NILA MACK WITH SOME OF HER "LET'S PRETEND" FANS.
LET'S PRETEND!
Cream of Wheat is so good to eat
Yes, we have it every day.
We sing this song, “It will make us strong
And it makes us shout, HOORAY!”
It’s good for growing babies,
And grown-up’s too, to eat.
For all the fam’ly’s breakfast
You can’t beat Cream of Wheat!
There was hardly a kid in America who couldn’t parrot the Cream of Wheat jingle, sung every Saturday morning for nine years at the beginning of Let’s Pretend on CBS. It was the weekly introduction to Nila Mack's land of gentle make-believe in the Network Radio world filled with news reports of actual carnage and programs of fictional mayhem. (1) For 30 years the childless widow educated scores of talented children new to radio’s dramatic arts while they entertained millions more interpreting her scripts based on classic fairy tales and fables.
Nila Mack, was herself an only child, born on October 24, 1891, to an Arkansas City, Kansas couple. The precocious youngster took to the stage at an early age and her mother took an active role in managing her budding career when she was widowed in 1906. (2) Nila was a multi-talented teenage ingenue with a touring theater company when she met actor-writer Roy Briant. Over time on the road, romance blossomed and the couple married in 1913. Both Roy and Nila were writers and contributed material for their subsequent vaudeville act, keeping it fresh and popular for several years.
But nearing the end of the decade vaudeville began to die and the act split up. Roy gravitated to Hollywood where he became a screenwriter for Paramount Studios. Meanwhile, Nila continued to pursue her stage career which led to New York City. Her arrival coincided with the complete collapse of vaudeville and the subsequent birth of Network Radio. Nevertheless, she began to build her reputation as a Broadway actress and writer. Then, she received word that Roy was seriously ill in Los Angeles and she left to be with him. He died in 1927 and the young widow returned to New York to resume her budding career. During this period Nila also applied for a copywriting job at the new Columbia Broadcasting System. But early in 1930 she again dropped everything - this time to tend to her seriously ill mother back in Arkansas City. Ironically, it was in that small Kansas town where her life’s career in radio would begin.
To support her mother and herself, Nila’s six-months in Arkansas City were spent in the employ of its new radio station, WEEB. The experience was her “basic training” for radio where she wrote copy, created programs, performed in some, directed others, twisted dials and tackled every job required inside a small market station short of detailed technical tasks. The hours were long and the pay was small but she picked up broadcasting techniques and learned the lingo in preparation for her shot at radio in the big time. It came sooner than she thought.
CBS tracked Nila down in July and offered the copywriting applicant the totally unexpected job as Director of CBS Children’s Programs - a bigger job at a bigger salary than she had ever hoped to attract. How the network ever thought she would be compatible with children’s programs was anybody’s guess. Nevertheless, she left her mother in the care of her aunt and returned to New York and her new job on August 11, 1930. At noon five days later, on Saturday, August 16, 1930, Nila Mack took over as Director of The Adventures of Helen & Mary, the half-hour children’s fantasy show created by her predecessor, Yolanda Langworthy, in 1929.
Helen & Mary’s two young leads, Patricia Ryan, age eight, and seven year old Gwen Davies, (fka Estelle Levy), plus twelve year old Donald Hughes from the original cast furthered their new producer-director’s idea of creating a show for children by children. Nine year old Vivian Block joined Nila's fledgling juvenile stock company in 1931, Albert Aley was 13 when he first appeared in 1932 as was Michael O‘Day in his 1933 debut. Others who joined the company in 1933 were eleven year old Miriam Wolfe and Daisy Alden, age ten.
Nila Mack continued juggling auditions of young players while rewriting, producing and directing weekly episodes of Helen & Mary - all the while planning the introduction of a new series which she was designing to replace it based on classic fairy tales and featuring a cast consisting solely of juveniles. She called it Let’s Pretend. Her three years of planning finally debuted on Saturday, March 24, 1934.
