FRANK SINATRA & JUDY GARLAND AT ONE OF THEIR MANY COMMAND PERFORMANCES
COMMAND PERFORMANCE
It was jokingly said that Command Performance was the most popular program that nobody ever heard - nobody except millions of Armed Forces personnel overseas who picked up its weekly shortwave broadcasts or heard transcriptions of the all-star variety show from a nearby AFRS station. It was their program and that was exactly what it was intended to be.
Command Performance was born just ten weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack when the War Department asked radio producer Louis G. Cowan, then with the Radio Division the Army’s Bureau of Public Relations, (soon the Office of War Information), to create a program for its service personnel scattered worldwide that would give them a sense of a closer touch with home. (1) Cowan’s concept was a weekly half-hour program that would answer requests sent to it by GI’s from their nearest Army Post Office or Fleet Post Office, (referred to by number on the show as “APO’s” and “FPO’s”), and present the their favorite stars who would volunteer their time and talents.
The first show was produced and transcribed in New York City on March 1, 1942. Eddie Cantor played host to Bea Wain, Danny Kaye, Dinah Shore, Merle Oberon, Bert Gordon as The Mad Russian. A unique extra on the show was the recording of Mutual’s Don Dunphy & Bill Corum describing Joe Louis’s January 9th one round knockout of Max Bear in their Heavyweight Championship fight. (2)
One of its first shows from Hollywood, from May 7, 1942, starred Betty Grable, Jack Benny, Judy Canova, Robert Benchley, Mary Martin, Phil Harris, the Harry James orchestra, Mary Livingston, Dennis Day, Eddie (Rochester) Anderson and Don Wilson. Its sports feature was Clem McCarthy calling the 1942 Kentucky Derby, run five days earlier. By this time requests were beginning to pour into the program from servicemen and women.
Stateside military brass and government officials got their first exposure to Command Performance on August 30, 1942 when a performance was transcribed at the National Theater in Washington, D.C. Bing Crosby hosted the show that featured Abbott & Costello, Kay Kyser‘s band with singer Harry Babbitt and comic Merwyn Bogue as Ish Kabibble. The broadcast is marred by several temporary technical flaws, but the audience learned what reviewers meant in claiming that $50,000 to $75,000 worth of talent performed gratis each week for Command Performance.
Time magazine called it, "The best program in wartime radio” with an average of six or seven marquee name guest stars per episode. The show recorded on September 22, 1942 before a service audience in Hollywood was typical of that description with Don Ameche, Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy, Tommy Dorsey’s band, Fanny Brice & Hanley Stafford in a Baby Snooks skit, Nelson Eddy and Vivian Blaine.
By this time Armed Forces Radio Service had been established for four months and was shipping 33 1/3 r.p.m. discs of Command Performance to its stations which would number 300 around the globe by the end of the war. The civilian audience finally heard a Command Performance broadcast on Christmas Eve, 1942, when a special one-hour recording of the program was broadcast by all four networks and many independent stations at 11:00 p.m. ET. The show, which is contained on this site’s annual Christmas In The Air post in December, was truly an all-star affair hosted by Bob Hope with Crosby, Benny, Bergen & McCarthy, Fred Allen, Red Skelton, Dinah Shore, Charles Laughton, the Andrews Sisters, Spike Jones’ City Slickers, Ethel Waters and Kay Kyser’s band featuring Ginny Simms. The program and its purpose was introduced by former network newsman Elmer Davis who had become the Director of the Office of War Information.
If anything, the program got stronger entering its second year when it moved its base to Hollywood. Vick Knight left his $700 a week position producing the Fred Allen Show to move west and produce Command Performance for no salary and Major Meredith Willson became Musical Director of AFRS then took over the conductor’s duties of Command Performance with an orchestra of top sidemen who had joined the Army.
Favorite songs and comedy routiines weren’t the only sounds requested by Command Performance listeners. As the show June 6, 1943 illustrates Betty Hutton answering requests for a bottle of beer being opened and a baby’s coo. The show also offers swing by Woody Herman‘s band, Jose Iturbi‘s classical piano solo and Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll performing an Amos & Andy routine.
Bob Hope and Bing Crosby appeared individually - more often than not, together - in dozens of Command Performance’s 415 shows over its nearly eight years. The show from September 25, 1943 when Crosby greeted Hope who had just returned from an overseas entertainment tour with Frances Langford and Tony Romano is a prime example of the two letting loose. Meanwhile, Hope sidekick Jerry Colonna took over the Command Performance host duties on February 5, 1944 in a show that featured Ethel Waters, Frances Wayne and Jim & Marian Jordan as Fibber McGee & Molly.
