Radio: Breakfast, of Sorts

The Blue Network, which has no soap operas, has found an answer to its rivals’ sudsy successes. It is a program called Breakfast at Sardi’s (11-11:30 a.m., E.W.T., 8-8:30 a.m., P.W.T.), which has more listeners (estimate: 3,000,000) than most soap operas. It is predicated on the theory that nearly everybody lusts for notoriety.

Every morning but Sunday at 7:30 some 400 women and a sprinkling of men crowd into Sardi’s Hollywood restaurant. Some are local folks; others are from all over the Pacific Coast. Many are just off the train from Keokuk and points East. For their early-worminess they catch breakfast on the house, and two and a half hours of ribbing from the man who owns the show: fat, greying, double-chinned Tom Breneman, ex-vaudevillian.

Insult Adorable. Breneman, a fast-breaking, brash, unromantic character, wanders about among his audience with a microphone and asks personal questions: “Where were you born?” “How old are you?”, etc. He does this with an air of detachment—yawns, looks bored, calls women by their first names, mispronounces their last names, scoffs at their provincialism (most of them are from small towns). They seem to like it. Women who cannot be present write him 1,000 to 1,500 letters a day. Some begin: “Tom, my precious. . . .”

High point of the show is the ten or 15 minutes that Breneman spends trying on the audience’s hats, which he refers to as “this molting feather duster” or “something special in the way of a potholder.” Some women now deliberately show up with their most eccentric headgear, sit waiting for Breneman’s onslaught.

Cigar, Lady? With all his clowning, Breneman knows that it sometimes pays to be solemn. He is careful to treat old women with respect. He air-expresses an orchid to “the good neighbor of the day”—chosen from nominating letters sent in by listeners. Sometimes he presents an orchid to a member of the audience. Often she is a Midwestern farm woman who has never seen one before, and she frequently accepts it with tears in her eyes. Breneman will offer a grandmother a cigar if he thinks he can get away with it. He constantly asks his audience if he is too intimate. They invariably scream No!

Very, very occasionally, Breneman lays an egg. Once he presented a wishing ring (a daily broadcast feature) to a “lucky number” winner in the audience, with the request that she make an immediate and personal wish. Said the woman “I want babies, twin babies!” Breneman choked, reddened, could say nothing. “Well,” snapped his supposed victim, “what are you going to do about it?”