Spring Shows

Each year, with the enthusiasm of a commuter with a set of new garden tools, the radio business plants a batch of new shows. Last year's planting was unusually successful, producing such flourishing specimens as Alec Templeton Time, Pot o' Gold, Mr. District Attorney. This season, U. S. radio spaded early. Last week five new sprouts appeared, and one recently transplanted radio perennial struggled for survival.

> The returning perennial was Rudy Vallee, who quit the air last September with the unique distinction of having been a top-ten favorite for nearly ten straight years (all for Standard Brands). Last fortnight Vallee returned for Sealtest dairy products with a completely revamped program, and a re-vitamined selling point: Vitalure, "abundant in good, fresh milk."

Vallee's new show (Thursdays 9:30 to 10 p.m. E.S.T., NBC-Red) is a sort of historical tour de farce, with incidents of the dead past reconstructed to include Vallee, ex-Prize Fighter Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom and guest players. Last week, for the Ides of March, Rudy was Caesar, Una Merkel Calpurnia, and Maxie one Slapsimus Maximus, a Caesarian stooge. In Rudy's Rome the WPA built the Appian Way, and Caesar avoided assassination by putting the Ides of March off till the vacated Thanksgiving date. Not Grade A to date, the show this week offers Pocahontas and Captain John Smith.

> Likeliest, folksiest of last week's newcomers was MBS's Sheep and Goats Club, an all-Negro jamboree with an all-Negro studio audience (Wednesdays 8 to 8:30 p.m. E.S.T.). Entrepreneur is colored Actor Richard Huey (All God's Chillun Got Wings, In Abraham's Bosom, Porgy), a Harlem big shot who runs a barbecue near Lenox Avenue called Aunt Dinah's Kitchen, and operates on the side a theatrical booking office for Negro talent. As Bossman Huey explained the setup: "Over on the right here we got the sheep. . . . They sing hymns, and they preach sermons and they is taken up with the spiritual side of life. Then over on the left here is the goats. . . . Among them I see gamblers, a couple of cake-eaters, some jitterbugs and some rug cutters."

First the sheep sang Oh, I Got a Little Brother in the New Graveyard, then the goats did a juke-joint caper, Let the Deal Go Down. Brother Wilson preached in the words of the great James Weldon Johnson.

> Who Knows?, on a four-station MBS network for Griffin's shoe polish Saturday nights 8:30 to 8:45 E.S.T., is the latest thing in radio ghost stories. Its talebearer is gaunt, ghost-grey Dr. Hereward Carrington, director of the American Psychical Institute, an oldtime spook-hunter who likes to spend his vacations in haunted houses. Last week Who Knows? spun a yarn about a composer who came back after death with the finale to a concerto left unfinished at his death. This week a Scotland Yard detective solves a murder mystery by premonition. The trade's handy handle for Who Knows?: Ghost Busters.

> Not to be outshone by Griffin, Shinola shoe polish also took to the air last Saturday (10 to 10:30 a.m. E.S.T., NBC-Red) with Play Actor Burgess Meredith (a radio serial alumnus) in a weekly series called Lincoln Highway. Last week's pedestrian episode along the famed 3,400-mile, coast-to-coast road was a low-budget It Happened One Night, whose boy-girl hitchhikers fall in love in a barn near Valparaiso (Ind.), instead of in a tourist cabin.

> Most pretentious and certainly the corniest air newcomer last week was Celebrity Minstrels, off to a four-week try-out on NBC-Blue (Tuesdays 9:30 to 10 E.S.T.) as a possible summer substitute for one of the big shows. To prove his point that there is a bit of minstrelsy in every man, Producer Mort Lewis (If I Had The Chance) got Cartoonist Ham Fisher (Joe Palooka} and Illustrator James Montgomery Flagg as regular endmen, Actor Ezra Stone and Announcer Harry von Zell as extras, Jay C. Flippen as interlocutor. Celebrity Minstrels opened with Oh, Dem Golden Slippers, got in tune with There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight, closed with Waiting for the Robert E. Lee. Sample chestnut: "Great Scott, your uncle yelled 'Down with the Irish!' at the St. Patrick's Day parade? What followed?". ... "A hearse and four horses."

Promised attractions: Presidential Perennial Norman Thomas, Mouthpiece Sam Leibowitz as endmen; Al Smith, Dr. Sigmund Spaeth and Robert Moses for close harmony.

> New quiz program, for Chocolate Products Co. (syrup), over a CBS California network 10 to 10:30 a.m. P.S.T. Saturdays : Stillicious Kids' Quizaroo. Sample poser: Shirley Temple is an ancient Greek ruin. True or false?

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.