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By Meryl Friedel

Dramatic actor par excellence, ace announcer, writer, production man, singer, player of both the piano and alto horn…and only 19 years old…that’s Marvin Elliot Mueller, Dramatic Director of KMOX, and without doubt, the most talented young man of his age in the radio business. For that matter, he is more talented than ninety nine percent of the thousands who daily pass over the stages of many air theaters in this country.

Like the true story of all genii…Marvin is certainly a genius…his story is one of determination to make good, and long hours of hard work to do it.

His entrance into radio while a freshman at Washington University was no accident, as was the beginning of many radio stars. Marvin had always been interested in radio. One day he decided that, because certain announcers on local stations didn’t know how to properly pronounce the names of foreign musical works, it was his duty and pleasure to become a radio announcer and to see to it that listeners received the correct pronunciations.

With the courage…it is sometimes called foolhardiness…of youth, he suited action to the thought and immediately called upon a local station, telling them what he thought of their local announcers and suggesting he be given an audition. Marvin says that, considering his nerve, they were exceptionally nice, for they gave him an audition.

He admits now that he must have been pretty bad, but at the time he was annoyed that he wasn’t immediately signed, and he told the production man in charge of his audition that if they didn’t want him for an announcer, they should engage him for dramatic work because he could do many different types of voices. (He wasn’t sure he could, but he had once done it during a high school show.)

To make the story short, that “clicked” and he was engaged to write and enact a daily dramatic program in which, at times, he took as many as forty different parts.

From then on, it was comparatively easy. Although he was in and out of radio up to August, 1932, he felt confident that if he got the chance, he’d make good.

It was last August that he finally felt sure enough of himself to try for an audition at KMOX, which had always been his goal. Soon after his audition, he was made a member of the staff. Since then, he has steadily forged ahead, improving upon his talents and becoming one of the most popular of the KMOX voices.

In the less than a year’s time that Marvin has been with this station, he has impersonated a number of famous people of all types, including the late Calvin Coolidge, President Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Joseph of Nazareth, Samuel Insull, Japanese Minister of War, George Bungle, Uncle Remus and many others.

His repertoire of dialect types include British, French, Italian, Negro, Rural, Mountaineer, Irish, Cockney, Tough, Chinese, German, Old Man, Juvenile and Child.

Despite his unusual talents and the fame he has won because of them, Marvin is a normal young man who enjoys dancing, driving, and all the other sports of active, young people. His cheerful disposition and willingness to pitch in any place where help is needed makes him a favorite with the KMOX staff. And probably the most unusual thing about this young St. Louisan is that he has no idea how exceptionally talented he is. Others do, however, and we predict that it won’t be long after he finishes the University next year that the entire radio world will be hearing much of this young man.

Oh yes…we almost forgot to tell you what he looks like. Perhaps because his personality is so engaging one forgets his appearance, although it is a very attractive one. Marvin is 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighs around 175 pounds, has very dark brown hair and eyes, and one of those rosy complexions that women always envy in men.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 7/22/33)

Back in 1939, one local brewery’s name was synonymous with sports in St. Louis. They sponsored broadcasts of pre-game and post-game baseball broadcasts on the radio and daily sports updates on five local radio stations. In fact, they practically wrote the book on sports sponsorships and broadcasts. No, it wasn’t Anheuser-Busch.

Sports reporting was a big deal in 1939. There were regular, daily sports programs on KMOX, KWK, KXOK, WIL and WEW. Those men who anchored the shows were well-known among fans, so much so that the Hyde Park Brewery sponsored the shows and then took out adds in local newspapers and The Sporting News telling listeners where and when to tune in for a dose of sports.

While no breweries were involved in sponsoring play-by-play (Those sponsorships were snapped up by companies like General Mills, The Independent Packing Company and Socony-Vacuum Oil Company) Hyde Park managed to snag sponsorships of pre-game and post-game shows on KWK and KMOX, both of which carried the home games.

In those days, the radio play-by-play broadcasts were only of the home games played at Sportsman’s Park at Grand and Dodier. St. Louis had two teams then, so there were broadcasts practically every day of either the Cardinals or the Browns. Interest in the Browns probably waned quickly during the 1939 season. The team ended the year with a won-lost record of 43 – 111, some 64 ½ games out of first place. The Cardinals had a respectable 92 – 61 season.

And the ads for Hyde Park Beer seemed to be everywhere, every day. In addition to the ads heard around the game broadcasts, the Hyde Park Brewery sponsored three daily sports reports on KWK, two daily reports on KXOK, eight reports a day on WIL and a daily sports report on WEW. The latter station is particularly interesting since it was owned by St. Louis University, a Jesuit institution, but beer ads ran on it.

These sponsorships underwrote the programs of all of St. Louis’ celebrity sports broadcasters at the time: Alex Buchan, Cy Casper, Bill Durney, Allen Franklin, France Laux, Herb MacCready, Neil Norman, Johnny O’Hara and Ray Schmidt.

To be sure, there were many other beers brewed in St. Louis, but Hyde Park’s radio advertising was pervasive because of its identification with sports.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 5/09)

(Unsigned article)

Kenneth Wright is the new organist heard in KMOX daytime programs. He is also heard as “Sad Sam,” the accordion man teamed with “Sunny Joe” Wolverton , the banjo wizard.

