25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording, Television Permalink

Spike Jones

October 25, 2019

Lindley Armstrong “Spike” Jones was a popular musician and bandleader specializing in performing satirical arrangements of popular songs. Ballads and classical works receiving the Jones treatment would be punctuated with gunshots, whistles, cowbells, and ridiculous vocals. Through the 1940s and early 1950s, the band recorded under the title Spike Jones and his City Slickers and toured the United States and Canada under the title The Musical Depreciation Revue.

Jones’s father was a Southern Pacific railroad agent. Young Lindley got his nickname by being so thin that he was compared to a railroad spike. At the age of 11 he got his first set of drums. As a teenager he played in bands that he formed himself. A railroad restaurant chef taught him how to use pots and pans, forks, knives and spoons as musical instruments. He frequently played in theater pit orchestras. In the 1930s he joined the Victor Young orchestra and thereby got many offers to appear on radio shows, including Al Jolson’s Lifebuoy Program, Burns and Allen, and Bing Crosby’s Kraft Music Hall.

From 1937 to 1942, he was the percussionist for the John Scott Trotter Orchestra, which played on Bing Crosby’s first recording of White Christmas. Spike Jones was part of a backing band for songwriter Cindy Walker during her early recording career with Decca and Standard Transcriptions. Her song “We’re Gonna Stomp Them City Slickers Down” provided the inspiration for the name of Jones? future band, the City Slickers.

The City Slickers evolved out of the Feather Merchants, a band led by vocalist-clarinetist Del Porter, who took a back seat to Jones during the embryonic years of the group. They made experimental records for the Cinematone Corporation and performed publicly in Los Angeles, gaining a small following. The original members included vocalist-violinist Carl Grayson, banjoist Perry Botkin, trombonist King Jackson and pianist Stan Wrightsman.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Stan Chambers

October 25, 2019

Stanley Holroyd Chambers is a retired American television reporter who worked for KTLA in Los Angeles from 1947 to 2010.

Chambers’s career began shortly after KTLA became the first commercially-licensed TV station in the western United States. His April 1949 on-scene 27½-hour report of the unsuccessful attempt to rescue Kathy Fiscus from an abandoned well in San Marino, California prompted the sale of hundreds of TV sets in the Los Angeles area. His report has been recognized as the first live coverage of a breaking news story.

In 1952 Chambers was involved in the first live telecast of an atomic bomb test at the Nevada Test Site. Among other stories he has covered are the 1961 Bel Air fires, the 1963 Baldwin Hills Reservoir dam break, the 1971 Sylmar and 1994 Northridge earthquakes, the 1963 kidnapping of Frank Sinatra, Jr., the 1965 Watts Riots, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the Tate-LaBianca murders by the Manson Family, and the Hillside Strangler. Chambers broke the story on the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles Police Department officers.

Chambers has earned several Emmy Awards, Golden Mike Awards, LA City and County Proclamations, an LA Press Club Award, and a “star” on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His grandson, Jaime Chambers, became a reporter at KTLA in 2003.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Snow White

October 25, 2019

Snow White is a fictional character and the protagonist from Disney’s 1937 animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as well as an official Disney Princess.

Snow White is a princess of noble birth who is forced into servitude by her jealous stepmother, the Queen. She is very pure hearted, innocent, and a bit naïve, but she never loses faith that one day her wish for true love will someday come and take her away. She remains cheerful and kind, no matter how poorly her stepmother, the Queen, treats her.

She’s a born optimist, who will always see the bottle half full no matter how grim things may seem. A silent dreamer, she loves helping people less fortunate than herself and never judges others. And aith a kind, gentle and feminine nature, she follows her heart and does what she feels is right even if it can lead her into trouble. For example, when she helps a suspicious, ugly crone by bringing her in to the cottage after Grumpy told her not to let anyone in.

She sees the good in everyone and everything, almost to a fault, but through it all she’s a good person with a huge heart and a motherly soul that can charm anyone, even Grumpy.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Sol Lesser

October 25, 2019

Sol Lesser was an American film producer and presenter.

