Outstanding Radio Features of 1935

I found this image online with no attribution but dated to January 12th, 1935. But I do recognize it as a column from the New York Daily News. I'm going to assume that date is real and extrapolate from there. This Radio Program section was published in this format from at least 1934 into 1937, that's almost 90 years ago. So lets dig into the arcane details.

TUESDAY (1/15/35)

CALL SIGN	Time	Owner
WOR	8:00 PM	Eddy Brown, Violinist
WHN	8:00 PM.	Amateur Hour
WJZ	8:30 PM	Lawrence Tibbett
WMCA	9:00 PM.	US Navy Symphonic Orchestra
WEAF	9:30 PM	Ed Wynn; Duchin Orchestra
WABC	9:30 PM	Jones Orchestra; Evan Evans Baritone
WEAF	10:00 PM.	Musical Comedy, "The Mikado" with John Barclay
WEAF	11:00 PM.	Christmas Carols
WJZ	12:00 MID	Rudy Vallee Orchestra

Eddy Brown only died in 1974 after a very long career. He was a child prodigy musician, who performed on many New York City area radio stations after immigrating to America from Italy at the age of 4 in 1899. He performed with many different symphonies, and lead the Eddy Brown String Quartet in the 1920s. He was music director of the Mutual Broadcasting System from 1930–37, then the music director of radio station WQXR from 1936 to 1942. This performance would have been while he was still at WQXR, and simultaneously president of the Chamber Music Soc. of America.

Lawrence Tibbett was an opera singer and recording artist. Originally from Bakersfield, California he studied music in New York starting in 1923 under Frank La Forge. The earliest radio appearance I found of his was in 1922 over KHJ. He sang leading roles with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City from 1923 to 1950 with over 600 performances in that time. Tibbett  made his first recording for Victor in 1926 and his first Hollywood film in 1930, Rogue Song, for MGM. He appeared on many different radio programs: The Packard Show, Hit Parade, Chesterfield Presents, Ford Sunday Evening Hour, Atwater Kent Radio Hour, The Circle, The Voice of Firestone, and the live broadcasts at the Metropolitan Opera. In 1937 he co-founded AFRA and serving as it's president until 1953. I suspect this specific program is Lawrence Tibbett with Wilfred Pelletier's Orchestra and John B. Kennedy as commentator. 

 The Duchin Orchestra recorded literally hundreds of sides for Victor recordings, often with Lew Sherwood, vocalist. Their sides for the Texaco program were broadcast live on October 2nd 1934. Ed Wynne (also spelled Wynn) was also on the Texaco program back in 1932 in the Fire Chief series. [LINK]The American Bosch popularity poll vote him most popular comedian that year. 

Evan Evans should have a disambiguation asterisk. In addition to the judges, actors, writers, Welsh poets and footballers there was also an Evans Evans actress born in 1936. Evans Evans appears with the Barlwo Orchestra in multiple issues of Tempo dating back to 1933. A concert Program listing, Serious Music on the Columbia Broadcasting System notes 17 performances under the title "Melody Masterpeices." A 1939 advertisement for Julliard School of music lists Evan Evans in the voice staff. Each reference is short and nominally informative always writing out the name and the one word "baritone" except for the oldest one, The Musical Times published in 1899 which inexplicably says "tenor."

WEDNESDAY (1/16/35)