No one could have possibly known on that March morning when Let’s Pretend first presented Nila Mack’s adaptation of Cinderella that the program would extend on CBS for the next 20 years and 1,115 broadcasts to October 23, 1954. (3)
Former cast member Arthur Anderson authored a comprehensive history of the show, Let’s Pretend & The Golden Age of Radio. The second edition, published in 2004, estimates that 180 children appeared on the program over its 20 years. But the number of performers on each week’s broadcast seldom exceeded nine and that included the “regulars” whom Nila Mack learned to rely upon when rehearsal time was short in the program’s first lean decade without a sponsor. Anderson joined the program in 1936 when he was 14 and, with time out for World War II military service, remained until he was 30. (4) By that time, listeners were used to hearing another Nila Mack innovation, the performers on each broadcast identifying themselves at the end of each show. It was her way of stressing the ensemble, (or family), feeling that she wanted her cast to reflect.
Her approach to directing her juvenile casts was one of a friend. As she told Anderson, “I needed to make the children see that I was not their teacher nor not yet their mother. I was one of them. We were going to have a grand time - a thrilling time - bringing fairy tales to life.” Besides, in those first years the kids were each paid $3.50 a broadcast! (5)
Those chosen to appear on the Saturday show received “The Call” from Mack’s office during the week to alert them and make sure they were available. In the sustaining days rehearsals were held on Saturday mornings with the cast around a large table, boys on one side, girls on the other. Nila Mack sat between them with her ever-present pack of Kool Menthol cigarettes. (She smoked over two packs a day.)
As Anderson observed, “She did not give us acting lessons or teach theory. That wasn’t her job. She had a show to put on and very little rehearsal time in which to do it. She gave us directions on how to be a better princess, giant, enchanted frog or wicked witch. We learned by doing and any child who proved incapable of learning wasn’t called any more….Nila made real actors out of many of us who otherwise would have been doomed to quick fadeouts after brief careers as ‘cute kiddies.’”
Let’s Pretend also connected with its audience. A single announcement on the program in August, 1938 offering a $10 prize for the best response to, “Why I listen to Let’s Pretend…” drew over 5,300 entries. A thousand fan letters and program requests per week was normal and Mack’s office used teenage cast members Gwen Davies, Daisey Alden, Miriam Wolfe and Albert Aley to help handle the mail. The program also became a favorite of popularity polls conducted by newspapers and magazines, winning multiple awards from Radio Guide, Radio Daily, Motion Picture Daily, Scripps-Howard Newspapers, and the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award, As a reward to its creator, CBS ordered the program to be introduced every week as Nila Mack’s Let’s Pretend.
Two episodes of the program are posted from this period. On August 29. 1942, The Pretenders performed The Little Mermaid and on December 19, 1942, it was Prince Gigi & The Magic Ring - two of the 130 that Nila Mack wrote or adapted for Let‘s Pretend.
Jerome Lawrence reports her blunt reply to his question, “How do you write for children?” in his 1944 volume, Off Mike - Radio By The Nation’s Top Writers: “I don’t write for children! When I write it’s for people of all ages who enjoy fun and fantasy. No picture comes to mind of pigtails, towheads and hair ribbons, but rather of the whole family listening and each one finding something in the story for his own personal enjoyment.”
