[78-L] For 78's, What Does Transcription Mean?
Kristjan Saag
saag at telia.com.invalid
Wed Apr 1 13:07:04 PDT 2020
Well, here's the 2013 discussion, starting with Julian Vein answering Cary Ginell's comment from October 28th. Ending with Joe Salerno's posting on November 4th.
Chronological order.
Kristjan
--------
On 28/10/13 18:26, Cary Ginell wrote:
> Speaking of Westinghouse, they sponsored this 1957 broadcast of Studio One, which featured "The Night America Trembled," a retrospective on the 1938 Mercury Theatre production of "War of the Worlds," which celebrates its 75th anniversary this Wednesday. I had thought that the superb 1975 TV movie "The Night That Panicked America" was the only such show recreating the Orson Welles broadcast. T
> Cary Ginell
>
There was a programme about the "War of the Worlds" 1938 broadcast on
BBC Radio 4 on Saturday night. They played extracts from the programme.
The question is: Was the programme committed to a transcription disc
(meaning it didn't go out live), or was this a Boris Rose effort?
Julian Vein
--------
PBS Is showing a new documentary on Welles' WAR OF THE WORLDS this week on
the 75th anniversary of the original broadcast.
Dave Weiner
-----
It went out live -- our networks did not allow the use of recordings
with very few exceptions (by that time, only one.) Boris Rose would
have had nothing to do with it unless he recorded it off the air.
Recently we have been discovering several previously unknown sources of
the recordings of the broadcast, and we might now have six independently
recorded versions, including a 1948 dub that dl owns.
Mike Biel
--------
I was surprised nobody had mentioned this. Tomorrow night in Buffalo (isn't
that a Roger Miller song? Yeah, I know, Baltimore). There's been some
discussion re WOTW on a local radio-tv board (I forwarded the link to the huge
long page that features comment by everybody, including Mike and Liz) but was
wondering where the program was heard in Canada. Toronto heard it on CFRB,
which had a long-standing connection with CBS, but did the CBC get it in the
rest of the country or did they carry Charlie McCarthy?
dl
-------
The Longines, which wasn't in fake stereo, although it had an odd gap of about
1 second of silence (someone forgot to remove a piece of leader tape). But it
also had that sound overlap where an operator started side 2 a couple of
seconds before side 1 finished. That was still present on the Radio Spittoons
CD if I'm not mistaken. The 2-LP set was from the same source (Mannheim Fox) as
the Longines.
dl
---------
of the versions which have appeared on LP and CD,
which is the most complete and best sound ????
On LP I had the Audio Rarities version, which was pretty bad.
there was one issued by Longines? which IIRC was much better sounding, and a
2-LP version (don't remember the label). There have been many others on LP and
CDs since - I would upgrade if there is a really excellent version available......
There was a book by Hadley Cantril about the effect of the broadcast and "panic" A serious
study possibly from the 1940's - have there been any other SERIOUS studies more recently ???
Thanks, Thomas Stern
------
The Radio Spirits CD of "War of the Worlds" has to be the worst attempt at noise reduction and audio cleanup I've ever heard. Unlistenable.
There's a transfer from 78s, recently made available on an old-time radio blog that I cannot locate the link to, that may be the most complete version out there.
Randy Watts
------
The 2001 book "The Complete War of the
Worlds: Mars' Invasion from H.G. Wells to Orson Welles" includes
the full audio on CD along with next day & 40-years-later
interviews with Welles and a subsequent meeting between H.G. &
Orson as well as excerpts from the 1968 recreation by
Buffalo's WKBW. Sound is excellent. The book contains the
full text and original illustrations of the Wells book as well as
the Koch radio play along with the story of the broadcast and
"panic", fully illustrated with period
news photos. Highly recommended!
Peter
------
A contributor to the BBC programme suggested that the people who may
have panicked may have tuned in late. He suggested that many were
listening to Ed Bergen and Charlie McCarthy on another network, and when
Dorothy Lamour started singing a boring song (which they played), they
started channel hopping, and this would have tuned in just as the
"panic" announcement came on.
Julian Vein
-----
The legend has always been that people switched stations when Nelson Eddy sang,
but that one doesn't hold up for various reasons including Eddy's immense
popularity at the time.
dl
------
But did that apply to Dorothy Lamour?
