nostalgiadigest.com
Chuck Schaden
CHUCK SCHADEN is
a broadcaster/historian who has produced and hosted
Those
Were The Days since 1970 and has been nationally recognized for his efforts.
He was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1993, the only radio fan to
be so honored.
A former newspaper editor and marketing executive, he turned his hobby into a vocation and draws from a collection of more than 50,000 vintage broadcasts to prepare his programs.
He is the founding editor and publisher of the Nostalgia Digest; author of WBBM Radio: Yesterday and Today, a history of station WBBM, Chicago; and author of Speaking of Radio – Chuck Schaden’s conversations with the stars of the Golden Age of Radio, published by his Nostalgia Digest Press.
From October, 2006 thru September, 2007 he hosted the nationally syndicated old-time-radio series When Radio Was, replacing Stan Freberg. The program was heard in more than 200 markets from coast-to-coast.
A founding member of the Board of Directors of Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications, he is the Midwest’s leading radio historian and a resource for public libraries, metropolitan daily and community newspapers, and colleges and universities throughout the country. He has provided archive materials to the Library of American Broadcasting at the University of Maryland and is an active member of the First Generation Radio Archives, an organization devoted to preserving radio's past.
ILLINOIS STYLE: The guru of old-time
radio
By RON PAZOLA
GLEN ELLYN, Ill. - If old-time radio
has a guru, Chuck Schaden is it.
For 35 years, Schaden has broadcast "Those Were The Days," a weekly show that
plays programs from what is known as the Golden Age of Radio. For the last year,
he also has hosted "When Radio Was."
During free moments of a recent broadcast of "Those Were The Days," Schaden
spoke about his long career, his passion for old radio shows and why he believes
old-time radio is still popular today.
"I'm just as enthusiastic about doing the show today as I ever was," Schaden,
73, said. "That's why I haven't gotten bored with it. I love planning the
program and deciding its content and broadcasting the show." "Those Were the
Days" airs Saturdays on WDCB-FM 90.9, the public radio station at College of
DuPage in Glen Ellyn.
According to Schaden, many of the radio programs that were broadcast during the
1930s, '40s and '50s still hold up today. "The listeners are the camera,"
Schaden said. "Through their imagination, they decorate the sets, costume the
actors and provide the pictures. TV and movies are spectator sports, while radio
is a participant sport. That's what keeps it fresh.
"Old time radio is not just a curiosity piece."
Schaden remembers running home from school as a boy to listen to his favorite
shows. There were "The Adventures of Superman," "The Lone Ranger," "The Cinnamon
Bear" and "Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy"_ to name a few.
"My brother and I were sprawled on the floor, while my mother was knitting on
the couch and my father was sitting on an easy chair looking through a
magazine," Schaden said. "We were all listening to the radio."
The key was variety. There were comedies, mysteries, dramas, Westerns, variety
shows and big band music_ all on one station.
Some of Schaden's favorite shows are the "Jack Benny Program," "Suspense" and
the "Lux Radio Theater."
Schaden draws from more than 50,000 recordings of vintage broadcasts to prepare
his programs.
During one August edition of "Those Were The Days," Schaden played a 1949
broadcast of "My Friend Irma," a production of "Mice and Men" from 1949, a 1950
episode of the "Phil Harris-Alice Fey Show", a "World News Today "segment from
1942 and a 1957 broadcast of "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar."
He and his co-host Ken Alexander also did a segment where they read snippets
from a May 8, 1949, issue of the Chicago Sun-Times. Alexander, a veteran radio
broadcaster, has been a regular on "Those Were The Days" for the past six years.
"I always wanted to be a radio broadcaster, but I didn't have the voice for it,"
said Schaden, who worked as a banker, a newspaper editor and a marketing
executive before he retired.
His collection of old radio shows began some 40 years ago when he jumped at the
chance to purchase some reel-to-reel tapes of vintage broadcasts from an East
Coast collector. His Morton Grove house is filled with recordings of old radio
programs.
It was his collection that landed him a part-time job with a small radio station
in Evanston. His first "Those Were The Days" show aired May 2, 1970.
"I haven't had to cut the grass on a Saturday afternoon since then," Schaden
said.
A service of the Associated Press(AP)
September 16, 2007
* * * *
*
35 Years of
'Those Were The Days'
By GARDNER KISSACK
What was life like in 1970?
