NRR Project: "The Goldbergs" -- 'Sammy Goes into the Army' (July 23, 1942)

 

NRR Project: “The Goldbergs”

‘Sammy Goes into the Army’

Broadcast July 23, 1942

13:11

The Goldbergs was one of the most popular radio shows in history. Lasting from 1929 to 1945, with a brief reprise in 1949-1950, the show chronicled the lives of a typical Jewish family in Brooklyn (they lived on East Tremont. . . later in the show, they moved to Connecticut). Surprisingly, during a time when a notable portion of American citizens were antisemitic, this warm and funny show captured the imaginations of listeners and became a favorite everywhere.

The show was the brainchild of Gertrude Edelstein Berg, a housewife and mother who had ambition. She started writing audio sketches and short, humorous pieces in the early days of network radio. Finally, on Nov. 20, 1929, her The Goldbergs hit the airwaves and continued strong, in formats varying from 15 minutes a day, five days a week, to a half-hour. Berg was the writer, producer, and director of the series – a first for women on air.

Was the show a soap opera, or a comedy? It was both. Its gentle humor and sharply observed, eccentric characters were endearing, and Molly Goldberg (played by Berg herself) was the matriarch. She lived in a tenement with sometimes-grouchy husband Jake, who worked as a tailor. Their children, Sammy and Rosalie, grew up on the show. Relatives and friends crowded around the microphone as the Bergs went through the same everyday routines that all Americans did – save that they were religiously observant (but not obnoxiously so).

The Goldbergs have been compared to the long-running radio comedy show Amos & Andy, as well as Carlton E. Morse’s great, long-running radio soap One Man’s Family. In all three cases, characters developed and grew down the years, becoming as familiar as old friends. Berg’s cry, “Yoo hoo! Is anybody?” became a national catchphrase.

In this episode, son Sammy has joined the Army and is off to boot camp via Grand Central Station. Molly secretly follows him down there, just to say goodbye one last time. It turns out that Jake and other relatives had the same idea – so they all congregate on the platform to bid the budding G.I. a fond farewell. The tender scene of parting is bolstered by Molly’s advice to another mother there, seeing her son off. She declares that the folks at home must be brave and without tears, lest the fascists get the upper hand.

Berg was in step with the popular imagination. Her show even successfully made the transition to early television. With sentiment and sarcasm blended effortlessly together, her slice-of-life program was a popular and critical hit.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Stan Kenton plays Artistry in Rhythm (1943).

NRR Project: 'Command Performance' (July 7, 1942)

 

NRR Project: “Command Performance”

Broadcast July 7, 1942

30 min.

Once again, I must point to the superlative explanatory essay on this show from Cary O’Dell, which you can read here. I have little to add!

It was a great idea. American soldiers stationed all over the planet during World War II were homesick. They longed to hear from the home front. Producer Louis G. Cowan came up with a swell concept. Let the military men send in requests for specific performers to entertain them over the radio; these “commands” were executed in broadcasts that ranged from 30 minutes to two hours in length. The broadcasts were then transmitted directly to servicemen via shortwave and transcription disk via the Armed Forces Radio Service; most civilians never heard them.

This program became a special treat for G.I. listeners. You never knew but that your request would be honored. Famous singers, comedians, actors, and musicians all donated their time to make the show happen. Networks lent their studios and time for free. Everybody pitched in to make the boys at war happy!

It wasn’t just entertainers the G.I.s asked for. One guy wanted to hear his dog bark. Another wanted to hear starlet Carole Landis sigh. Still another wanted to hear the sound of a slot machine paying off. All these requests and more were granted.

The broadcast chosen by the National Recording Registry is a typical one from early in the run of the show. Comedian Bob Hope was the emcee; performers included the great Black singer Lena Horne (radio was colorblind), bandleader Les Brown and his Orchestra played a swing version of Verdi’s Anvil Chorus, the vaudeville team of Shaw and Lee did a routine, a “hurdy-gurdy” (a crank-driven musical machine) from the streets of Manhattan was played, singer Ginny Simms performed, and finally actress Rosalind Russell and Hope did a comic skit together.

The show was an immense success, and continued even after the war, lasting until 1949. It was just one of the many projects undertaken to boost the morale of the troops. Radio reached out and gave servicemen the comforts of home.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: ‘The Goldbergs’ Sammy Goes into the Army (July 9, 1942).

 

Hail, Euterpe!, or; my favorite poets

 

Poetry is good for you. How come?

It’s wordplay. It’s rhyming and meter schemes that enter your head and don’t leave. Poetry catches thoughts and feelings that can’t be expressed in other terms. It’s heightened language; it has the virtues of compression and intensity. When a good poem hits you where you live, it moves you, it changes your outlook on things. It’s an art form that persevered for thousands of years, predating even written language. There is something in the human soul that keeps producing it.

