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They were Tucson Smith, Stony Brooke and Lullaby Joslin; for a while, they were also Rusty, Rico and the Masked Rider; but one name everyone knew them by was the Three Mesquiteers – a hard-riding, wisecracking trio fondly remembered as the heroes of one of the liveliest Western series ever to gallop across the matinee screen.

Between 1935 and 1943, their adventures were chronicled in 53 movies, a record for fictional cowpokes topped only by the Hopalong Cassidy films. But while the Cassidys depended on the presence of irreplaceable William Boyd, the Mesquiteers were played over time by sixteen different actors. Unlike other Western series it was the concept, rather than the names on the marquee, that kept those Saturday afternoon crowds bellying up to the box office.

Tucson, Stony and Lullaby were the offspring of prolific Western pulp writer William Colt MacDonald, who carved a long career out of ten-cent monthly magazines with names like Quick-Trigger Western and Lariat Story Magazine. MacDonald was neither an artistic stylist nor a writer particularly concerned with authenticity – in his 1933 novel Law of the Forty-Fives, Tucson Smith intimidates a gang of bad guys with an arch and rambling speech comparing himself to a doctor who dispenses little lead pills to those in need, a textbook example of straining for effect (not to mention, how not to write believable cowboy dialogue) – but he could crank out action scenes like nobody’s business and whipped his stories along from one vivid scene to another. It’s no surprise that his work caught the eye of the Hollywood B Western factories, and had already seen over a half-dozen of his stories adapted to the screen (mostly for veteran star Tim McCoy) before the Mesquiteers came along.

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MacDonald didn’t invent his famous cowboy trio concept – in fact, he cribbed it, along with the “Three Mesquiteers” name, from fellow pulp writer Eugene Cunningham’s story Riders of the Night – but MacDonald was the man whose work would put both notions on the map. He brought his threesome together in 1933 in the aforementioned Law of the Forty-Fives, and two years later, it was adapted to the screen – the first in a string of Mesquiteer pictures that would continue unbroken for nearly a decade.

That first film was a 1935 Normandy Pictures release, retitled The Law of 45’s, starring Guinn “Big Boy” Williams as Tucson, Al St. John as “Stoney”…and no one as Lullaby, an omission that’s often dismissed as a hatchet job by critics and historians who don’t seem to realize that Law of the Forty-Fives isn’t really a Three Mesquiteers novel, not quite.

In fact, Tucson and Stony had been created by MacDonald as a pair of crime-busting drifters in 1929, and most of the novel Law of the Forty-Fives is just another of their adventures. During the course of the story, they meet deputy sheriff Lullaby Joslin…and when Stony is drygulched and seriously wounded, Lullaby steps in and helps Tucson bring the bad guys to the rough justice they deserve. And in true pulp fashion, that justice includes a climactic saber duel on horseback between Tucson and a Russian Cossack. With all the villains six feet under, Lullaby decides to join Tucson and Stony on the trail – but not until the last page of Tucson and Stony’s final adventure as a twosome.

Big Boy and Al

From that perspective, it’s easy to see why Lullaby was dropped from the film version. Despite his importance in the novels that would follow, in Law of the Forty-Fives he’s essentially a supporting character who stands in for Stony in the final chapters, an expendable complication in a 56-minute film that was never intended as anything more than a stand-alone programmer.

For the same reason, The Law of 45’s takes a lot of liberties with its source material. “Stony Brooke” is renamed “Stoney Martin,” and all that remains of the original story are a shootout in an atmospheric smoky cantina, and the well-played scenes involving “Stoney’s” ambush. Otherwise, it’s a slow-moving and frequently creaky little oater with little to distinguish it from all the other cheaply thrown-together cowpoke programmers of the early Depression years.

(Typical of many a low-budget Western of its day, the film is not only inconsistent with its source material, it’s even inconsistent with itself. While the publicity materials refer to it as The Law of the 45’s, the title in the credits reads, The Law of 45’s. Welcome to Poverty Row.)

Silent film comedian Al St. John, nearly clean-shaven and still several years away from his well-known “Fuzzy” persona, makes a game and good-hearted “Stoney,” griping about the lack of excitement and ever ready to back his pal’s play – good for a gentle laugh, but nothing like the silly figure he would become when the comic relief sidekick fully came into vogue.

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Tucson Smith was the star of the novels, too busy talking tough and blowing away the super-villains of the Old West to fool around with romance. But The Law of 45’s is first and foremost a Big Boy Williams vehicle, and he not only gets the lion’s share of the action, he also gets the girl. If a good deal less canny than the hero of the novels, Williams’ roughhewn Tucson is still closer to MacDonald’s concept than we’d see in most of the films to come. It’s a pity that the budget necessitated changing the climax to a simple fistfight; Big Boy Williams crossing swords with a mounted Cossack would have been one of the great surreal moments of ‘30s filmmaking.

While The Law of 45’s is hardly a milestone, it’s far from the worst Western cranked out by Poverty Row – and if the fans of MacDonald’s trio were disappointed by the liberties it took, they had only a few months to wait for the greatest Three Mesquiteers movie of them all: Powdersmoke Range.

Instead of tiny Normandy Pictures, this time the studio was top gun RKO, and the result was something bordering on first class. A big-budget “special,” at 72 minutes it’s the longest Mesquiteers film ever made and the most faithful adaptation of any book in the series.

But the real drawing card was the cast – such a huge array of current and former cowboy stars that RKO touted the film as “The Barnum and Bailey of Westerns!” The supporting players included seven former headliners from the silent oaters. Younger heroes Bob Steele and Tom Tyler, on loan from their own starring series, were prominently featured in major roles. And best of all was the trio assembled to play the Mesquiteers themselves: Harry Carey as Tucson, Hoot Gibson as Stony and Big Boy Williams again, this time as Lullaby.

Robert Livingston, Syd Saylor and Ray Corrigan

The picture gets right down to business with the Mesquiteers riding in to check on the progress of the Guadalupe Kid (Bob Steele), a young badhat who’d seen the error of his ways in Law of the Forty-Fives (the novel, that is; he isn’t in the movie version). In short order, they’re embroiled in a plot by land-hungry Steve Ogden to possess the Kid’s spread at any cost. Too smart to take on Tucson man-to-man, Ogden sends for a hired gun – Sundown Saunders, “the fastest draw in the Southwest” (Tom Tyler), who challenges Tucson to a showdown.

In the finest scene in the picture, Steele tries to talk Tyler out of the job…but Sundown’s a nihilist who doesn’t care if the other Mesquiteers come after him or not. “Life ain’t such a sweet proposition anyway,” he says, “just a matter of three squares a day, 40 winks and a lot of powdersmoke.”

In a nice twist, Tucson bests Sundown without killing him. The gunman refuses Tucson’s attempts to reform him, but ultimately undergoes a change of heart and takes a bullet meant for the Mesquiteer. He dies with an ironic smile on his lips. “It just wasn’t in the cards for me,” he says.

As a killer haunted by his wasted life, Tyler nearly steals the show from his powerhouse co-stars. Gibson, craving excitement and eating nonstop, manages to hold his own by bringing an assured light touch to Stony. As Lullaby, the powerful-looking Williams is laconic and humorous. But there’s no doubt that Harry Carey is the star of Powdersmoke Range, and he is terrific – avuncular, flinty, and tough as an old boot as he ambles through the picture in a black hat the size and shape of the Chrysler Building, mowing down everybody who gets in his way. Out of all the many movie versions, Carey’s performance is the closest we get to MacDonald’s ultra-competent Tucson Smith. Even during those moments when the action flags and the dialogue sequences stretch on a little too long, Carey’s is an electrifying presence.

Max Terhune, ventriloquist

Tucson returned, sort of, in another Normandy Pictures release the following year, a 60-minute quickie called Too Much Beef. In this story of cattle rustling and gunplay, Rex Bell stars as Cattleman’s Association detective Johnny Argyle, who takes the alias “Tucson Smith” while running his investigation. One can’t blame Bell’s character for the name switch – who’d want to be known as Johnny Argyle under any circumstances? Sorry, Rex; it doesn’t count. And it would be the last time any other studio would play fast and loose with the name of one of MacDonald’s Western trio – for that same year, Republic Pictures kicked off their long-running Three Mesquiteers series, and every cowboy-loving kid in America would know who the real Tucson Smith was. And it wasn’t Rex Bell.

Compared to the big pictures of 1935, Powdersmoke Range was only a modest hit, but that was more than enough for the likes of newly formed Republic Pictures, who saw the potential for a long-running Saturday matinee series. The ambitious little Poverty Row studio snapped up the rights to the Mesquiteers in the blink of an eye, and committed two of their most promising action stars to the project. Robert Livingston, a personable leading man who’d just played the screen’s first talking Zorro in The Bold Caballero, was cast as Stony. Ray Corrigan, fresh from his first starring role in the hit serial The Undersea Kingdom, came aboard as Tucson. Comedian Syd Saylor as Lullaby rounded out the trio in the opening installment, released September 22, 1936 (almost a year exactly after Powdersmoke Range’s Sept. 27, 1935 premiere) and titled simply The Three Mesquiteers.

Powdersmoke Range poster

Saylor, an Adam’s apple-bobbing comedian, must have struck William Colt MacDonald’s readers as an odd choice as a member of the heroic trio…but with the second film, Ghost Town Gold, he was replaced by vaudevillian Max Terhune, and things went from odd to downright bizarre. A juggler and talented sleight of hand artist, Terhune was also a ventriloquist who brought his unsettling dummy Elmer along for the ride in the Mesquiteers films, often pictured in the saddle with Elmer on his arm, both of them merrily drawling away while flanked by their strapping two-fisted partners. An amiable lug who often seemed to be grinning at some private joke, Terhune was popular among the younger fans, and at first his Lullaby more or less carried his own weight in the films’ action set pieces; but later scripts would paint him as so intrusively stupid that his scenes became painful to watch.

An even more radical change was the relationship between Stony and Tucson. Cueing off Stony’s established yen for excitement, Republic capitalized on Livingston’s bigger name by reversing the balance in MacDonald’s stories to make him the focus of the series as an impetuous young cowpoke forever getting into scrapes from which the long-suffering Tucson, now almost a secondary character, had to rescue him.

Pioneers of the West movie poster

Not that such departures mattered much to the Saturday matinee crowd, who made the series a hit from the start. Cranked out in batches of eight, each shot in about a week’s time, the Mesquiteer films were marvels of fast action and simple, vivid characterizations, gloriously slick examples of the B Western at its best. Updated to that budget-saving fantasy the “Modern West,” Riders of the Whistling Skull and other MacDonald stories were followed by a string of original screenplays that brought the total to 16 hour-long films in the first two years. Illness forced Livingston to skip the tenth entry, The Trigger Trio – but Republic kept giving the fans their money’s worth by casting Ralph Byrd, star of the popular Dick Tracy serials, as Tucson’s brother Larry.

