NBC'S BERTHA BRAINARD PUT MAGIC INTO THE MAGIC KEY'S EARLY PROGRAMS
BEST FEAT FORWARD
David Sarnoff had a mission in early 1935. The 44 year old President of RCA headed what had grown in 16 years to become the world’s greatest electronics and communications conglomerate and he wanted the world to know it. He called in his advertising agency, Lord & Thomas, which had already dubbed components of RCA-Victor radios as Magic - the Magic Eye, (tuning), Magic Brain, (noise filter), and Magic Voice, (sound).
The magic trick they pulled out of the hat this time was The Magic Key of RCA - a radio program of impressive dimensions that would both advertise and demonstrate the capabilities of RCA’s six divisions, from shortwave and direct communications equipment for industry, (and military), to RCA-Victor radios, phonographs, records and replacement parts for consumers. (1) Naturally, the program would be broadcast on the most popular of all RCA divisions, either the Red or Blue Network of NBC.
Once the idea was sketched out, Sarnoff brought in the woman who would make it happen, NBC Program Manager Bertha (Betty) Brainard. (2) The pert, 45 year old Brainard, a Red Cross ambulance driver during World War I, had risen quickly through the ranks to become Network Radio‘s highest female executive. With Sarnoff’s encouragement she had focused on broadening NBC‘s appeal to women by introducing Rudy Vallee‘s highly popular Thursday night variety shows and Gertrude Berg‘s family serial, (The Rise of) The Goldbergs.
The Magic Key was to be unlike any program Brainard had yet developed - with RCA’s facilities the world was her studio and she was told to use it. She and Sarnoff agreed that The Magic Key would be a weekly hour on the Blue Network, often billed as the more prestigious of NBC’s two chains. They further agreed that the program would be scheduled on Sunday afternoons for technical and commercial reasons. (3)
Brainerd determined that the program’s cast would have three permanent members: NBC Music Director Dr. Frank Black would conduct the network’s symphony orchestra in an overture to begin every show, booming voiced Milton Cross, host of the network’s Metropolitan Opera broadcasts would be its lead announcer and John B.Kennedy would be The Magic Key’s roving commentator, reporting from different locations every Sunday.
The program’s first of an eventual 206 performances took place at 2:00 p.m. on September 29, 1935. It lived up to its advance notices which included full page spreads in Life magazine and Variety called it “superior stuff.” (4) After Milton Cross’s sonorous opening announcements and introduction, Frank Black conducted the NBC Symphony in the rousing third act overture of Wagner’s Lohengrin. Then it was time to show off RCA’s technical abilities as David Sarnoff greeted listeners from the SS Majestic, 975 miles out in the Atlantic and operatic soprano Maria Jeritza with the Vienna Symphony performed from Vienna.
Returning stateside, RCA-Victor recording artist Paul Whiteman and his troupe presented a song from Whiteman’s new film, Thanks A Million, and news commentator John B. Kennedy gave a rambling report on the World Series and business from Detroit. The second half of the program returned to the classics, Dr. Walter Damrosch led the NBC orchestra and a chorus in an excerpt from Das Rheingold. Then, in a complete turnaround, Walt Disney with the voices of his cartoon characters appeared from Hollywood. The show’s closing minutes began with a “Trip Around The World In Two Minutes” featuring live, radioed salutes from San Francisco, Honolulu, Manila, Tokyo, Geneva and back to New York. An encore by Whiteman’s orchestra was followed by Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll who climaxed the show as Amos & Andy from Chicago recalling their early days in radio beginning in 1920.
When the whirlwind hour was over, critics asked how The Magic Key could possibly equal or top its impressive premiere broadcast. The answer was that it couldn’t. Nevertheless, it tried and often tried hard. In doing so, it produced some memorable moments for its listeners at the time and today‘s historians.
