me about what you were doing and your druggist. And my druggist who had heard one of the shows and he survived Beck's Drugstore, and his name is Eddie and it's on 81st and Broadway. And he's darling.
- [11:25]
Walter Griset
Good for him.
- [11:26]
Richard Lamparski
You referred to Ms. Carlo, Ms. Fan. He was Lorelei, my lovely, as I remember.
- [11:30]
Walter Griset
That is. That is correct script wise.
- [11:33]
Richard Lamparski
But she was always going out to get a scoop when she was supposed.
- [11:38]
Walter Griset
To and getting into trouble on account of it. And somebody had to get her out one of the carriages or Steve came along a little belatedly usually, as I recall, but he had to come along because he had to be there the next week and so did she.
- [11:53]
Fran Carlin
Every year, I think Ms. Harriet Van Horn and the World Telegram would devote a small piece to Big Town saying that this is not the way a newspaper office is run. It's not that exciting because anything from Lorelei. Remember that one awful one where she was hung on the meat hook in a freezer or something?
- [12:12]
Walter Griset
I don't think. I don't seem to recall that we had any particular supervision as to protocol with regard to newspaper etiquette or newspaper article.
- [12:25]
Mason Adams
Jerry had been a newspaper man.
- [12:26]
Walter Griset
Jerry had been a newspaper man. He wrote pretty thoroughly and pretty painstakingly.
- [12:32]
Fran Carlin
He did.
- [12:33]
Walter Griset
But we weren't. We didn't have any. Anybody over us with thumbs down. You mustn't do this, or no editor would do this and no reporter would do this, that sort of thing.
- [12:44]
Richard Lamparski
You mentioned Harry Van Horne, Mr. Grizet. Ed Begley told me a funny story which just reminds me of the two of them. He said that before he was a well known actor on the screen, he was a character actor on radio and I think on Broadway he played Charlie Chan. Well, as we all know, radio characters didn't get big billing in those days. You didn't necessarily recognize the name immediately. And he said the first big publicity break he had was they were going to put him on the Harriet Van Horne radio show, which emanated from the lower floor of the NBC building where the skating rink is now. He said they took him in the NBC press agent. There she was. It was live on the air. And he was so thrilled. He was going to be interviewed as Ed Begley star. And his mother was listening and his family was listening. The first thing she said to him was, well, ladies and gentlemen, we have today the star of Charlie Chan on radio. And, you know, he's not Chinese at all. I thought, my God, this woman is paid to do this book.
- [13:46]
Walter Griset
Well, Ed has a storehouse full of priceless stories.
- [13:51]
Richard Lamparski
He is one of the funniest men.
- [13:52]
Walter Griset
He's contributed to a lot of them. And I'm just about to say he's contributed to so many. And I've known him for so long and so many years. When he first came down. And you both do, too, I'm sure, Mason and Fran. When he first came down from Hartford and into radio here in New York. And he was a bit of a character even then, a lovable character. But he has done so many things. And I've been in three different pictures with him and three different plays with him, to say nothing of complex radio shows. And I've never ceased to be thoroughly entertained by him, even at times when he has made me want to duck under the table sometimes not to be seen.
- [14:31]
Fran Carlin
Well, you know, he can cry. He's one of the few people I've ever known, whether it's a question of tear ducts or something, but he can literally. The tears can flow down his cheeks. Well, I was dashing on a very rainy, nasty day going up that escalator at 53rd street on the subway to get to CBS. And Ed was coming down the escalator, coming from another show, and he was at the top, I was at the bottom. And suddenly I heard, why did you leave me? Why? And I looked up at all these people in the escalator turning around and looking at me with this shock thing. And here he is, the tears streaming down his face. He shouldn't, he said, you shouldn't have the children. We miss you. We miss you. As we passed each other, I'm quite sure these people thought I was a monster.
