• U.S.

Radio: Rainbow’s End

4 minute read
TIME

By last week most of the first-magnitude folk in radio’s great free-show firmament were in their places for the long winter evenings: Kate Smith, Bing Crosby, Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Charlie McCarthy. The Philharmonic had arranged to broadcast on tour; a hallowed hush awaited Arturo Toscanini next week in NBC’s starchy Studio 8H. Rudy Vallée, Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson were major absentees. There was no newcomer with the mature charm of 1938’s prize find, Information Please, but radio 1939 turned up an idea that threatens to sweep the nation like Bingo if the antigambling goblins don’t get it first.

Pot o’ Gold. Horace Heidt’s kampuskut orchestra has been rah-rahing since 1923, but has had to play frequent second fiddle to such fraternity-row favorites as Fred Waring, Kay Kyser. But this season, sponsored by Turns, a carminative, Horace Heidt’s Musical Knights went out in front with a burp. During Turns’ Tuesday night half hour, a wheel of fortune is ceremoniously spun several times, eventually coming to rest on a telephone number somewhere in the U. S. A call is put in for the unnamed subscriber. The band plays on, but when the phone is answered, Announcer Ben Grauer shouts “Stop, stop, Horace!” When Horace stopped the first week, Grauer called into the telephone of Frank J. Drouin, a wood carver of Andover, Mass.: “Sonny, get your father to the telephone. We have good news.” When Mr. Drouin came on, Grauer told him: “This is the Horace Heidt program. I am happy to tell you that the sponsors, the makers of Turns, are making you a present of $1,000, and we are sending you the money by Western Union. . . . This is not a joke.”

If the winner faints, cusses or thanks Providence the audience hears none of it, because NBC dares not take the responsibility for airing what goes on at rainbow’s end. In Woodcarver Drouin’s case, Ben Grauer reported that he had said: “I ought to buy that boy some lollipops.” Next week the winner was a preacher, the Rev. W. H. Lash of Salisbury, N. C. At the parsonage, a female voice answered, showed no excitement over the message; replied that the Reverend was not at home. The Reverend won $1,000 just the same. If no one had answered, he would still have won $100, the remaining $900 going back into Turns’ kitty.

Mu$1co, an idea born in Chicago, cradle of the slot machine, is a whopping success in Illinois. Listeners play it with Mu$1co cards, distributed each week by Kroger and National Tea Co. groceries in Chicago, Peoria and Rockford. Made up like Bingo cards, they have five rows of five spaces each, with tune titles instead of numbers. As the studio orchestra plays its string of some 20 tune choruses, listeners are supposed to identify and check off the titles on their cards. First one to fill a line across rushes to the telephone, dials a special number, shouts: “Musico!” Any single line filled may win a bag of groceries. Specially-designated “Cash” lines may win up to $100. For last week’s big game over WGN, 1,100,000 listeners held cards, kept 25 National Tea special telephone operators busy with 10,000 Musicos.

Mu$1co is the contribution to U. S. pastimes of youthful John Farwell (University of Chicago ’34), a hepcat who got the idea last year at a Kay Kyser musical quiz broadcast. As Clef, Inc., he gave the game a sendoff in the Gold Coast Room and at the Blackhawk. National Tea Co. nibbled, tried it out over Rockford’s WROK. Kroger’s nibbled, too, now runs a sizable weekly game (125,000 cards) over Peoria’s WMBD. Thus far Mu$1co has been unmolested by the Law, its backers stoutly insisting that Mu$1co is a game of musical skill.

Wits were giving it another recommendation. Said they: “It’s better than bank night. You don’t have to see two B pictures with it.”

More Must-Reads from TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com