Mardi Gras was in full swing on February 23, 1936 and The Magic Key reported the festivities from New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro. A studio audience was present as the program was again front loaded with classical music - Frank Black’s orchestra opened with Tchaikovsky and was followed with the piano team of Hannah Klein & Pauline Gilbert. Screen star Gene Raymond with Sidney Fox and Alice Frost provided a change of pace with a scene from his RKO film Love On A Bet which set up Milton Cross with a gratuitous plug for RCA‘s Photophone motion picture sound recording and reproduction process. The first half hour ended with Black’s arrangement of Mardi Gras from Ferde Grofe’s Mississippi Suite and soprano Francia Whiite opened the second half with two light opera selections before the program turned to more popular and timely matters. The program‘s roving correspondent, newsman John B. Kennedy, was brought in with a report from New Orleans covering preparations for the Mardii Gras climax on Shrove Tuesday the following week.
With a healthy plug for RCA‘s shortwave capabilities, the switch was made to Rio where an unidentified reporter presented several minutes of noise he identified as the climax of the city‘s carnival celebration. Listeners who put up with this “demonstration” of RCA equipment were rewarded with the show’s highlight that came next. Bertha Brainard called on her protégé Rudy Vallee, who had a Top Ten show on NBC in 1936, to provide several forgettable songs recorded for RCA Victor with his Connecticut Yankees orchestra, Everything‘s In Rhythm With My Heart and I‘m The Fellow Who Loves You. In a 180 degree return to the classics, Black closed the program with a selection from Dvorak.
The Magic Key of March 22, 1936 is a rare broadcast because it spotlights two radio legends who are rarely heard in recordings from the Golden Age - Graham McNamee and Floyd Gibbons. Following Frank Black’s customary opening selection from the classics with the NBC orchestra, Lanny Ross, singing star of the network’s Thursday night Top Five Maxwell House Showboat, gave listeners a change of pace with an operatic solo before launching into the more familiar Dream Lover.
After an embarrassingly long switch to a nearby location, Graham McNamee reported from the Newark airport where planes were leaving with emergency supplies for the to flooded areas of Pennsylvania and New England. That segued into a garbled report from the control tower at Chicago‘s Municipal Airport but a dispatch from Charles Lamb aboard a Boeing airliner in flight is exceptionally clear. It all added up to a lengthy, not too successful demonstration of the RCA communications equipment used in planes and control towers, culminated by a preachy RCA institutional commercial by Milton Cross who is joined in this broadcast by NBC announcer Ben Grauer who handles the commercials for RCA home radios. Popular music was next on the program with Ray Noble’s RCA-Victor orchestra and the program’s customary quota of two selections, Let Yourself Go and The Touch of Your Lips
Black and the NBC orchestra opened the program’s second half with a selection by Debussy while soprano Erna Sack performed from Dresden, Germany with greater clarity than the report from Chicago‘s airport. Floyd Gibbons provides the program’s highlight 46:20 into the hour with his colorful seven-minute eyewitness description of the New England floods as he observed them from a low flying plane. (5) Black closed the broadcast with the customary classical piece.
NBC took the show on the road to Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles for its August 15, 1937, performance. It was sounding increasingly like a commercial program with the first and last words of the program from announcer Ken Carpenter were, "In radio, it’s R-C-A…all the way!" More resembling a traditional variety show, this Magic Key broadcast was hosted by Robert Benchley, in his familiar bumbling comedic mode, and featured blues singer Doris Weston, baritone Frank Forrest, the Ioani Namakueha Hawaiian Serenaders from Honolulu, the Paul Taylor chorus and film actor Walter Abel in a scene from his film Flight From Glory - enhanced, we’re told, by the RCA Photofilm process Nat Shilkrit’s orchestra replaces vacationing Frank Black’s huge ensemble for this broadcast and the change is evident from the opening number, Shilkrit’s popular ballad The First Time I Saw You composed for the film The Toast of New York.
