To Beginning Years
In 1939 I started working in radio, the TV of the 30's, 40's,
and 50's. It's has long been said that with radio, the pictures were only in the listener's imaginations. With as many dramas on radio then as on TV now, the need for a lot of actors existed, and some of them were kids. After being given my career start by Carlton E. Morse as described down below, I was one of radio's West Coast kids working in the Los Angeles area up into my twenties, appearing on most major shows broadcast. I had the opportunity to work with many major radio and film personalities of the era. I've mentioned before in articles I've written for "Radiogram" the house organ of SPERDVAC (Society for the Preservation, and Encouragement
of Radio Drama, Variety And Comedy) that my youth prevented me from having been familiar with a lot of those personalities' previous work, so I never asked them any questions about themselves for answers I could relate here.
Pictured are the old NBC Studios located on the northeast corner of Sunset and Vine where previously my mother had made an appointment for me to do a reading for NBC's May Regan, an executive for their talent department. Her office later called me (through my mother, I was only eight years old) to further audition for the part of Hank on "One Man's Family." I remember my mother and I entering the artist's entrance at the back of the building, checking in with the guard and being directed down a long sloping hallway to a set of black painted doors with molded letters reading "Studio G" on them. A lady soon exited those doors and presented me with a script. She told me I was to read the lines marked "Hank." The script looked something like this: The words are NOT those of Carlton E. Morse's work. They're mine:
After being given a few minutes to read over the lines I was called into the studio where Carlton E. Morse, and others were in what'd I later learned was a control booth. It took up the entire width of the studio and a soundoproof pane of glass stood separated it from the main area of the studio. He spoke into a small tabletop director's microphone and over the Talk-back speaker I heard him tell me I would be reading with the actress that would play Hazel (I don't remember if it
was the actual Hazel (Bernice Berwin). She cued me with her line
and we read aloud the script dialog. The script may have been longer than my above example, but we finished, and the lady who called me in escorted me out to where my mother was waiting and told her the standby "don't call us, we'll call you." A week or so later my mother told me I had been Mr. Morse's choice for the part. There had been a phone call to inform me.
There's a joke about the octagenarian who says, if he'd known he was going to live so long he'd taken better care of his health, so is it with me about really remembering all the nuances and details of the times I experienced in Old Time Radio. I'd kept notes, but being so young I just rode out the waves. Among my credits I appeared regularly as "Hank" on
"One Man's Family",
"Butch" on"The Mayor of the Town", starring Lionel Barrymore and Agnes Moorehead, "Junior" on the "Life of Riley", starring William Bendix, and was featured on the Smilin' Ed McConnell Saturday morning children's show, "The Buster Brown Gang." I also performed as "Little Alvin" in the short lived "Major Hoople" show, starring Arthur Q. Bryan, who also was the voice of "Elmer Fudd" of the Warner Bros. "Bugs Bunny" cartoon.
During my career I performed on most radio drama programs originating from Los Angeles. It was during the days before tape recording, and records weren't easily cut, so most everything was done "live". We worked in sickness and in health, for better or for worse. It wasn't that recording didn't exist, for thousands of fragile old transcriptions of early radio shows were made and still exist today having been transferred to tape. It's just that shows weren't recorded in order to achieve perfection, but to be "airchecked" by legal departments who bought advertising as a means to insure their ads were being correctly broadcast.
My education was normal in that I didn't attend a private school, where hours were scheduled to accommodate professional children. I went to Los Angeles city schools, namely San Fernando Valley, Selma Avenue, and Vine Street elementary schools, Le Conte Junior High, and Hollywood High School. At Hollywood I played baseball, football, tried out a little track. Not a fireball in sports, lettering only in B team football. Graduating from
Hollywood High's Class of Winter '49, I enrolled at Los Angeles City College earning a two year Associate in Arts degree in General Education.
During World War II, I was ten when it started, in addition to buying Defense Savings Stamps and War Bonds my war effort contribution consisted of 25 or so USO camp show performances for the service men training in the Southern California area, performing a juvenile part in F. Hugh Herbert's Broadway stage play "Kiss and Tell". I played with some fine actors and
actresses, Ray Collins, Tom Brown, Larry Parks, Peter Lawford, Bonita Granville, Ann Rutherford, Arthur Space, Jerome Courtland and others now mostly seen on late night movies and Turner Network Television.
As mentioned I'd been interested in flying for as long as I can remember. On my seventh birthday Mom and Dad took me and my brother, Hugh, for an airplane ride. I remember it still. From then I knew I wanted to know how to fly. I started flying lessons when I was thirteen, soloed when I was sixteen, and got my pilot's license at seventeen. My attention riveted on
flying. My goal (in those days it was called ambition) was to be a military pilot and wear silver wings!
To U.S. Air Force Years