For starters, Life was still a weekly magazine and people still compared it to
Look and the Saturday Evening Post. Time’s Man of the Year was West Germany’s
Willy Brandt, and the Berlin Wall was but nine years old.
The Baltimore Orioles beat the Cincinnati Reds 4-1 in the World Series and the
Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Vikings 23-7 to win Super Bowl IV.
Patton was a box office smash and John Wayne received his only Oscar for his
role in True Grit.
Popular songs included “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Everything is
Beautiful.”
President Nixon and Henry Kissinger were trying to end the war in Vietnam.
Prices were edging up; inflation was a growing problem; the oil crisis was
bubbling.
The threat of polyester pants, pants-suits, and jackets was looming (so to
speak), but we learned that they were too hot – or too cold – because they
didn’t “breathe” or absorb like cotton or wool, they unraveled and they
fuzzed-up.
A week’s worth of television brought viewers The FBI, Bonanza and Ed Sullivan on
Sunday; Gunsmoke and Laugh-In on Monday; Marcus Welby, M.D., Mod Squad, Beverly
Hillbillies and Green Acres on Tuesday; Hawaii 5-0 on Wednesday; The Odd Couple,
Flip Wilson, and Ironside on Thursday; The Brady Bunch and That Girl on Friday
and Let’s Make A Deal, Mannix, Lawrence Welk, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show on
Saturday.
Radio in 1970 was an amalgam of music, news, sports and talk, most of it on AM
radio. FM was in only a few homes and fewer automobiles. Radio’s Golden Age of
comedy, drama and variety had expired at least a decade earlier. “Prime time”
radio had moved from the evening hours of the preceding 40-some years to
“morning drive” time, which was filled with disc jockeys spinning the latest
version of rock and pop hits.
But in the spring of 1970, someone came along to do something for those who
longed for simpler times and the glories of radio’s earlier era.
At 1:05 p.m. Saturday, May 2, at WNMP, a small daytime AM radio station in
Evanston, Illinois, the first Those Were The Days program created, planned,
promoted and hosted by Chicago journalist Chuck Schaden went on the air.
Radio’s second Golden Age began with Schaden “bridging the sound gap between
yesterday and today...” His first program featured 1940s re-broadcasts of Ma
Perkins, The Thin Man and the Pepsodent Show, along with Billy Jones and Ernie
Hare as the Tasty Breadwinners from 1934.
Fast-forward 35 years to 2005, through thousands of hours of the best from the
Golden Age of Radio and only three different stations (WNMP, which became WLTD;
WNIB and WDCB) and the same Saturday afternoon time slot. Those Were the Days
has been on the air for three-and-a-half decades, longer than the original
Golden Age of Radio, considered by many historians to be 1930-55.
“I hardly ever met a radio show I didn’t like,” says Chuck Schaden, whose
observation seems to agree with his thousands of loyal listeners. “Oh, I’ve had
some I liked less that others, but they too deserve to be played.”
His collection of old radio shows began some 40 years ago when he jumped at the
opportunity to purchase some reel-to-reel tapes of “vintage” broadcasts from a
collector on the East Coast. Among his earliest acquisitions were Orson Welles’
“The War of the Worlds” and copies of Fibber McGee and Molly, The Jack Benny
Program and Suspense.
Schaden began collecting with a passion. “Some might call it an obsession and
that would be accurate, I guess. I couldn’t believe that I could find these
wonderful shows after having missed them so much since they went off the air a
decade or so earlier. I decided I wanted to have as many of them as possible.”
He found others with a similar passion. Each acquired programs from different
sources and they began trading copies of their tapes. Soon the few reels of tape
became many. “I may have had a thousand broadcasts by the late 1960s and some
weeks I might have received a hundred reels of tape in the mail,” explains
Chuck.
The collection kept growing and his thousands of shows were all documented, at
first on neatly typed loose-leaf pages, then on index cards and finally on a
computer data base. When the Museum of Broadcast Communications (MBC) opened in
Chicago in 1987 (Schaden was a founding member of the board), his collection
became the Museum’s core radio collection. “Chuck’s donation of his 50,000 hours
of radio programming was, without question, the most significant early
contribution made to the Museum,” recalls MBC founder/president Bruce DuMont.