- [15:20]
Richard Lamparski
You know, if you embarrass Easta, you're quite right not to, because I had to pick him up at the Algonquin right after, just before his baby was born. His father again, as you know, about a year and a half, two years ago, and he was with his new wife, very pretty girl. And he was so careful with her, you know, the curbs and the steps and everything, because the baby was on its way and they were going to Ireland. He wanted to show Arlo, as it happened, the baby was born prematurely and.
- [15:46]
Fran Carlin
Was born in Ireland.
- [15:48]
Richard Lamparski
Well, we were walking out of the Algonquin. We turned off on the 6th Avenue, going to the 4th of the 12 Caesars for lunch with some newspaper man and a Tanner touring bus Drove by and stopped. And a lady leaned out of the window. She said, oh, there is Ed. There he is. There's Ed Begley. And he looked up and he said, where were you? Where were you last year? What a nerve. Don't ever call me again. That's the last person still there, probably with their mouth open.
- [16:15]
Fran Carlin
Everybody in the street.
- [16:17]
Richard Lamparski
It's like walking down the street with Santa Claus. And everybody recognizes him.
- [16:21]
Fran Carlin
He's a very funny man.
- [16:22]
Walter Griset
He has a habit of walking into a restaurant. If you have preceded him, for example, he said, I'll see you there in five or 10 minutes. He has a habit of walking in and standing inside the door. Or near the captain or the head waitress, as the case might be. And in a loud voice remarking to everybody, I'm here to meet Walter Griset. Where is he? Where is the. Oh, there's Walter over there. Yes, I'll be right with you, Walter. Just. Just a moment. And everybody looks up, of course, and sees who it is, actually. I mean, you feel like crawling under the tablecloth. He's a great.
- [16:59]
Mason Adams
He once pulled a. Pulled a gag in an elevator at NBC. The elevator operator closed the door, or I guess opened the door. And Ed said, oh, you caught my hand. And he went out like this. And a woman in the elevator as he left. And the elevator operator was aghast as.
- [17:18]
Walter Griset
The doors were closed.
- [17:19]
Mason Adams
He said he was bleeding.
- [17:21]
Walter Griset
Oh, God, that's acting.
- [17:27]
Richard Lamparski
I think the audience might be interested, too, in some of the other programs you all worked on over the years. I know that Ms. Carlin was Bunny Mitchell.
- [17:36]
Fran Carlin
Oh, Mary Marlin was one of the first radio shows I ever did. And Ann Seymour was Mary Marlin. And I played Bunny Mitchell, who was a devil. And it was great fun to play. But I guess one of the interesting aspects of radio is that people believed. Not only believed what you did, but believed that you were that person. I know I was on one of the original Erna Phillips show Today's Children. And I had a baby on this show in this script. And I got an entire layette. I got flowers when the baby was supposed to arrive. They really believed that. And because we weren't identified in many ways. Unless you were doing, like, the nighttime shows where we got billing is that as far as Bunny, they didn't realize because she was Southern and a very naughty woman. And was taking Mary Marlin's husband away from her. And so Ann Seymour and I had to appear at a women's club benefit to kind of publicize the show. And they Introduced Anne as Mary Marlin and the women all applauded. And they introduced me as Bunny Mitchell. And you could hear, oh, that dreadful girl. That dreadful girl taking Jo Marlon away. Isn't that awful? And they wouldn't speak to me. They really didn't speak to me afterwards.
- [18:53]
Richard Lamparski
Yeah, I remember her as the heavy and all. And Cynthia Swanson on, I believe, who was on the program just quite recently, Helen Trant. Cynthia Swanson was the heavy on that. I think she was Mary Jane Higby.
- [19:07]
Fran Carlin
Oh, yes, he was writing a book.
- [19:08]
Richard Lamparski
About all of you.
- [19:09]
Fran Carlin
Yes, I know. I talked to Mary a bit about it.
- [19:12]
Walter Griset
And we've got Pepper Young here today.
- [19:13]
Richard Lamparski
Too, that you know.
- [19:16]
Walter Griset
Indeed.