Mr. Wright is well known to theatre and radio audiences in almost all of the Middle West cities. The credit is given him for having originated the use of a microphone in connection with his organ playing in theatres, and he has been billed as the “singing organist.”

He claims Great Bend, Kansas as his home and bachelorhood as his state.

Ruth Hulse Nelson is still featured during KMOX nighttime broadcasts.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment, 10/15/32)

In the early days of baseball broadcasting, there was no sophistication. It was every station for itself, with three different stations broadcasting all the games in St. Louis.

At first, in 1926, it seemed the baseball clubs gave no thought to having radio broadcast their games. KMOX assigned an announcer to go to the ballpark and give the listeners periodic summaries of what was happening, but this practice was stopped after a few weeks because the station balked at the expense of the service.
Later that year, the Cardinals won the World Series in seven games, and local listeners could hear some of the games through a national chain broadcast.

As a result of this success on the diamond, the next year attitudes changed, and three radio stations were at Sportsman’s Park broadcasting play-by-play for all Cardinals’ and Browns’ home games. On KMOX, listeners heard Garnett Marks (although he took air names requested by his sponsors – Rhino Bill and Otto Buick). KWK’s general manager Thomas Patrick Convey did duty under the air name Thomas Patrick. William Ellsworth announced for WIL.

Listeners had their choice, based on which announcer they preferred. These announcers and their engineers had to set up, not in the ballpark, but on the roofs of buildings outside the park. Within a couple months, Western Union lines were installed and all three stations were invited inside the park.

But two years later management of one station in the trio had a change of heart.

WIL’s William Ellsworth announced his station would no longer carry baseball. He told a Globe-Democrat reporter a special music program would instead be broadcast on game days. It was a response, he said, to “many listeners who have written to Station WIL requesting a musical program during the hours when the whole dial seems to be covered with the pandemonium of explanations and vocal flourishes concerning one set-to in one city to the utter ignoring of any other form of entertainment whatsoever.”

The general manager of KMOX, Nelson Darragh, was not terribly upset with the WIL decision. “We personally remained in baseball broadcasting,” said Darragh, “because I believe Station KMOX is the only one in St. Louis which can reach the section of the country which is particularly interested in St. Louis’ teams.”

Thomas Convey at KWK, took issue with Ellsworth’s proclamations about audience reaction to baseball on the radio, saying, “In fact, I have 16,000 names signed in petitions asking that KWK and its announcers come back on the air in the play-by-play accounts and descriptions of the games which became so popular last year.”

And so it was that in 1929, baseball fans lost one option for their listening pleasure in the St. Louis market. KMOX and KWK continued the broadcasts while WIL broadcast recorded musical selections each afternoon. The Browns posted a record of 79 wins and 73 losses, while the Cardinals finished at 78-74.

One year later, the owner of WIL, Lester A. “Eddie” Benson overruled his general manager and personally returned to Sportsmen’s Park to broadcast the local games for WIL. Two years later, WIL’s sports director Dave Parks described the situation in the Sportsman’s Park pressbox in an article in Radio and Entertainment magazine: “There are three booths near the roof of the grandstand in Sportsman’s Park. The eastern section is used by KMOX, the western section by KWK, and in the middle sits the Old Reporter for WIL. There is no need whatever for him to ask what is going on, because France Laux and John Harrington gave him no opportunity to forget that he’s at a baseball game.”

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 5/2009)

John Harrington, popular KWK announcer and sports commentator who grew up with radio in St. Louis, has left the Mound City to go with station WGN, Chicago.

Harrington’s move to Chicago was like his sports broadcasts, swift and unexpected. The former announcer entered radio in September of 1929. At that time he didn’t have the slightest desire to enter the game but visited the KWK studios with a hankering to see the transmitter. They wouldn’t let Harrington in unless he had some business with the studio so John promptly asked for a job – more to see the station than anything else. He was given an audition and hired, and has been with radio station KWK since then until last Thursday night.

Though Harrington entered radio through an accident more than anything else, his early training suited him for an announcer’s spot in front of the “mike.” He had exercises in voice culture and oratory at the Kirkwood High School and the University of Arkansas down Fayetteville way.

Some of the assignments that stand out in Harrington’s memory are helping in the broadcast of the last two World’s Series in St. Louis.

He has interviewed such notables as Jerome “Dizzy” Dean, the most eccentric of all modern ball players, Sammy West, the leading hitter in the American League, and other notables in the sport world. He introduced Floyd Gibbons to St. Louis radio audiences on his two visits here and is christened by some the “Gibbons” of the Central States on account of his rapid fire reviews.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment, 6/3/1933)

Franklyn MacCormack, former Program Director of WIL, is now with the Columbia Broadcasting System as announcer for the Lavoris Easy Aces program heard every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 7 p.m. over KMOX.

Competing with twenty-eight other announcers for the program, MacCormack secured the appointment. Jane and Goodman Ace are under contract for four years to the sponsors and he will continue to be the announcer for the skit of American home life.

While Franklyn was at WIL, he was program director, announcer, soloist, and became famed for his Dream Boat, a group of poetical readings each evening. He came to St. Louis a year ago from Denver where he had been in radio work, and previous to that had been widely experienced in stage and dramatic work. Neil Norman is his successor as program director of WIL.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 3/11/33)