MGM'S LOUIS B. MAYER: "hAVE i GOT A SHOW FOR YOU!"
MGM'S GOOD NEWS
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer first recognized the promotional value of radio when its parent company, Lowes, Incorporated, bought WHN/New York City in 1928. (1) This explains why anytime a radio broadcast is depicted in an MGM film from the era, the microphone is prominently flagged WHN. The station was also an interview stop for any of the studio’s stars in town for work or play.
Taking it one step further, MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer longed for the promotion that weekly exposure a major network program could provide. Encouraged with the idea by WHN Manager Louis Sidney, Mayer’s enthusiasm heightened on August 24, 1935, when his marketing department put together an hour variety show on the Blue Network celebrating the opening of The Broadway Melody of 1936, from the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theater. The gala was hosted by the movie's star, Jack Benny, and featured cast members Frances Langford, (singing the film's hit song, You Are My Lucky Star), plus Robert Taylor, Sid Silvers and Una Merkel. (Mayer, of course, was delighted to read self-congratulatory welcoming remarks to the radio audience.)
Mayer watched over the following season as CBS programs Hollywood Hotel and Lux Radio Theater both became Top 15 shows, each heard in over three million homes a week. Then, when Lux soared into the Top Five during the 1936-37 season, Mayer pulled out all the stops and MGM openly floated its concept of a studio-based variety show to major advertisers and their agencies.
That Mayer's project would resemble Louella Parsons’ Hollywood Hotel was ignored. Instead it was sold as a lavish MGM production, feature its stars exclusively and incorporate scenes from its latest films. After much deliberation and several working titles, (Film Stars On Parade, Film Stars In Review, etc.), the title Good News was chosen with the year tagged on to emphasize its contemporaneous appeal. (2)
.
While MGM made the rounds of potential sponsors offering the glamour of its boast, More Stars Than There Are In Heaven, General Foods was watching its former Top Ten show on NBC, Thursday night's Maxwell House Showboat, lose half its ratings and sink against the competition from Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour on CBS. When MGM came calling, General Foods and its Benton & Bowles agency were eager listeners to the pitch for Good News of 1938, despite Mayer's weekly production price tag of $25,000. (3)
It was a seller’s market - MGM obtained an hour’s worth of NBC prime time publicity every week and General Foods agreed to pay for it. As the studio and sponsor’s agency busily prepared the elaborate first broadcast, the 1937-38 network season began just as the earlier one had ended with Major Bowes clobbering Maxwell House Showboat 19.5 to 8.9 in the September and October Hooperatings. But listeners were promised that big changes were coming and they did on November 4th.
Good News of 1938’s initial broadcast, also posted below, was staged at Hollywood’s El Capitan Theater and was presented like a major movie premiere with searchlights, celebrities and Hollywood Boulevard roped off in front of the theater for the chauffeured arrival of some 1,500 invited guests . Inside the theater, MGM set designers fashioned the stage for the broadcast to resemble the lobby of Nashvlle’s Maxwell House Hotel, a tribute to the sponsoring General Foods coffee.
The broadcast itself - heard on the entire NBC network plus WHN/New York City - began in true Hollywood fashion. The growl of Leo, the MGM lion, led into three minutes of trumpeted fanfares, superlatives spouted by announcer Ted Pearson and rousing choruses of Good News from Meredith Willson’s orchestra and chorus. Director Robert Z. Leonard, host for the first show, then led listeners on a fast-paced musical “tour” of the MGM studios, featuring a song and tap dance by Buddy Ebsen, George Murphy, and Eleanor Powell, followed by an interview and song from Austrian baritone Igor Gorin. The non-stop music continued with 14 year old Judy Garland belting out Everybody Sing and 50 year old Sophie Tucker’s four minute tribute to Your Broadway And Mine with in-person cameos by former vaudeville stars Gus Edwards, Irene Franklin and Trixie Friganza. And all of that was just in the first 25 minutes! .
Good News’ second half began in stark contrast with the first - four minutes of stilted platitudes read by MGM’s Louis B. Mayer and General Foods Chairman Colby Chester on behalf of Maxwell House. That was followed by a 24 minute adaptation of MGM's new musical, The Firefly, starring Jeanette MacDonald and Allan Jones which Mayer was quick to remind listeners, “…you will see in your local theaters tomorrow.” That, of course, was his purpose for getting involved with Good News in the first place - promotion.