- [19:16]
Mason Adams
Sixteen years, as the old gag went. It almost became a steady job.
- [19:23]
Walter Griset
Well, you did a lot to making it that way, Mace, that's for certain. I cut that in half. I did eight and a half years as the police inspector on Crime Doctor and followed that up with about three years on the FBI and Peace and War. And it got to a point where people were completely associating me with law enforcement agencies and law enforcement officers. And if it wasn't, of course, they always called it wrong. It was always. In spite of what I was doing, it was always, oh, there's the District attorney. You got the wrong building no matter which way you was.
- [20:04]
Richard Lamparski
Warner Baxter, the Crime Doctor, when you were on it.
- [20:07]
Walter Griset
No, Warner Baxter did it in pictures.
- [20:08]
Richard Lamparski
Oh, he didn't. On the radio?
- [20:10]
Walter Griset
No, not as far as I ever knew. Not during my tenure with it at all. Warner did the Crime Doctor series that they made in four pictures especially, remember?
- [20:22]
Richard Lamparski
Yes. You were Manhattan Mother too, weren't you?
- [20:26]
Fran Carlin
No, no, I wasn't on that. That was. Oh, she was a marvelous gal with a deep voice. No, no, this was Chicago, and when it came here, Peg Hillas played it.
- [20:41]
Walter Griset
Oh, really?
- [20:41]
Richard Lamparski
No, you're on Portia Face's Life.
- [20:45]
Fran Carlin
I did Portia Faces life on television for two years when it was a television soap and when it was a radio show. Lucille Wall was Portia. And Lucille had a very bad fall and she was out for almost two years. So Ann Seymour took over, and then Ann Seymour got a throat infection and was out for a couple of weeks. And that was some billing that was really funny because Lucille did was one of the few daytime shows that in which the star of the show got billing. In other words, it was Portia Face's Life with Lucille Wall, so that it became this Portia Face's Life with Lucille Wall, currently being played by Ann Seymour, who is currently Ill and being played by Fran Carlin. It was longer than the show by the time. Yes, that's it.
- [21:35]
Richard Lamparski
On Stella Dallas.
- [21:37]
Fran Carlin
I was on Stella, as we all were in what we call the Hummert Stable. We went from one show to another. Like you'd do a sequence of maybe 13 weeks or 26 weeks on young Widder Brown or David Harum, and then you get through with one of those. Then you'd go into perhaps playing a completely different type part into Stella Dallas, our Gal Sunday. And I was on Our Gal Sunday for about 15 years as her best friend and next door neighbor, Irene Galway. And it was always said that way, it was never just Irene Galloway. It was her best friend and next door neighbor.
- [22:14]
Richard Lamparski
Well, Stella was on the show Round.
- [22:16]
Fran Carlin
About Christmas on the South.
- [22:18]
Richard Lamparski
Yes, I went all the way to Lambertville, New Jersey, to her fantastic restaurant. She's a lovely restaurant.
- [22:23]
Walter Griset
Oh, you did it down there from there?
- [22:25]
Richard Lamparski
Yes, I drove forever. Well, actually, it isn't that far.
- [22:28]
Fran Carlin
No, not at all.
- [22:30]
Walter Griset
Kind of a fur piece, as they say.
- [22:32]
Richard Lamparski
She's a mad, mad lady.
- [22:34]
Fran Carlin
Yes. She threw a wonderful hat with feathers on the top which were kind of distracting.
- [22:40]
Richard Lamparski
I should have got them from those birds that are in that aviary in the restaurant.
- [22:45]
Mason Adams
I probably have the distinction of being one of the few radio actors who never worked for air features.
- [22:51]
Fran Carlin
Never.
- [22:52]
Mason Adams
I never did any of those shows. I wonder sometimes how I survived.
- [22:57]
Richard Lamparski
Were you blacklisted?
- [22:59]
Mason Adams
No, it was.