Announcer Ken Carpenter and Benchley combined to introduce Weston who sang the torch song Bill from Showboat. Abel and co-star Whitney Bourne sleepwalk through their movie scene and Forrest finally brings a touch of the classics to the program near the end of its first half with an aria by Puccini followed by a Victor Herbert ballad. The mid-break commercial directs listeners to the new issue of Life magazine containing the first insert titled Listen, a four to eight page mini-magazine glorifying the various divisions of RCA.
The show’s second half opened with Shilkrit conducting a medly of Sigmund Romberg songs from Maytime, (also available on RCA-Victor records), followed by the Hawaiian Serenaders and their two-song contribution to the show. Carpenter then brought on Benchley in his solo spot, a five-minute “professorial” lecture of birds, (briefly interrupted midway.) After another commercial for RCA radios, Benchley delivers a straight introduction for its Old Song of The Week dramatization, Gold Will Buy Most Anything - best described as “hokey.” .
Following Frank Black’s customary opening with a classical number, The Magic Key of February 5, 1939 demonstrates an obvious cut in the program’s budget and a scaling back of its original far-flung remote broadcasts and technical wizardry. It starts with Milton Cross introducing Metropolitan Opera Soprano and RCA-Victor recording artist Margery Lawrence. Ben Grauer prepares the listener for the program’s switch to vaudeville comedy with an awkward Waiting At The Station sketch by Tom Howard & George Sheton. After the midway station break Ben Grauer brings on Sammy Kaye’s Swing & Sway orchestra and interviews the young bandleader, (“Do you mind if I mention that you record for RCA-Victor?”), before the obligatory two selections from the band’s latest releases. Milton Cross returns to introduce legendary actress Eva LeGallienne in an eight minute playlet, A Sunny Morning. Cross remains host as Lawrence is returned for two selections and Black filled out the remaining several minutes of the program after Grauer commercial for RCA-Victor radios. Magic remained in the program's title but not in its content.
The Magic Key was within six months of its cancellation with the performance of March 12, 1939. The program opened with Black conducting the orchestra in third act overture of Wagner’s Lohengrin. (Yes, the same opening number as the first broadcast in 1935, only Black’s orchestra was no longer called the NBC Symphony.) Cross then introduced Polish tenor Jan Kiepura, 37, who was immediately followed by fast-talking comedienne-singer Nancy Hamilton and Black launched into Leon Jessel‘s Parade of The Wooden Soldiers.
The uniqueness of this program is the appearance of radio’s Town Crier Alexander Woolcott with the 55 voice Hamilton (New York) College Glee Club. Woollcott’s Biblical oration and the chorale’s delivery of sacred music are both outstanding. An unexpected treat is Black’s orchestra letting go with Jerome Kern’s lilting Waltz In Swing Time. Kiepura returned with the popular Tell Me Tonight from his film, Be Mine Tonight and encored with O Sole Mio. Altogether, it an enjoyable hour of talent compatible with NBC's Monday night lineup of semi-classical programming, but there was nothing "magic" about it.
As The Magic Key wound down to its September 18, 1939 finale, it continued to stray far from its original intent to spotlight the communications and equipment divisions of RCA with their products and services. Perhaps it was the imminent threat of World War II that caused RCA to back off publicizing its capabilities. Or possibly Sarnoff and Company considered the job was accomplished after the first few years. Whatever the reason, The Magic Key remains an interesting footnote to the first decade of Network Radio’s Golden Age.
(1) Lord & Thomas identified The Magic Key’s sponsors as Radio Corporation of America and its subsidiaries RCA Manufacturing Co., RCA Communications, Inc., Radiomarine Corporation and the National Broadcasting Co.
(2) Bertha (Betty) Brainard, 1890-1946, entered broadcasting as a theater critic for WJZ/Newark in March, 1922. She became the station’s Assistant Program Manager in 1923 and its Program Manager October 1926 when RCA bought the station and moved it to New York City. She was appointed head of programming for NBC in 1928 and in 1939 was named in charge of the network's new Talent Sales Division with a staff of 40 in New York, Chicago and Hollywood. She remained with NBC until her marriage, retirement and death, all in 1946.