Variety’s review of the program’s first broadcast criticized the show for its lack of comedy and, oddly enough, its scarcity of commercials. Nevertheless, the similarities between Good News and Hollywood Hotel were obvious - big name stars, variety acts and capsulized movie scene adaptations - even its director, Bill Bacher, had come to Good News from Hollywood Hotel. (4)
MGM contract actors Robert Young, Jimmy Stewart and Robert Taylor became rotating hosts of Good News beginning with its second broadcast and comedy was introduced to the show with the addition of Fanny Brice’s Baby Snooks and Hanley Stafford as her long suffering Daddy to the permanent cast. (See Baby Snooks on this site.) However, beginning with the radio show’s second broadcast, its robust title song from the stage and movies was heard for only several seconds at the beginning of the show before Meredith Willson’s orchestra and chorus segued into the romantic ballad, Always And Always. (5)
A program from this period, December 23, 1937, also posted below, with Jimmy Stewart, Fanny Brice, Hanley Stafford, semi-regular Frank Morgan and guests Nelson Eddy, Eleanor Powell, Ray Bolger and Iona Massey from the MGM musical Rosalie backed by Meredith Willson’s orchestra and chorus. The only blemishes on the program are Stewart’s laughably saccharine introduction of Louis B. Mayer and Mayer’s attempts at being an emcee with his self-serving descriptions of discovering Eddy, Massey, Bolger and Powell.
A singular departure from the show‘s format was heard on February 17, 1938, when Jack Benny, star of General Foods‘ Jello program on Sunday evening, invades Good News to monopolize the broadcast which also features Robert Taylor, Frank Morgan, Allan Jones and Maureen O’Sullivan. A highlight of this show comes near its conclusion when a routine between Benny and Brice disintegrates into a hilarious jumble of ad-libs between the two old friends.
Listeners took quickly to the movie glamour and variety offered by Good News. It finished the 1937-38 season with a 16.6 average rating, good enough for 11th place, pulling Major Bowes’ amateurs out of the Annual Top Five to sixth place with a 19.4. It was an impressive beginning .
The show’s title changed with the calendar to Good News of 1939 on its first broadcast of the 1938-39 season. That show, from September 1, 1938, also coincided with MGM’s release of Boys Town starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney who were present to enact several scenes from the film. Louis B. Mayer was also on hand, (again), to accept the gratitude of Father Edward Flanagan who founded the Omaha institution. Robert Young, who had become the show's permanent host, introduced Frank Morgan, Fanny Brice, Hanley Stafford and guest star Alice Faye. (6) Faye’s appearance is notable because she appeared to promote her latest film, Alexander’s Ragtime Band, a major Technicolor musical produced by MGM competitor 20th Century Fox.
Judy Garland’s singing stole the show from Joan Crawford’s dramatics in the Good News show from October 20, 1938. Robert Young was master of ceremonies to comics Frank Morgan, Bille Burke, Fannie Brice and Hanley Stafford, then did a turn himself with Crawford in the romantic sketch The Moon Is On Fire. But Garland’s knockout treatment of Zing! Went The Strings of My Heart stole the show.
Robert Young continued his hosting duties for MGM during the 1938-39 season. However, the show from March 30, 1939, illustrates the edge of format sameness which Good News was nearing without the constant presence of MGM’s major stars and their distinctive personalities. This show features Fanny Brice and Hanley Stafford performing another Baby Snooks routine, Frank Morgan again playing the befuddled buffoon and character actor Leo Carrillo doing a mangled English bit, then returning with Walter Pidgeon and Virginia Bruce for scenes from the studio’s melodrama, Society Lawyer.
The ratings race between Good News and Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour continued neck and neck during the season, finishing with less than a point difference between the two Top Ten programs. Good News finished ahead with a 17.3 average rating good for 6th place, edging Bowes’ 16.6 in tenth place.
It should have been a cause for celebration by MGM and General Foods - instead it precluded their divorce. The broadcast of June 29, 1939, featuring the cast of The Wizard of Oz - Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr plus the regular appearance by Fanny Brice and Hanley Stafford was a proper sendoff to the program that General Foods finally realized was too expensive for its return - even for a Top Ten show.