CALL SIGN	Time	Owner
WMCA & WNYC	2:00 PM	New York Civic Symphony and Orchestra.
WABC	3:00 PM	Kate Smith's Matinee, with broadcast from Berne Switzerland
WEAF	3:30 PM	Woman's Radio Review - American Indian Music
WEAF	7:00 PM	Pickens Sisters
WABC	7:30 PM	The O'Neills
WEAF	8:00 PM	Mary Pickford in "Trigger"
WJZ	8:30 PM	Lanny Ross
WABC	8:30 PM	Broadway Varieties
WJZ	9:00 PM	Warden Lewis E. Lawes; Sing Sing Band
WABC	9:00 PM	Nino Martini; Kostelanetz Orch; Chorus
WEAF	9:00 PM	Town Hall Tonight, with Fred Allen
WJZ	9:30 PM	John Charles Thomas
WABC	9:30 PM	Burns and Allen
WJZ	10:00 PM	Induction of Elsie Janis as NBC Announcer
WABC	10:00 PM	Byrd Expedition Broadcast - Christmas Program
WEAF	10:30 PM	One Man's Family
WABC	10:30 PM	Mary Eastman, Evan Evans, Howard Barlow Orch.
WJZ	11:00 PM	Coleman Orch.
WEAF	12:00 MID	George Olsen Orch. and Ethel Shutta
WABC	12:00 MID	Amateur Night in Harlem

I hardly need to discuss Kate Smith, especially since I did that previously [LINK].  But Woman's Radio Review is a much lesser known radio program. Claudine MacDonald was the program's host, a single photo caption [SOURCE] adds little detail from the Donna L. Halpern book Invisible Stars: A Social History of Women in American Broadcasting. 

“The Women’s Radio Review was almost like a magazine, featuring segments on music (sometimes written or performed by women artists), literature, art, travel, news… and no recipes. Macdonald was… opposed to the type of women’s show that talked to women as if they were stupid.”

The Picken's Sisters were really sisters. Grace, Jane, Helen and Patti were daughters of Monte and Patti Pickens. Grace was not a singer but their manager. Patti and Helen got married and dropped out of show biz early. But Jane Pickens Hoving was a popular singer on Broadway, radio and television for 20 years. She sang in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, then toured with Eddy Douchin's Orchestra. Her appearances on the American Melody Hour on CBS radio led to her own radio program: the Jane Pickens Show on NBC.

The O'Neills was a radio soap opera . The radio iteration of the show aired for a decade in a 15-minute format. First on Mutual, CBS and then NBC from 1934 to 1943, later a TV series from 1949 to 1950. Quick synopsis: An elderly widow "Mother O'Neil" played by Kate McComb has two married children and two adopted children. Mother O'Neil is sage and wise, as is her platonic companion Morris Levy played by Jack Rubin. The kids are all non-stop drama as the words soap opera implied.

Lanny Ross born Lancelot Patrick Ross, was another singer from the Packard show. In the 1937 season Fred Astaire left, and they wrapped up those episodes with under the title Mardi Gras, with Ross as the singer and Walter O'Keefe as comedian, but still sponsored by Packard. His first radio gig was in 1928 earning him the title "the troubadour of the moon" according to the Historical Dictionary of Old Time Radio by Robert C. Reinehr. But this is probably not quite right. (The book Paul Whiteman: Pioneer in American Music by Don Rayno reports that same title describing Jimmy Brierly for a program he did on WAAT prior to 1933. A 1930 issue of The Herald and review newspaper tells me that "The Troubador of the Moon" program may be heard over WWJ, WSAL WHO. KSTP or WTAM... that program starred Ross so I'm going to disregard Brierlyfor the moment.  Ross career did start in 1928, but singing for Yale Glee Club's Jeddo Highlanders on NBC. He performed on Show Boat until 1937, and his own show, ''Lanny Ross and His Log Cabin Orchestra.'' before going into film. 

Warden Lewis E. Lawes publicity photo 1935

 Lewis E. Lawes (pictured above) was an actual prison warden, that's a title not a proper name. The Sing Sing Band is a reference to Sing Sing Prison, not vocalists. But Lawes did make some radio appearances. He was in The Glass Key episode of the Campbell Playhouse in 1939, and on Information Please he appeared with Boris Karloff in 1941.  He was the narrator for "Behind Prison Bars", which ran on WJZ from 1933-1939.  Later he was the subject of The Crime Cases Of Warden Lawes, a set of dramatized stories from Lawes' Sing Sing files on Mutual-Radio 1946-1947. He did record one record for Victor in 1932, it's more of the above. [SOURCE] It's hard to describe his brief but intense popularity, he wrote a few books and appeared in everything from radio to the cover of Time magazine, to comic books.

