Radio

A string of last Year’s Christmas tree ornaments provides the clank of the sailors’ chains as the clamber aboard Captain Pegleg’s ship in the Polly Pops Pirate Thriller program over KWK at 6 o’clock Tuesday and Friday.

A deft wielding of a folded newspaper makes the sound of paddles of the canoe to conjure up romantic pictures. An empty cigar box tapped gently on the table represents the soft footfalls of the attackers.

Cajoleries and cries of Poll Parrot, the inseparable companion of Pegleg, are provided by Austin Cottrell, a staff member of KWK. In fact, he is the one-man sound effects man (sic) who furnishes the sound of the waves and the yells and shouts of the sailors. When the continuity reads “The steady rolling noise of the surf” or “The ship’s bells sounded through the deadly clear,” Cottrell leaves off being the parrot and rattles the property chains or imitates noisy sailors.

Squawks, cheers, applause, shrill sounds, parrot lingo are all a part of the sound background which he supplies to make the yarns that Pegleg spins sound more realistic.

Pegleg is played by Robert Vaughan, the original “Bat” when that production played in New York.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 4/17/1932).

If a thunderstorm comes raging and roaring out of your loudspeaker to the accompaniment of high-class “drummer” some calm midsummer night, don’t be kidded. They haven’t set up a shower-bath in the studio to get that pitter-patter effect, nor is George Bungle delivering a campaign speech to create that loud, empty, booming illusion.

If the program is from KWK studio, you can bet what little coin you have left that Jeff le Pique’s at the microphone pouring rice from one tin can to another and rattling a sheet of tin for all he’s worth, which is a lot.

For Jeff is KWK’s sound effect technician. He’s also Herbert Berger’s drummer man. The two jobs work in together. Jeff was the kind of a boy who liked to beat on tin pans when he was little. He’s working that out of his system on the kettles and traps. He was also the sort of boy who enthusiastically splashed the water with his hand to assure his fond and intently listening parents that he was taking a bath. Thus was created the sound illusion genius we have today.

Jeff’s a nice, pleasant-faced young fellow, honest-looking in spite of that mustache, and you wouldn’t think to look at him that he’s got the soul of a shell-game man when it comes to fooling people. But he has. He makes a business of fooling radio listeners, and the better he does it, the more he gloats.

For instance, to create the effect of softly lapping waves, he gently strokes a kettle drum with a wire brush. For the sound of canoe paddles, he squeezes a newspaper into a ball and pulls it out again, like a round accordion. For a train clicking over the rails, he pulls a iron bar over a set of chair springs. And when the Cannonball Express roars over a trestle-there’s a thrill. Jeff puts springs and a bar over a kettle drum and repeats the operation.

When Black Lightning gallops down the home stretch a nose in front to pay off the mortgage on the old cunnel’s plantation, it’s just Jeff tapping his drum sticks on an old derby. And don’t ask whether it’s an English or a Kentucky derby. We thought of that one and passed it up as phooey.

For the tinkle of breaking glass, he shakes a thermos bottle with the insides broken in front of the mike. The whir of an airplane motor is gotten by sticking a piece of celluloid into an electric fan. Kissing is usually done by one of the entertainers merely kissing his or her finger close to the mike.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 6/11/1932).

By Nancy Frazer
Seated at the tiptop of Sportsman’s Park at the side of France Laux, KMOX’s popular announcer, offers both a mental and verbal picture second to none. At that commanding position where the park looks like an artist’s dream, the game should be apparent in even its tiniest details – but it isn’t unless Laux is describing it.

Personally, I am not much of a baseball enthusiast or wasn’t until I heard him talk about the game so familiarly and colorfully. Since seeing the game through his eyes and my own simultaneously, I am convinced that one actually derives as definite a picture of what is taking place through his description while seated comfortably by the radio as if one were actually there.

While thousands of persons in homes and on the street and in automobiles are awaiting his next word, France Laux’s head in bent close to a microphone with his eyes on every player in the game. He catches every movement and the words are on the air before the ball stops and while the actual spectator is wondering what the result will be. I heard what he said and with my eyes glued on the plays I still couldn’t see what was going on until he had already sent the words bounding out through the ether.

The amazing part about it is that he rarely, if ever, makes a mistake. He knows the game thoroughly, having played baseball in all positions and all over the state of Oklahoma. He has played in all the major sports and served as coach and instructor to the extent that he is renowned in the Southwest. He is even popular as an umpire, and that is saying something!

I always fancied when I merely heard of him that he must have lists of names and score cards and all sorts of historical data piled before him which he fumbled through in order to get the information out in time. But he doesn’t! He merely has an ordinary scorecard and a package of cigarettes and a head full of personal and historical information about each of the players. With each play he puts down a system of circles and dashes which mean worlds to him.

They meant so little to me that I prevailed upon him to explain while Ray Schmidt was summing up the events at the end of the innings.