(3) Brainard correctly assumed that European talent and facilities would be more available for live afternoon broadcasts in the United States than for an evening program that could run well past midnight in Europe. Although Sarnoff considered The Magic Key to be an important promotional vehicle for RCA, he was loathe to block out an hour of evening time for the program - an hour that could sold to a paying sponsor or two.
(4) The technical quality of this air-check was originally quite poor, but technical consultant Mark Durenberger reprocessed the 83 year old recording to overcome many of its technical imperfections.
(5) Author, commentator and film maker Floyd Gibbons made his mark in Network Radio’s early days. He died of a heart attack shortly after the start of World War II in September, 1939, at the age of 52.
David Sarnoff had a mission in early 1935. The 44 year old President of RCA headed what had grown in 16 years to become the world’s greatest electronics and communications conglomerate and he wanted the world to know it. He called in his advertising agency, Lord & Thomas, which had already dubbed components of RCA-Victor radios as Magic - the Magic Eye, (tuning), Magic Brain, (noise filter), and Magic Voice, (sound).
The magic trick they pulled out of the hat this time was The Magic Key of RCA - a radio program of impressive dimensions that would both advertise and demonstrate the capabilities of RCA’s six divisions, from shortwave and direct communications equipment for industry, (and military), to RCA-Victor radios, phonographs, records and replacement parts for consumers. (1) Naturally, the program would be broadcast on the most popular of all RCA divisions, either the Red or Blue Network of NBC.
Once the idea was sketched out, Sarnoff brought in the woman who would make it happen, NBC Program Manager Bertha (Betty) Brainard. (2) The pert, 45 year old Brainard, a Red Cross ambulance driver during World War I, had risen quickly through the ranks to become Network Radio‘s highest female executive. With Sarnoff’s encouragement she had focused on broadening NBC‘s appeal to women by introducing Rudy Vallee‘s highly popular Thursday night variety shows and Gertrude Berg‘s family serial, (The Rise of) The Goldbergs.
The Magic Key was to be unlike any program Brainard had yet developed - with RCA’s facilities the world was her studio and she was told to use it. She and Sarnoff agreed that The Magic Key would be a weekly hour on the Blue Network, often billed as the more prestigious of NBC’s two chains. They further agreed that the program would be scheduled on Sunday afternoons for technical and commercial reasons. (3)
Brainerd determined that the program’s cast would have three permanent members: NBC Music Director Dr. Frank Black would conduct the network’s symphony orchestra in an overture to begin every show, booming voiced Milton Cross, host of the network’s Metropolitan Opera broadcasts would be its lead announcer and John B.Kennedy would be The Magic Key’s roving commentator, reporting from different locations every Sunday.
The program’s first of an eventual 206 performances took place at 2:00 p.m. on September 29, 1935. It lived up to its advance notices which included full page spreads in Life magazine and Variety called it “superior stuff.” (4) After Milton Cross’s sonorous opening announcements and introduction, Frank Black conducted the NBC Symphony in the rousing third act overture of Wagner’s Lohengrin. Then it was time to show off RCA’s technical abilities as David Sarnoff greeted listeners from the SS Majestic, 975 miles out in the Atlantic and operatic soprano Maria Jeritza with the Vienna Symphony performed from Vienna.
Returning stateside, RCA-Victor recording artist Paul Whiteman and his troupe presented a song from Whiteman’s new film, Thanks A Million, and news commentator John B. Kennedy gave a rambling report on the World Series and business from Detroit. The second half of the program returned to the classics, Dr. Walter Damrosch led the NBC orchestra and a chorus in an excerpt from Das Rheingold. Then, in a complete turnaround, Walt Disney with the voices of his cartoon characters appeared from Hollywood. The show’s closing minutes began with a “Trip Around The World In Two Minutes” featuring live, radioed salutes from San Francisco, Honolulu, Manila, Tokyo, Geneva and back to New York. An encore by Whiteman’s orchestra was followed by Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll who climaxed the show as Amos & Andy from Chicago recalling their early days in radio beginning in 1920.
