Written by Linda Jay exclusively for The Connector February, 2021
My parents were freelance writers of mysteries and dramas that aired nationally over WNBC in New York City during the 1940s – the so-called “Golden Age of Radio.” Their beige Royal typewriter with the high keys got a real workout as Mom and Dad cranked out script after script – two shows for “The Shadow” in 1944, one show each for other radio classics, such as “Mr. and Mrs. North,” “Famous Jury Trials,” and “Grand Central Station.”
My parents enthusiastically rehearsed the sound effects for “The Shadow” in the thin-walled kitchen of our apartment in Washington Heights, above Manhattan. Needless to say, that experience made life interesting for me, their only child. I vividly recall asking my playmates in kindergarten if their parents were also creating strange, weird sound effects in the kitchens of their apartments. I discovered that nobody else’s parents were doing this.
I vividly recall one weekday afternoon around 2 when Mom and Dad were racing around the Kitchen screaming, shooting off toy guns, running the sirens on small ambulance toys, making sounds resembling imaginary vaults going in and out. Ho-hum, just another typical Tuesday at the Jay apartment.
But then I heard a different noise: it seemed that four or five neighbors had gathered in front of our apartment and were pounding on the door, wondering what on earth was going on inside. My mother, who fancied herself as an actress, pulled herself up to her full 4 feet, 11 ¾-inch height, adopted a haughty attitude, and an imperious voice. As she slowly opened the door and faced the puzzled neighbors, she said, nonchalantly, “Yes? Is something the matter?”
The neighbors said, nearly in unison, “What are the loud noises coming from your apartment? It sounds like someone’s being killed in there!”
My mother calmly explained, “Oh, that! Think nothing of it. We’re just rehearsing…FOR “THE SHADOW”! And she shut the door, very slowly.
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Another New York radio-related experience: one day my Dad and I went to a bakery near the El (elevated train). The radio inside the bakery happened to be playing an episode of “Grand Central Station” that my folks had written. The plot was gruesome: a young woman had been strangled with wire inside the chicken coop on a farm. I was afraid to listen. But Dad, whose temperament was gentle and kind – how did he ever write those plots for the radio shows? – told me to listen to the show because “it’s helping to pay our bills.”
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In the 1950s, Dad continued his affiliation with NBC. He was hired as a continuity writer at the 50,000-watt station WLW-NBC, in Cincinnati. On-staff for over ten years, he was there in the early 1950s when an unknown writer named Rod Serling (later famous for Twilight Zone) joined the staff. Rod and Dad became good friends, and coauthored a murder mystery, “A Walk in the Night,” that aired on “The Philip Morris TV Playhouse” in 1954. Only time Serling had a coauthor of a TV script.
Another WLW writer, Alan Stern from New York City, and Dad coauthored a mystery that aired on the Colgate TV Theatre in the 1950s. In 1966, Dad wrote an episode of TV’s “Gunsmoke” that aired – on NBC.
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My Dad, an Iowa farmboy, was a brilliant writer. He left college (Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa) a semester before graduation and moved to New York, because he had won first prize in a national contest sponsored by the New York Times, for an original sci-fi play. It was produced in theaters up and down the East Coast.
I delight in regaling friends with tales of early radio, and of Dad’s years at NBC in Cincinnati. One time I was visiting the station, to see a dramatic show being produced. What was unusual about it: an announcer was crawling around on the floor, having deliberately set fire to the other announcer’s script – WHILE HE WAS ON THE AIR! The purpose: to see how the second announcer would react to this unexpected practical joke.
Another time at NBC in Cincinnati, I was waiting in the lobby for Dad to come downstairs so we could go home together. Suddenly a handsome man in a resplendent cowboy suit came up the steps and walked through the lobby – leading a huge, striking horse! They got on the freight elevator and went upstairs to the second floor, to be interviewed on the popular “Ruth Lyons Show.” My Dad was producing that show. Yes…the cowboy and the horse were Roy Rogers and Trigger! Roy Rogers’ real name was Leonard Slye, and he was a native Cincinnatian, with a statue of him downtown.
Hope you’ve enjoyed these reminiscences. Thanks for listening!