It’s a skill that’s fiendishly difficult to sustain. That being said, there is a lot of bad poetry out there, just like any other discipline. I oughta know, I wrote enough of it in my twenties. (I lost the ability to think in that way quickly and switched to prose.) I just took a look at those early efforts of mine . . . they are . . . OK. Everybody should try it sometime. Poetry can be anything -- silly, tragic, sarcastic, angry, political, philosophical, romantic, confused, bitter, hope-inducing. It doesn’t even have to make sense – try Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, or Shel Silverstein and you'll see what I mean.

Sometimes it doesn’t stand the test of time. Did you ever try to read Alexander Pope, or Lord Byron? Undoubtedly talented, their efforts don’t resonate (for me) today. Still, we study these venerable wordsmiths and others, and once in a while we find something that clicks in our heads when it’s read – and it feeds our souls in a way that could not be comprehended before.

Given the rising tide of illiteracy in our country, reading poetry is an act of defiance. It’s the least utilitarian of literary skills – it solves nothing, it doesn’t increase your bank balance. But it seems to be something we need.

I have a list of favorite poets, but there are plenty to choose from, across the stretch of time and from around the world. (Great poets require great translators.) Whatever your outlook on life is, there is a poet for you. Just off the top of my head, here are other names to conjure with – Homer, Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth, John Milton, John Donne, Rabindranath Tagore, Rumi, Robert Frost, Edgar Allan Poe, Alexander Pushkin, Langston Hughes, Rudyard Kipling, Maya Angelou, Tu Fu, William Blake, W.B. Yeats, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charles Bukowski, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas Hardy, Rainer Maria Rilke, Carl Sandberg, the Brownings (Robert and Elizabeth), Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, John Keats.

I guarantee that if you dive into the discipline, you will find something you like. One of the best ways to find “your” poets is to pick up an anthology. I grew up with F.T. Palgrave’s Golden Treasury; other fine collections include such entries as the Norton Anthology of Poetry and the Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.

Here are my faves, pals I go to again and again through more than 60 years of reading. As you will see, I kind of got stuck on the Imagists, a group of poets in the early 20^th century who pioneered modernism. I just love that generation.

Virgil (70 B.C.E. – 19 B.C.E.) – The Aeneid. A story of the downfall of Troy and the founding of Rome.

Ovid (43 B.C.E. – 17 A.D.) –  The Metamorphoses. Myths and legends made real.

Li Po (701-762)

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) – The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. A trip through Hell, the redemption of Purgatory, and the splendors of Heaven.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 – 1400) – The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Cressida. You can try reading these in their original Middle English, but read a modern translation first. Once you get used to his mode of expression, you will find him hilarious.

William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) – Sonnets.

Andrew Marvell (1621 – 1678)

Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892) – Leaves of Grass.

Charles Beaudelaire (1821 – 1867) – The Flowers of Evil. A pioneer in tackling poetic subjects that aren’t “pretty.”

Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955)

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880—1918)

William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963)

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886 – 1961)

e.e. cummings (1894 – 1962)

Bertolt Brecht (1898 – 1956)

Hart Crane (1899 – 1932)

W.H. Auden (1903 – 1973)

Pablo Neruda (1904 – 1973)

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

John Berryman (1914-1972) – The Dream Songs.

Octavio Paz (1914 – 1998)

NRR Project: 'Wings Over Jordan' (May 10, 1942)

 

NRR Project: “Wings Over Jordan”

Broadcast May 10, 1942

30 min.

Another entry for which I have no data. I cannot even find a representative broadcast online, much less the one for the date mentioned. Read Bryan Pierce’s explanatory essay for details on this selection.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Command Performance (July 7, 1942).

NRR Project: 'White Christmas' (1942)

 

NRR Project: “White Christmas”

Words and music by Irving Berlin

Performed by Bing Crosby, with the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers

Recorded May 29, 1942

2:57

“White Christmas” is the result of America’s dean of songwriters Irving Berlin wanting to tie together a bumper crop of his holiday songs in one film. Berlin was already established as a stellar hitmaker, even before he killed it with “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” in 1911. His avalanche of great songs, performed on stage and captured on film, dominated early 20^th century popular culture. Everybody knew “God Bless America,” “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” “Blue Skies,” “Always.”

Then he wrote the most popular song ever recorded. You can hear the 1942 recording here.

He wrote this song, and eleven others, for the 1942 musical film “Holiday Inn.” It stars Bing Crosby, a New Yorker who sings and who decides to open, on an old farm in Connecticut, an entertainment venue that’s only open on the holidays. He is a rival in love, jostling for the hand of Linda (Marjorie Reynolds, singing dubbed by Martha Mears) against his old pal Ted (Fred Astaire), who gets to display his terpsichorean talents, of course.

