When TV was VERY Young

[JSngry]

Wow...

http://classicshowbiz.blogspot.com/2009/05...-club-1948.html

[Larry Kart]

When I was in my pre-school years in Chicago, circa 1945-7, my mom and I used to listen to the Breakfast Club on the radio almost every weekday morning. Fran Allison (later the marvelous human mainstay of "Kukla, Fran, and Ollie") used to crack me up as the Breakfast Club's Aunt Fanny. Also, the pianist in the band on the show, later the music director, was a friend of my folks.

Then it was the time for the soap operas -- Ma Perkins, Just Plain Bill, Our Gal Sunday ("Can a girl from a small mining town in Colorado find happiness as the wife of a wealthy and titled English lord?"), and Lorenzo Jones, the one whose theme song was "Funiculi, Funicula." Boy, did I hate that song.

[JSngry]

If you're into it, this is priceless footage, because it's really a radio show that happened to have cameras running...

[medjuck]

That first song the band plays is a rarely heard Gershwin piece: iirc it's called "Wintergreen for President" and is from "Of Thee I Sing" or the other political musical they did the name of which I can't remember right now.

[BruceH]

To think, when that show was first telecast, barely one home out of ten had a TV set. Watching anything must have been quite a thrill.

[GA Russell]

I remember the Breakfast Club on the radio in the 60s. I thought it was very boring, and couldn't understand why anyone listened to it!

[Larry Kart]

That first song the band plays is a rarely heard Gershwin piece: iirc it's called "Wintergreen for President" and is from "Of Thee I Sing" or the other political musical they did the name of which I can't remember right now.

"Let 'Em Eat Cake" (though "Wintergreen for President" is from "Of Thee I Sing")

[seeline]

I remember the Breakfast Club on the radio in the 60s. I thought it was very boring, and couldn't understand why anyone listened to it!

I'm just old enough to have thought that radio shows like the Breakfast Club were a novelty, because all I knew was TV. I remember liking Don McNeil's voice and thinking he sounded friendly, but that's about it.

[Ted O'Reilly]

I remember the Breakfast Club on the radio in the 60s. I thought it was very boring, and couldn't understand why anyone listened to it!

I'm just old enough to have thought that radio shows like the Breakfast Club were a novelty, because all I knew was TV. I remember liking Don McNeil's voice and thinking he sounded friendly, but that's about it.

I must be of Larry Kart's vintage or more (late 60s), since I too recall the radio version from the 1940s, and thought it wonderful (I was a child). Didn't they always do a "march around the breakfast table"?

[seeline]

I can't vouch for the 40s, but they did the "March Around the Breakfast Table" on the 60s version of the show. I always wondered about this (being a TV kinda kid), - how did anyone know they were really marching?!

Edited May 20, 2009 by seeline

[Larry Kart]

I must be of Larry Kart's vintage or more (late 60s), since I too recall the radio version from the 1940s, and thought it wonderful (I was a child). Didn't they always do a "march around the breakfast table"?

Just turned 67. One of my earliest memories, probably late 1944 or early 1945, is visiting the troop transport on which my dad was a signal officer, this at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard north of San Francisco.

[Ted O'Reilly]

I must be of Larry Kart's vintage or more (late 60s), since I too recall the radio version from the 1940s, and thought it wonderful (I was a child). Didn't they always do a "march around the breakfast table"?

Just turned 67. One of my earliest memories, probably late 1944 or early 1945, is visiting the troop transport on which my dad was a signal officer, this at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard north of San Francisco.

Gotcha by a year...

My dad was in the Canadian Merchant Marine, doing North Atlantic convoys and ship deliveries for the Navy... Hazardous work, and no pensions.

And Seeline, you could HEAR the marchers, as I recall. Radio is the most visual medium there is. (I worked in it for more than 40 years...)

[medjuck]

I remember the show and the march around the table but I'm not sure what years. (I was born in '43 and I guess the show was broadcast in Canada.) The video slightly disillusioned me: I always pictured them sitting around a table and eating breakfast.