- [23:00]
Walter Griset
No, he was too busy, probably.
- [23:01]
Fran Carlin
He was too busy. It was just.
- [23:03]
Mason Adams
It was just some of the. Some people, you know, as you said, it was a stable.
- [23:08]
Richard Lamparski
Yeah.
- [23:10]
Walter Griset
Well, you had what you called in those days a running part on a certain soap opera, certain cereal. And when that running part ran out, if you were a part of the stable, so called, they take care of you. But fitting you into a running part on another one of their shows.
- [23:27]
Mason Adams
Dick Widmark was one of the leading lights of the.
- [23:29]
Walter Griset
I was on with Dick when we did Front Page Farrell or Port. He went west.
- [23:34]
Mason Adams
Matter of fact, I made my Broadway debut in a play with Ed Begley. That was Dick's second play and the first one in which he played a major role. Get away, old man. And that was Ed's first play on Broadway.
- [23:45]
Walter Griset
He was very good, too.
- [23:47]
Fran Carlin
And Dick was also, you know, another thing that I seems to have gone along with. The audience just listening and not looking. Is that. Do you remember the giveaways that were on?
- [24:01]
Richard Lamparski
Surely.
- [24:02]
Fran Carlin
And they used to. You at least were spared that then, Mason, if you didn't do the Hummert shows because they would incorporate the giveaway into the script. Say, for example, in David Harum, if they had a scene together and a very romantic scene and we had to go out into a flower garden and they'd say, oh, look at the beautiful flowers. Yes, Burpee's seed. And we would start right. They incorporated it within the show. And on Backstage Wife. Once I was the villain of the piece at this time. I was always locking somebody into the hexagonal room. I never could quite understand that. And they said they had a giveaway of a pin very much like the one on the Helen Trent thing that they used to do. The solid gold almost heart shaped pin. So one of the people on the show had to look at me and say, oh, you can't be all bad. I see that you are wearing the heart of gold pin that we are giving. And this went on and we used to have to do it within the content of the script.
- [25:08]
Richard Lamparski
I got inquiries about a very famous radio personality, Mr. Keane. And I think maybe Walter Grizet could tell us about this.
- [25:16]
Walter Griset
We were talking about not only the program but the actor who played it for so long outside. And neither Fran Carlin nor myself could come up with his name. And I wonder whether Mason can.
- [25:28]
Mason Adams
By any chance it isn't Alonzo Dean?
- [25:32]
Walter Griset
No, I know it the moment I heard it. But according to my best information, he's been gone for some little time. But he played it for so long that he became so well identified as Mr. Keane, the facer of lost persons, that I know that he was called that on the outside because he. His voice was so distinct. His characterization was so definite all the way through. I'm the old investigator that with a touch of.
- [26:08]
Fran Carlin
And well, he's in my.
- [26:09]
Walter Griset
Kelly.
- [26:10]
Fran Carlin
There's a lot of commercials. He's still around. Yes, Mike Kelly, he's still around. He does a lot of commercials. I run into him every once in a while.
- [26:19]
Walter Griset
I haven't seen Mike in a long, long time.
- [26:21]
Fran Carlin
And Mystery Theater there used to be all the. See when we would do so many times, as you did all the shows during the day, then there'd be the shows at night and you'd have to kind of fit in. If you're doing a nighttime show, which usually if you were just playing a supporting part, the nighttime shows paid better. Naturally, they were bigger shows and they paid better. So there was another thing that I guess is gone too is that there used to be stand ins. Because a lot of us. There was one particular time on Big Town I think where there was one single person that was of the original cast and everybody else was off either rehearsing a play or doing a nighttime show. And then they come slipping in for the rehearsal part of the afternoon and run out again. Or we would be doing something else. And Jerry was darling and allowed this quite often. And we had some very famous people.
- [27:17]
Walter Griset
That broke into the. Right up through and including the dress. Somebody would come in and open the door and go to the mic, the open mic, and report to the director and said, I'm so and so and so and so standing in for Joe Doakes. He won't be here until 20 minutes or four and so forth. All right, go ahead. Here's the script. And that's the way it was done.
