EDWARD G. ROBINSON & ONA MUNSON LIVED IN BIG TOWN BEFORE ED PAWLEY AND FRAN CARLON.
BIG BIG TOWN
Big Town was Network Radio’s most popular newspaper based melodrama, registering eleven Annual Top 30 finishes in its 14 seasons on CBS and NBC.
In reality, its creator/writer and sometimes producer/director Jerry McGill, actually fashioned two distinctly different sounding programs between Big Town’s first five season run on CBS from 1937 to 1942, and its return in 1943 for another six seasons on CBS and three on NBC.
The first run was a costly Hollywood production with movie star Edward G. Robinson as crusading Illustrated Press newspaper editor Steve Wilson and 27 year old film actress Claire Trevor as the paper’s society editor, Lorelei Kilbourne. The pair were backed by first-call supporting actors including Gale Gordon, Hanley Stafford and Jack Smart plus a full orchestra. The show was observed by a studio audience whose applause is heard at the end of the series’ first broadcast of October 19, 1937, also posted below.
Both Robinson and Trevor were active in films during Big Town’s first CBS run sponsored by Lever Brothers which had seen the radio appeal of Hollywood stars with its Monday night blockbuster on CBS, Lux Radio Theater. During the 1937-38 season Robinson starred in six films and Trevor appeared in ten. They co-starred in 1938’s The Amazing Doctor Clitterhouse.
Big Town had no problem winning its Tuesday time period at 8:00 for CBS, immediately breaking into the night’s Top Five. Its double digit ratings provided a strong lead-in for Lever’s Al Jolson Show at 8:30, an Annual Top Ten attraction.
Claire Trevor married Big Town’s producer Clark Andrews less than a year after the show’s debut in 1937. But she left the show - and Andrews - in 1939, shortly after her breakthrough performance in John Ford’s epic Western, Stagecoach. Focusing on her film career, Trevor was nominated for three Academy Awards and won one as Best Supporting Actress in 1948’s Key Largo in which she played the alcoholic mistress of a sadistic gangster played by her former Big Town boss, Edward G. Robinson.
Ona Munson - pictured above with Robinson - replaced Trevor as Big Town’s Lorelei 1939-40 while enjoying the peak of her film fame as Belle Watling in 1939’s Gone With The Wind. Robinson and Munson kept the melodrama high in the nightly Top Ten rankings despite being shuttled from Tuesday to Wednesday to Thursday from 1939 until the end of Big Town‘s run in 1942 when Robinson left the series.
Normally, the loss of a program’s major star like Robinson would result in cancellation to Network Radio’s dumpster. But creator Jerry McGill had other ideas. He took a year off and began thinking small, moving the show to New York and cutting the budget drastically. That kind of thinking appealed to Sterling Drug which was looking for a network vehicle for its Ironized Yeast weight gaining tablets - “Now there’s no excuse for being skinny!”
McGill chose two virtual unknowns to replace Robinson and Munson in Big Town’s lead roles. Edward Pawley, 42, primarily a stage actor with limited film and radio experience, won the part of Steve Wilson. A voice familiar to soap opera fans was picked for Lorelei. It belonged to Fran Carlon, 30, who had stints as Joyce Jordan, M.D. and Kitty Keene, plus supporting roles in Our Gal Sunday, The Story of Mary Marlin and Today’s Children.
Big Town’s big orchestra was replaced by organist John Gart and studio audiences were shut out of the new production. Of greater importance, the show’s scripts took more of an action oriented, crime fighting mode as opposed to the character study and morality play tendencies of its earlier run. Broad comic relief characters were added like Harry The Hack, Willie The Weep and Mozart, the blind bar room pianist. Critics might have accused McGill of “dumbing-down” Big Town, but it was a risk he was willing to take.
At it dd look risky in 1943-44 when Big Town returned to its original Tuesday timeslot at 8:00. The revamped drama was constantly beaten by NBC‘s Ginny Simms Show in its time period and dropped out of the Annual Top 50 for the first time with a mediocre 10.9 rating. But the show got traction, gained popularity and beat Simms, Rudy Vallee and Milton Berle in successive seasons to peak in 1947-48 with a season average rating of 19.5 - the best either run of the series ever scored.
Jerry McGill was vindicated and as the owner of the program he was all ears when Lever Brothers came calling to say it wanted Big Town back under its corporate umbrella, offering the show one of NBC’s prime timeslots, 10:00 Tuesday between Fibber McGee & Molly and People Are Funny. McGill made the jump and Big Town was one of Tuesday’s Top Ten shows for the next three seasons. The first show from Big Town’s second run for Lever Brothers in 1948 is also posted below.
Walter Greaza replaced Ed Pawley as Big Town’s lead when Lever moved the show back to Wednesday at 8:00 on CBS midway during 1951-52 season Despite the switch it was again one of the night’s Top Ten attractions - finishing 29th in the Annual Top 50 of all programs. But by this time television had taken its toll on Network Radio’s ratings and Big Town was no exception, falling into single digits. Lever Brothers cancelled the program at the end of the season.
Nevertheless, Big Town lived on in television. It’s video version opened in 1950 for a four season run on CBS-TV. The first two seasons were live presentations from New York starring Patrick McVey as Steve Wilson. It became a Hollywood film production in 1952 with Mark Stevens in the lead role which he held through the program’s switch to NBC-TV in 1954 until its conclusion in 1956.
During its Network Radio run the series also inspired four B movies from Paramount in 1947 and 1948: Big Town, I Cover Big Town, Big Town After Dark and Big Town Scandal - all featuring Philip Reed as editor Wilson and Hillary Brooke as Lorelei.
Proving the program’s appeal to be universal, DC Comics published 50 issues of Big Town comic books from 1951 to 1958.
Nine years of radio popularity, six more on television, four movies and scores of comic books since 1942. Not bad for a program that everyone considered finished after its first five year run - everyone, that is, except Jerry McGill.
Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
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