As a school-age lad in the mid-1930s, I found myself with quite a dilemma. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to grow up to be another John Garfield of the movies, or another Walter Winchell, writing a daily gossip column read by millions.(I briefly considered a future as a "human fly"; just such a daredevil had visited my hometown of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and had climbed the outside of the 12-story Hotel Vicksburg, without ropes and with much acclaim.)

I finally settled for a career as another Andre` Baruch, my favorite radio announcer.Mr. Baruch was on the air often, most noticeably as the exciting voice on Your Hit Parade. This big, brassy weekly show surveyed sales of phonograph records and sheet music all over the nation and presented the top tunes every Saturday night.Radio's magic spell was everywhere. I spent many evenings in my little room listening intently to WLW Cincinnati, WWL New Orleans and KMOX St. Louis on my primitive Atwater-Kent.As I listened, I grew familiar with the likes of Baby Snooks, who sorely tried the patience of her long-suffering daddy, Joe Penner, asking "Wanna buy a duck?" There was Major Bowes, who clanged his gong on The Amateur Hour and brushed off stars of tomorrow with, "All right, all right!"Eddie Cantor, Burns and Allen, Amos and Andy, Stoopnagle and Budd, President Roosevelt's "fireside chats", dance bands from the Black Hawk in Chicago - all entertained and enlightened me.The programs varied widely in content, and the big stars appeared and disappeared at quarter-hour to one-hour intervals.

But I realized that an announcer was ever-present.He introduced the comedians and the music; he was the renowned authority on events of the day; he sat next to me at the championship fights and the World Series. Yes, the announcer linked me with the outside world. And of all the voices on the air, I liked Andre` Baruch best.Once I had carefully chosen my future career, I set out to do something about it. I wheedled from my grandfather a prehistoric hand-crank phonograph and a stack of old recordings that had been gathering dust in the attic for decadesThis ancient equipment, together with some stimulating advertisements scissored from current magazines, and an aged Big Ben alarm clock, became my "radio station". For hours and hours, day after day, I introduced such dubious hits as In The Gloaming and Bringing In The Sheaves, playing them over and over again.

Interspersed with the music, I extolled the virtues of Dr. Gragg's Foot Powder, Mix-O-Mint Julep Mixer, Packard automobiles and other popular products.In the early days of radio, a big, deep voice was essential for an announcer.Every young fellow who aspired to talk on the air professionally wanted to sound like Harry Von Zell of The Fred Allen Show; Westbrook Van Voorhis, voice of The March of Time, or Singin' Sam the Barbasol Man. What's more, the men who did the hiring also wanted booming voices.

Thus, in 1936, a thin-voiced 16-year-old with ambitions to become a voice on WQBC, his hometown station, slept with his bare feet exposed next to an open window. He caught a terrible cold that brought his voice down a couple of octaves. The next day the stripling read for an audition at the radio station and was hired on the spot as a part-time announcer.Of course, the kid almost died of walking pneumonia, but he did break into broadcasting by applying this dramatic shortcut. Once his cold disappeared, however, his voice returned to its normal squeakiness and the station manager wondered why he had hired the kid. But he didn't have the heart to fire him.

As the young fellow grew older, his voice naturally deepened and in time, he sounded professional enough to get important jobs on the Pacific Coast. Eventually he gravitated into television as a writer, producer and "voice-over" for national shows and commercials. I know that kid well; I was him.Years later I brought home a record album, Themes Like Old Times, on which are transcribed 90 introductions to old radio shows just as they were once presented on the air. My wife and I listened with nostalgia to Jack Armstrong - The All- American Boy, The Shadow, Young Widder Brown and dozens of other show intros from yesteryear. Suddenly out of the stereo speakers burst the resonant introduction of The Story of Myrt and Marge, a daytime serial."Why, Honey!" my good wife exclaimed. "That announcer sounds a lot like you. Not his voice, exactly, but the way he phrases his sentences."I smiled. The announcer she referred to was - you guessed it! - Andre` Baruch. Without exactly planning it that way, I imagine that as an announcer-in-training I had copied his style.

 

 

# {published in GOOD OLD DAYS SPECIALS, January 1998}