In 1915, while living in San Francisco, Lesser learned that the authorities were about to clean out the Barbary Coast district, a raucous area of gambling houses, saloons and brothels. He grabbed a camera and a friend, future Hollywood cameraman Hal Mohr, and roamed the area, especially the parts that were best-known before the area was shut down. This film is now considered a lost film.

The resulting film was The Last Night of the Barbary Coast, an early example of an exploitation film that was sold directly to movie theater owners by Lesser. With the profits from the film, he bought several theaters, and soon owned a cinema chain.

Sol Lesser signed Jackie Coogan to a movie contract in 1922, establishing both as major Hollywood names. The Coogan-Lesser hits included Oliver Twist and Peck’s Bad Boy. Lesser made a successful transition to sound films, with his own Principal Pictures company; he would either distribute his productions himself under the Principal name, or arrange for a major studio to release them under their own trademarks. In 1939, Lesser produced Thunder Over Mexico a compilation film made from Eisenstein’s Que Viva Mexico! with the permission of Upton Sinclair and his wife.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Sonja Henie

October 25, 2019

Sonja Henie was a Norwegian figure skater and American actress. She was a three-time Olympic Champion, a ten-time World Champion and a six-time European Champion. Henie won more Olympic and World titles than any other ladies figure skater. At the height of her acting career she was one of the highest paid stars in Hollywood.

Sonja Henie was born in Kristiania, current Oslo, the only daughter of Wilhelm Henie, a prosperous Norwegian furrier and his wife Selma Lochmann-Nielsen. In addition to the income from the fur business, both of Henie’s parents had inherited wealth. Wilhelm Henie had been a one-time World Cycling Champion and the Henie children were encouraged to take up a variety of sports at a young age. Henie initially showed talent at skiing, and then followed her older brother Leif to take up figure skating. As a girl, Henie was also a nationally ranked tennis player and a skilled swimmer and equestrienne. Once Henie began serious training as a figure skater, her formal schooling ended. She was educated by tutors, and her father hired the best experts in the world, including the famous Russian ballerina Tamara Karsavina, to transform his daughter into a sporting celebrity.

Henie won her first major competition, the senior Norwegian championships, at the age of 9.

She then placed eighth in a field of eight at the 1924 Winter Olympics, at the age of eleven. During the 1924 program, she skated over to the side of the rink several times to ask her coach for directions. But by the next Olympiad, she needed no such assistance. Henie won the first of an unprecedented ten World Figure Skating Championships in 1927 at the age of fourteen, and her first Olympic gold medal the following year. She also won six consecutive European championships. Towards the end of her career, she began to be strongly challenged by younger skaters including Cecilia Colledge, Megan Taylor, and Hedy Stenuf. However, she held off these competitors and went on to win her third Olympic title at the 1936 Winter Olympics, albeit in very controversial circumstances with Cecilia Colledge finishing a very close second. Indeed, after the school figures section at the 1936 Olympic competition, Colledge and Henie were virtually neck and neck with Colledge trailing by just a few points. As Sandra Stevenson recounted in her article in The Independent of the 21st April 2008, “the closeness infuriated Henie, who, when the result for that section was posted on a wall in the competitors’ lounge, swiped the piece of paper and tore it into little pieces. The draw for the free skating came under suspicion after Henie landed the plum position of skating last, while Colledge had to perform second of the 26 competitors. The early start was seen as a disadvantage, with the audience not yet whipped into a clapping frenzy and the judges known to become freer with their higher marks as the event proceeded. Years later, a fairer, staggered draw was adopted to counteract this situation”.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Snub Pollard

October 25, 2019

Harry “Snub” Pollard was a silent movie comedian, popular in the 1920s.

Often mistaken as the brother of Australian actress Daphne Pollard, in fact the two were not related despite their shared surname. Harry Pollard was born as Harold Fraser and took the name Pollard as his stage name. In addition, the two both acted with “Pollard’s Lilliputian Opera Co.” in Australia, which gave stage performances featuring children and performers of small stature. This was a very well-known troupe in its time, and many of its performers adopted the surname “Pollard”.

Pollard played supporting roles in the early films of Harold Lloyd. The long-faced Pollard sported a Kaiser Wilhelm mustache turned upside-down; this became his trademark. Lloyd’s producer, Hal Roach, gave Pollard his own starring series of one- and two-reel shorts. The most famous is 1923’s It’s a Gift, in which he plays an inventor of many Rube Goldberg-like contraptions, including a car that runs by magnet power.