That was only Livingston’s first leave of absence from the series, though. In 1938, Republic moved him to bigger projects and replaced him with a struggling journeyman actor named John Wayne. Years later, Wayne would complain that the Mesquiteer films “were kids’ movies…horrible monstrosities” – an unfair description even factoring in Elmer. But the Duke was frustrated, having crawled back to Republic after quitting the studio to escape the stigma of B Westerns. After months of unemployment, his only choices were the Mesquiteers or the breadline.

Corrigan was also dissatisfied. In just a few years he’d worked his way up from personal trainer to stunt man to serial star – but in the Number Two spot reserved for Tucson, he seemed to have stalled. He became surly on the set, resenting Livingston and Wayne for occupying the top spot. Evidently, Terhune was the only happy guy on the set; but then, he always had Elmer to talk to.

Jimmie Dodd, Tom Tyler and Bob Steele

Despite all the sulking behind the scenes, the eight films with Wayne were the apex of the series: glossy, well acted and nicely varied in their storylines – busting spies in one, rescuing a circus in another, and in the surprisingly dramatic Wyoming Outlaw, failing to save a young man (the dynamic Donald Barry) from social forces that turn him into an outlaw and finally end his life.

By the time Wayne’s eight-picture run ended, he’d been loaned to John Ford for Stagecoach and his B Western days were numbered. But even before Wayne’s departure, Terhune had quit the series. He was replaced by Raymond Hatton, a veteran character actor who brought much warmth and talent to the rechristened “Rusty” Joslin. The best Third Mesquiteer of all, Hatton would play Rusty in nine films.

With Wayne’s departure, Bob Livingston – who hadn’t made the splash that Republic had hoped for – returned to his old role of top Mesquiteer. Fed up, Corrigan followed Terhune out the door, leaving another gap to fill. The job went to future Cisco Kid Duncan Renaldo, who joined the series in 1939’s The Kansas Terrors as Rico, a young Caribbean rancher who teams up with Stony and Rusty to fight corruption on his native island. He rode with the boys for seven films, cutting a dashing figure with his fancy black duds and pencil mustache.

Duncan Renaldo on the left

To keep things fresh, Republic moved the setting back to the Old West, which gave the series a shot in the arm. A less brilliant move was capitalizing on Livingston’s recent role in the serial The Lone Ranger Rides Again by having Stony don a black eye mask at times to leap into action as “The Masked Rider,” doing pretty much the same things Stony had always done when his face was uncovered. The films remained slickly produced entertainment, but at such moments the series finally descended to the kiddie level of John Wayne’s nightmares.

In mid-1940 Hatton and Renaldo moved on and Republic went back to basics with the return of Tucson and Lullaby. Livingston, no longer in that silly mask, was joined by fan favorite Bob Steele as the new Tucson. Hillbilly comedian Rufe Davis was the least effective Lullaby of all, a standard-issue rube sidekick with none of the color contributed by his predecessors, but he did his best with the material he was given. Stony remained the central character, but shorn of its old brashness, the role was becoming increasingly generic. After the 1941 Gangs of Sonora, Livingston said adios to the part forever.

Gunsmoke Ranch movie poster

Steele welcomed the decidedly un-impetuous Tom Tyler as the new Stony, and for the rest of the series the reformed bad guys of Powdersmoke Range played the good guys who’d reformed them. Steele was compact, authoritative and genial; Tyler, with his steely gaze and metallic voice, seemed dangerous even when playing heroes. The contrast made a fascinating team.

Jimmie Dodd took over as Lullaby for the final six installments, a change for the better. Dodd, who would later slip into a pair of Mickey Mouse ears to become the head Mousketeer for a future generation, strummed a mandolin and looked like Howdy Doody, but his humor was gentle and character-driven and his Lullaby was never a dope.

By this time, the series had lost much of its gloss and ingenuity, returning to the Modern West setting and replacing the entertaining formula of the old days with by-the-numbers fistfights and knockabout humor. With few exceptions (a notable one being the cowboys-versus-Nazis adventure Valley of Hunted Men), the stories had become standard Western fare, the characters of Stony and Tucson written to be increasingly interchangeable. Somehow Steele, Tyler and Dodd managed to make it all work – but it was as though the stars had become vehicles for the films instead of vice versa.

Lobby card for "Call the Mesquiteers"

The Mesquiteers ended their careers punching and riding their way through minor adventures that were a far cry from the wild Indiana Jones-like action of Riders of the Whistling Skull or the social concerns of Wyoming Outlaw. With 1943’s Riders of the Rio Grande, the series came to an end – a shadow of its former self but, thanks to its stars, still holding on to some of its dignity.

Like many Republic products, the Mesquiteers movies were re-released in the ‘50s and eventually turned up on television. But where their contemporaries Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and Hopalong Cassidy succeeded in capturing a new generation with original stories for the home screen, no similar attempt was made with the Mesquiteers. Over the decades they slowly faded into obscurity, remembered only by a few aficionados and 16mm collectors…until the 1990s, when a one-two punch of the cable Encore Western Channel and the release of classic Republic material to the home video market made them accessible again. From video tape to dvd, the Mesquiteers films have remained constantly available to this day. Even the obscure The Law of 45’s has been made available on the collectors market. Only Powdersmoke Range remains elusive, but it’s out there and worth the effort – like 52 other films, a tribute to the imagination of William Colt MacDonald, and the 16 men who brought the Three Mesquiteers to life.

The Mesquiteer series might have run even longer, but their success inspired so many imitators that by 1943, they’d been rendered almost commonplace by all the three-man teams that stampeded out of the Monogram and PRC studios. The Range Busters, the Rough Riders, the Trail Blazers and the Texas Rangers were the best known knockoffs of William Colt MacDonald’s trendsetting characters, and many of those groups included former Mesquiteers.

The actors who played Stony, Tucson and the gang were trailblazers, but they were also the nexus of virtually the whole wide range of Saturday matinee cowboys, nearly all of whom passed through their little corner of the West at one time or another. The number of top hands each man encountered over the course of his career is impressive; if you spread the associations out a little further, a la the old game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” the total is staggering.

The Three Mesquiteers Trio Westerns of Republic Pictures

Bengie's Drive-In in Maryland

The drive-in Theater was the brainchild of one Richard Milton Hollingshead, Jr. The inventor’s father, Richard Milton Hollingshead, Sr., owned and operated a business that first sold harness soap, later moving on to selling a complete line of automotive products under the name of the “Whiz Auto Products Company.” After Richard Jr. finished school, he took a position with his father’s company as general sales manager.

Always on the lookout for new ideas, Richard Jr. began thinking about new business concepts. His preference was to have a cash business, as he didn’t like the idea of going into debt. It dawned on him that in terms of buying habits, people gave up Food, Clothing, Autos and Movies last, in that order. He had noticed that even though the depression was in full swing, folks continued to go to motion pictures at their local Theater. From this, his first notion was to create a deluxe gas station, designed like a Hawaiian Village, that would feature a restaurant and outdoor movies where the customers could mingle while their cars were being serviced, utilizing Whiz Auto Products of course!

It is not clear why he dropped every other aspect of the idea other than the outdoor Theater, but soon Richard, 30 years old by this time, was experimenting with the concept in his back yard on 212 Thomas Avenue in Riverton, New Jersey. He started by placing an old Kodak projector on the hood of his car, projecting the movie onto a screen nailed to a tree. He turned on his sprinkler to simulate rainfall, and placed a radio behind the screen to provide the sound. He also reasoned that in order to ensure that all of the vehicles had an un-obstructed view of the screen, they would need to be positioned in a special way. He spent several weeks arranging vehicles in different configurations to solve the visibility problem. The final solution was a series of terraced ramps whose height increased as you parked closer to the screen. This arrangement of ramps was the core of his concept and Richard felt it was strong enough to be patentable, allowing him to collect royalties from future drive-in operators for a period of 17 years, the standard time limit for patents. Or so he thought.

Drive In Theater

The application for patent was filed on August 6, 1932, and it was later granted by the patent office on May 16, 1933 under patent number 1,909,537. The next thing on the agenda was to build the first drive-in in order to promote the idea to the public as well as potential investors. First off though, he needed to get some financial backing which came from Willie Warren Smith, his first cousin and parking lot operator. The two men then formed a company, called Park-In Theaters Inc. Richard assigned his patent to the company immediately. Edward Ellis, a road contractor, was brought in to grade the lot of the first Theater in exchange for stock. Oliver Willets, an executive of Campbell’s Soup, also bought stock in the company at the time.

On May 16, 1933, the day the patent was granted, work began on constructing the drive-in on Crescent Boulevard in Pennsauken Township, New Jersey. The location is usually reported as Admiral Wilson Blvd. in Camden, but technically the Theater was just over the Camden town line, where the name of the road changes. Opening night was June 6, 1933, and it was known simply as “Drive-In Theater” although the actual name was the “Automobile Movie Theater.” Opening night was packed with cars, and the first film ever shown at a drive-in was the 1932 release of “Wives Beware,” which was in second-run status at the time. The problem of obtaining first-run films for drive-ins remains to this day! Admission was 25¢ for each car and an additional 25¢ for each person, somewhat higher than the prevailing price at the indoor houses at the time, who were also offering double features. Ironically, this has reversed itself over time and drive-ins are usually the only places to see double features today.

Drive-In Movie Theater

Hollingshead promoted the drive-in concept by talking about the numerous advantages afforded to the patrons such as the option of smoking without bothering anyone or violating fire laws, talking in your car without disturbing anyone, as well as eating in the privacy of your vehicle. Young children could be brought along with their pajamas and sleep in the back seat so you wouldn’t need to hire a babysitter. One early drive-in operator staged a “Babysitter Protest” with picketing teenage girls marching around with signs that read “Down with Drive-Ins, More Work for Babysitters.” The aged and infirm or severely overweight folks who could not handle the narrow aisles of the indoor houses would also benefit.

It was initially thought that 3 shows a night would be viable, but after only 2 nights this gave way to showing only 2 shows per night, one at 8:45 and another at 10:45 with 2 changes a week. This brings to mind another issue that has changed the film exhibition business greatly. In the old days, it was possible for a small town house or DI to get 2-3 changes a week, which meant that if you were drawing from a small local population, you had something fresh every few days to keep people coming in. Nowadays, it is not unusual for the big studios and distributors to force exhibitors to show a film for a minimum of 4 weeks! Sometimes this can be negotiated down, but it really hurts attendance when most of your audience sees the new release on the first weekend and then you are dead for the next 3 weeks waiting for the next new film. Of course, this led to most Theaters becoming twinned and tripled until the dawn of the Multi-plex and Mega-Plex’s we see today. With 15 screens or more, there is always something new to see. The side effect of this of course is that it led to many drive-ins and small neighborhood houses to close down. This was not the only reason for their demise however, more on that later.

