[78-L] Panic..or myth? (Hey, it was 73 years ago tonight, too) [FWD]

[David Lennick]

I thought I had it on a Radiola lp but I'm not seeing it on the shelf (Edgar 
Bergen-Charlie McCarthy program).

dl

On 10/31/2011 5:23 PM, Rodger Holtin wrote:
> Is Nelson's show available anywhere?
>
> Rodger
>
> For Best Results use Victor Needles.
>
> .
>
> --- On Mon, 10/31/11, Michael Biel<mbiel at mbiel.com>  wrote:
>
>
> From: Michael Biel<mbiel at mbiel.com>
> Subject: Re: [78-L] Panic..or myth? (Hey, it was 73 years ago tonight, too) [FWD]
> To: "78-L Mail List"<78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
> Date: Monday, October 31, 2011, 4:02 PM
>
>
> As I mentioned in my early posting, several years ago Elizabeth did a
> great explanation about the slightness of the panic by reminding us that
> if 1.2 million people were noted as being "upset" or "Disturbed" by the
> broadcast, the population of the U.S. was 130 million - so less than 1%
> could have upset, let alone panic.
>
> By the way, you CAN'T blame Nelson Eddy for the tune-outs.  He OPENED
> the program.  He starts singing at about 2:15 into the show after a
> little banter between Don Ameche, Charlie, and Judy Canova.  He finishes
> just after 6:30 when Charlie McCarthy and Bergen join Amache and Eddy.
> While his second song "The Canadian Logging Song" is not as exciting as
> his first one "Song of the Vagabonds", even this at 4:30 in the show is
> much earlier into the program than everyone thinks would grab new
> tune-ins.  So people stayed with Bergen&  McCarthy at least until 15:00
> into the show when Dorothy Lamour is introduced to sing "Two Sleepy
> People".  So is Dorothy Lamour singing a NEW HIT to blame????  You can
> blame Lamour if you consider that people tuning into a comedy show do
> not want music, but just about every comedy/variety program had music,
> including Fred Allen and Jack Benny. BUT Amache does an ad around 19:30
> followed just after 21:00 by a rather dull dramatic scene from "There's
> Always Juliette" played by Madelene Carrol and Amache.  THIS is the
> tune-out, but it is about 20 minutes into the program.
>
> Unfortunately the BBC closed comments for its article, but the
> ill-informed had a chance to tell us that there were no national
> stations in the U.S. except for the Mexican border stations, and that
> the government and FCC passed laws because of this broadcast.  Of
> course, no laws or rules were passed (although NOW there is a rule
> against hoax broadcasts, but that is relatively recent), CBS programs
> were heard nationwide simultaneously (Boston withstanding!), and that
> Orson Welles had been commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation to
> study the possibility of using radio to spread fear and war propaganda.
>
>
> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [78-L] Panic..or myth? (Hey, it was 73 years ago tonight,
> too) [FWD]
> From: Elizabeth McLeod<lizmcl at midcoast.com>
> Date: Mon, October 31, 2011 3:45 pm
> To: "78-L Mail List"<78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
>
> Precisely -- the Mercury Theatre was unsponsored because 8 to 9 pm time
> slot on CBS was considered, for all intents and purposes, to be
> unsalable
> since the Chase&  Sanborn Hour on NBC was at that moment riding high as
> the most popular program of the week. Chase&  Sanborn was averaging
> about
> 37 million listeners each Sunday, compare to about 6 million, tops, for
> Welles. No sponsor was going to want a piece of that unless something
> happened to bring unusual attention to Welles.
>
> THere was indeed no West Coast rebroadcast for the Mercury Theatre
> series
> -- sustaining programs rarely, if ever, did a second show for the Coast.
>
> So if it was heard at all out west, it was heard around suppertime.
>
> As for announcements in the program, there was Dan Seymour's opening
> announcement, an announcement following the theme music introducing
> Welles, a regularly-scheduled station break at approximately 40 minutes
> past the hour, a post-station break announcement thirty seconds later,