One of the most satisfying results of his collection and broadcasts, Chuck
believes, is that the shows have been embraced by people who either missed them
the first time, or were too young to remember them, or who were not even born
yet. Being able to share the Golden Age of Radio with so many others is one more
part of an amazing legacy.
Not content with simply playing the old-time programs on the air each week,
Schaden sought opportunities to speak with the people who worked in front of the
microphones and behind the scenes during the great radio days.
Interviewing the stars of Radio’s Golden Age has played an important role on
Those Were The Days, providing fans with many hours of enjoyment, insight and
personal glimpses by those “voices” so well-known from radio.
During the first season of TWTD, indeed a mere six weeks into the show, Schaden
was at Sages’ East restaurant on North Michigan Avenue on June 16, 1970 where a
collection of radio personalities had gathered to celebrate their participation
in the “good old days of Chicago radio.” At that event, armed with a microphone
and portable tape recorder, Schaden talked with, among others, Little Orphan
Annie, Captain Midnight, Billy and Betty from the Jack Armstrong program, and
the director of Ma Perkins – Shirley Bell Cole, Paul Barnes, John Gannon,
Sarajane Wells and Phil Bowman, respectively. He was off and running!
A few weeks later, in September, Chuck sat across from Jack Benny, who was in
the Chicago area appearing at the Mill Run Theatre in suburban Niles, and they
talked about Mr. Benny’s radio days. “Can you imagine – I met Jack Benny!” Chuck
exclaims.
Before the second anniversary of Those Were The Days he had taped interviews
with Hans Conried, Mel Blanc, Agnes Moorehead, Hal Peary, Don Ameche, Ralph
Edwards, and Rudy Vallee.
Schaden’s interviews, which he prefers to call “conversations” and which come
across as two friends chatting, numbered at least 170 by 1989 and now total more
than 200. Not only is he well-prepared for each guest (many have commented that
he knows about their achievements better than they), but his enthusiasm for and
knowledge of the material relaxes the subjects and have led to some amazingly
insightful and personal revelations.
His interviews – conversations – gathered over all the years he has been on the
air, form the basis for his book Speaking of Radio, published in 2003.
Chuck Schaden has been a creative and imaginative coordinator of special
programming during the past 35 years of Those Were the Days. Each year he has
offered special seasonal and topical shows.
He begins the end-of-year holiday season with his annual
Hallowe’en broadcast on the last Saturday of October. This usually features a
combination of scary and mysterious dramas combined with spooky comedy shows
which he sends out to listeners via his “ghost-to-ghost network.” This is
followed a few weeks later by his annual November broadcast of appropriate
Thanksgiving episodes.
The Christmas season is filled with vintage holiday broadcasts offering “Radio
to Get Into the Holiday Spirit By.... to Plan Your Christmas List By... to
Address Christmas Cards By... to Wrap, Bake and Decorate By.” Listeners call to
report that they are keeping pace with his “schedule” or to tell him that they
are “way behind, so slow down!”
Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day,
Labor Day and Columbus Day have all received special TWTD treatment.
Schaden has featured scores of broadcasts devoted to the talents of specific
radio or motion picture stars, and those programs almost always contained one of
his interviews with the subject or an expert guest who talks about the star of
the day.
He has devoted multi-week salutes to such personalities as Bob Hope, Frank
Sinatra, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby and Humphrey Bogart, but there’s only one
performer who has been given the superstar treatment: Jack Benny. For 26 years
Benny has been the subject of “Jack Benny Month” on TWTD. “Listeners start
reminding me in late summer that they can’t wait for the next Jack Benny Month,”
says Chuck, who tells them with a smile, “I can’t wait either!”
On November 7, 1993 he was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame, joining Jack
Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, Norman Corwin and the scores of radio stars who
have been honored for their work on the air. “I am very proud of that. And I’m
the only fan in the Hall of Fame.” he says.
Schaden’s commemoration of World War II stands out as one of the most ambitious,
interesting and historical special events ever presented on Those Were The Days.
Beginning on Saturday, December 7, 1991, to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of
the attack on Pearl Harbor, he set out on an interesting journey. “I decided we
should follow the progress of the war as it was reported on radio and as the war
effort insinuated itself into radio programming.”