More than just its name changed when Good News of 1940 returned on September 7,1939. After two seasons and over $2.0 Million of General Foods' budget, it was no longer an elaborate MGM production - or carried by WHN along with NBC’s WEAF in New York City. It was simply a movie based variety show hosted by alternating genial veteran actors Walter Huston and Edward Arnold. (See Mr. President on this site.)
The Good News episode of February 22,1940, features Edward Arnold with holdovers Fanny Brice Hanley Stafford and Meredith Willson, the only cast member with the show since its beginning. Guests were semi-regulars Connee Boswell, William Gargan and Benny Rubin. Representing the movie industry were B-Movie queen Iris Meredith plus Warren William and Eric Blore performing scenes from The Lone Wolf Strikes, the second of nine Columbia quickie mysteries in which William portrayed the suave detective, Michael Lanyard, and Blore was his valet/sidekick, Jamison.
The season was produced at a fraction of the cost of MGM’s involvement but that made little difference to most listeners because the 1939-40 ratings showed that Good News lost only four-tenths of one point from its previous season. Good News slipped to 12th place a point and a half behind Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour but cheers were heard from General Foods where even bigger changes were brewing for the Maxwell House Coffee show.
It dawned on the sponsor that if Fanny Brice was the constant between the two highly rated versions of Good News, why not make her the star of the show? Taking it one step further, it was decided to virtually eliminate motion picture scenes from the program and cut it to 30 minutes. That would allow General Foods to assign Good News' second half hour to its promising new sitcom, The Aldrich Family, a sudden Top 50 entry in its freshman year on Blue. (See The Aldrich Family on this site.)
The scaled down Good News of 1941 debuted on the first Thursday in September, 1940, with Brice, Stafford, singing guests Dick Powell and Mary Martin plus the ever-present Meredith Willson‘s orchestra and chorus. Ratings averaged a solid 16 over the first three months and producers decided to co-star Brice with another popular regular from the show’s MGM years, Frank Morgan. Morgan joined the cast on January 2, 1941, and the name Good News was changed to Maxwell House Coffee Time.
The impact of Morgan’s arrival was immediate as ratings for the month zoomed to 23.4 and General Foods had the most popular hour on Thursday night’s most popular hour with ninth ranked Coffee Time at 9:00 ET leading into The Aldrich Family which had soared into seventh place at 9:30. The two shows remained Top Ten favorites for the next two seasons until Coffee Time slipped to 13th place in 1943-44.
Then, General Foods broke up the winning combination in 1944-45 in its quest to defeat Jack Benny for defecting to his new sponsor, American Tobacco. (See Lucky Gets Benny and Sunday At Seven on this site.) It was one of the most colossal blunders in Network Radio history. (See The 1944-45 Season on this site.)
The fallout from that mistake was anything but good news for Frank Morgan who fell out of the Top 25 as a solo act on Coffee Time, Worse yet, Fannie Brice dropped to 76th place on Sunday evening’s Toasties Time.
Meanwhile, Burn & Allen moved in to the 8:00 p.m. Thursday slot on NBC in 1944-45 and The Aldrich Family took over in 1945-46 for the next five seasons, but it was too late - the Top Ten days of General Foods’ Maxwell House Coffee had ground to a halt and never returned.
(1) MGM followed the lead of Warner Brothers which obtained KFWB/Los Angeles in 1925.
(2) The show’s title and its opening theme are from the 1927 Broadway musical Good News with music and lyrics by Ray Henderson, Buddy DeSilva and Lew Brown. Good News was bought and made into to a movie in 1930 by MGM which produced a second musical based on Good News starring June Allison and Peter Lawford in 1947.
(3) The trade press estimated that Maxwell House Coffee would need to double its sales to pay for Good News.
(4) Ironically, Bill Bacher was also the original writer/director of Maxwell House Showboat from 1932 to 1935.
(5) At MGM’s insistence, Always And Always, the Oscar nominated ballad from the studio’s 1937 release Mannequin, became the main theme of Good News. Nevertheless, the lyric, “Always and always I’ll go on adoring the glory and wonder of you, Always and always my love will go soaring to heaven far under the blue…” seems strangely out of place for a fast-paced network variety show.
(6) Alice Faye and singer Tony Martin were married from 1937 to 1940 which explains several of the inside jokes. After their divorce she married Phil Harris in 1941, a union that lasted until his death, 54 years later.