The first drive-in held under 400 cars, despite reports to the contrary, and large trees and fencing were put in to prevent people from seeing the screen from the outside of the lot. The screen was 30 ft. high and 40 ft. wide and it was 12 feet from the ground. It was housed by a larger structure that was 149 ft. wide, 35 ft. high, and 60 ft. deep. The field was paved with gravel and oiled to keep dust down and discourage mosquitoes. Sound was supplied by 3 six-foot square RCA speakers and could be heard from miles around on some nights! Total cost was published at $60,000 but it was more like $25,000. The all-important concession stand was put in after the first week.

Drive-In Movie Theater

Oddly, this first drive-in did not last long. It was closed by 1936 and “moved” to Union, New Jersey by the man who bought it from Hollingshead. The reason given by Richard at the time was the high film rental costs caused the drive-in to be unprofitable. Indeed, he had paid $400 for a 4-day rental of “Wives Beware” when it was available to indoor exhibitors for $20 a week! This would not be the last time that drive-in owners would be treated unfairly by the Hollywood studios. In truth however, there were other reasons for the closure of the first drive-in, mostly technical. The sound was horrible and was not synchronized with the screen due to the delay caused by having the speakers near the screen. The insects, the price and the single bill policy also contributed to its closing.

Although Hollingshead retained his 30% interest in Park-In Inc., he was never again involved in operating a drive-in. He felt that the licensing aspect of the business showed more promise anyway, but unfortunately this was not to be the case. A second drive-in was begun in Weymouth Massachusetts in 1936 and was opened on May 6 of that year. The owners of the Weymouth Drive-In, Thomas DiMaura and James Guarino failed to obtain a license from Park-In however. On July 3rd, legal action was brought against them by Park-In charging patent infringement. Park-In was able to obtain a writ which entitled them to place gate keepers at the Weymouth and collected the entire gate receipts for July 3, 4 and 5 for Park-In. There was subsequent moneys paid, and by the fall the Weymouth partners, a.k.a. Drive-In Theaters Corp entered into a licensing agreement with Park-In.

The cost was a one-time fee of $1000 and 5% of the gross box office receipts. In return they would get a protected territory. In July 1937, Elias M. Leow opened a drive-in at Lynn Massachusetts, in apparent violation of the Weymouth license with Park-In. The Weymouth folks had to sue Park-In to get them to sue the Lynn operation! Meanwhile, Park-In counter-sued Weymouth over an un-authorized location that had been built in Shrewsbury Massachusetts. Then 2 men from California, a Mr. M. A. Rogers and Thomas Burgess, opened a drive-in without obtaining a license from Park-In either. Although the business had gotten off to a slow start, by the late 1930′s things began to heat up.

Drive-In Movie Theater

This was the beginning of what became a morass of legal wrangling with numerous lawsuits and counter-suits all over the country. Drive-Ins began popping up, some were licensed and some were not, some who were licensed originally began to stop paying their royalties to Park-In due to the un-authorized locations being built in their so-called “protected” territories. This legal chaos continued for several years, with locations being built faster than Park-In could sue them. As a historical note, one these early drive-ins was the Sunrise Auto Theater in Valley Stream, Long Island New York. It was owned by one Michael Redstone, father of the mastermind and head of Viacom, Sumner Redstone. This Theater was the seed of what was to become Northeast Theaters which evolved into National Amusements, which eventually would operate 60 drive-ins and dozens of indoor Theaters over the years. Although Mr. Redstone claimed in his book, “A Passion to Win” that the Sunrise drive-in was “probably the fourth drive-in built in the world,” this does not appear to be the case, according to records from back then. It was certainly one of the first 15 to 20 though.

The legal case that had the most lasting impact on the business was with the Loews people, which finally made its way up to the First Circuit Court of appeals. This court’s decision dealt a stunning blow to Hollingshead’s Park-In Company and their ability to collect royalties from any drive-in operator ever again. The court ruled that the patent, which was the basis for the licensing fee, was invalid on its face and never should have been granted in the first place! It was their opinion that it was not inventive at all, but a mere facsimile of the layout an indoor Theater utilized, only having cars instead of seats. The terracing of vehicles was deemed to be a mere adaptation of the sloped floor in a Theater auditorium and was an obvious design, not novel in any way.

In the late 1930′s and early 1940′s, drive-ins were being built at a modest pace, but there were some innovations that greatly improved the drive-in experience. The most important of these was most certainly the in-car speaker. There was an early version of the individual speaker, used in the late 30′s, that was simply a stationary speaker mounted on a pole near the car. RCA announced the availability of the in-car speaker, which was designed to be hung on the car window in 1941. It was not widely used however, until after the war in 1946. This new speaker became a necessity as many communities began instituting noise ordinances which restricted the level of sound that could be heard beyond the drive-in lot. Although there had been many other contraptions devised to deal with the sound issue, the in-car speaker was definitely the best solution and opened the door for the massive growth that was on the horizon during the post-war years.

Empty Parking Lot at the Drive-In

It was in the period of the late 1930′s that the state of Michigan was introduced to the drive-in, with the opening of the so-called “Drive-In”, later known as the Eastside, on May 26, 1938 with the film The Big Broadcast of 1938. A Mr. John H. Flancher filed a petition in court in July of that year on behalf of the residents of 3 Detroit suburbs. His contention was that the new Theater could be heard from two miles away and should be deemed a public nuisance. Although the petition contained over 500 signatures, the case was dropped when the Theater agreed to take steps to alleviate the problem which seemed to satisfy the petitioners and the court. This would not be the last time a drive-in Theater operator would run afoul of the local community however.

During the 1940′s there were 8 major companies controlling 95% of the films produced. These companies, which included Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, Warner Bros, MGM, RKO, Columbia, Universal and United Artists, not only produced films however, they distributed and exhibited them as well! They used this power against the independent Theater owners by forcing them to take all of their product, regardless of quality, if they wanted to get the big features with all the name stars. This practice, known as “block booking,” was a tough thing to deal with for the ozoners as well the independent indoor houses and was later used as ammunition in a legal case to break up the studio monopoly in 1949. This did not mean however, that it became easy to deal with the major distributors, it just became tolerable.

The drive-ins were also butting heads with many of the indoor operators by then as well. This “outsider” status that drive-ins had has never really gone away, as some people simply looked upon ozoners with disdain. Some examples of this was the refusal of some newspapers to accept advertising for drive-ins and a plan by the Theater Owners of America (TOA) to ban the practice of free admission for children at the drive-in, which they felt was cheapening the movie business!

Bengie's Drive-In in Maryland

Despite these setbacks, by 1949, there were 155 drive-ins throughout the country. By 1951, that had increased to 820, and by 1957 the total was to reach 3700! This was certainly the heyday of the drive-in, the post war years when everyone was in love with the automobile and huge suburban communities were being built. The quality of the presentation and overall construction of many of these drive-ins varied widely. Some were elaborate first-class locations with all of the amenities like rides and playgrounds. The first of which was the West Side Drive-In in Detroit which installed a merry-go-round in 1943. Other locations however, were very low-budget affairs with little more than a primitive wooden screen and a modest projection booth utilizing 16mm projectors. A good example of the basic drive-in was the Hilltop in Jackson, MI.

This boom caused a trend toward ever-larger and more elaborate drive-ins, such as the Bel Air Drive-In in Detroit, built in 1950. This location featured space for 2200 cars, an elaborate concession stand along with a full playground and a train ride for the kids. Some operators put up amusement parks, boat rides, fishing ponds and added in-car heaters to remain open year-round for their patrons. All kinds of products were introduced to keep rain off the windshield and chase away the bugs.

The concession business became more important as food revenue increased steadily during this period. Some operators experimented with talk-back speakers to take orders and deliver food to the car, while others had mobile carts patrolling the lots selling snacks. The owners discovered that concessions could be sold at a high mark-up and you didn’t need to give a percentage of that revenue to the film distributor. Of course this food revenue remains extremely important to exhibitors to this day, with film rental rates going as high as 80% on opening weekends for some features. Most locations were utilizing the now-famous drive-in intermission films, popularized by the Filmack Company, that featured dancing hot dogs and countdown clocks.

It was also during this period and into the 1960′s that the drive-in business began to expand beyond U.S. borders, with locations opening in Australia, Great Britain and Denmark among other countries. There was also an initiative underway, started by NATO (the National Association of Theater Owners that is), to invent a “daytime screen” which would allow drive-ins to expand their hours of operation. This was perceived to be important as Daylight Saving Time was starting to be instituted in some areas of the country by then. There were numerous attempts by many firms to perfect the daylight screen but none of them panned out. DST was in full swing by 1967 nationwide, and it is often reported as a reason for declining attendance at drive-ins, due to the later start times. This appears to be an overstatement however, as attendance figures published at the time show no significant decrease during the period when DST was rolled out.

Drive In Movie Theater

It was in the early 70′s that AM radio sound came into practical use. Although the idea had been kicking around since the 1950′s, with some systems even calling for a separate box the patron would purchase and reuse, it was made practical by Cinema Radio, a company started by Fred J. Schwartz after experiencing what he felt was poor sound quality at a drive-in. As an estimated 97% of cars had AM radios by then, the timing was perfect. Although transmitting a radio signal normally required an FCC license, the drive-in folks were given a pass on this as their systems were low-power and could not normally by heard beyond the drive-in lot. Indeed, the AM system required that a coax cable be buried under the ramps to transmit the signal. The new radio sound would be welcomed by the drive-in operators also because they were growing tired of finding many of their speakers either damaged or stolen at the end of the night! Eventually, FM sound was available which provided better quality. FM is what remains in use to this day at most drive-ins.

No discussion of drive-ins would be complete without the mention of the reputation they had as “passion pits.” This was an image that really went back to the early days and continues to this day. It is certain that that a lot of necking and other such activity went on, although it tends to be somewhat exaggerated. Most owners were promoting their drive-ins to the family trade and openly discouraged these young lovers and their activities. There were even some communities that raised objections over it when they felt it was getting out of hand. The stories of love at the drive-in will live on forever just as the tales of sneaking in under the fence or in the trunk of a car get repeated over and over.