It’s pleasant, fun-loving comic romp. And it was Berlin’s idea – he was nominated for Best Original Story at the Oscars that year, and won Best Original Song for this entry – which he wound up presenting to himself.

In various combinations, the three go around the calendar in their club with featured musical numbers for the patrons, allowing Berlin to supply us with songs for Valentine’s Day (“Be Careful, It’s My Heart”) and “Easter Parade” and even Washington’s Birthday (“I Can’t Tell a Lie”).

The film is marred by the fact that there is a blackface sequence. As late as 1942, casual racism still plagued Hollywood, abysmally behind the times – or rather, perhaps, in sinister sync with them. This was not just a number (“Abraham,” a Lincoln’s Birthday bit) but a plot point.

It’s why you don’t see it much any more. Too bad – otherwise, it’s a very entertaining film. It’s marred by a racism that would, eventually, be thought and taught out of existence . . . hopefully.

And the sleeper hit in it is “White Christmas.” Its evocation of home, its perfect expression of feeling, its unspoken desire for something lost, its sheer tenderness and emotional honesty – combined with memorable lyric. And it’s easy to sing. Infectious! How could you not remember “White Christmas”?

So it’s released in May, and by October it’s Number One. It stays that way through the next year. It is said that soldiers away from home made this a hit. Again and again, it crops up, by Crosby in a 1947 update, and then by others, oh so many others. It’s competed with by other “secular” Christmas hits such as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman,” but it sits atop the memory tree. It’s still heard everywhere at Christmas time.  

This is the epitome of the American song, heard by hundreds of millions by now, a kind of love song to a time and a place where everything was all right.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Wings Over Jordan (May 10, 1942).

NRR Project: 'Native Brazilian Music' (1942)

 

NRR Project: “Native Brazilian Music”

Various artists

Recorded 1940; released 1942

Approx. 40 min.

Conductor Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977) was a fan of Brazilian music. In 1940, he went on a tour of South America with his All-American Youth Orchestra. With the help of fellow composer Hector Villa-Lobos, he gathered together many of Brazil’s greatest musical talents for a special project. On the S.S. Uruguay, he and some Columbia Records engineers sat down to record dozens of native tunes which had never been put to lacquer before.

The musicians in the sessions included Pixinguinha, Donga, Joao de Bahiana, Ze Espinguela, Cartola, Ze da Zilda, Luiz Americano, and Jararaca and Ratinho. Altogether, 40 songs were recorded. From this, a selection of 17 were made into a 78 r.p.m. album and released in 1942.

There are sambas, batucadas, macumba, and emboladas. The album can be accessed via the Internet Archive here. It’s a remarkable recording – here is music of the people, not made for commercial reasons but rising out of the cultures of the South American continent.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: White Christmas.

NRR Project: Roosevelt and Churchill give Christmas speeches (Dec. 24, 1941)

 

NRR Project: Christmas Eve broadcast (Dec. 24, 1941)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill

13:46

First, go to H.W. Brands’ excellent essay on this topic via the National Recording Registry here. It does a great job of setting the table for these two speeches, and delineating the fortunately close relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill.

America was in turmoil, having declared war against Japan on Dec. 8. Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, immediately proposed a meeting; American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt was happy to host him at the White House. After a dangerous sea voyage, Churchill reached the U.S. The two saw the value of quickly devising an overall strategy among the opponents of the Axis. Churchill intended to stay a week, but stayed for three.

The two were dynamic, charismatic leaders, and both had the gift of eloquence. I cannot transcribe Roosevelt’s inspiring words, but you will find them here. You can literally watch them give their speeches here.

The nation needed reassurance. What would a country at war become? Roosevelt here asks if it is appropriate to celebrate Christmas in such dark times. He answers in the affirmative, and urges people to “arm our hearts”.

I include Churchill’s words below, because I can. It is worth reading not only for its brave sentiments, but as a fine example of Churchill’s style. His English is impeccable; he gets right to the point, states it clearly, and finishes magnificently. The guy could write.

“Fellow workers, in the course of freedom, I have the honour to add a pendant to the necklace of that Christmas goodwill and kindliness which my illustrious friend the President has encircled the homes and families of the United States by his message of Christmas eve which he just delivered.

I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, and yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home. Whether it be by the ties of blood on my mother’s side, or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, whichever it may be, or all of them together, I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States. I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome, convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.

Fellow workers, fellow soldiers in the cause, this is a strange Christmas Eve. Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle. Armed with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other. Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the lands or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the expense of others, had led us to the field. Ill would it be for us if that were so. Here in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes. Here amid all these tumults, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart.

Therefore we may cast aside, for this night at least, the cares and dangers which beset us, and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm. Here, then, for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace. Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable year that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.

And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.

May you all have a very happy Holiday Season and here’s to a bright New Year.”

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Native Brazilian Music.