The show of June 3, 1944 (A) was the first of two programs scheduled to be recorded in the same evening. The script called for Hope and Crosby to “compete” with Frank Sinatra, “auditioning” to be Judy Garland’s next leading man. As was often the case with Hope and Crosby, the script was merely a suggestion and the show wound up in being ad-libbed hilarity that didn’t end - it only led into the show of June 3, 1944 (B) which was originally designed to be an “all female” show with singers Connie Haines, Lena Horne, Shirley Ross, Frances Langford and opera star Lotte Lehmann. Then Hope, Crosby and Sinatra arrived on the scene. Host Ken Carpenter and conductor Meredith Willson managed to hold the show together into a neat half hour package - even after Jerry Colonna made a surprise appearance in its closing minutes.
One of the most famous Command Performance broadcasts came about on February 15, 1945 - an original 55 minute musical comedy, Dick Tracy In B-Flat, or, For Goodness Sake Isn’t He Ever Going To Marry Tess Trueheart, with an all-star cast. Host Harry Von Zell introduced Bing Crosby as Tracy with other characters from Chester Gould’s popular comic strip played by Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, Judy Garlad, Jerry Colonna, Jimmy Durante, Frank Morgan, Cass Daley and the Andrews Sisters. Although credits weren’t given at the show’s end, one can sense the fine hand of Meredith Willson fashioning the clever songs and tricky parodies.
A departure from Command Performance’s string of comedy and melody was made in its VJ Day broadcast of August 14, 1945. This broadcast of Thanksgiving can be found on this site’s post V-J Day.
Command Performance continued well after the war until it became a victim of budget cuts in December, 1949. However, its Sixth Anniversary Show from May 29, 1948 is a one hour special that best presents its typical mix of stars with Hope, Crosby, Sinatra, Shore, Benny, Jimmy Durante, Claudette Colbert, Betty Hutton, Ronald Colman, Dennis Day and Rita Hayworth,
We’re fortunate to have scores of encores of this monumental eight year effort still available to us at www.otrrlibrary.org
(1) Louis Cowan was creator of The Quiz Kids in 1940 and created Stop The Music! with conductor Harry Salter in 1948. He entered television in 1955 with The $64,000 Question, (an extension of radio favorite Take It Or Leave It), and The $64,000 Challenge in 1956. Both shows died in the quiz show scandals of 1958 and Cowan, who had been made President of CBS Television by then, also lost his job in 1959. (See The Quiz Kids and Stop The Music! on this site.)
(2) Recordings of sports actualities would eventually be eliminated from Command Performance when AFRS was created and carried the events live.
Copyright © 2017, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
It was jokingly said that Command Performance was the most popular program that nobody ever heard - nobody except millions of Armed Forces personnel overseas who picked up its weekly shortwave broadcasts or heard transcriptions of the all-star variety show from a nearby AFRS station. It was their program and that was exactly what it was intended to be.
Command Performance was born just ten weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack when the War Department asked radio producer Louis G. Cowan, then with the Radio Division the Army’s Bureau of Public Relations, (soon the Office of War Information), to create a program for its service personnel scattered worldwide that would give them a sense of a closer touch with home. (1) Cowan’s concept was a weekly half-hour program that would answer requests sent to it by GI’s from their nearest Army Post Office or Fleet Post Office, (referred to by number on the show as “APO’s” and “FPO’s”), and present the their favorite stars who would volunteer their time and talents.
The first show was produced and transcribed in New York City on March 1, 1942. Eddie Cantor played host to Bea Wain, Danny Kaye, Dinah Shore, Merle Oberon, Bert Gordon as The Mad Russian. A unique extra on the show was the recording of Mutual’s Don Dunphy & Bill Corum describing Joe Louis’s January 9th one round knockout of Max Bear in their Heavyweight Championship fight. (2)
One of its first shows from Hollywood, from May 7, 1942, starred Betty Grable, Jack Benny, Judy Canova, Robert Benchley, Mary Martin, Phil Harris, the Harry James orchestra, Mary Livingston, Dennis Day, Eddie (Rochester) Anderson and Don Wilson. Its sports feature was Clem McCarthy calling the 1942 Kentucky Derby, run five days earlier. By this time requests were beginning to pour into the program from servicemen and women.
Stateside military brass and government officials got their first exposure to Command Performance on August 30, 1942 when a performance was transcribed at the National Theater in Washington, D.C. Bing Crosby hosted the show that featured Abbott & Costello, Kay Kyser‘s band with singer Harry Babbitt and comic Merwyn Bogue as Ish Kabibble. The broadcast is marred by several temporary technical flaws, but the audience learned what reviewers meant in claiming that $50,000 to $75,000 worth of talent performed gratis each week for Command Performance.
Time magazine called it, "The best program in wartime radio” with an average of six or seven marquee name guest stars per episode. The show recorded on September 22, 1942 before a service audience in Hollywood was typical of that description with Don Ameche, Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy, Tommy Dorsey’s band, Fanny Brice & Hanley Stafford in a Baby Snooks skit, Nelson Eddy and Vivian Blaine.