In the end, the image of the ozoner would be affected less by sex AT the drive-in then sex ON the screen itself. The furor over the content of some films being shown at the drive-in goes back to the 50′s, when it was reported in the Detroit Times that adult films such as The Burning Question, Guilty Parents, and How to Take a Bath, were being shown at the Fort, Grand River and Gratiot Drive-Ins. Sometimes operators would slip these features in at the end of a season to generate some extra profit. A showing of Hurly Burly brought out the sheriff at the Division Drive-In in Grand Rapids, even though the film had been cleared by the censors for Detroit, Chicago and elsewhere. The film was confiscated on the last night of its run as the Michigan Archdiocese raised objections in its newspaper.

Iconic image of the Drive-In

This issue continued to plague the industry as attendance began to decline by the mid 1960′s and early 1970′s and more and more operators were looking to boost their profits through the showing of exploitation material, often churned out by Detroit-born Roger Corman, Samuel Z. Arkoff, and James Nicholson of American International Pictures (AIP). This studio made what are some of the classics of the genre, movies that ranged from Beach Blanket Bingo, numerous Vincent Price horror films such as Tomb of Ligea, to biker films like Hell’s Angels, as well as exploitation films like Blacula. Some of these films may have rankled people at the time, but most would be considered mild by today’s standards. Many of these are now on video and are quite hilarious to watch today. Some drive-ins of course eventually began showing XXX rated films which really alienated them from the community and sped up their demise.

Although the early 1960′s were looking good for drive-ins, with many ozoners out-grossing indoor Theaters and enjoying better margins to boot, attendance began to fade by the mid to late 1960′s. Some reasons given for this are the quality of the films being shown, the older drive-ins falling into disrepair, the popularity of television and the decline of the “Car Culture.” Another factor was that early, multi-plex indoor Theaters began to appear, in fact it was being seen by the major chains as the future of exhibition by then. Although it was harder to multiplex a drive-in, there was some success in making that happen, such as Charles Shafer’s Ford-Wyoming complex in Dearborn, which operates to this day with 9 screens. Although the first signs of decline was recognized by the 1970′s, there were still nearly 3000 locations still open as of 1977. The decade that would prove the most brutal to the drive-in was the 1980′s….

The now infamous quote, from the early 1980′s, came from none other than Sumner Redstone, who operated National Amusements, a company who had built or bought 60 drive-ins by then, was as follows; “Drive-Ins are rapidly becoming part of our nostalgic past. I foresee their extinction by the end of the decade.” Quite a statement from a man who got his start working for his father at the old Sunrise Drive-In out on Long Island, New York. And so it was. Although there was still 2129 drive-ins standing in 1982 this number was reduced to 999 by 1987! The profit of drive-in doom, Sumner Redstone, had been correct! The main reason for this rapid decline was not just a continuation of the problems that started in the 60′s and 70′s but a building boom that occurred in the 1980′s, much of it in suburban or formerly rural areas.

Vintage Newspaper Ad

What were once cow pastures in the middle of nowhere were now highly desirable properties, in growing suburban areas. Owners of drive-ins were being offered millions for land they had paid a few thousand for years earlier. That, along with the fact that the operator was probably making a fairly modest income from the drive-in by that time made his decision quite easy, take the money and run! I myself called about the old Lakes Drive-In in Brighton, after it was closed and put up for sale. It was being offered at over 1 million dollars! This once desolate location way out on Grand River had become prime real estate. It immediately dawned on me that this was a huge reason for the decline of the drive-in.

I feel that this selling off of drive-ins in more populated areas created such momentum that eventually many of the drive-ins out in the country were closed as well. Drive-Ins were simply not in vogue anymore. The years of neglect, the lack of good quality family films, television, the multi-plex, the real estate boom and the changing culture all had taken their toll. By the early 1990′s drive-ins dropped to a low of about 750 nationwide. But then, something remarkable happened. The decline stabilized by the mid 1990′s and the number of drive-ins has stayed pretty consistent since then.

Some of the more innovative and dedicated owners hung on, made improvements and weathered the storm. Most drive-ins today reside in smaller towns, but the Miracle Twin, a location that escaped the axe of Sumner Redstone and is still owned by National Amusements, is in the Flint area. Flint is also the home of Lou Warrington’s US-23, who has owned and operated it since its opening in 1952. Other open drive-ins include the Getty 4 in Muskegon, the Sunset Auto Theater in Hartford, the 5-Mile in Dowagiac, the Hi-Way in Carsonville, the Cherry Bowl in Honor and the aforementioned Ford-Wyoming in Dearborn. The big news last year was the opening of the Silverdome Drive-In on the grounds of the Pontiac Silverdome. As great as all of these are, nothing can match the splendor of the Capri Drive-In in Coldwater, lovingly owned and operated by the Magocs family since 1964, it is definitely the standout. The huge main screen, the immaculate lot, great concession food, as well as the wonderful overall presentation makes it the best in the Midwest!

That about wraps up the history of the drive-in so far, hopefully there will be much more to tell in the future. As for our hero Richard Hollingshead Jr., he eventually returned to his fathers company, which by the 1940′s was doing very well, where he became chairman of the board by 1950. The company was eventually absorbed by Litton industries and Richard retired in 1964. He died at the age of 75 on May 13, 1975 in his home in Villanova PA of cancer. Although his family petitioned the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences numerous times to recognize Richard’s efforts, his achievements were never formally acknowledged by the motion picture industry. We drive-in lovers however, will always remember him for what he gave to us, the magical experience of watching a movie under the stars, a uniquely American pastime that we should all relish and be proud of.

Bengies Drive In Theater reviews in Maryland

Sources:
Drive-In Theaters, A History from Their Inception in 1933 by Kerry Segrave
Authors recollections

Reprinted with permission from http://www.waterwinterwonderland.com

– Shirley Jones

The Partridge Family

She originally wanted to become a veterinarian. Instead, Shirley Jones became the winner of the 1952 Miss Pittsburgh Pageant and launched her successful career as an actress and singer. In her six decades of television, she starred as wholesome characters in a number of well-known musical films, such as Oklahoma! (1955), Carousel (1956), and The Music Man (1962). She known to millions as Shirley Partridge, the widowed mother of five children in the television series The Partridge Family (1970–1974), co-starring her real-life stepson David Cassidy, son of Jack Cassidy. In something you would only expect from Hollywood, she and Elizabeth Taylor are the only actresses to win Oscars for playing prostitutes in the same year: Jones for Elmer Gantry (1960) (Best Supporting Actress) and Taylor for Butterfield 8 (1960) (Best Actress). Dexter the sixth season

Shirley Jones

Named after child star Shirley Temple, Shirley Jones started singing at the age of six. She started formal training at the age of 12 and would dream of singing with her idol, Gordon MacRae. Upon graduating from high school, while vacationing in New York City with her parents, the 19-year-old Jones auditioned for the songwriters Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Her wholesome appearance and well-trained soprano voice impressed the team, who cast her in a minor role in their Broadway production of Me and Juliet (1953). Standing out among the large cast, Jones was eventually signed to play the lead on tour. She later signed for the role of a nurse in the Broadway production of South Pacific. Within a year, she would be in Hollywood to appear in her first film, Oklahoma! (1955) as Laurey, the farm girl in love with cowboy Gordon MacRae. Oklahoma! (1955) would be filmed in CinemaScope and Todd-AO wide-screen and would take a year to shoot.  (In Oklahoma!, she worked with Gloria Grahame, who is being highlighted during our slide show presentations this year.)

Oklahoma! movie poster

Released in 1955, the multimillion-dollar production met with acclaim from critics, who felt Jones was the perfect choice to play the movie’s heroine Laurey. She followed the success of her film debut with a turn in the 1956 feature adaptation of Carousel (1956). Opportunities continued to come her way, and she landed leading roles in April Love (1957) and Never Steal Anything Small (1959), which paired her with leading man James Cagney.

With a screen image comparable to peaches-n-cream, Shirley wanted a darker role to change her image. In 1960, she would be cast as the vengeful prostitute in the Richard Brooks dramatic film Elmer Gantry (1960). With a brilliant performance against an equally brilliant Burt Lancaster, Shirley would win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. But the public wanted the good Shirley so she was cast as “Marion,” the librarian, in the successful musical The Music Man (1962). Shirley would again work with little Ron Howard in The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1963). She took on lighter roles in and Bedtime Story (1964); and showed her flair for the dramatic in The Happy Ending (1969) and The Cheyenne Social Club (1970). The Memphis Film Festival guests

The Partridge Family

In 1970, Shirley Jones became Shirley Partridge in the television series The Partridge Family (1970). While the success of the show would do well for her stepson, teen idol David Cassidy, her name and face was in the public view for the four years that the series ran, and trade papers often ran with a story about Shirley Jones and her successful career. The cast capitalized on the show’s popularity by recording a few albums which included songs like “I Think I Love You” and “Doesn’t Somebody Want to Be Wanted.” The show still plays in reruns today and is available on DVD. After the show ended, Shirley would spend the rest of the 70′s in the land of television movies. The television movie The Lives of Jenny Dolan (1975) would be made as a pilot for a series that was not picked up. In 1979, Shirley appeared in a comedy show called Shirley (1979), but the show lasted only one season.

The Amazing Spiderman 2012 movie

The Dark Knight Rises 2012 movie

SELECTED MOVIES STARRING SHIRLEY JONES

Oklahoma!  (1955)  as Laurey

Carousel  (1956)  as Julie Jordan

April Love  (1957)  as Liz Templeton

Never Steal Anything Small  (1959)  as Linda Cabot

Bobbikins  (1959)  as Betty Barnaby

Elmer Gantry  (1960)  as Lulu Bains

Pepe  (1960)  as Suzie Murphy

Two Rode Rogether  (1961)  as Marty Purcell

The Music Man  (1962)  as Marian Paroo

The Courtship of Eddie’s Father  (1963)  as Elizabeth Marten

A Ticklish Affair  (1963)  as Amy Martin

Dark Purpose  (1964)  as Karen Williams

Bedtime Story  (1964)  as Janet Walker

Fluffy  (1965)  as Janice Claridge

The Secret of My Success  (1965)  as Marigold Marado

El Golfo  (1969)

Happy Ending  (1969)  as Flo Harrigan

The Cheyenne Social Club  (1970)  as Jenny

Beyond the Poseidon Adventure  (1979)  as Nurse Gina Rowe

The Adventures of Pollyanna  (1982)  as Aunt Polly

Tank  (1984)  as LaDonna Carey

The X-Files episode with the Patridge Family

SELECTED TELEVISION APPEARANCES OF SHIRLEY JONES

Playhouse 90  (November 8, 1956)  “The Big Slide” with Red Skelton

Lux Video Theatre  (February 14, 1957)  “Dark Victory”  with Jack Cassidy

The U.S. Steel Hour  (February 27, 1957)  “Shadow of Evil”  with Jack Cassidy and Lee Marvin

The DuPont Show of the Month  (April 19, 1958)  “The Red Mill”  with Donald O’Connor and Harpo Marx

Make Room for Daddy  (February 16, 1959)  “Shirley Jones Makes Good”

Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theatre  (December 11, 1964)  “The Shattered Glass”  with William Shatner

The Danny Thomas Hour  (December 11, 1967)  “The Royal Follies of 1933″  with Johnny Carson and Eve Arden

The Name of the Game  (March 7, 1969)  “The Third Choice”  with Gene Barry

The Bob Hope Show  (April 5, 1971)  with Wally Cox and Sammy Davis Jr.