His four-year odyssey became an aural history of World War II, 50 years after
the earth-shaking agony of the conflict. Programming was chronological: war news
was broadcast as it unfolded in the 1940s, complete with up-to-the-minute
emergency bulletins, speeches, news reports, on-the-air eyewitness accounts of
battles or attacks, with network correspondents giving first-hand descriptions
of what they saw and experienced in Europe, in north Africa or in the Pacific.
President Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats were an important part of the undertaking,
which included news coverage of D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, the death of
F.D.R., the end of the war in Europe, the dropping of the atomic bomb, and the
surrender of Japan.
In an age when there was no television coverage of the war, it was radio that
provided the most personal, important and latest news of world events.
Newspapers had, in many cases, more detailed coverage, but it took time to print
and distribute the newspapers. Motion picture newsreels offered coverage of
certain events of the war, but they often took several days to get to movie
houses across the U.S. So it was left to radio to inform the public daily and
immediately. Radio was a most trusted and reliable news source, and it captured
the events of the war in a way not experienced before or since.
World War II was radio’s war and radio was ready for it, not only with the news
reports and speeches, but also with special programs and all types of
entertainment shows that had something to say about the war, if only to remind
listeners to “buy War Bonds” or “save used fats” or to observe rationing of
food, rubber and other goods necessary to win the war. Jack Benny donated his
Maxwell to the scrap drive and Fibber McGee was certain that his neighbor was a
Nazi spy. Bob Hope entertained at military bases and Eddie Cantor broadcast from
the Hollywood Canteen for servicemen.
Schaden’s four-year, 50th anniversary commemoration was so well-received that
for the war’s 60th anniversary, beginning in 2001, he added pre-Pearl Harbor
coverage of the war in Europe and some other newly-acquired 1940s programs to
the mix.
How has Those Were The Days been able to survive all these years?
“The old shows were good,” Chuck says simply. “If they weren’t any good back in
those radio days, they wouldn’t be any good now. But they have staying-power.
They were well-written and well-performed. They are not ‘dated’ by costumes or
scenery or automobiles, all of which tend to ‘date’ movies or TV shows.
“The listener provides those things by using his imagination. The listener
costumes the actors and decorates the set. He is a participant, not a spectator”
and, Schaden adds, “the listener has been primarily responsible for our being
here for 35 years. The stations, yes, of course. Our various sponsors and
underwriters, for sure. But the listener, who has been with us while we take our
weekly trip to radio’s past has made it all possible, absolutely. I will always
be grateful.”
* * *
* *
By STEVE DARNALL
When Chuck Schaden prepared to interview actress Agnes Moorehead in 1971, her handlers presented two directives. First, she was there to promote United General Theaters’ new "mini-theater" concept (we know them now as multiplexes) and he should stick to that subject. Second, he had five minutes.
As the host of the weekly nostalgia-fest "Those Were The Days" (now heard Saturdays from 1-5 p.m. on WDCB-FM 90.9), Schaden was willing to honor their first request, even though he was more interested in asking Moorehead about acting opposite Orson Welles on "The Shadow" or impersonating Eleanor Roosevelt on "The March of Time." As for the second request...
"I didn’t care if they dragged me out by my heels; I wasn’t going to do five minutes," Schaden recalls with a laugh from his Morton Grove home. "Then I started talking with Miss Moorehead about her radio work... and something happened. She realized that I wasn’t just some guy representing a three-minute sound bite for some radio station; I knew about her career on radio." After a few minutes, Moorehead’s handlers began moving in to wrap things up "and she put her hand out to stop them. It was a very gratifying conversation."
In the three decades since then, Schaden has spoken with dozens of actors, directors and writers who took part in that era known as the Golden Age of Radio. Some were big stars and required listening (including Jack Benny, Eve Arden and Don Ameche), while others were dependable character actors; a majority of them are no longer with us.
What Schaden learned about radio history from these conversations could fill a book, and with the publication of his interview anthology "Speaking of Radio" (Nostalgia Digest Press, 420 pages, $27; www.nostalgiadigest.com), it has.
"When I first went on the air, all I thought about was going on the air with the radio shows," Schaden recalls. "But that wore off for me quickly. It seemed natural for me to want to talk more about the programs and the performers and learn more from the performers. When I started doing this, there was no real written history of the popular culture of radio and its programs and performers. All of these interviews – each in its own way – helped fill me in on what was going on."
