Radio: Templeton Time

Last week Alec Templeton Time (NBC-Red) was the up-and-comer of the new 1939 radio shows. In two months it had won some 6,000,000 listeners. Blind, brilliant Alec Templeton’s charm is no secret; his musical lampoons spare nobody, from his keyboard come chuckles for all. Once he put on an accent like Music Master Walter Damrosch’s, piano-lectured theme by theme on Three Little Fishies. He embroiders five-note themes tossed up by audiences until they sound like Wagner. His Bach Goes to Town, a swing classic, is now part one of a pentateuch that includes Mendelssohn Mows ’em Down, Mozart Matriculates, Haydn Takes to Ridin’, Debussy in Dubuque.

Templeton learns his scripts by having them read to him 20 times, follows them during broadcasts by touch-cues, called “zicks,” given by his manager, Stanley North. North puts his right hand on Templeton’s left shoulder, squeezes when he is to speak or play, whispers the first few words of each speech. To speed his playing North presses Alec’s left shoulder with his forefinger; to slow him down, the forefinger is drawn across his back. After a particularly fine job, North pats Alec’s left coat pocket. Thus far, Alec has never missed a cue, has had his pocket patted often.

But not even so versatile a genius as Alec Templeton can hold 6,000,000 radio listeners for a full half hour. So Alec Templeton Time employs guest stars, an orchestra under Symphonist Daniel Saiden-berg, a 16-voice chorus, and, for the last month an Old Country crowd pleaser named James Patrick Rudolph Francis O’Malley.

Pat O’Malley is a fruity, beet-red, Lancashire-born Irishman who was introduced to the U. S. four years ago with Templeton and Jack Hylton’s orchestra. His specialty: English North Country songs, the phlegmatic Lancashire monologues that have made Gracie Fields Britain’s top entertainer. From Pat many U. S. radio listeners have learned for the first time of stubborn old Sam Small, who held up the Battle of Waterloo until the Duke of Wellington, no less, soft-soaped him into picking up his musket. They know, too. of young Albert Ramsbottom who got et by a lion at Blackpool zoo, moving his outraged parents to lament: . . .

It’s a shame and a sin For a Lion to go and eat Albert, And after we’ve paid to come in.*

O’Malley’s prize rendition is the bleak legend of the ghost of Anne Boleyn, haunting the draughty & bloody Tower of London where:

. . . It’s awfully awkward for the Queen

To ‘ave to blow ‘er nose

With ‘er ‘ead tucked underneath ‘er arm.*

* Reprinted by permission of Chappell & Co., Inc.