Julian Vein
-----
What's sarong with Dorothy Lamour?
dl
-----
I looked this up on the web site of my local PBS station because
this is the first I'd heard of it. Apparently they are going to
play pieces of the original broadcast in real time (the time it
it would have aired originally) then comment on what was going on
during the broadcast. One scary thing popped out at me in the
synopsis:
> ...the film examines the elements that together created
> one of the biggest
mass hysteria events in U.S. history,
> including our longtime fascination
with life on Mars;
> the emergence of radio as a powerful new medium; the
> shocking Hindenburg explosion of 1937, the first disaster
> to broadcast
live;... Are they really going to repeat that Hindenburg misconception
as fact?
Dave Weiner
-------
My Paramount DVD of the 1953 film of WOTW (Special collector's edition) has what appears to be the complete 1938 radio broadcast in correct pitch/speed and excellent noise- free sound as one of the special features of the DVD. Compared to other versions I've heard this restoration is near miraculous. However, the fast forward. pause and reverse functions would not operate while playing the show on my current vintage DVD player, a major inconvenience easily solved with an external audio recorder. I purchased the DVD in 2006 and do not know if the currently available DVDs still contain the show as a special feature.
JD (Jackson)
-------
Was it intended to be broadcast only once without reference to the other
time zones? Was it transcribed by CBS for later broadcasting?
Julian Vein
--------
It was LIVE LIVE LIVE and not even redone 3 hours later for the west coast.
Transcriptions existed only as reference recordings (line or air checks) or for
syndication to non-network stations because the radio networks had agreed for
years never to broadcast a record. The first exception was Herb Morrison's
Hindenburg report and as Mike Biel has said, it was the only one up to this
point. No such problems existed in Europe or at the Beeb or in Canada.
dl
-------
"...Nelson Eddy's popularity at the time." A phenomenon I've never understood. Same goes for
Elvis, the Beatles, and rap, Oh well, de gustibus & all that, so long as I don't have to listen to it. There
may be benighted people in the world who don't like
Landowska and Schiotz.
Mike Harkin
--------
They also exist as a souvenir set made for the "director of the Mercury
Theatre and star of these broadcasts" which I have <grin>. The recording
was made by the Harry Smith studio of New York.
Lennick is right: there apparently was no repeat broadcast, so listeners on
the west coast heard the show at 5 PM if they heard it at all. Remember,
this was a very obscure, non-sponsored series up against one of the top
comedy shows on the air.
I still would like to pin down of the recording we have of the Chase and
Sanborn Charlie McCarthy show of that night (Oct. 30) is from the east or
west coast version. If the aircheck was made from a west coast station,
then it's not the same performance that most of the country was listening to
as Welles and his group put on their Hallowe'en Eve play...
Sammy Jones
------
And as pointed out by many of us, reports of nation-wide panics were
wildly exaggerated. The show didn't even air in some major markets
(Boston among them). A fine article from Slate about the mythology of
the War of the Worlds Broadcast for those who didn't see it:
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/history/2013/10/orson_welles_war_of_the_worlds_panic_myth_the_infamous_radio_broadcast_did.single.html
Donna Halper
-------
Musical taste, like beauty and funny, also rests with the beholder.
Is the Chase and Sanborn show cited available online somewhere? My
dad recalled they were listening to Nelson when the neighbors came
pounding on the door and they listened to the remainder of Wells all
the way to the can't soap all your windows line.
rjh334578 at gmail.com
------
Nothing, she was singing the sarong number!
Julian Vein
---------
Lots of C & S episodes including that one @:https://archive.org/details/BerganMccarthy
David Diehl
--------
Now THAT is more credible than listeners automatically switching off at the end
of the first routine or the commercial or because Nelson Eddy came on. The
great unwashed had no idea who Orson Welles was on October 30, 1938. If they
changed stations, they might have been more likely to switch to a local one
playing music....depends on what was nearest to NBC on the dial in whatever city.
dl
------
Nelson Eddy was the star of the program and Don Ameche was the host.
When RHJ says his father said he was "listening to Nelson", he probably
was referring to the PROGRAM HEADLINER, not the content that was on the
air at the moment. Bergen and McCarthy were NOT the stars of the show.
Eddy opened the show with a song and was not the reason for the
tune-outs because the song was over at about 4 minutes into the show.