Like The Advetures of Helen & Mary, Let’s Pretend was primarily a mid-to-late Saturday morning half-hour, bounced around like many sustaining programs of the era. (6) Then everything stabilized and changed for the better on September 25, 1943, when Minneapolis-based Cream of Wheat, (“The Great American Family Cereal”), through its ad agency, Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn, (BBDO), assumed sponsorship of the show and Let‘s Pretend became anchored on Saturday mornings at 11:05 on CBS. (7)
Two immediate changes took place. First, veteran announcer and radio actor Bill Adams, 56, became Uncle Bill, the program’s host, narrator and Cream of Wheat spokesman. (8) Secondly, when Let’s Pretend became a commercial program, its performers moved up the AFRA pay scale to earn $47.30 per broadcast. (9)
This is often considered the peak of Let’s Pretend’s run on CBS. Nila Mack’s stock company of young actors were becoming well-paid professionals who knew what their director wanted and they delivered it. The first archived broadcast under Cream of Wheat sponsorship posted here is The Pretenders’ performance of Jack & The Beanstalk from October 26, 1946. Bluebeard followed on June 21, 1947 and Rapunzel on July 19, 1947. Their repeat performance of Cinderella is from September 27, 1947.
Let’s Pretend’s popularity remained strong throughout this sponsored period although its audience ratings didn’t reflect it. The best rating it could muster was during the 1946-47 season when it registered a 6.5 Hooperating which would have tied for 120th in the annual rankings. However, Let’s Pretend was broadcast only once a week on CBS at 11:05 a.m. on Saturday morning - Eastern time. That means it aired on the West Coast at 8:05 a.m., before Hooper's polling of listeners by telephone began for the day.
Nevertheless, the program's mail count remained high, sales of Cream of Wheat were strong and the 1944 production budget for Let’s Pretend was only $2,000 a week. It was a bargain for the sponsor and agency BBD&O when compared to the $3,000 paid by Pillsbury and Armstrong-Cork for their Saturday afternoon half-hour dramas on CBS, Grand Central Station and Armstrong Theater. (10)
The 1940’s were indeed Let’s Pretend’s prime years. Nila Mack was now in her fifties and many in her troupe of Pretenders were now in their twenties, several of whom were married with children of their own. "Miss Mack" was now "Nila" fo most of them, the young women seeking domestic advice and the men eager to share the latest joke with their employer who more than once showed sly appreciation for humor not fit for broadcast. (11)
One custom from the early days continued, however, the annual Christmas party at Nila Mack's apartment for the cast and crew of the program. For the 1945 party, Pretender Don Hughes wrote a ten-minute ribald parody of Let’s Pretend which the cast recorded that surprised and delighted her. As remembered by Arthur Anderson, it opened with Gwen Davies and Sybil Trent singing the familiar show opening with these new lyrics:
Cream of Wheat may be good to eat
But we really couldn't say.
We've sung this song for so goddam long
That it makes us shout, "OI VEY!"
Perhaps the babies love it,
The sponsor does, we know.
So on and on we sing it,
To keep our jobs, you know.
That was followed by Uncle Bill Adams attempting to get the audience to shout the name of their favorite cereal, but all he gets in reponse is “Wheaties!” and “Ralston!” Disgusted, Adams snarls, “All right, you little bastards, just for that, no commercial!” The kids cheer at that and the story of Snow White Cinderella (or) Sleeping Beauty & The Beast unfolds, only to wind up with the hero and heroine between Sleeping Beauty’s sheets. Anderson remembers Nila Mack’s howling reaction when recognizing the voices of Gwen, Sybil, Meriam Wolfe, Jack Grimes, Albert Aley, Bob Readick, Patricia Ryan and Bill Adams as the record spun. She understood that it was her family laughing at itself and she loved her family.
The Cream of Wheat sponsorship of Let’s Pretend went on for another seven years. A show from this period is another of its familiar classics, Hansel & Gretel, broadcast on November 17, 1951. Then, as television began cutting into its Saturday morning audience, Cream of Wheat cancelled the show on December 6, 1952. Nila was prepared for the inevitable.- she prepared a new opening theme for Gwen & Sybil to sing in the old, familiar melody:
Hello! Hello! Come on let’s go!
It’s time for Let’s Pretend!
The gang’s all here and standing near
Is Uncle Bill, your friend.
The story is exciting
From its start and to the end
So everyone come join the fun
Come on and Let’s Pretend!
