Showing posts with label radio during the Great Depression. Show all posts

5. Nan the Radio Star - Part 2

Battle for Stardom

Nan's publicity photo by Maurice Seymour, 1932.

The Great Depression after the stock market crash of 1929 greatly compromised, but did not ultimately harm, the fledgling radio industry. “At the moment when radio was poised to complete its transition from a local to a truly national medium, capital markets dried up, consumption dropped, and unemployment soared, Cynthia B. Meyers writes. "And yet, radio grew anyway.” [Meyers, Cynthia B., A Word from Our Sponsor: Admen, Advertising, and the Golden Age of Radio. Fordham University Press, 2014.]

Source

With the Depression underway, however, radio trade magazines reported that some of the networks had trouble collecting bills due from sponsors. [Radio Guide, March 31, 1932.] In addition, a Radio Guide columnist wrote that executives from NBC had decided to do away with 15-minute programs for budgetary reasons. It would be "much cheaper to employ one entertainment unit for half an hour than two for fifteen minutes," Mike Porter observed on April 16, 1932. As a result, some artists and performers were added to the ranks of the unemployed.

This is likely what happened to Nan, for, other than a visit to Columbia's New York City studios in August of 1932, the only reference I have found for her between 1932 and 1936 is in the 1933 city directory for Evanston, Illinois, listing Nan as a cashier in Vera Megowan's Tea Room.

Chicago Tribune, November 15, 1931.

Competition from Hollywood

Before she headed back to Chicago to look for work, 21-year-old Nan had faced stiff competition in the radio business. By 1932, Radio Guide reported that "countless thousands of girls" were swarming to radio studios in Chicago and New York in a "battle for stardom." "They come, long lines of them, in their eager faces both hope and fear," the magazine observes in its November 13-19 issue. "When some of the greatest stage stars in the country are washouts in front of the microphone, what chance has the comparatively inexperienced girl to crash the networks and rise to stardom?"

And what chance did Nan Dorland have? She had acting and radio experience, and she was attractive. But a pretty face meant little to broadcasters. "In Hollywood, face and form come first," the magazine states. "In radio, they come last." Producers were always looking for something new, something different.

Radio auditions were tough. "Audition after audition came and went," writes Mary Jane Higby. "I would arrive at those studios rigid with determination, seething with the will to win. And I nearly always did achieve something, but never that glorious first place. After a year of such near misses I was becoming as neurotic as any other of my soap opera characters.” [Mary Jane Higby, Tune in Tomorrow. New York: Cowles Education Corp., 1966.]

Career Revival

Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, May 20, 1943.

Ogden Standard Examiner, Aug. 11, 1927.

With her marriage to radio script writer Richard Morenus in New York City on October 15, 1936, Nan's radio career picked up again. For example, she played a schoolteacher named Harriet Adair in a half-hour weekly NBC series called "Gunsmoke Law" in the late 1930s. Apparently Nan can be heard in the sole surviving episode held at the Library of Congress (which I am attempting to order). The main character, a young cowboy named Dave Serviss, attempts to flirt with Harriet by telling her, "Yore mighty easy to look at." [Source: Radio Rides the Range. Jack French and David S. Siegel, eds., Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2014.]

During her nine years of almost continuous radio work in Chicago and New York, Nan also made regular appearances before the microphone on the programs of such well-known radio personalities as Don Ameche, Amos and Andy, Lum and Abner, Walter O’Keefe, Graham McNamee, Bob Hope and others, the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix reported on May 20, 1943.


Illustration by D. E. Holcomb in Tower Radio magazine, Jan. 1935.

I would love to hear a recording of Nan's voice as apparently it was great for radio. "Miss Dorland is favorably equipped with a pleasant vocal apparatus and an easy flow of vocabulary," Variety magazine enthused on April 26, 1932. Before Nan and Richard moved to northern Ontario, the Star-Phoenix mentioned that she had made a "master recording registration of her voice for a program signature" at the insistence of "an enthusiastic sponsor." Nan's voice was still being heard on the radio long after she left New York.