Copyright © 2017, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer first recognized the promotional value of radio when its parent company, Lowes, Incorporated, bought WHN/New York City in 1928. (1) This explains why anytime a radio broadcast is depicted in an MGM film from the era, the microphone is prominently flagged WHN. The station was also an interview stop for any of the studio’s stars in town for work or play.
Taking it one step further, MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer longed for the promotion that weekly exposure a major network program could provide. Encouraged with the idea by WHN Manager Louis Sidney, Mayer’s enthusiasm heightened on August 24, 1935, when his marketing department put together an hour variety show on the Blue Network celebrating the opening of The Broadway Melody of 1936, from the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theater. The gala was hosted by the movie's star, Jack Benny, and featured cast members Frances Langford, (singing the film's hit song, You Are My Lucky Star), plus Robert Taylor, Sid Silvers and Una Merkel. (Mayer, of course, was delighted to read self-congratulatory welcoming remarks to the radio audience.)
Mayer watched over the following season as CBS programs Hollywood Hotel and Lux Radio Theater both became Top 15 shows, each heard in over three million homes a week. Then, when Lux soared into the Top Five during the 1936-37 season, Mayer pulled out all the stops and MGM openly floated its concept of a studio-based variety show to major advertisers and their agencies.
That Mayer's project would resemble Louella Parsons’ Hollywood Hotel was ignored. Instead it was sold as a lavish MGM production, feature its stars exclusively and incorporate scenes from its latest films. After much deliberation and several working titles, (Film Stars On Parade, Film Stars In Review, etc.), the title Good News was chosen with the year tagged on to emphasize its contemporaneous appeal. (2)
.
While MGM made the rounds of potential sponsors offering the glamour of its boast, More Stars Than There Are In Heaven, General Foods was watching its former Top Ten show on NBC, Thursday night's Maxwell House Showboat, lose half its ratings and sink against the competition from Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour on CBS. When MGM came calling, General Foods and its Benton & Bowles agency were eager listeners to the pitch for Good News of 1938, despite Mayer's weekly production price tag of $25,000. (3)
It was a seller’s market - MGM obtained an hour’s worth of NBC prime time publicity every week and General Foods agreed to pay for it. As the studio and sponsor’s agency busily prepared the elaborate first broadcast, the 1937-38 network season began just as the earlier one had ended with Major Bowes clobbering Maxwell House Showboat 19.5 to 8.9 in the September and October Hooperatings. But listeners were promised that big changes were coming and they did on November 4th.
Good News of 1938’s initial broadcast, also posted below, was staged at Hollywood’s El Capitan Theater and was presented like a major movie premiere with searchlights, celebrities and Hollywood Boulevard roped off in front of the theater for the chauffeured arrival of some 1,500 invited guests . Inside the theater, MGM set designers fashioned the stage for the broadcast to resemble the lobby of Nashvlle’s Maxwell House Hotel, a tribute to the sponsoring General Foods coffee.
The broadcast itself - heard on the entire NBC network plus WHN/New York City - began in true Hollywood fashion. The growl of Leo, the MGM lion, led into three minutes of trumpeted fanfares, superlatives spouted by announcer Ted Pearson and rousing choruses of Good News from Meredith Willson’s orchestra and chorus. Director Robert Z. Leonard, host for the first show, then led listeners on a fast-paced musical “tour” of the MGM studios, featuring a song and tap dance by Buddy Ebsen, George Murphy, and Eleanor Powell, followed by an interview and song from Austrian baritone Igor Gorin. The non-stop music continued with 14 year old Judy Garland belting out Everybody Sing and 50 year old Sophie Tucker’s four minute tribute to Your Broadway And Mine with in-person cameos by former vaudeville stars Gus Edwards, Irene Franklin and Trixie Friganza. And all of that was just in the first 25 minutes! .
Good News’ second half began in stark contrast with the first - four minutes of stilted platitudes read by MGM’s Louis B. Mayer and General Foods Chairman Colby Chester on behalf of Maxwell House. That was followed by a 24 minute adaptation of MGM's new musical, The Firefly, starring Jeanette MacDonald and Allan Jones which Mayer was quick to remind listeners, “…you will see in your local theaters tomorrow.” That, of course, was his purpose for getting involved with Good News in the first place - promotion.
