The Pittsburgh Press (December 17, 1945)
Gallup to choose air show
Seeks verdict on best movie
By Si Steinhauser
The Gallup Poll, featured regularly in the Pittsburgh Press as an expression of public opinion in America, is testing moviegoers’ tastes to determine the most popular film of 1945 to be adapted to radio on WJAS’ Radio Theater of Monday, January 14. Dr. George Gallup will announce the picture on January 11. This will be the first time in 12 years of the Radio Theater’s history that the following week show has not been announced on the previous Monday.
Dr. Gallup, in addition to his newspaper poll, directs Audience Research, Inc., for radio and movies. His survey of the best picture of 1945 is a year-around project. At the end of 1944, he announced “Going My Way,” as the year’s favorite picture, Bing Crosby the favorite actor and Greer Garson the favorite actress.
George Sanders, a “good bad” actor, meaning he plays bad guys better than anyone we ever watched, will be decent on tonight’s Cavalcade of America and portray Dr. Benjamin Rush, forward-thinking medical man who signed the Declaration of Independence.
If you have been wondering who and what you have been missing by not being a daytime radio fan tonight’s Vox Pop will round up a lot of daytime performers for your benefit. Vox Pop will lose its sponsor when the contract runs out in spring.
Fritz Kreisler will be the Telephone Hour’s New Year’s Eve guest. He was last year.
Helen Traubel will be the Christmas Eve guest for the third consecutive year.
NBC promises to pick up troopships bearing Yanks home from Europe and the Pacific so they may say “Merry Christmas” to the folks at home. What a ring there should be in those happy voices.
Jack Benny has added Peter Lorre and Goodman “Easy” Ace to the judges of his “I can’t stand Jack Benny, because–” contest. Fred Allen is the other judge. They’ll probably read 10 letters chosen by others as finalists.
If we had a little picture of a bull we’d put in right here with an explanation of the “legitimacy” of that Jack Benny contest. One of America’s most richly paid press agents is trying to rescue Benny as he goes down for the third and last time and that’s the only explanation. He will prove that Benny got hundreds of thousands of replies, which in radio surveys means he has that many followers but in honesty means only that that many people want some easy money – and may have never listened to Benny before and will never listen to him again.
Benny has been out of the first fifteen most-listened-to programs for so long that he can’t remember when he was among the favorites. When you drop below the first fifteen you are really out of the picture. That’s where Benny and Kate Smith both are. They have themselves to blame. If Benny gave away all of the money he ever made and hired six press agents like “Steve” that wouldn’t bring him back.
Only a guy like Bing Crosby can stay up there in spite of every break against him. Off the air for months, Bing is right now – according to polls – the favorite singer and favorite emcee of radio. Tie that if you can.
The contest is as phony as a feud between Sammy Kaye and Barry Gray WOR disc jockey. Gray pans the life out of Sammy. The other night Sammy stopped his band and urged people to turn their sets off as the following program comes on because a “guy up there who sweeps up the WOR studios makes a habit of passing a mike and burping or panning someone.” Gray came on with “Kaye ought to know about broomsticks, he has a neck like one.”
That sounds like hatred, doesn’t it? Well Sammy and Barry are as close friends as two guys can be. Yet suckers listen to be on the job “when the shooting starts.”
Bing Crosby wandered alone into a Mutual Network station and was thrown out “because no visitors are allowed.” The guy who pushed him out is still “taking it.”
Tommy Dorsey is vacationing in Mexico City. He will follow his brother Jimmy in Harry Grennman’s Capitol Theater in New York.
Higgins, the shipbuilder who said he was closing up shop, has advised Bob Burns that the hog-caller’s seagoing yacht will be completed before the shops close.
Watch for “Beulah” to have little kids doing dialect acts on her show. Marlin Hurt who portrays “Beulah,” her boyfriend “Bill” and himself, is rehearsing children’s voices. Hurt says he was doing Negro dialect before he was ten years old, when he played with colored children in his neighborhood in Du Quoin, Illinois.
Slater the hypnotist is on his way out, which means he’s getting the air but good.