This Is Your FBI

I will not be able to post the next couple of days... so here are some extra, we'll skip a day, and then some extra on my return...

This batch has a disc recording that is likely new to many...

This is Your FBI 1952-09-05 388 The Seagull Shakedown.mp3
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This is Your FBI 1952-09-12 389 His Brother's Keeper.mp3
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This is Your FBI 1952-09-19 390 The Comic Strip Bandits AFRTS#91 (RU-53-6_1B) FROM DISC.mp3
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This is Your FBI 1952-09-19 390 The Comic Strip Bandits UPGRADE.mp3
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Thanks greybelt

Best regards

Art

Thanks Greybelt,
While following JB's additions to this series, I found this interesting read offered from Anne Whitfield who starred in the FBI show The Traveling Swindle from 1952/08/29.........

ANNE WHITFIELD

ANNE WHITFIELD, former actress, portrayed Phyllis, the younger daughter of Alice Faye and Phil Harris, on their weekly radio show in the late 1940s and early l950s. We contacted her and she agreed to share with us the following:

Anne’s recollections of Alice:


Alice Faye was nice and I really idolized her. At ten years of age, it was my aspiration to grow up and be like her. I thought she was a wonderful role model - - very refined, beautiful, and well-groomed. I remember that the seams in her stockings were always SO straight.

I waited with anticipation each Christmas to see what gifts Alice would give me and Jeanine (Jeanine Roose played Alice, Jr., the older daughter of Alice and Phil). The gifts were always from Bullocks Wilshire, and they were exquisite.

Because Alice refused to fly, we would travel by train to Chicago and New York for the last shows of the season, and it was all luxury at its best.

I remember going to Washington, D.C. for the Harry Truman inauguration. Originally, Jeanine and I were to be part of the show, but it ran too long into the night, and our parts were scrapped, to our great relief and our mothers' disappointment.

I was born in Mississippi in 1938. My mother was screen-struck and wanted to go to Hollywood and become an actress. My mom TAUGHT drama and speech – that was OK with her puritanical father – but she wasn’t allowed to perform and she wanted to. Short of her own success in movies and/or radio, she had a daughter who she thought was very talented. I would put on shows back in Georgia for family and neighbors, which included acrobatic dancing and dressing up like movie stars, and I was an early reader. In 1944, my mother drove the two of us on Route 66 out to Hollywood. My father was fighting in the Pacific. Before the war, he had been director of bands at Ole Miss, but gave it up for the move to Los Angeles. He then worked for the Veterans Administration.

Mother had written letters to radio producers in Hollywood, suggesting if they had any parts for a six year old they should consider Anne, as she could read very well. The letter that paid off was the one to Carlton Morse, producer/director/writer of ONE MAN’S FAMILY. I got the part of a seven year old whose family had been caught in the war in Germany and had come home. I still had a southern accent, but Mr. Morse masked it by having me speak only German at first (“Penelope” had ended up in a concentration camp, traumatized and separated from her family).

During ONE MAN’S FAMILY, I also had a part on Mr. Morse’s HIS HONOR THE BARBER and then a running part on CISCO KID. In time I had a running part on the FANNY BRICE SHOW, but ONE MAN’S FAMILY was the longest-running gig I had, and it even lurked in the background while I was doing the PHIL HARRIS/ALICE FAYE SHOW for six years.

As I remember, I auditioned for the PHIL HARRIS/ALICE FAYE SHOW more than once. I felt pressured to get the part and felt like maybe I had a slight advantage because I still had a bit of a southern accent, and Phil was from The South.

Q. What goes in to making a PHIL HARRIS/ALICE FAYE SHOW?

A. Well, there were rehearsals sitting around a table. The show was a comedy, and the writers were like the stars of it, and so they would laugh at their own jokes uproariously when you are reading one of their jokes. If it doesn’t work, then immediately everything stops and they do rewrites, so you are scribbling on the script like crazy. That’s a run-through. Then you get up and do it in front of the microphone and they gradually add in the sound effects and the music. There are several run-throughs with fewer and fewer stops by the director to correct something, and then the dress rehearsal. Then you have a show with a live audience and a warm-up ahead of the show where the announcer came out. Then Phil came out, and they would do things to warm up the audience. There was this warm-up for like a half an hour or at least fifteen minutes before the show. The thing I remember about the PHIL HARRIS/ALICE FAYE SHOW was that the announcer had this funny way to condition the audience to laugh. He’d be standing up and wearing probably a suit or a sport coat with trousers, and he would grab his pants at the knee and jiggle them up and down on one leg, just one leg, toward the audience. Somehow he conditioned the audience to laugh when he did that. So whenever they did a joke on the show and they wanted laughter from the audience, the announcer would come out and jiggle his pants.



Q. So, who is teaching you how to act? Who is teaching you comedic timing? Is the Director directing you? Do you feel like you are acting or like you are reading a script?