McMillan & Wife  (January 23, 1977)  with Rock Hudson

Gorgeous, mouth-watering Sherry Jackson began her career as a child actress on the 1953-1958 television sitcom, Make Room for Daddy, which starred Danny Thomas. Rumor has it that Idaho-born Sherry was “discovered” by a talent agent while she and her mother were waiting for a bus. She began with small parts in such films as Susie, one of the Kettle children, in Ma and Pa Kettle Go To Town (1950), Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm (1951), Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair (1952), and Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation (1953), along with other Hollywood classics including The Next Voice You Hear (1950 with James Whitmore), For Heaven’s Sake (1950, with Joan Bennett and Clifton Webb), Trouble Along the Way (1953, playing John Wayne’s daughter), and many others. Her most impressive role during the 1950s was as a Portuguese youngster who witnesses a vision in The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (1952, with Gilbert Roland).

Sherry literally grew up as Danny Thomas’ coquettish daughter “Terry Williams” on The Danny Thomas Show (also known as Make Room for Daddy). She starred on the series for the first five seasons, written out of the series in the final episode of the fifth season (the script had her heading off to college), and things changed drastically work-wise. She made the move to Warner Brothers, courtesy of her stepfather, Montgomery Pittmann, who was writing and directing numerous television episodes of Maverick, Cheyenne and 77 Sunset Strip. She took time to work for other other movie studios and producers, including the recurring role of Melanie Culpin on Walt Disney’s Swampfox and Jeff Myrtlebank’s girlfriend in an episode of The Twilight Zone.

Sherry Jackson as the android, Andrea, in the STAR TREK episode, "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"

Jackson grew totally out of her pert and pretty teen figure into a ravishing stunner during the early sixties. She appeared on The Wild, Wild West, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., Wagon Train and Perry Mason. She gained pop culture status with her appearance as Pauline, The Riddler’s moll in a two-part Batman television episode in 1966. Star Trek fans recall Sherry Jackson as the sexy android, Andrea, in the episode “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” Jackson played Effra, an extra-terrestrial in “The Space Croppers” episode of Lost In Space. In 1979, she played the title character in the made-for-TV movie, Brenda Starr, based on the comic strip character of the same name.

One could usually count on spotting Sherry somewhere as a biker chick, cooey-voiced party girl or scantily-clad femme fatale. Her motion-picture career included the sexy Samantha in Gunn, the 1967 major motion-picture based on the TV series, Peter Gunn, starring Craig Stevens reprising his television role. In 1965, Jackson played the lead role of Lee Sullivan in Wild on the Beach (1965), one of many flicks created as a result of the then-popular Beach Party craze. In 1968, she played the Connie, the newlywed being terrorized in AIP’s Mini-Skirt Mob (1968), now a cult classic. Jackson doesn’t like to look back at The Mini-Skirt Mob, but we find it to be a very entertaining film and Jackson never looked more beautiful. For this reason, we’re planning to screen the movie during the convention.

A Selection of Sherry Jackson’s Television Career

The Range Rider, “Dead Man’s Shoe”  (telecast in 1951)

The Gene Autry Show, “Rock River Feud”  (January 18, 1952)

The Roy Rogers Show, “The Unwilling Outlaw”  (March 9, 1952)

The Rifleman, “The Sister”  (November 25, 1958, with Chuck Connors)

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, “The Prettiest Collateral in Town”  (April 12, 1960)

Surfside 6, “High Tide”  (October 10, 1960, with Van Williams)

77 Sunset Strip, “The Texas Doll” (December 11, 1959)

Maverick, “The Naked Gallows”  (December 15, 1957)

The Twilight Zone, “The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank”  (February 23, 1962)

Gunsmoke, “Root Down”  (October 6, 1962, with James Arness)

Perry Mason, “The Case of the Festive Felon”  (November 28, 1963)

Lost in Space, “The Space Croppers”  (March 30, 1966, with Mercedes McCambridge)

Rawhide, “Moment in the Sun”  (January 29, 1965, with Clint Eastwood)

My Three Sons, “The Wheels”  (April 21, 1966, with Fred MacMurray)

Batman, “Death in Slow Motion”  (Part One, April 27, 1966)

Batman, “The Riddler’s False Notion”  (Part Two, April 28, 1966)

The Wild, Wild West, “The Night of the Gruesome Games”  (October 25, 1968)

The Immortal, “Sylvia”  (September 24, 1970)

Death Valley Days, “Lady of the Plains”  (May 5, 1966, with DeForest Kelly)

Star Trek, “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”  (October 20, 1966)

The Rockford Files, “The Real Easy Red Dog”  (October 31, 1975)

The Streets of San Francisco, “One Last Trick”  (October 6, 1977)

The Incredible Hulk, “Earthquakes Happen”  (May 19, 1978)

CHiPS, “The Strippers”  (February 16, 1980, with Erik Estrada)

A Selection of Sherry Jackson’s Movie Career

This Woman is Dangerous  (1952, with Joan Crawford)

The Breaking Point  (1950, with John Garfield and Patricia Neal)

Covered Wagon Raid  (1950, with Allan Lane, a.k.a. Allan “Rocky” Lane)

The Mini-Skirt Mob  (1968, with Diane McBain and Jeremy Slate)

Gunn  (1967, with Craig Stevens and Ed Asner)

Something to Live For  (1952, with Joan Fontaine and Ray Milland)

Where Danger Lives  (1950, with Robert Mitchum, Faith Domerque and Claude Rains)

Wild on the Beach  (1965, with Frankie Randall, Sonny and Cher)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  (1960, with Tony Randall)

Louisa  (1950, with Ronald Reagan, Edmund Gwenn and Ruth Hussey)

Ma and Pa Kettle Go To Town  (1950)

Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm  (1951)

Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair  (1952)

Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation  (1953)

Gloria Grahame in "The Cobweb" (1955)

Much of my information on Gloria Grahame comes from the excellent book Suicide Blonde: The Life of Gloria Grahame by Vincent Curcio. I definitely recommend this book for fans of Grahame. It’s out of print, but used copies can be found online in several stores.

Grahame was a beautiful, troubled actress with a unique style that made her perfect for the part of the femme fatale, a role she most famously played in The Big Heat (1953). In that film she plays Debby, the sarcastic, childish, narcissistic girl of mob henchman Vince Stone (Lee Marvin). After Vince scalds half of her face with boiling coffee, Debby seeks out revenge, nudged none-too-subtly by officer Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) who is also out for revenge.

Gloria Grahame, actress

According to Suicide Blonde, director Fritz Lang was a tyrant on the set. He always needed a scapegoat to pick on during filming, and Gloria was the scapegoat on The Big Heat. Jocelyn Brando recounted that she was treated poorly, too, at one point being forced to do about 25 takes on a single short scene where she feeds her husband Dave a piece of dripping steak; Lang was never satisfied that Brando was dripping the juice just right. The stressful work environment may have actually helped Grahame flourish as an actress, as her characterization was well-received by most critics of the day. Curcio says of her performance, “One would have to look back to Jacobean revenge tragedies of the early seventeenth century to find a character of her complexity and moral tone.” While it’s true she creates a layered performance with surprising depth, he does overstate her abilities by a fair margin.

Gloria in "It's A Wonderful Life" (1946)

During filming, Gloria won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in the previous year’s The Bad and the Beautiful. Gloria was so distracted due to the tough schedule and Lang’s grueling direction that she was hardly prepared for the honor. When she walked up to the stage to accept her Oscar, she stumbled badly. She said it was due to being blinded by the television lighting, while others said she was obviously drunk. Her make-up and hair were only half done and she was obviously flustered. In the days after her win there were stories that Grahame just didn’t appreciate the Oscar. One of the most repeated stories was that Grahame cared so little for the award that she had given the Oscar to her little boy to play with. In response, Gloria gave an interview with a movie magazine during a strenuous day of filming on The Big Heat. Between takes, she spoke with the interviewer, her face half-covered in the now-famous scar make-up. She explained that her son had decided the Oscar was a doll and that no mother would ever take away their son’s favorite toy. The rumors that she didn’t care about the Oscar upset her, she said. Physical pain eventually goes away, she explained, but emotional hurts linger.

Gloria Grahame

Gloria is somewhat famous for her song “I Cain’t Say No” in “Oklahoma!” (1955), which is surprising as she was completely tone-deaf. Even the brief song she half-sings half-hums in The Big Heat is dubbed in. You can also see in that same scene the results of of her frequent plastic surgery. Grahame was never confident in her looks, and despite her lips being the one of her more well-known attributes, she had plastic surgery on her upper lip to reduce the deepness of the upper creases. The surgery was botched, though, resulting in her upper lip becoming stiff and unmovable. It was in reviews just after The Big Heat that Grahame became known as “the girl with the Novocaine lip”, something that would haunt her the rest of her life.

Gloria Grahame in "Naked Alibi" (1954)

Because she didn’t want anyone to know about the botched plastic surgery, Grahame took to stuffing tissue in her upper lip, telling people it was to make her lips look fuller. She decided she’d rather be known for being eccentric than for ruining her lips, and for decades, people believed the “Novocaine lip” was entirely due to her strange use of tissues.

Grahame was a study in contradictions. She was both genuine and nice, while at the same time being insecure and difficult. Her personal life was a PR disaster. Gloria was often featured in gossip columns due to several publicly turbulent relationships. In 1952 she divorced from husband Nicholas Ray, and word of an affair she’d had with his then 13-year-old son Anthony Ray leaked into gossip columns. (She later married her stepson Anthony when he was in his mid-20s, about 10 years after they first met.) Her erratic behavior spilled over into her acting as well. Just two years after “The Big Heat”, patience with Gloria’s antics wore out.