Then most of the cast did a conversational routine with Ameche,
including Bergen & McCarthy. There was a dramatic sketch after that,
and this might have been the tuneout. Listen tomorrow at 8 when
YesterdayUSA.com will play both shows in sync on our two channels.
As for the dial spinning, after sunset almost all the independent
non-network stations were off the air. About all that most people could
pick up were multiples of network affiliates. Turn the dial and you
will hit several CBS stations with the drama.
Mike Biel
-----
Thanks for this....added it on Facebook.
dl
----
The song in question was "Two Sleepy People," one of the big hits of the
moment -- not a bad version, either. But if people*had* tuned out then,
they would have ended up in the middle of Carl Phillips' description of the
meteor impact site.
The only actual support for the "tuneout" story is in Hadley Cantril's book
-- which, in turn, is based on a personal survey he performed after the
broadcat. He sent out 846 survey cards to people who had heard at least part
of the Welles broadcast. 518 cards were returned, and of those, 18 percent
of those said they had also heard part of the Chase & Sanborn program.
Sixty-two percent of that 18 percent said they had tuned out of Chase &
Sanborn at the conclusion of Bergen's first routine -- which led into
Lamour's song. That's all the hard evidence that exists for the tuneout
story -- and if you do the math, it doesn't come to an awful lot of people.
As Mike noted, Nelson Eddy wasn't just some random guest star -- he was a
headliner, one of the most popular male vocalists in the country in 1938 --
*the* most popular according to Radio Guide's annual poll -- and blaming him
for driving listeners away from the program is a sign that the one doing the
blaming has no idea what they're talking about.
Elizabeth McLeod
-------
It dawned on me tonight (as I await the airing of the new PBS doc on the
show) that I don't own a copy of the famous Evolution double-LP set of the
War of the Worlds. I checked eBay, and all copies of Evolution 4001 appear
to be*gasp* simulated stereo.
Did Evolution ever issue this version in mono? If not, are the CD copies in
circulation (Metacom, Radio Spirits) really sourced from this pseudo-stereo
record? Of the several CD restorations I've heard, the Metacom disc from
the mid-90s seems to be the least objectionable.
I've got the Audio Rarities release, which I believe is cut. Any other
notable versions worth owning on LP?
Sammy Jones
----
The Longines Symphonette version is identical to the Evolution except that it
IS mono. It also has the overlapping dialogue at the 15 minute point (original
transcription discs sides 1 & 2) and about a 1-second blank spot somewhere
(don't ask me where, I transferred that thing to open reel decades ago and
spliced out the gap). Obviously a bit of leader someone neglected to remove, or
something similar.
The Audio Rarities was the first version issued, in the 50s, from pretty bad
sources, missing the opening, sounding as if the last few minutes were from bad
78 lacquers.
dl
----
Well, that's one I won't be keeping. But I did make it to the end. Wonder how
many people tuned out in panic within the first few minutes when the first
horrible fake accented talking head (who looked and sounded like John Cullum)
started spewing badly scripted bullshit? If they were going for reality, they
missed by light years, and if they were going for Spinal Tap, somebody needs to
learn them quick how to do that sort of thing. Wotta piece o' poop.
Rehearsal cut on wax discs, eh?
dl
---
Forgot to mention that the Longines version is complete on one disc. The Radio
Spirits CD is a disaster, horribly overprocessed, and I got rid of it as
quickly as possible. I think it has the same overlap as the Evolution and
Longines transfers.
dl
------
I finally had a chance to check out my tape (7 1/2 IPS half track mono)
which I got a year before the Evolution LP set came out. Not checking
very closely in the past, I had thought that it was the same transfer as
used on the LP. It turns out that it was a different playing of the
same discs, and is no more than a second generation copy of the discs.
The overlap error of the first into the second disc is not on my tape.
It is perfectly done on mine. The same is true of several other places
where lines or words are missing, such as the professor looking down at
his blackened hands, worn shoes and tattered clothing, and later looking
over the spires of his university buildings. My tape is complete at
these points. This is checked in comparison with the two sets of 78 RPM
discs. The only thing missing from my tape is the first half sentence
at the start of disc side 3 at 30 minutes, right after the announcer
says "One moment, please." There was a lot of groove scratch and about
10 words were not transferred. I can get them from other sources.