The cast was also aware that Let’s Pretend’s new sustaining status meant a cut in pay, back to $43 a show. What no one was prepared for was CBS removing the show from its established time period of nearly a decade and pushing it into Saturday afternoon - but only when it didn’t conflict with sports broadcasts. That was the unkindest cut of all. Nevertheless, on Saturday, December 13th, one week after Cream of Wheat cancelled, Let’s Pretend’s timeslot on CBS was given to Grand Central Station while Uncle Bill and The Pretenders aired at 2:30 p.m.
Nila Mack was found dead in her apartment five weeks later on January 20th, the victim of a heart attack. Theater great Howard Lindsay and his wife Dorothy Stickney were her closest friends. At Nila’s funeral Lindsay read the following lines from a note she had enclosed for them with her will:
And if at last you should get
To the pearly gate
Let me know you’re coming
And I’ll bake a cake.
Her body was buried in her hometown of Arkansas City, Kansas beside her parents. But the show continued over CBS for another 23 months. And, as this performance of Robin Hood from January 9, 1954, proves, the show was still collecting awards and Nila Mack’s name lived on as its creator.
(1) The jingle which served as the Let’s Pretend theme was based on the second movement of Fairy Tale by Czech composer Karel Komzak, (1850-1905). The lyric was written by Nila Mack and sung by cast members Gwen Davis and Sybil Trent.
(2) The family name was Mac. Nila added the “k” early in her stage career.
(3) During the Let’s Pretend’s early years, Nila Mack also worked on a number of CBS programs outside of the children’s realm. One example of her comedic writing and direction is posted here: The Columbia Workshop’s production of The Great Microphone Mystery from February 29, 1940.
(4) Others who joined Nila Mack’s Let’s Pretend cast of regular performers in the pre-war years were nine year old Sybil Trent in 1935; Jack Grimes, eleven, Kingsley Colton, 13, and Betty Jane Tyler, nine, all in 1937. Bill Lipton, twelve, followed in 1938, and Bob Readick, 13, joined them in 1939.
(5) The talent fee for Let’s Pretend was raised to $5.00 per broadcast in 1938 and $10.00 in 1940. The show was ruled a “kiddie show,” and exempt from the AFRA union minimum for sustaining network shows, $21 in 1940.
(6) Let’s Pretend became a dinnertime feature on Monday (or Tuesday) and Thursday nights on CBS from January, 1938, until April, 1939, in an effort to prove to the FCC that the network took its commitment to quality children‘s programs seriously.
(7) Cream of Wheat, is a brand of farina, (or porridge), made from ground wheat semolina to the same consistency as corn meal. The breakfast food was first developed by grain millers in Grand Forks, North Dakota, in 1893. Production was moved to Minneapolis in 1897 where it remained until the company was sold to the Nabisco Division of Kraft Foods in 2002. Cream of Wheat is still produced today by B&G Foods which bought the brand in 2007.
(8) Bill Adams’ presence as narrator made Nila Mack’s script editing job easier because Let’s Pretend lost five minutes of its time to a CBS newscast beginning in April, 1943, and another three minutes were given to Cream of Wheat commercials. As she explained, “Five minutes of dialogue could be condensed into 30 second of narration.
(9) The AFRA union scale for a 30 minute commercial broadcast, (including up to four hours rehearsal time), increased to $71.25 in 1947.
(10) Cream of Wheat stood out among cereal manufacturers sponsoring radio programs because it never offered a premium for a proof of purchase on its commercials. (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
(11) Anderson relates one incident from an early dress rehearsal when Miss Mack instructed a young “lady in waiting” on addressing royalty: “No dear, it’s not MAD-am, it’s Ma-DAM. That’s DAM, like in God…”
Copyright © 2019, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
Cream of Wheat is so good to eat
Yes, we have it every day.
We sing this song, “It will make us strong
And it makes us shout, HOORAY!”