Gloria Grahame

Many were surprised when Gloria was cast as Ado Annie in Oklahoma! (1955). Director Fred Zinneman said he had always wanted Gloria for the role, and he was willing to do almost anything to make it happen. Gloria herself said she didn’t want the role because she simply could not sing. Others, however, report Grahame reading over the script for the film before casting began, making it very possible that she was deliberately trying for the role.

Never secure with her looks or her acting ability, the added stress of attempting to sing in a musical made Grahame extremely difficult to deal with. Her singing was almost useless, and Zinneman insisted everyone in the film do their own singing. Gloria was forced to sing one or two notes at a time and leave it to the music editors to piece it together. The result is a choppy version of “I Cain’t Say No” where the lyrics are spoken more than sung.

LIFE magazine, October 21, 1946

By now married to Cy Howard, Grahame spent a lot of time on the phone with him while he told her how to play each scene. Filming was held up and she was often literally dragged from the phone to the stage.

Gloria often refused to learn her blocking properly. Some claim this was a sort of passive-aggressive attempt on her part to do things the way she wanted, although others close to Grahame say it was borne from insecurity and near-panic. During Oklahoma!, however, this problem with blocking turned into routine upstaging where she stepped on other actor’s feet, kicked and shoved others out of the scene, and deliberately did her takes differently each time to throw the other actors off.

About the Author: Stacia Jones is the author of the She Walked by Night blog. Stacia is also in charge of the Marie Prevost Project. For more information, click here.

SELECTED MOVIES FEATURING GLORIA GRAHAME

Veronica Lake, actress

“I will have one of the cleanest obits of any actress. I never did cheesecake like Ann Sheridan or Betty Grable. I just used my hair.”  –Veronica Lake

Veronica Lake never received her due of sex appeal like her Hollywood competition. Her legs were not insured for $1 million dollars like Betty Grable and her two biggest assets were not being promoted like Jane Russell. When she stood to attention in So Proudly We Hail! (1943), uniformed Veronica Lake stood 4 feet, 11 inches tall. She weighed 90 pounds. She was teamed with Joel McCrea in Sullivan’s Travels (1942), who stood 6 feet, 3 inches. While filming I Married A Witch  in 1942, Veronica Lake and co-star Fredric March did not like one another, due in part to some disparaging remarks March made about her. During filming, Lake delighted in playing pranks on March, such as hiding a 40-pound weight under her costume when March had to carry her in his arms. In another scene in which the two were photographed only from the waist up, Lake stuck her foot in March’s groin.

Veronica Lake

But in front of the camera, Veronica Lake deftly filled the lens with more sex appeal in her one eye than most beauties wearing half as much, and trying twice as hard. An icy blonde whose trademark hairstyle – a cascade of golden tresses that obscured one heavy-lidded eye – remained among the enduring images of Hollywood glamour… and Veronica Lake was for a time, one of the most popular and sought-after actresses in motion pictures. Her hair style motivated a generation of women to imitate her cool persona with the peak-a-boo hair style. (This wasn’t the first time a Hollywood actress influenced the way Americans lived. Actresses Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn were often photographed in trousers during the 1930s, which helped make trousers acceptable for women to wear in public.) Gale Storm, Phyllis Coates

Veronica Lake photo

Composers feted her in song, with famed composers Rogers and Hart citing her look in 1943′s The Girl I Love to Leave Behind and Lake even singing a tune about herself in the 1942 wartime morale booster film, Star-Spangled Rhythm. When the G.I.s overseas displayed pin-ups to remind themselves what they were fighting for, Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth had competition. Her impact on society was so dramatic, that during the war, she was forced by the United States government to temporarily change her peek-a-boo hair-do after numerous women in munitions factories were becoming injured when their long locks of hair were catching in assembly-line machinery. Veronica Lake’s hair style, popularized on the silver screen, became a safety hazard and in 1943, she began appearing on the screen without the trademark hair. Rita Hayworth

Veronica Lake publicity photo

Movie historians debate whether or not this dramatic change in her appearance had a negative effect on Lake’s screen career, but in reality, there were a number of factors that contributed to the decline of her star status. Lake had a reputation for being difficult on the set, and many of her co-stars were open in their dislike of her; Fredric March refused to speak about her in interviews, and even the genial Eddie Bracken (her co-star in Star-Spangled Rhythm) had nothing but caustic words about her. In 1942, she divorced John Detlie, and the following year she stumbled over a cable during the making of The Hour Before Dawn (1944), which led to the premature birth of her son, William. The movie studio has to quickly reschedule filming (and additional cost to do so). To make matters worse, critics savaged her performance as a Nazi sympathizer in Dawn. Some claimed she could not act – only look pretty. Some historians today make the same claim. Lake also reportedly began drinking during this period, with rumors of mental instability – which had plagued her since childhood.

Veronica Lake, a sex zombie?

Born Constance Ockelman in Brooklyn, New York, on Nov. 14, 1919, Veronica Lake was only 12 years old when she lost her father, oil company employee Harry Ockelman, due to a work-related accident. Her mother, also named Constance, married Anthony Keane a year later, causing the family to move several times over the next few years. After gaining some fame in beauty pageants in Florida, she and her parents re-located to Beverly Hills, CA, enrolling Lake in the Bliss Hayden School of Acting in Hollywood. Her big break happened almost immediately. After signing with RKO, she made her film debut in John Farrow’s romantic drama, Sorority House (1939), in which she was initially billed as Constance Keane. Bit roles in other features followed, including a Leon Errol comedy film short (which we’re screening this year in the movie room). Lake’s parts were so small that her characters rarely had a name and you’ll notice that in the Leon Errol comedy.

“Hollywood gives a young girl the aura of one giant, self-contained orgy farm, its inhabitants dedicated to crawling into every pair of pants they can find.”  –Veronica Lake

So Proudly We Hail! (1943)

Lake worked her way up in Hollywood, proudly and publicly admitting that she was capable of getting roles in movies without the need of a casting couch tryout. She signed with Paramount in 1941, and while there, famed producer Arthur Hornblow redubbed her Veronica Lake – “Lake” being inspired by the blueness of her eyes, and according to Hornblow, the name Veronica suggesting beauty. (Years later, Jay Ward and his staff would poke fun of her name in a comical story arc on The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, a caper that took place at Lake Veronica.)

(Left to Right) Paulette Goddard, Dorothy Lamour, and Veronica Lake

For the next three years she appeared in a string of box office hits, all financially successful for the studio. She made a major impact as William Holden’s smoldering love interest in the military drama, I Wanted Wings (1941), a 17th-century sorceress who falls for the ancestor of the man who condemned her to death in Rene Clair’s I Married A Witch (1941), and showed considerable comic talent as a struggling actress who accompanies Joel McCrea on his cross-country trip in Preston Sturges’ cutting social commentary, Sullivan’s Travels (1942). Why this latter film has not been hailed as one of the 100 best movies ever made is subject to debate, but we’ll be screening it this year and if you never saw Sullivan’s Travels, we recommend you take the time and do. It’s one of those films you will admit, after the closing credits, “they don’t make movies like that anymore.” TCM.com

I Married A Witch (1942)

In late 1942, she was cast opposite screen newcomer Alan Ladd in the brutish noir thriller, This Gun for Hire (1942), with Ladd as a killer and Lake who sympathizes for the gunman. The movie studio had found a solution to Alan Ladd’s 5 foot, 5 inch height. They paired him up with Veronica Lake. They would appear together in a total of seven films, including The Glass Key (1942), Duffy’s Tavern (1945) and The Blue Dahlia (1946).

Veronica Lake, actress

In 1944, she married film director Andre De Toth, reportedly violent behind the camera. De Toth would later be responsible for directing House of Wax (1953), considered one of the greatest 3-D movies ever made. Ironic when you consider the fact that De Toth had a glass eye – you need two eyes to see the 3-D process. Perhaps she needed a man who was dominant in her life. Perhaps she felt sorry for the director. Whatever the reason, her marriage never lasted a decade and her drinking continued behind the camera. Business-minded Alan Ladd, soft-spoken, meek and insecure, publicly criticized her for showing up late on the set of The Blue Dahlia.

This Gun For Hire (1942)

20th Century Fox picked up her contract in 1948 and she initially assumed this was a change for the better since she did not feel welcome at Paramount anymore. Fox wasn’t known for putting out quality movies, with more misses than hits. Lake was among the statistics. Not that Fox tried their best. Whenever possible, movie producers gave her top billing. In February of 1952, she played the role of Mary Stevens, a young American girl, who goes to Mexico with her mother, to escape the strife of the American Civil War. Once there, she gets caught up in love and politics as Don Migeul Navarro (Zachary Scott), a follower of Maximillian, battles Dom Pedro Alvarez, a follower of the exiled Juarez, vie for her hand. The romance paralleled the success of the Juarez movement. Stronghold was released in theaters and the film was such a flop that she went to New York to try the stage and a number of television appearances (mostly to pay off a debt to the IRS). She never returned to Hollywood for more than a decade.

This Gun For Hire (1942)

Even though Lake took advantage of her down time and earned her pilot’s license; in 1946, eventually flying solo from Los Angeles to New York, her personal life after Hollywood involved alcoholism. She only made the news when she was picked up by the police for disorderly conduct. Lake moved to Hollywood, Florida, avoiding the West Coast, where she penned a well-received autobiography, Veronica, which detailed her many struggles with temperament, mental illness and alcoholism. With one last ditch effort for her long-past-its-prime career, Lake managed to co-finance her final film, a dreary, Florida-lensed horror movie called Flesh Feast (1970), in which she played a doctor experimenting with a youth formula involving maggots. The film was not a box office success.

I Married A Witch (1942)

In 1973, she was hospitalized with declining health brought on by hepatitis and renal failure — both complications of her alcohol addiction. Her mental facilities were also in sharp decline. Lake had suffered from steadily increasing paranoia since the mid-‘60s. Estranged from her children, Lake died alone on July 7, 1973. Rumor had it that it took days for someone to identify her body. Some of her ashes were scattered in the Virgin Islands three years later, but in 2004, it was discovered that another portion had reportedly remained in possession of a friend and that it had made its way to an antique store in the Catskills.

This Gun For Hire (1942)

References to Lake’s peek-a-boo style and ice queen demeanor were seen in everything from the neo-noir flick, L.A. Confidential (1997) with Kim Basinger as Lynn Bracken, to the animated femme fatale, Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988). Even the comics’ Archie Andrews of The Archies had a longtime love, brunette vixen Veronica Rogers, mirrored closely with the actress.

After her Hollywood career came to a close, her one-time lover Marlon Brando heard she was working as a barmaid and promptly had his people deliver her a check for $1,000. Too proud to cash it, Lake instead chose to have it framed as a memory of days gone by, and a not-so-subtle notice to others that she was once Hollywood’s reigning sex symbol.