A. As far as the acting, I think I did have some talent, so I had an instinct how to do it, but the comedy thing really takes more experience and technique, and I really didn’t have any of it. My mother didn’t have any. She kept telling me how to read lines, when to pause, which word to emphasize, and stuff like that. In fact, she even had me mimicking her on certain things, but the comedy thing I just had to learn by doing. Fanny Brice taught me about when to come in after a laugh. You don’t come in after the laugh, you come in when the laugh is about 80% finished; and you have to project, otherwise you won’t be heard.



Q. So you were learning on the job?

A. Yes, exactly. Pretty stressful.



Q. How many years were you on the PHIL HARRIS/ALICE FAYE SHOW?

A. I think I started at eight years of age and finished at thirteen or fourteen.



Q. What was it like when there was a guest star?

A. I only remember Jack Benny and Dennis Day.



Q. When you were at a table read, who was sitting beside you?

A. Probably Jeanine, who played my older sister.



Q. How did Alice and Phil treat you? Were they maternal/paternal toward you?

A. Not especially. The only time they were particularly warm was at Christmas. There was a generation gap there, and I don’t think the people there were particularly mentoring to kid actors. I was just supposed to be professional –

don’t drop the script, pick up my cues, and don’t flub on the air.



Q. Since it was a comedy, was it a fun set?

A. Not really. You might think so. Comedy is the hardest, and these writers were just so nervous.


Mr. Morse didn’t like to share his cast with other shows, so when the PHIL HARRIS/ALICE FAYE SHOW ended, he brought me back into ONE MAN’S FAMILY.

I think the PHIL HARRIS/ALICE FAYE SHOW ended because Phil and Alice didn’t want to do it anymore, not because it lost popularity.

ANNE WHITFIELD

May 2, 2013
Note: Anne Whitfield is presently running a Bed and Breakfast in the Pacific Northwest.
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Thanks for posting that, otrhead. I've tried to use pictures close to the age of the character they're playing. But here's Anne Whitfield a little older... Looks like she's going for Georgia Ellis's role of Miss Kitty. :-D

I'm back!

Thanks for the background, otrhead!

Here are yesterday's and today's episodes...

This is Your FBI 1952-09-26 391 The Little Tin Box UPGRADE.mp3
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This is Your FBI 1952-10-03 392 The Sight Seeing Killer UPGRADE-2.mp3
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This is Your FBI 1952-10-10 393 The Roundup UPGRADE.mp3
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This is Your FBI 1952-10-17 394 The Hot Sedan UPGRADE-2.mp3
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This is Your FBI 1952-10-24 395 The Wayward Brother.mp3
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This is Your FBI 1952-09-26 391 The Little Tin Box

This is Your FBI 1952-10-03 392 The Sight Seeing Killer

This is Your FBI 1952-10-10 393 The Roundup

This is Your FBI 1952-10-17 394 The Hot Sedan

This is Your FBI 1952-10-17 394 The Hot Sedan  (The cars)

This is Your FBI 1952-10-24 395 The Wayward Brother
The last time they used this story, the souvenir gun was a German Luger. This time it's a Russian Tokarev.. Made in most of the communist block, and still used in North Korea, they tell me.

This is Your FBI 1952-10-31 396 The Evil Samaritan

Thanks greybelt

Best regards

Art

Thanks greybelt

Best regards

Art

This is Your FBI 1952-11-07 397 The Frivolous Cousins
I could only find one of the cousins...
That McCallion guy reminds me of The Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager

This is Your FBI 1952-11-14 398 Wide Open City
Warren Stevens was in the original Star Trek too, but here he is as Dr. Ostrow in Forbidden Planet.

Thanks greybelt

Best regards

Art

Thanks greybelt

Best regards

Art

Thanks greybelt

Best regards

Art

Wow, can't get access to the site anymore due to high traffic. I may have to buy a premium account. That stinks.
Jeff

Hold off on that Premium purchase Ghemrats. If Greybelt will let me know when his alotment ran out I will repost the stalled links from my account.

OTRHead, you have saved me from plunging into my threadbare change purse (actually, change wallet).  You will be rewarded in Heaven.

For the record, the last three episodes (12.12 to 12.26) are now wafting in the ether for me, so it may be that would be the place to start. How may I repay your kindness, good friend and samaritan?
Jeff

This is Your FBI 1952-11-28 400 The Baby Peddler
Colleen Collins and Katherine Keith continue to be elusive.

This is Your FBI 1952-12-05 401 Mama's Boy

This is Your FBI 1952-12-12 402 Pickup

This is Your FBI 1952-12-19 403 Snow Screen
I guess they got tired of hunting for Santa every Christmas.  
Special Agent Taylor blows it here.... by revealing that the Territory in question was Alaska after
the announcer did the usual vague description of the location.  

This is Your FBI 1952-12-26 404 The Sunshine Syndicate
Florence Lake reminds me of June Lockhart.
There's a new announcer this week, William Spargrove, but I couldn't find a picture.