It’s good for growing babies,
And grown-up’s too, to eat.
For all the fam’ly’s breakfast
You can’t beat Cream of Wheat!
There was hardly a kid in America who couldn’t parrot the Cream of Wheat jingle, sung every Saturday morning for nine years at the beginning of Let’s Pretend on CBS. It was the weekly introduction to Nila Mack's land of gentle make-believe in the Network Radio world filled with news reports of actual carnage and programs of fictional mayhem. (1) For 30 years the childless widow educated scores of talented children new to radio’s dramatic arts while they entertained millions more interpreting her scripts based on classic fairy tales and fables.
Nila Mack, was herself an only child, born on October 24, 1891, to an Arkansas City, Kansas couple. The precocious youngster took to the stage at an early age and her mother took an active role in managing her budding career when she was widowed in 1906. (2) Nila was a multi-talented teenage ingenue with a touring theater company when she met actor-writer Roy Briant. Over time on the road, romance blossomed and the couple married in 1913. Both Roy and Nila were writers and contributed material for their subsequent vaudeville act, keeping it fresh and popular for several years.
But nearing the end of the decade vaudeville began to die and the act split up. Roy gravitated to Hollywood where he became a screenwriter for Paramount Studios. Meanwhile, Nila continued to pursue her stage career which led to New York City. Her arrival coincided with the complete collapse of vaudeville and the subsequent birth of Network Radio. Nevertheless, she began to build her reputation as a Broadway actress and writer. Then, she received word that Roy was seriously ill in Los Angeles and she left to be with him. He died in 1927 and the young widow returned to New York to resume her budding career. During this period Nila also applied for a copywriting job at the new Columbia Broadcasting System. But early in 1930 she again dropped everything - this time to tend to her seriously ill mother back in Arkansas City. Ironically, it was in that small Kansas town where her life’s career in radio would begin.
To support her mother and herself, Nila’s six-months in Arkansas City were spent in the employ of its new radio station, WEEB. The experience was her “basic training” for radio where she wrote copy, created programs, performed in some, directed others, twisted dials and tackled every job required inside a small market station short of detailed technical tasks. The hours were long and the pay was small but she picked up broadcasting techniques and learned the lingo in preparation for her shot at radio in the big time. It came sooner than she thought.
CBS tracked Nila down in July and offered the copywriting applicant the totally unexpected job as Director of CBS Children’s Programs - a bigger job at a bigger salary than she had ever hoped to attract. How the network ever thought she would be compatible with children’s programs was anybody’s guess. Nevertheless, she left her mother in the care of her aunt and returned to New York and her new job on August 11, 1930. At noon five days later, on Saturday, August 16, 1930, Nila Mack took over as Director of The Adventures of Helen & Mary, the half-hour children’s fantasy show created by her predecessor, Yolanda Langworthy, in 1929.
Helen & Mary’s two young leads, Patricia Ryan, age eight, and seven year old Gwen Davies, (fka Estelle Levy), plus twelve year old Donald Hughes from the original cast furthered their new producer-director’s idea of creating a show for children by children. Nine year old Vivian Block joined Nila's fledgling juvenile stock company in 1931, Albert Aley was 13 when he first appeared in 1932 as was Michael O‘Day in his 1933 debut. Others who joined the company in 1933 were eleven year old Miriam Wolfe and Daisy Alden, age ten.
Nila Mack continued juggling auditions of young players while rewriting, producing and directing weekly episodes of Helen & Mary - all the while planning the introduction of a new series which she was designing to replace it based on classic fairy tales and featuring a cast consisting solely of juveniles. She called it Let’s Pretend. Her three years of planning finally debuted on Saturday, March 24, 1934.
