Radio: Vanda’s Show

An audience that can get the savor of Edgar Bergen’s ventriloquism can probably get the savor of anything—even a disembodied Marlene Dietrich. This week radio addicts will get a chance to do precisely that. For one full hour Miss Dietrich will do her sultry best to vocalize the life and hard times of Scheherazade.

Responsible for the Hollywood aspects of this experiment is a man named Vanda of CBS. CBS has invested $50,000 in a series of twelve try out shows (blanket title: Forecast) that it hopes will make hay when the summer doldrums are over. Last year, from a similar showcase, CBS sold Duffy’s Tavern, now sponsored by Schick Magazine Repeating Razor Co. Besides Marlene’s Scheherazade, other straw-hat sustainers this year will include Mischa Auer, Adolphe Menjou, Frank McHugh.

An old hand at snaring such top-flight cinema talent for noncommercial rates is sharp-tongued, tapir-nosed Charles Vanda, 38, producer of Forecast. He also produces Lolly Parsons’ Hollywood Premières and the Hollywood end of the U.S. Treasury’s Millions for Defense. Acidulous on all matters, particularly Hollywood, Vanda is enormously popular with reporters, is privily referred to by actors as “The Toad.” Mordantly witty, as typical of Manhattan as a knish, Vanda has a ready excuse for his devastating blintzkriegs. “It’s all an act,” he says. “Inside I’m just a sissy.” Few people agree with him. He has referred to himself as a “junior genius,” claims that with a few relatives he’d be an important man in Hollywood.

The son of a South African diamond merchant, Vanda began his career in the U.S. as copywriter for J. Walter Thompson, which never saw its way clear to use any of his copy. Later he did small-time press-agentry, served as saxophonist in a band, was a gossip columnist for Theatre Magazine, broke into radio as a theatrical commentator. In 1933 he joined CBS, was made West Coast program director in 1938. Vanda is married to the sister of Benay Venuta, lives in what he describes as a “synthetic estate” atop a hill in North Hollywood, now earns some $700 weekly from his three big shows alone.

Until last week the real name of Professor Quiz was a big question—a $64 question. Then out of Boston came a sharp, domesticated sound. Mrs. Arthur E. Baird confronted the Professor (known extra-curricularly as Craig Earl) as her ex-spouse, demanded $100 a week alimony, got it.