When the whirlwind hour was over, critics asked how The Magic Key could possibly equal or top its impressive premiere broadcast. The answer was that it couldn’t. Nevertheless, it tried and often tried hard. In doing so, it produced some memorable moments for its listeners at the time and today‘s historians.
Mardi Gras was in full swing on February 23, 1936 and The Magic Key reported the festivities from New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro. A studio audience was present as the program was again front loaded with classical music - Frank Black’s orchestra opened with Tchaikovsky and was followed with the piano team of Hannah Klein & Pauline Gilbert. Screen star Gene Raymond with Sidney Fox and Alice Frost provided a change of pace with a scene from his RKO film Love On A Bet which set up Milton Cross with a gratuitous plug for RCA‘s Photophone motion picture sound recording and reproduction process. The first half hour ended with Black’s arrangement of Mardi Gras from Ferde Grofe’s Mississippi Suite and soprano Francia Whiite opened the second half with two light opera selections before the program turned to more popular and timely matters. The program‘s roving correspondent, newsman John B. Kennedy, was brought in with a report from New Orleans covering preparations for the Mardii Gras climax on Shrove Tuesday the following week.
With a healthy plug for RCA‘s shortwave capabilities, the switch was made to Rio where an unidentified reporter presented several minutes of noise he identified as the climax of the city‘s carnival celebration. Listeners who put up with this “demonstration” of RCA equipment were rewarded with the show’s highlight that came next. Bertha Brainard called on her protégé Rudy Vallee, who had a Top Ten show on NBC in 1936, to provide several forgettable songs recorded for RCA Victor with his Connecticut Yankees orchestra, Everything‘s In Rhythm With My Heart and I‘m The Fellow Who Loves You. In a 180 degree return to the classics, Black closed the program with a selection from Dvorak.
The Magic Key of March 22, 1936 is a rare broadcast because it spotlights two radio legends who are rarely heard in recordings from the Golden Age - Graham McNamee and Floyd Gibbons. Following Frank Black’s customary opening selection from the classics with the NBC orchestra, Lanny Ross, singing star of the network’s Thursday night Top Five Maxwell House Showboat, gave listeners a change of pace with an operatic solo before launching into the more familiar Dream Lover.
After an embarrassingly long switch to a nearby location, Graham McNamee reported from the Newark airport where planes were leaving with emergency supplies for the to flooded areas of Pennsylvania and New England. That segued into a garbled report from the control tower at Chicago‘s Municipal Airport but a dispatch from Charles Lamb aboard a Boeing airliner in flight is exceptionally clear. It all added up to a lengthy, not too successful demonstration of the RCA communications equipment used in planes and control towers, culminated by a preachy RCA institutional commercial by Milton Cross who is joined in this broadcast by NBC announcer Ben Grauer who handles the commercials for RCA home radios. Popular music was next on the program with Ray Noble’s RCA-Victor orchestra and the program’s customary quota of two selections, Let Yourself Go and The Touch of Your Lips
Black and the NBC orchestra opened the program’s second half with a selection by Debussy while soprano Erna Sack performed from Dresden, Germany with greater clarity than the report from Chicago‘s airport. Floyd Gibbons provides the program’s highlight 46:20 into the hour with his colorful seven-minute eyewitness description of the New England floods as he observed them from a low flying plane. (5) Black closed the broadcast with the customary classical piece.
NBC took the show on the road to Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles for its August 15, 1937, performance. It was sounding increasingly like a commercial program with the first and last words of the program from announcer Ken Carpenter were, "In radio, it’s R-C-A…all the way!" More resembling a traditional variety show, this Magic Key broadcast was hosted by Robert Benchley, in his familiar bumbling comedic mode, and featured blues singer Doris Weston, baritone Frank Forrest, the Ioani Namakueha Hawaiian Serenaders from Honolulu, the Paul Taylor chorus and film actor Walter Abel in a scene from his film Flight From Glory - enhanced, we’re told, by the RCA Photofilm process Nat Shilkrit’s orchestra replaces vacationing Frank Black’s huge ensemble for this broadcast and the change is evident from the opening number, Shilkrit’s popular ballad The First Time I Saw You composed for the film The Toast of New York.