The Glass Key (1942)

Veronica Lake, actress

The beautiful Veronica Lake

Veronica Lake photo

Turner Classic Movies Monthly Schedule

Martin Grams Jr. is the author of numerous books about retro television and old-time radio. He has written more than 100 magazine articles for Filmfax, Radiogram, Scarlet Street, The Old Time Radio Digest and Nostalgia Digest, among others. He contributed appendixes and chapters for more than a dozen books. He is the author of liner notes for Radio Spirits and VCI Entertainment DVD releases. he recently provided audio commentary for The Twilight Zone BluRay television series release.

Joe DiMaggio

Hank Greenberg told Sport magazine in the September 1949 issue that Joe DiMaggio covered so much ground in center field that the only way to get a hit against the Yankees was “to hit ‘em where Joe wasn’t.” On February of that same year, DiMaggio signed a record contract worth $100,000 and became the first baseball player to break $100,000 in earnings. He already broke Wee Willie Keeler’s all-time hitting streak record and was a weekly celebrity in the New York newspapers. So it came as no surprise that on September 17, 1949, CBS Radio premiered The Joe DiMaggio Show, with that catchy theme, “Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio.” After 26 weeks, the series went off the air (concluding on March 18, 1950) and NBC immediately attempted to cash in on the ball player’s popularity. On April 15, NBC premiered The Joe DiMaggio show, offering more stations and larger coverage than CBS.

Among the notable guests on the CBS series were Jack Dempsey and Tommy Henrich. The final broadcast of the series featured former president Herbert Hoover opening Boys’ Club week. The Joe DiMaggio Showon NBC pretty much followed the same format of the CBS version. The famous center-fielder for the New York Yankees was the emcee and sports commentator who each week presented on his program the following special features:

Joe DiMaggio

Commentary on outstanding happenings in the baseball world tied in with the various big league games played each week. A sports quiz, featuring Jack Barry, famous emcee of Juvenile Jury as conductor for the quiz, which pitted “Kids versus Grown-ups” with contestants chosen from the studio audience and with questions on various sports subjects both general and specific, past and current. The contestants were arranged in two “teams” – the teams play a “3-inning game” following the rules of baseball. For every question correctly answered, the team scores one run. At the end of the quiz, the team with the greater number of runs was the winner. Jack Barry was the “pitcher”… of questions; Joe DiMaggio was the “umpire” who called the “hits” or errors. Scores were announced at the end of every inning and at the end of the game. Each member of the winning team received a 17-jewel Helbros wrist watch. Each member of the losing teams received a year’s subscription to Sport Magazine.

Each broadcast featured a famous sports writer and Joe DiMaggio invited them to tell their favorite sports story. This was revealed in the form of a brief dramatization, for which the celebrated athlete would also appear as a guest for a quick interview with Joe DiMaggio. (The interviews were scriped, not improv, as evident when reviewing the scripts.) The dramas featured New York radio actors Leon Janney, Mandell Kramer and Everett Sloane more often than any others, but the productions used different actors from time to time.

Dom DiMaggio and brother Joe (left to right)

There was a letter-answering spot in which DiMaggio answered some of the questions asked in letters sent to the program by listeners, who were instructed to mail their sports questions to Joe DiMaggio, NBC, New York 20. The most interesting letters each week were answered on the air by DiMaggio himself.

The program was a Barry-Enright Production and was under direction of Dan Enright. Production-direction was handled by Fred Weihe. The show was taped in advance and edited by Dan Enright. The script writer for the biographical dramas was Mike Oppenheimer. Musical background and bridges: Arlo Hults (generally known simply as Arlo), organist. While the exact reason is not known, the most obvious answer of why the series was transcribed rather than broadcast “live” was to accommodate DiMaggio’s schedule. On the same day the series premiered, April 15, DiMaggio was not in the radio studio but was playing against the Dodgers on the field at Yankee Stadium. No one could predict a game would or would not go into extra innings, and his performance on the field could not be affected by the radio series.

The premiere broadcast was reviewed in the Pine Plains, NY Register-Herald: “…the fans of baseball rated a four-star salute… this column recommends it for good radio listening if you are a baseball follower… Incidentally, DiMaggio has a voice which could, if he desires, bring him in the ranks of the top-notch radio sports announcers when his baseball days are over.”

For baseball fans, the radio series is a fascination of sports commentary. The Yankee Clipper in his opening show gave his version of the major league races for 1950 by picking the Yankees to win in the American League closely contested by Boston, Detroit, Cleveland and Philadelphia in that order. In the National League, DiMaggio picked the Dodgers to repeat with plenty of trouble from the Cardinals, Boston Braves and the Giants with the Giants the dark horse to win the National League crown.

Another interesting part of the show was Tommy Henrich’s answer to DiMaggio’s question: “Tommy, what is the hardest park in the American League for you to hit in?” Henrich replied by naming the parks in Boston and Washington stating that the distance in both stadiums to the right field fence was longer than in other parks.

Joe DiMaggio

For the broadcast of May 20, special guest was David W. Armstrong, National Director of the Boys’ Clubs of America, who presented Joe DiMaggio with the First Annual Boys’ Clubs of America “Man and Boy Award” in recognition of DiMaggio’s leadership and guidance among the Boys’ Clubs of America members.

The August 19 broadcast featured a dramatization of Jim Braddock, former heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Braddock’s success story would later be filmed as a motion-picture in 2005 as Cinderella Man. Playing the role of Braddock was George Reeves, before he became a household name as the Man of Steel on television.

The September 2 broadcast included a salute to the Fresh Air Fund, a fund used to send deserving youngsters to camp in the summer. Guest Irving Marsh told about the approaching Fresh Air Fund Football Game planned for the next week, the 12^th annual game for the Fund – would be played September 7 at the Polo Grounds in New York between the Los Angeles Rams and the Giants.

DiMaggio himself did appear on radio prior to The Joe DiMaggio Show, in the form of guest appearances. On the April 14, 1946 broadcast of The Radio Hall of Fame, DiMaggio was among the guests saluting America’s favorite pastime. On the February 12, 1941 broadcast of It’s Time to Smile, Joe DiMaggio participated in a comedy sketch titled “The Teetering Towers,” in which the ball player was moving into Eddie Cantor’s apartment building. DiMaggio was interviewed by Rudy Vallee on the November 17, 1938 broadcast of The Royal Gelatin Hour.

Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Charles O. Finley

Broadcast Schedule

April 15, 1950 to October 7, 1950

East Coast Broadcasts: Saturday evening from 7:30 to 8:00 p.m.

Chicago Broadcasts: Saturday evening from 6:30 to 7:00 p.m. (not broadcast in Chicago on October 7).

West Coast Broadcasts: Saturday evening from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m.

The final three episodes were broadcast West of Chicago only. In New York and along the East Coast, Art Linkletter’s People Are Funny was broadcast in the time slot. (The Joe DiMaggio Show was not broadcast on October 7 in Chicago.)

Del Webb, Dan Topping, Joe McCarthy Yankees

Episode Guide

Broadcast of April 15, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Tom Meany, associate-editor, Collier’s magazine and one of the country’s leading sports reporters and columnists.

Dramatic story is about Tommy Henrich, Yankee baseball star, and his performances of last season.

Tommy (Old Reliable) Henrich is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story.

Supporting cast: Leon Janney, Ed Latimer and Everett Sloane.

Roy Halladay, Elston Howard,  Roger Maris

Broadcast of April 22, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Ben Epstein of the New York Daily Mirror sports staff.

Dramatic story is about the true experience of Charley “Casey” Stengle who wanted to be a ball player and who became one of the greatest managers of all time.

Charley “Casey” Stengel, manager of the New York Yankees, is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story. This was not the first time Stengel and DiMaggio appeared together on the same radio broadcast. On October 12, 1948, an official announcement was made over the Mutual Broadcasting Company with Stan Lomax introducing Dan Topping and Del Webb, who in turn introduced Stengel as the new manager of the New York Yankees. Both Stengel and DiMaggio were interviewed during the 1948 broadcast.

Supporting cast: Charles Irving, Frankie Thomas and Stefan Schnabel.

Old-Time Radio Researchers, www.otrr.org, Jim Beshires

Broadcast of April 29, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Art Morrow, sports writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Dramatic story is about Connie Mack, manager of the Philadelphia Athletics.

Connie Mack, manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, was special guest after the drama.

The Morrow and Mack portions were transcribed from Philadelphia.

Supporting cast: Leon Janney, Mandell Kramer and Everett Sloane.

Ryan Ellett, Doug Hopkinson old-time radio

Broadcast of May 6, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Milt Gross, sports reporter and columnist for the New York Post.

Dramatic story is about Dominic (Dom) DiMaggio, Joe’s kid brother and player with the Boston Red Sox.

Dominic DiMaggio was special guest after the drama.

Supporting cast: Leon Janney, Mandell Kramer and Everett Sloane.

Larry MacPhail, Ted Williams, Bucky Harris

Broadcast of May 13, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Lou Effrat of the New York Times.

Dramatic story is about Luke Appling, Chicago White Sox infield star.

Luke Appling is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story.

Supporting cast: Jackson Beck, Charles Irving, Leon Janney and Mandel Kramer.

John McGraw, Miller Huggins, Ed Barrow

Broadcast of May 20, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Joe Trimble, sports writer for the New York Daily News.

Dramatic story is about Lou Boudreau, playing manager for the Cleveland Indians.

Luke Appling is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story.

Supporting cast: Jackson Beck, Charles Irving, Leon Janney and Mandel Kramer.

Harry Frazzee, Harry Frazee, Ebbets Field

Broadcast of May 27, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Bob Cooke, of the New York Herald Tribune

Dramatic story is about Gene Sarazen, famous golfer, who is also a special guest following the dramatization of the story Cooke has told.

Supporting cast: Jackson Beck, Leon Janney and Everett Sloane.

Whitey Ford, Bill Dickey, Phil Rizzuto

Broadcast of June 3, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Jim Kahn, associate editor of Collier’s magazine.

Dramatic story is about Phil Rizzuto, shortstop for the New York Yankees. Rizzuto is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story Jim Kahn has told.

Supporting cast: Leon Janney, Mandel Kramer and Everett Sloane.

Johnny Murphy NY Yankees, Red Ruffing

Broadcast of June 10, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Charlie Hankinson, a nine-year-old boy who was probably the youngest sportscaster in radio history, and who recently went on the air with his own radio sports program.

Dramatic story is about Dizzy (Jerome) Dean.

Dizzy Dean is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story.

Supporting cast: Jackson Beck, Jay Jackson and Mandel Kramer.