Variety’s review of the program’s first broadcast criticized the show for its lack of comedy and, oddly enough, its scarcity of commercials. Nevertheless, the similarities between Good News and Hollywood Hotel were obvious - big name stars, variety acts and capsulized movie scene adaptations - even its director, Bill Bacher, had come to Good News from Hollywood Hotel. (4)
MGM contract actors Robert Young, Jimmy Stewart and Robert Taylor became rotating hosts of Good News beginning with its second broadcast and comedy was introduced to the show with the addition of Fanny Brice’s Baby Snooks and Hanley Stafford as her long suffering Daddy to the permanent cast. (See Baby Snooks on this site.) However, beginning with the radio show’s second broadcast, its robust title song from the stage and movies was heard for only several seconds at the beginning of the show before Meredith Willson’s orchestra and chorus segued into the romantic ballad, Always And Always. (5)
A program from this period, December 23, 1937, also posted below, with Jimmy Stewart, Fanny Brice, Hanley Stafford, semi-regular Frank Morgan and guests Nelson Eddy, Eleanor Powell, Ray Bolger and Iona Massey from the MGM musical Rosalie backed by Meredith Willson’s orchestra and chorus. The only blemishes on the program are Stewart’s laughably saccharine introduction of Louis B. Mayer and Mayer’s attempts at being an emcee with his self-serving descriptions of discovering Eddy, Massey, Bolger and Powell.
A singular departure from the show‘s format was heard on February 17, 1938, when Jack Benny, star of General Foods‘ Jello program on Sunday evening, invades Good News to monopolize the broadcast which also features Robert Taylor, Frank Morgan, Allan Jones and Maureen O’Sullivan. A highlight of this show comes near its conclusion when a routine between Benny and Brice disintegrates into a hilarious jumble of ad-libs between the two old friends.
Listeners took quickly to the movie glamour and variety offered by Good News. It finished the 1937-38 season with a 16.6 average rating, good enough for 11th place, pulling Major Bowes’ amateurs out of the Annual Top Five to sixth place with a 19.4. It was an impressive beginning .
The show’s title changed with the calendar to Good News of 1939 on its first broadcast of the 1938-39 season. That show, from September 1, 1938, also coincided with MGM’s release of Boys Town starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney who were present to enact several scenes from the film. Louis B. Mayer was also on hand, (again), to accept the gratitude of Father Edward Flanagan who founded the Omaha institution. Robert Young, who had become the show's permanent host, introduced Frank Morgan, Fanny Brice, Hanley Stafford and guest star Alice Faye. (6) Faye’s appearance is notable because she appeared to promote her latest film, Alexander’s Ragtime Band, a major Technicolor musical produced by MGM competitor 20th Century Fox.
Judy Garland’s singing stole the show from Joan Crawford’s dramatics in the Good News show from October 20, 1938. Robert Young was master of ceremonies to comics Frank Morgan, Bille Burke, Fannie Brice and Hanley Stafford, then did a turn himself with Crawford in the romantic sketch The Moon Is On Fire. But Garland’s knockout treatment of Zing! Went The Strings of My Heart stole the show.
Robert Young continued his hosting duties for MGM during the 1938-39 season. However, the show from March 30, 1939, illustrates the edge of format sameness which Good News was nearing without the constant presence of MGM’s major stars and their distinctive personalities. This show features Fanny Brice and Hanley Stafford performing another Baby Snooks routine, Frank Morgan again playing the befuddled buffoon and character actor Leo Carrillo doing a mangled English bit, then returning with Walter Pidgeon and Virginia Bruce for scenes from the studio’s melodrama, Society Lawyer.
The ratings race between Good News and Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour continued neck and neck during the season, finishing with less than a point difference between the two Top Ten programs. Good News finished ahead with a 17.3 average rating good for 6th place, edging Bowes’ 16.6 in tenth place.
It should have been a cause for celebration by MGM and General Foods - instead it precluded their divorce. The broadcast of June 29, 1939, featuring the cast of The Wizard of Oz - Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr plus the regular appearance by Fanny Brice and Hanley Stafford was a proper sendoff to the program that General Foods finally realized was too expensive for its return - even for a Top Ten show.