No one could have possibly known on that March morning when Let’s Pretend first presented Nila Mack’s adaptation of Cinderella that the program would extend on CBS for the next 20 years and 1,115 broadcasts to October 23, 1954. (3)
Former cast member Arthur Anderson authored a comprehensive history of the show, Let’s Pretend & The Golden Age of Radio. The second edition, published in 2004, estimates that 180 children appeared on the program over its 20 years. But the number of performers on each week’s broadcast seldom exceeded nine and that included the “regulars” whom Nila Mack learned to rely upon when rehearsal time was short in the program’s first lean decade without a sponsor. Anderson joined the program in 1936 when he was 14 and, with time out for World War II military service, remained until he was 30. (4) By that time, listeners were used to hearing another Nila Mack innovation, the performers on each broadcast identifying themselves at the end of each show. It was her way of stressing the ensemble, (or family), feeling that she wanted her cast to reflect.
Her approach to directing her juvenile casts was one of a friend. As she told Anderson, “I needed to make the children see that I was not their teacher nor not yet their mother. I was one of them. We were going to have a grand time - a thrilling time - bringing fairy tales to life.” Besides, in those first years the kids were each paid $3.50 a broadcast! (5)
Those chosen to appear on the Saturday show received “The Call” from Mack’s office during the week to alert them and make sure they were available. In the sustaining days rehearsals were held on Saturday mornings with the cast around a large table, boys on one side, girls on the other. Nila Mack sat between them with her ever-present pack of Kool Menthol cigarettes. (She smoked over two packs a day.)
As Anderson observed, “She did not give us acting lessons or teach theory. That wasn’t her job. She had a show to put on and very little rehearsal time in which to do it. She gave us directions on how to be a better princess, giant, enchanted frog or wicked witch. We learned by doing and any child who proved incapable of learning wasn’t called any more….Nila made real actors out of many of us who otherwise would have been doomed to quick fadeouts after brief careers as ‘cute kiddies.’”
Let’s Pretend also connected with its audience. A single announcement on the program in August, 1938 offering a $10 prize for the best response to, “Why I listen to Let’s Pretend…” drew over 5,300 entries. A thousand fan letters and program requests per week was normal and Mack’s office used teenage cast members Gwen Davies, Daisey Alden, Miriam Wolfe and Albert Aley to help handle the mail. The program also became a favorite of popularity polls conducted by newspapers and magazines, winning multiple awards from Radio Guide, Radio Daily, Motion Picture Daily, Scripps-Howard Newspapers, and the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award, As a reward to its creator, CBS ordered the program to be introduced every week as Nila Mack’s Let’s Pretend.
Two episodes of the program are posted from this period. On August 29. 1942, The Pretenders performed The Little Mermaid and on December 19, 1942, it was Prince Gigi & The Magic Ring - two of the 130 that Nila Mack wrote or adapted for Let‘s Pretend.
Jerome Lawrence reports her blunt reply to his question, “How do you write for children?” in his 1944 volume, Off Mike - Radio By The Nation’s Top Writers: “I don’t write for children! When I write it’s for people of all ages who enjoy fun and fantasy. No picture comes to mind of pigtails, towheads and hair ribbons, but rather of the whole family listening and each one finding something in the story for his own personal enjoyment.”
Like The Advetures of Helen & Mary, Let’s Pretend was primarily a mid-to-late Saturday morning half-hour, bounced around like many sustaining programs of the era. (6) Then everything stabilized and changed for the better on September 25, 1943, when Minneapolis-based Cream of Wheat, (“The Great American Family Cereal”), through its ad agency, Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn, (BBDO), assumed sponsorship of the show and Let‘s Pretend became anchored on Saturday mornings at 11:05 on CBS. (7)
Two immediate changes took place. First, veteran announcer and radio actor Bill Adams, 56, became Uncle Bill, the program’s host, narrator and Cream of Wheat spokesman. (8) Secondly, when Let’s Pretend became a commercial program, its performers moved up the AFRA pay scale to earn $47.30 per broadcast. (9)
This is often considered the peak of Let’s Pretend’s run on CBS. Nila Mack’s stock company of young actors were becoming well-paid professionals who knew what their director wanted and they delivered it. The first archived broadcast under Cream of Wheat sponsorship posted here is The Pretenders’ performance of Jack & The Beanstalk from October 26, 1946. Bluebeard followed on June 21, 1947 and Rapunzel on July 19, 1947. Their repeat performance of Cinderella is from September 27, 1947.