By this time Armed Forces Radio Service had been established for four months and was shipping 33 1/3 r.p.m. discs of Command Performance to its stations which would number 300 around the globe by the end of the war. The civilian audience finally heard a Command Performance broadcast on Christmas Eve, 1942, when a special one-hour recording of the program was broadcast by all four networks and many independent stations at 11:00 p.m. ET. The show, which is contained on this site’s annual Christmas In The Air post in December, was truly an all-star affair hosted by Bob Hope with Crosby, Benny, Bergen & McCarthy, Fred Allen, Red Skelton, Dinah Shore, Charles Laughton, the Andrews Sisters, Spike Jones’ City Slickers, Ethel Waters and Kay Kyser’s band featuring Ginny Simms. The program and its purpose was introduced by former network newsman Elmer Davis who had become the Director of the Office of War Information.
If anything, the program got stronger entering its second year when it moved its base to Hollywood. Vick Knight left his $700 a week position producing the Fred Allen Show to move west and produce Command Performance for no salary and Major Meredith Willson became Musical Director of AFRS then took over the conductor’s duties of Command Performance with an orchestra of top sidemen who had joined the Army.
Favorite songs and comedy routiines weren’t the only sounds requested by Command Performance listeners. As the show June 6, 1943 illustrates Betty Hutton answering requests for a bottle of beer being opened and a baby’s coo. The show also offers swing by Woody Herman‘s band, Jose Iturbi‘s classical piano solo and Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll performing an Amos & Andy routine.
Bob Hope and Bing Crosby appeared individually - more often than not, together - in dozens of Command Performance’s 415 shows over its nearly eight years. The show from September 25, 1943 when Crosby greeted Hope who had just returned from an overseas entertainment tour with Frances Langford and Tony Romano is a prime example of the two letting loose. Meanwhile, Hope sidekick Jerry Colonna took over the Command Performance host duties on February 5, 1944 in a show that featured Ethel Waters, Frances Wayne and Jim & Marian Jordan as Fibber McGee & Molly.
The show of June 3, 1944 (A) was the first of two programs scheduled to be recorded in the same evening. The script called for Hope and Crosby to “compete” with Frank Sinatra, “auditioning” to be Judy Garland’s next leading man. As was often the case with Hope and Crosby, the script was merely a suggestion and the show wound up in being ad-libbed hilarity that didn’t end - it only led into the show of June 3, 1944 (B) which was originally designed to be an “all female” show with singers Connie Haines, Lena Horne, Shirley Ross, Frances Langford and opera star Lotte Lehmann. Then Hope, Crosby and Sinatra arrived on the scene. Host Ken Carpenter and conductor Meredith Willson managed to hold the show together into a neat half hour package - even after Jerry Colonna made a surprise appearance in its closing minutes.
One of the most famous Command Performance broadcasts came about on February 15, 1945 - an original 55 minute musical comedy, Dick Tracy In B-Flat, or, For Goodness Sake Isn’t He Ever Going To Marry Tess Trueheart, with an all-star cast. Host Harry Von Zell introduced Bing Crosby as Tracy with other characters from Chester Gould’s popular comic strip played by Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, Judy Garlad, Jerry Colonna, Jimmy Durante, Frank Morgan, Cass Daley and the Andrews Sisters. Although credits weren’t given at the show’s end, one can sense the fine hand of Meredith Willson fashioning the clever songs and tricky parodies.
A departure from Command Performance’s string of comedy and melody was made in its VJ Day broadcast of August 14, 1945. This broadcast of Thanksgiving can be found on this site’s post V-J Day.
Command Performance continued well after the war until it became a victim of budget cuts in December, 1949. However, its Sixth Anniversary Show from May 29, 1948 is a one hour special that best presents its typical mix of stars with Hope, Crosby, Sinatra, Shore, Benny, Jimmy Durante, Claudette Colbert, Betty Hutton, Ronald Colman, Dennis Day and Rita Hayworth,
We’re fortunate to have scores of encores of this monumental eight year effort still available to us at www.otrrlibrary.org
(1) Louis Cowan was creator of The Quiz Kids in 1940 and created Stop The Music! with conductor Harry Salter in 1948. He entered television in 1955 with The $64,000 Question, (an extension of radio favorite Take It Or Leave It), and The $64,000 Challenge in 1956. Both shows died in the quiz show scandals of 1958 and Cowan, who had been made President of CBS Television by then, also lost his job in 1959. (See The Quiz Kids and Stop The Music! on this site.)
(2) Recordings of sports actualities would eventually be eliminated from Command Performance when AFRS was created and carried the events live.
Copyright © 2017, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
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