I should have checked this tape -- and digitized it -- years ago. I
thought I had digitized it last year but do not find it on any CD or
hard drive. When I do it, and when I fix that start of side three and
use a cleaner version of the opening sentence from a 78 set, it will be
THE best version of WOW.
Mike Biel
-----
I wasn't home to see it, so will have to look at my DVD of it in the
morning. So I don't know what they said about the rehearsal, but I know
for a fact that it was lost because we have heard the story of it being
lost from the actor who had possession of the set and why he had them.
I have a set of rehearsal discs of an earlier Mercury Theater program,
and they were cut at Universal which was Raymond Scott's studio.
Mike Biel
-------
Hi,Of 93 people sampled who listened to both shows, 58 tuned out of Chase and Sanborn at the same time. If Chase and Sanborn was a very popular show, then I'd say that survey does point to quite a lot of people total (and has a margin of error of whatever).What hard evidence is there that doesn't support the tuneout story?Joseph Scott[...]The only actual support for the "tuneout" story is in Hadley Cantril's book -- which, in turn, is based on a personal survey he performed after the broadcat. He sent out 846 survey cards to people who had heard at least part of the Welles broadcast. 518 cards were returned, and of those, 18 percent of those said they had also heard part of the Chase & Sanborn program. Sixty-two percent of that 18 percent said they had tuned out of Chase & Sanborn at the conclusion of Bergen's first routine -- which led into Lamour's song. That's all the hard evidence that exists for the tuneout story -- and if you do the math, it doesn't come to an awful lot
of people."[...]
Joe Scott
--------
Eighteen percent can spread a lot of alarm and despondancy: phoning friends and family, going round to neighbours etc.
Julian Vein
------
What that figure doesn't include is that the majority of people who were
listening to Chase & Sanborn -- about 37 million according to Hooper, versus
about 6 million for Welles -- didn't tune out at all. They stayed with the
program all the way thru -- they didn't hear any part of the Welles program.
And if we accept Cantril's figures, 82 percent of the people who tuned into
Welles from some other program tuned into it from some program other than
Chase & Sanborn. That doesn't leave an awful lot of people out of the whole
audience who didn't like Dorothy Lamour. The common story is that the Chase
& Sanborn audience tuned out en masse at the twelve-minute mark, but neither
Cantril nor any other source actually supports that.
Elizabeth
------
Another urban myth bites the dust!
Mike Harkin
----
Of course, some of the relatively small number who were listening to
Welles could have phoned or yelled to friends who were grooving on Chase
& Sanborn and sent them into a panic.
Dave Weiner
---
Listening to the broadcast last night and wondered if anybody can recall what the title of the song is that "Bobby Mellette and his Orchestra" play from the Hotel Martenelle in Brooklyn.
Scott Wenzel
--
That's "Love Locked Out," a minor hit from the winter of 1933-34.
Elizabeth
-------
Judging from Cantril's survey hundreds of thousands of people did the same thing, switched from Chase and Sanborn to Welles at the same time.
Joseph Scott
-------
Even so, that's just twelve percent of those who responded to Cantril's
survey, which is very much a minority of the total. The myth that's built up
over the decades is that "most of" those who tuned into WOTW partway thru
did so as a result of tuning out of Chase & Sanborn (or, specifically,
tuning out on Nelson Eddy, which we've already proven to be false, since
Eddy did not perform "after Bergen's first routine.") In fact, most of those
who joined WOTW in progress were tuning out on programs *other than Chase &
Sanborn* -- or they were simply turning the radio on after the program
started, and didn't tune out on any other program at all.
Elizabeth
-------
The BBC Radio 4 programme is available for download at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03f86lh for those who can get it.
Julian Vein
------
Al Bowlly's rendering of that song is a favorite of mine.
Don
----
Did anyone download this War of the Worlds radio doc? By the time I got to
the site, the show was taken down (a real drawback to BBC Radio...).
Sammy Jones
--------
I have it. There also was a Southern Calif Public Radio doc, plus a
Science Skeptic program which was very good. Had details of why the
story of widespread panic was bull.
Mike Biel
--------
Didn't the Skeptical Enquirer magazine do something similar about 20
years ago?
Julian Vein
---------
I did, haven't listened yet. Don't know what I got....
joe salerno
---------
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