Let’s Pretend’s popularity remained strong throughout this sponsored period although its audience ratings didn’t reflect it. The best rating it could muster was during the 1946-47 season when it registered a 6.5 Hooperating which would have tied for 120th in the annual rankings. However, Let’s Pretend was broadcast only once a week on CBS at 11:05 a.m. on Saturday morning - Eastern time. That means it aired on the West Coast at 8:05 a.m., before Hooper's polling of listeners by telephone began for the day.
Nevertheless, the program's mail count remained high, sales of Cream of Wheat were strong and the 1944 production budget for Let’s Pretend was only $2,000 a week. It was a bargain for the sponsor and agency BBD&O when compared to the $3,000 paid by Pillsbury and Armstrong-Cork for their Saturday afternoon half-hour dramas on CBS, Grand Central Station and Armstrong Theater. (10)
The 1940’s were indeed Let’s Pretend’s prime years. Nila Mack was now in her fifties and many in her troupe of Pretenders were now in their twenties, several of whom were married with children of their own. "Miss Mack" was now "Nila" fo most of them, the young women seeking domestic advice and the men eager to share the latest joke with their employer who more than once showed sly appreciation for humor not fit for broadcast. (11)
One custom from the early days continued, however, the annual Christmas party at Nila Mack's apartment for the cast and crew of the program. For the 1945 party, Pretender Don Hughes wrote a ten-minute ribald parody of Let’s Pretend which the cast recorded that surprised and delighted her. As remembered by Arthur Anderson, it opened with Gwen Davies and Sybil Trent singing the familiar show opening with these new lyrics:
Cream of Wheat may be good to eat
But we really couldn't say.
We've sung this song for so goddam long
That it makes us shout, "OI VEY!"
Perhaps the babies love it,
The sponsor does, we know.
So on and on we sing it,
To keep our jobs, you know.
That was followed by Uncle Bill Adams attempting to get the audience to shout the name of their favorite cereal, but all he gets in reponse is “Wheaties!” and “Ralston!” Disgusted, Adams snarls, “All right, you little bastards, just for that, no commercial!” The kids cheer at that and the story of Snow White Cinderella (or) Sleeping Beauty & The Beast unfolds, only to wind up with the hero and heroine between Sleeping Beauty’s sheets. Anderson remembers Nila Mack’s howling reaction when recognizing the voices of Gwen, Sybil, Meriam Wolfe, Jack Grimes, Albert Aley, Bob Readick, Patricia Ryan and Bill Adams as the record spun. She understood that it was her family laughing at itself and she loved her family.
The Cream of Wheat sponsorship of Let’s Pretend went on for another seven years. A show from this period is another of its familiar classics, Hansel & Gretel, broadcast on November 17, 1951. Then, as television began cutting into its Saturday morning audience, Cream of Wheat cancelled the show on December 6, 1952. Nila was prepared for the inevitable.- she prepared a new opening theme for Gwen & Sybil to sing in the old, familiar melody:
Hello! Hello! Come on let’s go!
It’s time for Let’s Pretend!
The gang’s all here and standing near
Is Uncle Bill, your friend.
The story is exciting
From its start and to the end
So everyone come join the fun
Come on and Let’s Pretend!
The cast was also aware that Let’s Pretend’s new sustaining status meant a cut in pay, back to $43 a show. What no one was prepared for was CBS removing the show from its established time period of nearly a decade and pushing it into Saturday afternoon - but only when it didn’t conflict with sports broadcasts. That was the unkindest cut of all. Nevertheless, on Saturday, December 13th, one week after Cream of Wheat cancelled, Let’s Pretend’s timeslot on CBS was given to Grand Central Station while Uncle Bill and The Pretenders aired at 2:30 p.m.