A 1937 "Behind-the-Scenes" Video of Radio Show Production

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4. Nan the Radio Star - Part 1

Early Radio Soap Operas

Publicity shot of Nan Dorland, C. 1931. Source Animation by Deep Nostalgia.

The newly christened Nan Dorland moved back to her hometown of Chicago in 1931 to pursue a career in radio. Her interest in the new invention of radio began during her teenage years in Los Angeles in the late 1920s when, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Oct. 8, 1931), she stood before the microphone of station KFI to promote current theatre productions.

Nan was young when radio was young. The first record I could find of Nan's radio gigs is an advertisement in the Chicago Daily Herald on July 17, 1931 listing her as one of the Chicago Motor Club Players who were presenting a drama on radio station WENR (NBC). By September of the same year, Nan had embarked on her radio career in earnest, working on a daytime serial in the Chicago studios of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC).

Perhaps Nan felt the same way Mary Jane Higby felt at her first radio broadcast when she saw her first microphone . "I had heard a great deal about mike fright," Higby wrote in her book Tune in Tomorrow (1966), "but I felt absolutely nothing. Perhaps it was because I could never imagine that anyone was actually listening." In fact, millions of women were listening.

The Daytime Radio Serial

Much like the 1990s was a time of growth for the Internet, the 1930s was a time of rapid growth for radio. Hundreds of commercial radio stations popped up across the USA over the course of the decade. At the start of the decade 12 million American households owned a radio, and by 1939 this total had exploded to more than 28 million. [Source: Christopher H. Sterling and John M. Kittross, Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1990, p. 11.)

A housewife at work while listening to the radio (in the corner by the window), c1940. Source

Frank and Anne Hummert of Chicago were the founders of the daytime soap opera. In 1930, according to Jim Cox, Frank Hummert "postulated that the American housewife might appreciate daytime audio fare more amusing than cooking tips, beauty secrets and personal advice ... which dominated the airwaves during the sunlight hours." (Jim Cox, Frank and Anne Hummert's Radio Factory: The Programs and Personalities of Broadcasting's Most Prolific Producers. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2003). Daytime serials, designed to accommodate the daily pattern of the homemaker, made their debut on the infant medium of radio. Advertisers quickly recognized the potential and signed on in droves. During the "golden age" of radio there were between 360 and 391 soaps on the radio air.

Illustrator Cara Slack's depiction of a 1930s radio serial broadcast in the Chicago Tribune, Jan. 14, 1968.

The 15-minute daily serials were sentimental, with ample doses of hardship. James Thurber once wrote, "A soap opera is a kind of sandwich. Between thick slices of advertising, spread 12 minutes of dialog, add predicament, villainy, and female suffering in equal measure, throw in a dash of nobility, sprinkle with tears, season with organ music, cover with a rich announcer sauce, and serve five times a week." [As quoted in Jim Harmon, "When Life Could be Beautiful," The Chicago Tribune, Jan 14, 1968, p. 225.]

Keeping Up with Daughter

Nan's publicity photo by Maurice Seymour for Chicago NBC radio's daytime serial "Keeping Up with Daughter," 1931. Source

Nan's first starring role was in 1931 on NBC Chicago's "Keeping Up With Daughter" - one of the very first radio serials. The new radio program, sponsored by Sherwin-Williams, cost NBC $120,000 according to the Chicago Tribune (Sept. 27, 1931). Nan played Dora Mae, the high-school-age daughter. The story was billed as a "moving, human drama of the life of an average American family. ... Joys, pleasures, sorrows, success and ambitions - all these and other feelings of a family of three in a typical American town" were portrayed in the episodes. [Source: Minneapolis Star, September 26, 1931.] The show, which aired every Wednesday morning from 11 to 11:15 a.m., lasted only one season, from September 30, 1931 to June 22, 1932.