More than just its name changed when Good News of 1940 returned on September 7,1939. After two seasons and over $2.0 Million of General Foods' budget, it was no longer an elaborate MGM production - or carried by WHN along with NBC’s WEAF in New York City. It was simply a movie based variety show hosted by alternating genial veteran actors Walter Huston and Edward Arnold. (See Mr. President on this site.)
The Good News episode of February 22,1940, features Edward Arnold with holdovers Fanny Brice Hanley Stafford and Meredith Willson, the only cast member with the show since its beginning. Guests were semi-regulars Connee Boswell, William Gargan and Benny Rubin. Representing the movie industry were B-Movie queen Iris Meredith plus Warren William and Eric Blore performing scenes from The Lone Wolf Strikes, the second of nine Columbia quickie mysteries in which William portrayed the suave detective, Michael Lanyard, and Blore was his valet/sidekick, Jamison.
The season was produced at a fraction of the cost of MGM’s involvement but that made little difference to most listeners because the 1939-40 ratings showed that Good News lost only four-tenths of one point from its previous season. Good News slipped to 12th place a point and a half behind Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour but cheers were heard from General Foods where even bigger changes were brewing for the Maxwell House Coffee show.
It dawned on the sponsor that if Fanny Brice was the constant between the two highly rated versions of Good News, why not make her the star of the show? Taking it one step further, it was decided to virtually eliminate motion picture scenes from the program and cut it to 30 minutes. That would allow General Foods to assign Good News' second half hour to its promising new sitcom, The Aldrich Family, a sudden Top 50 entry in its freshman year on Blue. (See The Aldrich Family on this site.)
The scaled down Good News of 1941 debuted on the first Thursday in September, 1940, with Brice, Stafford, singing guests Dick Powell and Mary Martin plus the ever-present Meredith Willson‘s orchestra and chorus. Ratings averaged a solid 16 over the first three months and producers decided to co-star Brice with another popular regular from the show’s MGM years, Frank Morgan. Morgan joined the cast on January 2, 1941, and the name Good News was changed to Maxwell House Coffee Time.
The impact of Morgan’s arrival was immediate as ratings for the month zoomed to 23.4 and General Foods had the most popular hour on Thursday night’s most popular hour with ninth ranked Coffee Time at 9:00 ET leading into The Aldrich Family which had soared into seventh place at 9:30. The two shows remained Top Ten favorites for the next two seasons until Coffee Time slipped to 13th place in 1943-44.
Then, General Foods broke up the winning combination in 1944-45 in its quest to defeat Jack Benny for defecting to his new sponsor, American Tobacco. (See Lucky Gets Benny and Sunday At Seven on this site.) It was one of the most colossal blunders in Network Radio history. (See The 1944-45 Season on this site.)
The fallout from that mistake was anything but good news for Frank Morgan who fell out of the Top 25 as a solo act on Coffee Time, Worse yet, Fannie Brice dropped to 76th place on Sunday evening’s Toasties Time.
Meanwhile, Burn & Allen moved in to the 8:00 p.m. Thursday slot on NBC in 1944-45 and The Aldrich Family took over in 1945-46 for the next five seasons, but it was too late - the Top Ten days of General Foods’ Maxwell House Coffee had ground to a halt and never returned.
(1) MGM followed the lead of Warner Brothers which obtained KFWB/Los Angeles in 1925.
(2) The show’s title and its opening theme are from the 1927 Broadway musical Good News with music and lyrics by Ray Henderson, Buddy DeSilva and Lew Brown. Good News was bought and made into to a movie in 1930 by MGM which produced a second musical based on Good News starring June Allison and Peter Lawford in 1947.
(3) The trade press estimated that Maxwell House Coffee would need to double its sales to pay for Good News.
(4) Ironically, Bill Bacher was also the original writer/director of Maxwell House Showboat from 1932 to 1935.
(5) At MGM’s insistence, Always And Always, the Oscar nominated ballad from the studio’s 1937 release Mannequin, became the main theme of Good News. Nevertheless, the lyric, “Always and always I’ll go on adoring the glory and wonder of you, Always and always my love will go soaring to heaven far under the blue…” seems strangely out of place for a fast-paced network variety show.
(6) Alice Faye and singer Tony Martin were married from 1937 to 1940 which explains several of the inside jokes. After their divorce she married Phil Harris in 1941, a union that lasted until his death, 54 years later.
Copyright © 2017, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
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