He has worked out a system of recording all his own so that every one of the minute hieroglyphics means a player or a play to him. He is so well versed in the game that he knows what the decisions are and he can tell them as quickly as the play is made. He does however keep a weather eye on Martin Haley, official scorer, who sits over in the press box across the tiptop way. If there is any doubt, the scorer nuts up a finger or lays it down and they understand each other.

Laux tells that happens in an unbiased and simple way leaving out all adjectives, since he feels that if people are interested in listening to the game at all they want only information as to what transpires and not any comments of his own. As simple and as few as the words are, he has the most graphic command of descriptive words that I have ever heard.

I tried listening and looking. Then I tried just looking at the game and then merely listening to him and I found that I enjoyed the game much more with the mental picture and hearing him calmly and accurately verbally parading the plays out over the air.

France Laux started participating in sports via the radio announcer way in a spectacular manner.

When the Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Yankees were playing in the decisive game in the World Series, the sports announcer at KVOO suddenly quit and there was no one to announce. The powers were in a quandary while they realized that there was but one person in Oklahoma who knew the game well enough to describe it. France Laux was fifty miles away and there was but one hour to spare.

They tore down to his town and back again, did an in-motion kidnapping act and had him back in the studio with one minute to spare where he broadcast his first game. Being really catapulted into the announcing field, he made such a success at it that KMOX asked him to come here in 1929 where he was voted recently one of the best announcers in the country. It must be a family trait, however, for he has a brother in New Jersey who is also making a name for himself as an announcer.

Try as he will, though, he can’t keep all the enthusiasm out of his voice and that is toned down by Robert Stetson, engineer for the station, who is continually on the job at the radio booth in the park. He sees to it that the volume is kept down and the voice is modulated even during the most exciting moments.

Anyway, baseball has an ardent devotee. Since becoming a Laux follower I keep mentally reflecting what I have been missing.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 6/11/1932).

The name Louise Munsch and her “Just for Women” program on station WEW meant radio for women in St. Louis and a large surrounding area. For thirteen years during the 1940s and 1950s. The show, made up of interview and commentary, was called a low-key women’s lib. A graduate of Visitation Academy and Fontbonne College, she went on to do graduate work in radio and television at Northwestern University. In 1950 she was one of 25 people from throughout the nation who were chosen to spend eight weeks in intensive study of television at KNBH, the NBC basic station in Hollywood, California.

At St. Louis University, she gave the first course in television with academic credit to be given anywhere in this area, plus the first course in radio feature programming to be given anywhere. This radio educational first went out on the national news wires.

She had two other radio series on KSD under other names. She was Virginia Blair on “The Biederman Puzzle Party,” a quiz show recorded in homes; and she was also Louise Terry in “A Woman Views Politics” – a liaison between the women of St. Louis and the then Republican candidate for Mayor, Carl Stifel. She was also the first person in this area to present a women’s show on FM radio. WEW was the first FM station in St. Louis.

Helen Traubel, famous Wagnerian soprano of the Metropolitan Opera, and Mrs. Stan Musial made their radio debuts on the program. She also pioneered Alcoholics Anonymous on the air. There were series for the St. Louis Mental Health Society, The Municipal Opera, the Little Symphony Under the Stars at Washington University, the St. Louis Symphony, the Art Museum and the Missouri Historical Society. The theme of the program was to widen the horizons of women from the kitchen, the nursery and the front yard.

(From St. Louis Memories, 1990).

Bob Harms who takes the part of “Tommy” and writes the script for that nightly KMOX feature program “Tommy Talks” gets his inspiration and ideas from many sources. Bob has lunch with a group of office boys and messengers two or three times a week so that he can absorb their ideas and views and pick up their slang expressions. In this manner Harms is able to give a true picture of the thoughts and actions of the average office boy.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 1/30/1932).

Just as little boys dream of becoming policemen or engineers, Peter Grant, senior announcer at KMOX, cherished a hope of being a radio announcer.

Finishing his course in law, Grant – Melvin McGinn he was then – planned to open his own law office and wait dignifiedly for clients to rush in. He thought, however, that there might be a period of time before they found the way to his office and he was faced with the necessity of providing himself with a few sustaining funds. Dramatics were his natural bent and his eloquence in law work had been greatly enhanced so he hit upon the idea of convincing KMOX that he would be an excellent announcer for evening programs.

He tried out for this enviable position one night and got himself a contract to appear in dramatic sketches which were being featured over that station about six years ago.

Grant’s father is an instructor in music at Washington University and he tried vainly to make his son’s chubby fingers master the art of playing the piano. Some way, when practice time came, the budding genius was always on the corner lot conducting a circus or improvising some dramatic sketch. It was more to keep domestic peace than anything else that finally made his father give up his determination to make a concert pianist of Grant and let him spend the practicing hours on dramatic creations.

Dramatics bore fruit, however, forming the basis for Grant’s success. He has occupied almost every position from office boy on up. He is now senior announcer in addition to appearing in other sustaining programs at the station and thus is one little boy who had his dream actually realized.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 4/17/1932).