Minneapolis Star, September 26, 1931.

The Problem of Sponsor Meddling

A review in Variety magazine provides some insight into why the show "Keeping Up With Daughter" was a flop. "Mid-afternoon series of sketches only mildly entertaining because of the nearly 100% commercialism," Variety pronounced on April 26, 1932. Apparently, Sherwin-Williams insisted that plugs for their company's products be inserted into the story "in an none-too-deft manner," with Nan as the daughter reading off paint colours - and their numbers - from a catalogue! This commercial angle, the magazine continues, "practically ruins whatever chance to entertain the sketch possesses."

The question of entertainment versus advertising quickly became a dilemma in the early days of radio programming. As Dr. Cynthia Meyers points out, sponsors believed that since they were paying the piper, they should call the tune. By 1929 the sponsor system was in full swing, with advertisers involved in all aspects of radio broadcasting from concept development to talent recruitment to script-writing The problem of over-commercialization due to sponsor control resulted in listener alienation. [Source: Cynthia B. Meyers, "The Problems with Sponsorship in US Broadcasting, 1930s-1950s," Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 31:3, 2011.]

The Publicity Machine

Publicity photo of Nan by Maurice Seymour. Source

NBC's publicity machine kicked into high gear in the fall of 1931 to promote its new star Nan Dorland. Publicity photos and biographical sketches were distributed to newspapers and magazines far and wide. Obviously, physical appearance mattered little in radio, but newspapers and magazines were happy to print photos of the attractive, blue-eyed redhead. For example, on October 18, 1931 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote:

Although she admits she feels much more at home in a bathing suit or on horseback, Nan Dorland, radio drama actress, has proved she acts as well as she swims. She has a delightful smile that lingers on after she has passed, and a smile that, coming out of a "picture-speaker," would make all radio listeners television fans. (RCA began experimenting with television in 1931.)

Radio Guide, April 16, 1932.

"Incidentally she is an expert bowler." Allentown Morning Call, Feb. 17, 1932.

The Lane Reporter

Radio Guide, March 31, 1932.

Nan's second starring role in a radio program was "The Lane Reporter," sponsored by Lane Cedar Chests. Launched in the spring of 1932, Nan's new show took her back to her former home in Hollywood where she guided her listeners on tours of movie stars' homes, "observing with an uncanny eye what milady's boudoir should contain by the way of eyelash curlers or what the last word is in chintz coverings," Radio Retailing magazine wrote in June 1932. It was like a 1930s radio version of Robin Leach's "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." Nan's Hollywood "tittle-tattle" included a visit to the home of Paramount star Miriam Hopkins where she described for her listeners "the white, bright blue and yellow decorative scheme employed in the boudoir of Miss Hopkins as an attractive setting for the silver blond loveliness of its occupant." (Tampa Times, May 5, 1932.)

Vancouver Province, August 10, 1932.

Protests again arose about over-commercialization. "Miss Dorland is favorably equipped with a pleasant vocal apparatus and an easy flow of vocabulary," a review of "The Lane Reporter" in Variety magazine observes on April 26, 1932. "but what is more important to the sponsor is the subtle interjection of the plug throughout the discourse." While taking listeners through the homes of movie stars, Nan had to promote the sponsor's product - Lane cedar chests. If fans could be persuaded to believe "that all stars have big mansions with silver-brocaded bathtubs and silk-lined swimming pools," the magazine continues, " then it should be a cinch to sell 'em on the idea that no Hollywood home is complete without a cedar chest."

"Behind-the-Scenes" Video of a 1930s Radio Show

Here's a video from 1938 called "Back of the Mike" (produced by Jam Handy Organization) showing how radio shows were made in the 1930s. It begins with the images in the mind of a boy listening to a radio western and then cuts to the broadcast studio where we see how this whole fantasy world was created.

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