Ernie Pyle story featured twice on KDKA
Ernie’s book to be dramatized
By Si Steinhauser
So that everyone may hear NBC’s dramatization of Ernie Pyle’s last book, Brave Men, KDKA will carry the broadcast at 12:15 tonight and repeat it via recording at 11 o’clock Wednesday morning.
Dick McDonagh, head of the network script department, has adapted Ernie’s story for a Words at War broadcast, featuring the column Ernie wrote about the death of Capt. Waskow on an Italian mountainside and how his men brought their dead leader’s body from the precipice and bade him goodbye. It was one of Ernie’s greatest stories.
Tonight’s – and tomorrow’s – story is in fact a repeat. It was first heard on NBC’s These Are Our Men in February. The network felt, and Manager Joe Baudino of KDKA agrees, that Ernie and his writings meant so much to America that everyone will want to hear the story again. And those who missed it will appreciate the broadcast all the more.
Tonight, from 10 to 11 o’clock, WJAS will present Memo to the Future, an expression of the common man’s hopes in the San Francisco World Conference. A Wyoming serviceman, Marine Sgt. Harry Jackson, will act as “traffic cop to the world” and direct 40 pickups from six continents. Army, Navy and Marine Corps assisted in selecting Jackson for the job. He is just back from the Pacific.
Servicemen, farmers, workmen, statesmen, scientists, entertainers will be heard. Names of many are familiar: Bette Davis, Thomas Mann, Carl Van Doren, Paul Robeson, Elmo Roper. Also heard will be a Cuban newspaperman, a housewife, a Russian soldier, a Yank in Germany, airmen, exiles, a Jap-American and spokesmen and women from Allied lands.
Don Prindle told his radio partner, Wen Niles, “I’m writing a ‘joke.’” Wen looked at him and said, “Give her my regards.”
If they can tell them that bad on the air, we can write them.
One of those “once-in-a-lifetime” impromptu programs was given at the Variety Club Sunday night. A group from the Ladies Theatrical Club gave a private dinner party for the Oklahoma cast to thank the actors for entertaining at Deshon Hospital. The group retired to the club rooms after dinner and a singfest began. A “stranger” with a fine baritone “cut in” and everyone was wondering who he was. He was Ross Graham, one of NBC’s finest singers, who was also at Deshon with a USO unit.
Fred Waring signed an unusual contract with NBC today. He will go on the air as a half-hour morning feature, 11 to 11:30 starting June 4. The return of Waring to NBC is a personal idea of President Niles Trammell of the network. He wants Fred back where he started in radio. The contract is one of the biggest any network ever signed with a dance band and most unusual in that it is being used in the morning when soap operas are under fire.
Joan Brooks’ favorite story is about her trip to Camp Croft to sing for the convalescents there. She contracted pneumonia, they put her to bed and the G.I.’s sang for her.
A Kansas City columnist, tired of hearing Harry Von Zell trying to be a comedian, cracked, “Whoever told that guy Von Zell he’s funny? Why don’t he stick to straight commercials at which he’s good?”
That’s perfect comment in our book, but Harry resents it, so this summer he’ll spend his vacation “proving I’m funny by doing comedy roles in movies.”
There are two unfunny things about that: One is a strike in Hollywood which won’t permit Harry or anyone else to make pictures. The other is the possibility that Harry will flop as an actor, and if he does, will radio still want him?
One Man’s Family will celebrate its fourteenth radio birthday with tonight’s broadcast. Author Carleton E. Morse thinks he has written the equivalent of 54 novel-length books for the program.
Tonight’s American Forum will present questions the people are asking as the San Francisco World Conference is about to start. Members of the American delegation will be asked to answer them for the radio audience.
Gabby Hayes, who wears a beard, collects shaving mugs as a hobby.
Andre Kostelanetz and his wife, Lily Pons, can sign anyone of a number of radio contracts and “write their own ticket.” A most deserved situation.
Lawrence Tibbett is writing a popular song.
Fibber and Molly McGee (the Tim Jordans) are trying to build up faith in “staying married” in Hollywood. They have been happily wed for 27 years. They’re spreading the news of other long married couples, among them the Cantors, Bennys, Burns and Allen, Fred Allens, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson.
Following the Yank who boasted that he had dropped “everything but the kitchen sink” on Tokyo, then got a sink and dropped it, a radio giveaway program will give away a kitchen sink one of these nights. They’ve given everything else away.