John Charles Thomas was an American opera singer from Pennsylvania. He made his first recordings for Vocalion in 1920, then RCA Victor in 1931. This led to regular appearances on radio including Five-Star Theater in 1932-33 with the Joseph Bonime Orchestra, the Vince Radio Program 1934–36, the Ford, General Motors and The Magic Key of RCA shows 1937–40, the Coca-Cola show from 1940–41 and the Westinghouse Radio Program in 1943-46. 

Elsie Janis was born Elsie Bierbower, in 1889. She was an actress, singer and eventually a radio announcer. most sources state that in 1934, Janis became the first female announcer on the NBC radio network. The December 19, 1934 issue of Radio World published the below article. Apparently NBC had an official first broadcast on January 16th.

Ethel Shutta and the Olsen orchestra air back to back which isn't' surprising. Shutta married band leader George Olsen in 1926, and the couple began touring together. They appeared on the Jack Benny Canada Dry Radio Show, which debuted in 1932 on NBC radio, and apparently together on WEAF. They divorced in 1939. Her career was mostly spent on Broadway but she did do the Nestle Chocolateers program in 1933. 

My favorite program on this list is Amateur Night in Harlem. This was broadcast live from The Apollo Theater. This is where the tough judgement of that local crowd was built. Great artists won real applause, but poor performances were met with jeers, the audience would boo and hiss. [SOURCE] I've written about this program before but there is so much to be said. [LINK]

The Amalgamated Broadcasting System

Today, nobody remembers who Ed Wynne was, which is sort of a shame. He was born Isaiah Edwin Leopold, and his father made women's hats for a living in Philadelphia. Ed ran away from home to become a comedian while still a teenager. He crafted his middle name into a stage name, Ed Wynne. He performed on Broadway and in vaudeville, and made the jump into radio in the late 1920s.

While was a comedian in the 1930s he hosted a popular radio show called The Fire Chief. It was sponsored by Texaco. He reprized that popular Fire Chief radio character in two films "Follow the Leader" which came out in 1930 and "The Chief", three years later. It was then, at the peak of his fame that he struck it out boldly and risked it all to found a new radio network. Wynne lost big.

Wynne debuted the Amalgamated Broadcasting System on September 25, 1933. He used his personal savings to launch ABS, seriously trying to compete with CBS and NBC. They had one affiliate in New York WBNX, a share time with WAWZ. They had talks with other stations but it was just talk. Ed was tough, he'd been on his own for 30 years worked his way up from selling hats to Hollywood movies. But his partner Ota Gygi was not. Gygi was a Hungarian-born violinist, who worked in vaudeville. He was not very famous, and there is little written of him. Variety magazine reviewed a show he performed in 1922 and basically said it wasn't worth the $2.

Shortly after ABS started, Wynne left town to appear a Hollywood film. Gygi was left in charge. That's when things ran amok. Gygi spent his time offending the press, and advertisers. The fledgling network was crippled by the time Wynne got back. Without advertisers they lacked the capital to put together a schedule of quality programming. Amalgamated went out of business on October 28, 1933... after only 5 weeks. They lost $300,000, that's over 5 million in 2012 dollars. Wynne didn't take it well. In short order he was divorced, and had a nervous breakdown.

Gygi spent the next few years begging to work in the orchestra at NBC but he did eventually find work for Samuel Insull at the Affiliate Broadcasting Company, but that house of cards failed in 1936. He's lost to time after that. But Wynne's career recovered, The Fire Chief show lasted a few more years and he segued into television hosting variety shows. He hosted The Ed Wynne show on NBC TV in 1948, and memorably voiced the Mad Hatter character for Disney in the 1951 film Alice in Wonderland. He continued to do appearances on TV in the 1960s even appearing on the Twilight Zone. He died in 1966.