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]

Knights of the Gray Underwear

On admiral Byrd's second exhibition to Antarctica in 1934 he brought a team of 55 men and tons of equipment. That included a strange array of vehicles but also musical instruments and a radio transmitter.
They broadcast from amateur radio station, W2ZK operated by Amory H. Waite Jr.  Their weekly broadcasts included weather data,  news and singing from the Knights of the Gray Underwear.

The line up of the group included Joseph Hill, Charles Murphy possibly also Thomas Poulter, Epaminondas Demas and surely others. one of them played a home-made drum, another the jug, and Dr. Gill Morgan, their seismologist played organ. The Ohio State University Library actually has a 1934 recording of them singing an original composition titled "Penguins Parade." More here.

As a radioman Waite stands alone. He not only broadcast from Antarctica, but he kept a diary and that transcripts his weekly broadcasts are archived at the Ohio State University Library. [SOURCE] The archive is quite extensive. Just the Amateur Radio Sub-series contains one cubic foot of records dating from 1938 to 1984. These records document W2ZK including correspondence and station logs from 1938 to 1984.

He was born near Boston, MA in 1902 making him about 32 years old when they went to sea in 1934. He got hsi first amateur license as a boyscout at the age of 12. Waite joined the U.S. Navy in 1919 and went through the Naval Radio School at the Great Lakes Naval Station in Illinois. He later was a radioman aboard the U.S.S. Florida, and U.S.S. Arkansas. After being discharged in 1923 he attended MIT and graduated in 1926 with a degree in radio and electrical engineering. All that before shipping off to the ice caps.

One biography claims he was also once the Chief Operator of New England's first television station.. but does not identify it as WBZ or W1XAY.  But he did Waite later developed and patented a system to measure the depth of ice using radio waves. It's called radio ice depth sounding.

Bolling Advanced Base Radio

You can't grow up to be an explorer anymore. Our species, long obsessed with exploration for the purposes of fun and commerce has managed to visit every hilltop, island, valley, crevasse, and mud hole on the entire planet. Admiral Richard E. Byrd was probably the last of the explorers. But he was unique. He was fixated on being the first person to visit very cold places... ostensibly to check the wind speed. In 1919 he flew over the arctic for the navy, in 1925 he flew over the Greenland icecap, in 1926 the north pole, in 1928 the south pole, and was back in the Antarctic in 1933 again. We all know he was a pilot, but in that era, pilots had to be quite skilled with their radios.

In 1933 He traveled to the Antarctic and he decided to winter there inland from a base called Bolling Advanced Base. This was a difficult journey from the somewhat more robust base on the Ross Ice Shelf "Little America."  He was to do "Meteorological and Auroral work." to quote his 1937 book Alone. Originally he had planned that this base would be staffed by three men: two weather observers and a radio operator. But later supply issues meant that only one person could man the inland base. Byrd stayed there alone, in a "base" that was little more than a tunnel under the snow. His chief radio engineer John Dyer had to quickly teach him how to make repairs, and the basic operation of the radio set. His troubles foretold future problems  

"Whenever I I looked at the complications of tubes, switches, and coils, my heart misgave me. I scarcely knew the Morse code. Fortunately Little America could talk to me by radio telephone. So I wasn't obliged to decipher hot outpourings of dots and dashes from skillful operators. but reply I must in dots and dashes, and that I doubted I could do."

Little America used the call sign KFZ and the inland base used the call sign KFY. He was sometimes an hour late because his antenna was blown down. Little America broadcast a "special program" to the Chicago World's Fair and Byrd added his own greeting in Morse Code "Antarctic Greetings." But weeks later the exhaust of the generator powering the radio clogged with ice and the back pressure nearly killed him with carbon monoxide. Little America continued to make weekly broadcasts to the United States which were received by CBS.  This was critical as they were sponsored by General Mills who was using then as part of a radio advertising campaign. They even had a CBS radio Correspondent on staff at Little America, Charles Murphy. Earlier trips required communication strictly in Morse code. But by 1933 they could broadcast voice and even music with a Collins shortwave radio.


Byrd continued to survive at the inland base despite the wee problem with carbon monoxide poisoning until the generator broke down. He had an emergency hand-powered radio set. but they were intended to be worked by two men. one to crank... one to key and transmit. He described it as harder than rubbing your gut while patting the top of your head.  Later even that set failed him because of a simple loose connection to the antenna lead. In the end, he survived because his erratic broadcasts alerted the men at Little America. They rescued him and he recovered enough to later serve in WWII and to try three more Antarctic expeditions.