Pollard left Roach in 1924 and joined the low-budget Weiss Brothers studio in 1926. There he co-starred with Marvin Loback as a poor man’s version of Laurel and Hardy, copying that team’s plots and gags.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording Permalink

Smilin’ Ed McConnell

October 25, 2019

Smilin? Ed McConnell was a radio personality best known as the host of the children’s radio and television series, Smilin’ Ed’s Gang, closely identified with its sponsor, Buster Brown shoes.

The son of a minister, McConnell began to sing at the age of three and soon learned how to play both drums and piano. He was athletic as a teenager, and after attending William Jewell College, he went into prize fighting. During World War I, he was briefly thought to be dead, as noted in an NBC press release: “A troop train on which he was traveling was wrecked in Arkansas by a German sympathizer and Ed wound up in a river. When he was pulled out, an Army surgeon pronounced him dead, but a buddy finally revived Ed with artificial respiration.”

After his Army service, McConnell was a gospel vocalist with various evangelists. He entered radio in Atlanta in 1922 as a hasty substitute when a scheduled performer failed to arrive. Married in 1928, McConnell joined the CBS network in 1932, and five years later, he went to NBC as their “Sunshine Melody Man,” offering hymns and uplifting messages. McDonnell?s blend of “songs, humor and philosophy” was aired over network affiliates at 5:30pm. Guests included the Doring Trio, The Four Grenadiers, The Campus Choir and the Rhythmaires.

He became known in New York City when he was heard over WJZ, even though the show was from Chicago and he was living in Elk Rapids, Michigan. McConnell?s timeslots and sponsors also changed. At one point, he was heard at 10:30am doing a 15-minute program sponsored by the Air Conditioning Training Corporation of Youngstown, Ohio. Variety noted that aside from such hymns as “God Understands,” he “unloads a hokey hodge-podge of songs and you-know-me-I wouldn’t-steer-you-wrong-blather.”

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Smokey Robinson

October 25, 2019

William “Smokey” Robinson, Jr. is an American R&B and soul singer-songwriter, record producer, and former record executive. Robinson is one of the primary figures associated with Motown, second only to the company’s founder, Berry Gordy. Robinson’s consistent commercial success and creative contributions to the label have earned him the title “King of Motown.”

As an original member of Motown Records’ first vocal group The Miracles and as a solo artist, Robinson delivered thirty-seven Top 40 hits for Motown between 1960 and 1987. He also served as the company’s vice president from 1961 to 1988.

Robinson was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan’s North End neighborhood.

According to Entertainment Weekly, “when he was 6 or 7, his Uncle Claude christened him Smokey Joe, which the young William, a Western-movie enthusiast, at first assumed to be his cowboy name for me. Some time later, he learned the deeper significance of his nickname: It derived from smokey, a pejorative term for dark-skinned blacks. “I’m doing this,” his uncle told the light-skinned boy, “so you won’t ever forget that you’re black.”

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Sonny & Cher

October 25, 2019

Sonny & Cher were an American pop music duo, actors, singers and entertainers made up of husband-and-wife team Sonny and Cher Bono in the 1960s and 1970s. The couple started their career in the mid-1960s as R&B backing singers for record producer Phil Spector.

The pair first achieved fame with two hit songs in 1965, “Baby Don’t Go” and “I Got You Babe”. Signing with Atco/Atlantic Records, they released three studio albums in the late 1960s, as well as the soundtrack recording for an unsuccessful movie, Good Times. In 1972, after four years of silence, the couple returned to the studio and released two other albums under the MCA/Kapp Records label.

In the 1970s, they also positioned themselves as media personalities with two top ten TV shows in the US, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour and The Sonny & Cher Show. The couple’s career as a duo ended in 1975 following their divorce. In the decade they spent together, Sonny and Cher sold 80 million records worldwide.

Performing under her first name, Cher went on to a highly successful career as a solo singer and actress, while Sonny Bono was eventually elected to Congress as a U.S. Representative from California. The duo were inducted to the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1998, right after Sonny’s death.