Tony Lazzeri, Red Rolfe, George Steinbrenner

Broadcast of June 17, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Mel Allen, famous sportscaster in New York City.

Dramatic story is about Bob Feller, famous pitcher for the Cleveland Indians.

Bob Feller is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story Mel Allen has told.

Supporting cast: Leon Janney and Mandel Kramer.

Thurman Munson, Luis Tiant, Ron Guidry

Broadcast of June 24, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Dan Daniel, baseball editor for the New York World Telegram and Sun and author of the daily column, “Dan’s Dope.”

Dramatic story is about Hal Newhouser, famous pitcher for the Detroit Tigers.

Hal Newhouser is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story Dan Daniel has told.

Supporting cast: Leon Janney, Mandel Kramer and Everett Sloane.

Dave Winfield, Reggie Jackson, NY Yankees

Broadcast of July 1, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Arthur (Art) Daley, popular columnist of the New York Times, and author of the column “Sports of the Times” since 1942.

Dramatic story is about the life of Pee Wee Reese, short-stop of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Pee Wee Reese is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story.

Supporting cast: Jackson Beck, Leon Janney and Everett Sloane.

www.baseball-reference.com

Broadcast of July 8, 1950.

Instead of a sports writer, the program has a special guest: Ham Fisher, creator of the Joe Palooka comic strip, and considered one of the outstanding contributors to the sport of boxing through his comic character. Fisher says next to Joe Palooka, his favorite fighter is Sugar Ray Robinson.

Dramatic story is about the life of Sugar ray Robinson.

Sugar Ray Robinson is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story.

Supporting cast: Jackson Beck, Leon Janney and Mandel Kramer.

Trivia: For this broadcast only: musical bridges by John Gart, replacing Arlo at the organ.

www.ultimateyankees.com

Broadcast of July 15, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Al Buck, sports columnist for the New York Post.

Dramatic story is about Lefty Gomez (Vernon Gomez), known as the “whackiest left-hander big league baseball pitcher in the country.

Lefty Gomez is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story.

Supporting cast: Leon Janney, Mandel Kramer and Everett Sloane.

www.cbssports.com, www.nycgo.com

Broadcast of July 22, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Don Dunphy, one of the top boxing announcers in the country.

Dramatic story is about Willie Pep, featherweight boxing champion of the world.

Willie Pep is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story.

Supporting cast: Leon Janney, Mandel Kramer and Everett Sloane.

Elizabeth McLeod old-time radio broadcast

Broadcast of July 29, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Jim Burchard, sportswriter for Scrips-Howard newspapers and president of the Lawn tennis Writers Association of America.

Dramatic story is about Pancho Segura, professional tennis champion of the world.

Pancho Segura is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story.

Supporting cast is unknown.

www.ballparksofbaseball.com

Broadcast of August 5, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Max Case, sports editor of the New York Journal American.

Dramatic story is about Yogi Berra, catcher for the New York Yankees. Berra’s real name is Larry Berra, and he appears as a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story.

Supporting cast: Leon Janney, Mandel Kramer and Everett Sloane.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Yankees

Broadcast of August 12, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Jess Abramson, sports reporter of the New York Herald Tribune.

Dramatic story is about George Kell, battling champion of the American League, and third baseman with the Detroit Tigers.

George Kell is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story.

Supporting cast: Leon Janney, Mandel Kramer and Grant Richards.

Hilltop Park known as American League Park

Broadcast of August 19, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Red Smith of the New York Herald-Tribune.

Dramatic story is about Jimmy Braddock, former heavyweight boxing champion of the world.

Jim Braddock is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story.

Supporting cast: Leon Janney, Mandel Kramer and George Reeves.

Radio Recall, Metro Washington Old Time Radio

Broadcast of August 26, 1950.

Sports writer guests: Frank Graham, feature writer and columnist of the New York Journal-American, who also wrote a regular feature for Sport magazine under the title, “One for the Book.” It wasn’t done on prior broadcasts, but on this date there were two sports writer guests. The second was Dick Young of the New York Daily News reporter who covers the Dodgers games for his paper.

Dramatic story is about Mel Ott, who was until his retirement in 1948, was the manager of the New York Giants.

Mel Ott is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story.

Supporting cast in unknown.

Field of Dreams movie Kevin Costner

Broadcast of September 2, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Irving Marsh, assistant sports editor of the New York Herald Tribune.

Dramatic story is about Florence Chadwick, the woman Channel swimmer who this year broke Gertrude Ederle’s record in crossing the English Channel. Charlotte Manson plays the role of Florence Chadwick in this episode.

Supporting cast: Jay Jackson, Mandel Kramer and Charlotte Manson.

Trivia: John Gart was the organist for this episode, the first of two consecutive episodes, replacing Arlo who left for vacation.

CBS’ Person to Person and 60 Minutes

Broadcast of September 9, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Harold (Hal) Weisman of the New York Daily Mirror.

Dramatic story is about Umpire Dolly Stark, a retired baseball umpire. Stark retired in 1940 after 21 years as an umpire and ranked with Bill Klem as one of the “greats” in baseball arbitration.

Dolly Stark is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story.

Supporting cast: Leon Janney and Mandel Kramer.

Trivia: John Gart was the organist for this episode, the second of two consecutive episodes, replacing Arlo who was on vacation.

Roger Maris, Billy Martin, Don Mattingly

Broadcast of September 16, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Ed Fitzgerald of Sport magazine.

Dramatic story is about Jack Kramer, tennis star.

Jack Kramer is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story.

Supporting cast: Donald Buka, Leon Janney and Mandel Kramer.

Trivia: Arlo Hultz, organist, returns from vacation.

Jackie Robinson baseball player

Broadcast of September 23, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Lou Effrat, sportswriter of the New York Times.

Dramatic story is about Gus Mauch, trainer for the New York Yankees baseball team.

Gus Mauch is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story.

Supporting cast: Jackson Beck, Charles Irving and Mandel Kramer.

“vintage baseball broadcasts on radio”

Broadcast of September 30, 1950.

Sports writer guest: Dick Young of the New York Daily News reporter who covers the Dodgers games for his paper.

Dramatic story is about Carl Hubbell, great pitcher of the Big Leagues of the past. Hubbell retired 14 Yankees in a row during the first game of the 1937 World Series, including Joe DiMaggio, which is mentioned briefly on this program.

Carl Hubbell is a guest in person following the dramatization of the sports story.

Supporting cast is unknown.

Elston Howard, Monument Park in New York

Broadcast of October 7, 1950.

There was no sports writer guest for this episode. Instead, Joe DiMaggio presents guest Sid Luckman, pro football star, and interviews him about his personal and professional life.

NY Yankees Timeline 1903-1925

Closing Notes

To date, only six episodes are known to exist in recorded form. April 15, May 20, July 8, July 15, September 23 and September 30.

After a successful run on radio, Joe DiMaggio tried his hand with television. On September 23, 1950, The Joe DiMaggio Show premiered on NBC-TV as a fifteen-minute series, lasting a short thirteen weeks.

McFarland Publishing, Bear Manor Media

Martin Grams Jr. is the author of numerous books about retro television and old-time radio. He has written more than 100 magazine articles for Filmfax, Radiogram, Scarlet Street, The Old Time Radio Digest and Nostalgia Digest, among others. He contributed appendixes and chapters for more than a dozen books. He is the author of liner notes for Radio Spirits and VCI Entertainment DVD releases. he recently provided audio commentary for The Twilight Zone BluRay television series release. Martin is a volunteer and events organizer at the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention.

1957 Lobby Card

In 1946, American movies returned to France. Among these were films with dark themes and mood, stories that displayed the underbelly of life. One of these was Gilda (Columbia, 1946) with Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford. The French movie critics dubbed this style of film making, “Film Noir” or dark film. This was not Columbia’s first Noir production. Unbeknownst to them, the studio had been producing Noir features since 1940 with Angels Over Broadway. This style suited Columbia well, allowing films to be produced within strong budgetary restraints. With the exception of western noir, most noir films were contemporary. Elaborate sets were unnecessary. With low key lighting, which in itself saved money, minimal sets could be employed.

The Brothers Rico (1957)

Early Columbia Noir was evident in their “B” films, both in The Whistler and I Love a Mystery series, and such well remembered films like My Name is Julia Ross (1945), So Dark the Night (1946) and Night Editor (1946). With Gilda, Columbia began producing larger budget Noirs. Some Noir films receiving major critical acclaim include All the King’s Men (1949), In a Lonely Place (1950), Death of a Salesman (1951), On the Waterfront (1954) and Anatomy of a Murder (1959). In the late forties, Columbia moved from studio bound features to those filmed on location. San Francisco (Walk a Crooked Mile (1948)), Chicago, (The Undercover Man (1949)), New York (The Killer That Stalked New York (1950), The Glass Wall (1953) and The Garment Jungle (1957)) and Boston (Walk East on Beacon (1952)) were among the cities used. In the fifties, Columbia joined the trend to produce semi-documentary films that described how vice and corruption were eliminated in such cities as Houston (The Houston Story (1956)), Detroit (Inside Detroit (1956)), Chicago (Chicago Syndicate (1955)) and Miami twice (The Miami Story (1954) and Miami Expose (1956).

Trailer Title Card

With The Brothers Rico (1957), Columbia took on the Organization, a conglomerate that controlled criminal activities throughout the United States. The film was based on Georges Simenon’s novella which told of a family’s bond with organized crime. The oldest brother is recruited by a gangland czar to locate the youngest brother, who they believe might testify against the Organization over a gangland hit. The oldest brother believes the youngest brother will be allowed to leave the country until the furor blows over. In reality, he’s bringing his brother out of hiding to be murdered. Richard Conte was cast as Eddie Rico, the oldest brother. Conte was a film noir favorite, having appeared in over fifteen such films. Newcomer James Darren was chosen to play the youngest brother. Darren is very much able to hold his own in his emotion charged scenes with Conte. As good as the movie is, most observers believe the film would have been a stronger Noir had it had adhered closer to Simenon’s work in which the oldest brother solemnly returns home to his family after his brother’s murder. Darren would follow this film with the semi-documentary Noir, The Tijuana Story (1957) and then a western Noir, Gunman’s Walk (1958). In both Darren would give a good account of himself.

The Dark Knight Rises free download file torrent

James Darren will be a guest at the 2012 Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention. Be sure to take the time to watch the film during the weekend!

About the Author: A retired pharmacist, Gene Blottner has written for such publications as Western Clippings and Under Western Skies. He is the author of several books with McFarland Publishing, including Columbia Pictures Movie Series, 1926-55: The Harry Cohn Years. Gene lives in Norfolk, Virginia.