Here's a view of a Chicago landmark building, The Merchandise Mart, home of the NBC studios where tonight's program was recorded. The Art Deco structure is an architectural and engineering wonder. A thing of beauty.

I'm looking for a biography of Jimmy Shields who sings the song in the center of tonight's Johnson's Wax Program with Fibber McGee and Molly. I'm getting much on Jimmy Shields the interior decorator, but nothing which indicates he spent any time crooning. Of course, my plan was to provide some information on Billy Mills and his orchestra, who provided music for the program, and of course The King's Men, the vocal group who also became associated with McGee and Molly. But wouldn't you know it? The King's Men don't appear in tonight's episode. Jimmy Shields does.

I will try to learn what I can about him. In the meantime he is mentioned, in passing, in this short biography of The King's Men provided by a very informative geocities site devoted to Old Time Radio put together by Eric N. Wilson: 

"Led and with musical arrangements by Ken Darby (1909-1992), the King's Men (tenors Bud Linn and John Dodson, baritone Rad Robinson, and Darby on bass) joined the Fibber show in 1940 to sing mostly novelty numbers and, during the war, patriotic songs. They also backed Jerry Colonna in some of the memorable Disney cartoons based on American folk ballads ("Casey Jones" and "Casey at the Bat") while Darby was choral arranger and musical director at Disney.

The quartet was formed by Darby in 1928 as The Ramblers, Robinson replacing original baritone Joseph Galkin in 1929. They were renamed the King's Men during a stint at Hollywood station KFWB and sang at various stations in the area until an offer of stage appearances with Paul Whiteman prompted a move to New York. From there, they were featured on several network programs, including their own NBC show in 1936.

They returned to Hollywood in 1938. The group were heard on the soundtrack of several films, some as early as 1929, and appeared onscreen in several Hopalong Cassidy movies.

Darby was also a composer, creating the musical arrangement of "The Night Before Christmas" that became an annual Christmas presentation on FM&M and was released as part of a Fibber and Molly 78 rpm album for Capitol.

In addition to his Disney work, he supervised the music for several films at 20th Century Fox, including Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe films, and won three Oscars for scoring M-G-M musicals. He also created the sped-up Munchkin voices for The Wizard of Oz, and performed the voice of the Munchkinland Mayor.

His biggest claim to fame for a non-OTR audience was writing the score for Elvis Presley's first movie Love Me Tender, including the title song (credited under his wife's maiden name) which became Elvis' fourth #1 record on the Billboard singles chart.

Singers that preceded the King's Men in the musical slot included the Four Notes, Donald Novis, Jimmy Shields and Perry Como (whom you might have heard of). Martha Tilton, who was a regular vocalist with Benny Goodman, also sang for the show briefly at the beginning of the 1941-42 season."

        

Billy Mills (1894-1971) is a bit easier. His orchestra brought a more swingin' tone to the program starting in 1938. Mills followed Rico Marcelli and Ted Weems as the show's music director, bringing a new, very hip swing sound to the program which it had previously lacked. In tonight's program, Mills is worked into the cast as well - here appearing in character as a somewhat shady-sounding jazz cat mooching off the uppity Mrs. Uppington whose romantic adventures would also bring her into contact with Haratio Boomer, the show's perennial grifter. (She had the luck with men, huh?)

Well, the thing to remember is the shows were recorded live at Studio A in Chicago. Whenever you hear the band playing that means a band is playing - right there on the sound stage with the cast. At the show's ending you can hear Billy whooping the band into their closing number. It's part of the edgey charm of this program. It seems like they're triumphantly celebrating the conclusion of another broadcast. You never knew what was going to happen - it was so loose, and there seemed to be a lot of live audience interaction with the cast as well as reaction to the events playing out on the "stage."

So, Mills and his orchestra stayed with the show till 1953. Swing notables Spike Jones and Red Nichols were known to have sat in. Mills also wrote the show's new theme song, "Wing to Wing," which premiered in 1940, after an ASCAP boycott of radio forced producers to drop "Save Your Sorrows Till Tomorrow" as the signature tune.