The 46 interviews in "Speaking of Radio" paint a fascinating picture of the birth and growth of America’s first real mass medium, before satellite communications and the ascension of shrill, opinionated hosts. In those days, as former announcer Harry Von Zell told Schaden in 1974, radio was "the most intimate and socially personal medium in the world."
As many of Schaden’s interviewees explain, radio also offered creative options that movies and television couldn’t. Actress Lurene Tuttle echoed the sentiments of many radio actors when she told Schaden, "On the air, I could be the most glamorous, gorgeous, tall, black-haired female you’ve ever heard in your life. Whatever I wished to be, I could be with my voice." (Tuttle later became a respected acting coach whose students included a young Helen Hunt.) In one 1976 interview, Mercedes McCambridge (who gave voice to the demon in "The Exorcist") recalled playing Tiny Tim opposite John and Lionel Barrymore in a Christmas Eve radio production of "A Christmas carol," despite being so pregnant that she would give birth to her son four hours later.
Because radio emphasized sound and vocal ability, a truly versatile actor was in great demand. As Schaden points out, many of his subjects "talk about how they were racing from one program to another." Former Chicago actor Willard Waterman told Schaden about appearing "on three networks within 45 minutes. I did the show on CBS [from the Wrigley Building], ran across the street to the Tribune Tower [the home of WGN]... and I had about three minutes plus the commercials to make the show [at The Merchandise Mart, then-home of WMAQ]." Actors who arrived late for a show often blamed the bridge spanning the Chicago River; years after relocating to California, a group of Chicago actors formed "The Bridge Is Up Club."
Schaden admits that the book is probably best-suited for "someone who’s interested in the popular culture of radio," conceding that "the interviews did not start out to be any sort of in-depth look at the total history of radio. It’s more a look at radio as an item in the popular culture, and these are the people who made it popular."
Even so, "Speaking of Radio" is more than a niche book: It’s also a fascinating glimpse into the life of actors in the first half of the 20th Century. Radio veteran (and former Lakeview High School student) Les Tremayne told Schaden that radio, more than anything before or since, allowed an actor to become "an upstanding, home-owning, stay-in-one-place, family-raising... good-credit-risk individual."
Many of those actors, like Tremayne, were based in Chicago, which was a major radio hub until the early 1940s, and as a result, tales of the old Windy City abound in "Speaking." Jim Jordan (better known to radio listeners as "Fibber McGee") recalled coming out of vaudeville in the early 1920s to sing at Chicago’s WIBO on the corner of Broadway and Devon; he and his wife received a whopping $10 a week. Waterman recalled having a room at the Croydon Hotel where he could change into evening clothes – required dress for most prime-time dramatic shows.
"I think in some cases, these people would talk to me with a Chicago slant," Schaden says. "I think it just added to the rapport we had. If they said they were at Broadway and Devon, I would nod and say "Yes, I understand," and it was because I did understand! I didn’t have the blank look of an interviewer saying ‘Uh-huh.’ "
As these actors pass on, Schaden’s research becomes more invaluable. In fact, many of the actors in "Speaking" confess that his questions remind them of a resume credit they had forgotten. Tremayne, now 90 years old, recalls that "I kept pretty good records, but they were all in my head." Today, the former star of "The First Nighter" anthology happily acknowledges that Schaden has done wonders to make later generations aware of the work of Tremayne and his colleagues.
When Chuck announced that Les was celebrating his 90th birthday [in April 2003], we got several hundred cards from the listeners," recalls Tremayne’s wife Joan, "which meant that had to take the time to sit down, write a card and get it in the mail for the deadline. When your listeners cooperate to that extent, that’s when you find out what wonderful people he’s working with and what they think of him."
That respect for both his audience and his source material is why Schaden chose to publish "Speaking of Radio" himself. "I have a lot of friends who’ve written published books, and they all seem to tell the same story: Once they turn it over to the publisher, they’re sitting on the street, they have no input.
"I’m a publisher who has great respect for the author," he jokes, "and I’m not messing around with the author."
This article about Chuck Schaden's book
Speaking of Radio was published in the
Arts & Entertainment section of the Chicago Tribune October 26, 2003.
©2003 Chicago Tribune
Send mail to info@nostalgiadigest.com with
questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2007
Last modified:
December 27, 2007
Website Hosted by: JMZ Computer Works, Inc.