> Welles's closing speech, and a closing signature. Although it's
> occasionally been written that various stations along the network broke
> in locally, no positive documentation exists to back that up.
>
> Elizabeth
>
>
>
> on 10/31/11 2:50 PM David Lennick wrote:
>
>> No commercials..which was related to the lack of listeners, since the show
>> was
>> "highbrow" and couldn't land a sponsor until after the notoriety, at which
>> point it became the Campbell Playhouse. If I'm not mistaken, it wasn't even
>> done a second time for the west coast, which means that whatever stations in
>> the west carried it (and I believe LA didn't) ran it at 5pm. Some local
>> stations are thought to have done a line check and run it later. I've
>> heard a
>> number of different transfers of this broadcast (Longines, a dub off Orson's
>> own lacquers, a 16-inch set of discs dubbed from another set of 78 lacquers)
>> and the only "You are listening to.." occurs about 2/3 in.
>>
>> dl
>>
>> On 10/31/2011 2:40 PM, Rodger Holtin wrote:
>>> Some were truly panicked. My dad's family was happily enjoying Nelson Eddy
>> when the old man in their upstairs apartment came downstairs in tears
>> blubbering about the end of thw world. They spent the rest of the hour
>> scanning the radio dial looking ion vain for other stations that would
>> confirm or deny the situation and basicaly missed the rest of both Nelson
>> and Orson, including, I assume, Orson's announcement at the end, something
>> about "we couldn't possibly soap all your windows so we did the next best
>> thing."
>>>
>>> I have heard recordings of this, and they all run straight through,
> including
>> an LP from Longenes or somebody like that. I have read that there were at
>> least six announcements of the "only a play" nature of the broadcast given
>> during the hour, but I've never heard but the one I mentioned above. I
>> have to ask, too, if it was not broken up by commercial announcements?
>> This was an hour, after, all, and that seems a long time to go without "a
>> word from our sponsor " on a commercial station or network, right?? Had
>> they broken for commercials, that would have been a tip-off even to the
>> most unsophisticated listener.
>>>
>>> Rodger
>>>
>>> For Best Results use Victor Needles.
>>>
>>> .
>>>
>>> --- On Mon, 10/31/11, Elizabeth McLeod<lizmcl at midcoast.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> From: Elizabeth McLeod<lizmcl at midcoast.com>
>>> Subject: Re: [78-L] Panic..or myth? (Hey, it was 73 years ago tonight, too)
>> [FWD]
>>> To: "78-L Mail List"<78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
>>> Date: Monday, October 31, 2011, 7:26 AM
>>>
>>>
>>> People desperately *want* the GIGANTIC PANIC OMG! to be true in this case,
>> simply because it *is* such a good story. OTR fans want it to be true
>> because it's the basis for the entire Orson Welles Legend. And a lot of
>> media critics want it to be true because it makes an excellent talking
>> point for whatever agenda they happen to have.
>>>
>>> There's also a lot of people who want the "Nelson Eddy drove all the Chase
>> and Sanborn listeners over to Welles" angle to be true, because they can't
>> understand how anybody could possibly like Nelson Eddy, who may well have
>> been the most popular male vocalist in the country at that particular
>> instant in time. But that's a whole 'nother myth to explode.
>>>
>>> Elizabeth
>>>
>>> on 10/31/11 3:36 AM Mike Harkin wrote:
>>>
>>>> Never let the truth get in the way of a good story! [First Axiom of
>>>> story-telling].
>>>>
>>>> Mike in Plovdiv
>>>>
>>>> --- On Mon, 10/31/11, David Lennick<dlennick at sympatico.ca>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> From: David Lennick<dlennick at sympatico.ca>
>>>> Subject: [78-L] Panic..or myth? (Hey, it was 73 years ago tonight, too)
>>>> To: "78L"<78-L at 78online.com>
>>>> Date: Monday, October 31, 2011, 3:12 AM
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> What's this about War Of The Worlds not causing that much of a panic?
>>>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/magazine-15470903
>>>>
>>>> dl
>>>>