- [27:38]
Richard Lamparski
I told some kids recently, they're in their 20s, kids to me, that I had seen some star that asked me if I'd ever seen. I don't know who was John Barrymore, somebody like that. And I said, yeah, I saw him once at a race radio program. They said, were you on radio? I said, no, no, But I was in the audience. I said, in the audience of a radio program. That was so funny.
- [27:56]
Walter Griset
But you all met. Well, for a long time they had the Hollywood stars here.
- [28:05]
Mason Adams
Every Theater Guild on the air.
- [28:08]
Fran Carlin
Armstrong Theater, every Saturday. I used to play opposite all this star before that.
- [28:15]
Walter Griset
That I worked with Wally Beery when he did a radio show. Who was the director that did all of those?
- [28:21]
Mason Adams
Homer Fickle?
- [28:23]
Walter Griset
No, Homer did the Theater Guild. I'm not talking about that. Not the Cavalcade either. This was before that. Any of those.
- [28:31]
Fran Carlin
Oh, well, then I wasn't here before.
- [28:32]
Walter Griset
Any of those happened. And a big name, a big star name each program, each week, and the same director did it. And some of the biggest ones from Hollywood came in and each week were on this particular show. This was prior to Cavalcade, prior to Armstrong, prior to Theatre Guild of the Air.
- [28:53]
Fran Carlin
And they also used to have a lot of them who did not know radio well. They would paste the individual pages of their scripts on pieces of cardboard. And I had to do a show with Ms. Constance Bennett. And she would take. She took the. When we got on the air, she just decided that this was confusing. So as we went along and it always seemed to be on my line, then she would take the cardboard and just drop it. So it was put right at the foot of the base of the microphone. As I started to talk, I got a little outraged.
- [29:30]
Walter Griset
There were times on radio and 4 or 5, and sometimes more. More actors and actresses would surround one microphone. And if you were a pro, so called, and knew your way around, you got in there to get your lines over. And if you weren't, you just didn't stand a chance in the world.
- [29:49]
Fran Carlin
Wonder how the men did, because high heels were awfully good once in a while we're helpful.
- [29:56]
Walter Griset
Most everybody cooperated. Most everybody else. There were a few who didn't.
- [30:00]
Fran Carlin
I think that's one of the lovely things about radio. There was a very happy group of people. They seemed to get along beautifully. We saw each other on lots of shows and worked together well and remained a lot of us very good friends.
- [30:12]
Walter Griset
I think for the most part, that's perfectly true. Happy to say I have seen that.
- [30:18]
Richard Lamparski
Because when I first started doing this program I had maybe one or two names of people who played characters or who were themselves on radio. And they all knew where the other ones were. I mean, Lanny Ross knew where Jessica Dragonette was and knew where Lucy Monroe was. And all the people who played characters all seemed to know each other and were very helpful and said, oh, yes, I had lunch with her. I saw him the other day and by all means, I'm sure he'd love to do it. Which is how we got this show together.
- [30:45]
Walter Griset
In the other mediums, you have other problems. You have makeup problems, you have costume problems, you have line problems, you have contact problems that you never had in radio, you never had with some out there. You never had to come up against.
- [30:57]
Richard Lamparski
Them, unfortunately, where, as Jack Vang used to say, we're little late, folks, so we have to say goodnight in just a moment. Thanks very much to Mr. Walter Grizzet and his friend Carlin and Mr. Mason Adams for putting together the Big Town show. Next week I will be speaking with a man who was, until 1947, the world's most famous high harmonica player. His name is Larry Adler. In 1947, he was blacklisted from radio, television and motion pictures. He lives now in London and I'll be talking with him about the blacklist and how he feels about his native country. This is Richard Lamparski. Thank you for listening. And tune in again next week at the same time for whatever became of Larry Adler.