Nila Mack was found dead in her apartment five weeks later on January 20th, the victim of a heart attack. Theater great Howard Lindsay and his wife Dorothy Stickney were her closest friends. At Nila’s funeral Lindsay read the following lines from a note she had enclosed for them with her will:
And if at last you should get
To the pearly gate
Let me know you’re coming
And I’ll bake a cake.
Her body was buried in her hometown of Arkansas City, Kansas beside her parents. But the show continued over CBS for another 23 months. And, as this performance of Robin Hood from January 9, 1954, proves, the show was still collecting awards and Nila Mack’s name lived on as its creator.
(1) The jingle which served as the Let’s Pretend theme was based on the second movement of Fairy Tale by Czech composer Karel Komzak, (1850-1905). The lyric was written by Nila Mack and sung by cast members Gwen Davis and Sybil Trent.
(2) The family name was Mac. Nila added the “k” early in her stage career.
(3) During the Let’s Pretend’s early years, Nila Mack also worked on a number of CBS programs outside of the children’s realm. One example of her comedic writing and direction is posted here: The Columbia Workshop’s production of The Great Microphone Mystery from February 29, 1940.
(4) Others who joined Nila Mack’s Let’s Pretend cast of regular performers in the pre-war years were nine year old Sybil Trent in 1935; Jack Grimes, eleven, Kingsley Colton, 13, and Betty Jane Tyler, nine, all in 1937. Bill Lipton, twelve, followed in 1938, and Bob Readick, 13, joined them in 1939.
(5) The talent fee for Let’s Pretend was raised to $5.00 per broadcast in 1938 and $10.00 in 1940. The show was ruled a “kiddie show,” and exempt from the AFRA union minimum for sustaining network shows, $21 in 1940.
(6) Let’s Pretend became a dinnertime feature on Monday (or Tuesday) and Thursday nights on CBS from January, 1938, until April, 1939, in an effort to prove to the FCC that the network took its commitment to quality children‘s programs seriously.
(7) Cream of Wheat, is a brand of farina, (or porridge), made from ground wheat semolina to the same consistency as corn meal. The breakfast food was first developed by grain millers in Grand Forks, North Dakota, in 1893. Production was moved to Minneapolis in 1897 where it remained until the company was sold to the Nabisco Division of Kraft Foods in 2002. Cream of Wheat is still produced today by B&G Foods which bought the brand in 2007.
(8) Bill Adams’ presence as narrator made Nila Mack’s script editing job easier because Let’s Pretend lost five minutes of its time to a CBS newscast beginning in April, 1943, and another three minutes were given to Cream of Wheat commercials. As she explained, “Five minutes of dialogue could be condensed into 30 second of narration.
(9) The AFRA union scale for a 30 minute commercial broadcast, (including up to four hours rehearsal time), increased to $71.25 in 1947.
(10) Cream of Wheat stood out among cereal manufacturers sponsoring radio programs because it never offered a premium for a proof of purchase on its commercials. (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
(11) Anderson relates one incident from an early dress rehearsal when Miss Mack instructed a young “lady in waiting” on addressing royalty: “No dear, it’s not MAD-am, it’s Ma-DAM. That’s DAM, like in God…”
Copyright © 2019, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
| lets_pretend___8-29-42.mp3 |
| lets_pretend___12-19-42.mp3 |
| lets_pretend__10-26-46.mp3 |
| lets_pretend__6-21-47.mp3 |
| lets_pretend__7-19-47.mp3 |
| lets_pretend__9-27-47.mp3 |
| lets_pretend__11-17-51.mp3 |
| col_workshop__2-29-40.mp3 |
| lets_pretend__1-09-54.mp3 |