Enjoy tonight's episode of McGee and Molly. It's entitled "Fibber's Old Suit," and it really is a riot. Teenie, the little girl from across the street (played by Marion Jordan in falsetto) has a largish role in this one. And Bill Thompson's gaff as The Old Timer is particularly memorable. I'll write about him next week. One thing he was very good at doing was recovering himself with grace from dropped lines.

In the meantime, I'll keep searching for more information on the elusive Jimmy Shields.     

George Burns and Gracie Allen were a married couple in their television program, of course. The TV show, which began in 1950, followed much the same format as their radio program had done in the preceding decade. But these 1940 programs were on the cusp - so to speak - between their variety/comedy years and their sit-com years. That's why they may seem a little different - a little more free-flowing, perhaps - to those of us who remember the TV shows.

Of course, I remember the TV shows in reruns only.

George Burns recalls:

"When your ratings drop little by little, a half a point ... then a quarter of a point,...you're in trouble. If your ratings drop five points you're not in trouble because that means that night somebody that was very good was on against you on another network, but our ratings kept dropping a quarter of a point. One morning I woke up at about 2 o'clock and woke up Gracie. I said, "Gracie, I figured out what our problem is. Our jokes are too young for us. We're older than these jokes." And that's when I told the audience on the very next show that Gracie and I were married and had two children. So we changed the whole idea, the jokes, the writing, and our ratings picked up."

We'll put Benny on Fridays now. I've got a load of those ready to go. Here he is clowning around with Gracie Allen.

 

Arch Oboler, (1909-1987), shown in the picture above in center, was the author of many scripts for Lights Out, Everybody. He began writing for radio during the 1920's while he was still in High School. In 1936 he took over Lights Out, a horror anthology program produced in NBC's Chicago studios, from producer Willis Cooper.

In '39 Oboler was offered another program, Arch Oboler Plays. The two are often confused.

But Lights Out, Everybody, airing at midnight, specialized in shock, gore, and terror in a way no other radio program dared to do. Sound effects are the star of this program. Particularly in light of the fun spoof of sound effects mastery we heard in last night's Fibber and Molly episode, one wonders how sound effects technicians came up with ways to represent the sound of a neck snapping or an eyeball being gouged out of someone's head without having heard the real thing?

Perish the thought!

Lights Out shared a studio with the Johnson's Wax program, and as I've mentioned previously, Hal Peary was also on the Lights Out cast between '36 and '39. It's not too much a stretch to presume the two programs shared sound effects men, too.

Now, Oboler would go on to direct movies - some of them true "B" classics, like the 3-D Bwana Devil, but his best work was in radio. He really was largely responsible for creating the vignette horror/thriller series. Most of us are familiar with The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Tales From the Darkside - oh, Heavenly Days, the list goes on! - but I would guarantee no one associated with those programs was ignorant of Oboler's contribution to what they were doing or unfamiliar with his scripts for radio.

Lights Out is often compared to the CBS vignette series Suspense. There are some similarities - mainly in that the latter was also superbly written. But Suspense attracted big-name Hollywood talent like Lucille Ball and Orson Welles, and although some of the stories were quite chilling the emphasis really was on acting and drama. In other words, Suspense was kind of a class act. There are many such programs that probably would never have happened without Lights Out paving the way. And Lights Out was the one you had to stay up till midnight to hear. Imagine the mystique this must have engendered among teenagers.

OK, I have quite a few episodes of this program made between the years 1936 and 1939 loaded up and ready to go. I suppose I should wait until midnight to post them. What do you think?

So, on Wednesdays I'll feature a 'new' Lights Out, Everybody program each week here in Heavenly Days. I'll also provide more information on the cast, the scripts, the studios, the audience, and so on.

Until then, enjoy (if that's the right word) "Devil's Due," from 1939.