Announcer Ken Carpenter and Benchley combined to introduce Weston who sang the torch song Bill from Showboat. Abel and co-star Whitney Bourne sleepwalk through their movie scene and Forrest finally brings a touch of the classics to the program near the end of its first half with an aria by Puccini followed by a Victor Herbert ballad. The mid-break commercial directs listeners to the new issue of Life magazine containing the first insert titled Listen, a four to eight page mini-magazine glorifying the various divisions of RCA.
The show’s second half opened with Shilkrit conducting a medly of Sigmund Romberg songs from Maytime, (also available on RCA-Victor records), followed by the Hawaiian Serenaders and their two-song contribution to the show. Carpenter then brought on Benchley in his solo spot, a five-minute “professorial” lecture of birds, (briefly interrupted midway.) After another commercial for RCA radios, Benchley delivers a straight introduction for its Old Song of The Week dramatization, Gold Will Buy Most Anything - best described as “hokey.” .
Following Frank Black’s customary opening with a classical number, The Magic Key of February 5, 1939 demonstrates an obvious cut in the program’s budget and a scaling back of its original far-flung remote broadcasts and technical wizardry. It starts with Milton Cross introducing Metropolitan Opera Soprano and RCA-Victor recording artist Margery Lawrence. Ben Grauer prepares the listener for the program’s switch to vaudeville comedy with an awkward Waiting At The Station sketch by Tom Howard & George Sheton. After the midway station break Ben Grauer brings on Sammy Kaye’s Swing & Sway orchestra and interviews the young bandleader, (“Do you mind if I mention that you record for RCA-Victor?”), before the obligatory two selections from the band’s latest releases. Milton Cross returns to introduce legendary actress Eva LeGallienne in an eight minute playlet, A Sunny Morning. Cross remains host as Lawrence is returned for two selections and Black filled out the remaining several minutes of the program after Grauer commercial for RCA-Victor radios. Magic remained in the program's title but not in its content.
The Magic Key was within six months of its cancellation with the performance of March 12, 1939. The program opened with Black conducting the orchestra in third act overture of Wagner’s Lohengrin. (Yes, the same opening number as the first broadcast in 1935, only Black’s orchestra was no longer called the NBC Symphony.) Cross then introduced Polish tenor Jan Kiepura, 37, who was immediately followed by fast-talking comedienne-singer Nancy Hamilton and Black launched into Leon Jessel‘s Parade of The Wooden Soldiers.
The uniqueness of this program is the appearance of radio’s Town Crier Alexander Woolcott with the 55 voice Hamilton (New York) College Glee Club. Woollcott’s Biblical oration and the chorale’s delivery of sacred music are both outstanding. An unexpected treat is Black’s orchestra letting go with Jerome Kern’s lilting Waltz In Swing Time. Kiepura returned with the popular Tell Me Tonight from his film, Be Mine Tonight and encored with O Sole Mio. Altogether, it an enjoyable hour of talent compatible with NBC's Monday night lineup of semi-classical programming, but there was nothing "magic" about it.
As The Magic Key wound down to its September 18, 1939 finale, it continued to stray far from its original intent to spotlight the communications and equipment divisions of RCA with their products and services. Perhaps it was the imminent threat of World War II that caused RCA to back off publicizing its capabilities. Or possibly Sarnoff and Company considered the job was accomplished after the first few years. Whatever the reason, The Magic Key remains an interesting footnote to the first decade of Network Radio’s Golden Age.
(1) Lord & Thomas identified The Magic Key’s sponsors as Radio Corporation of America and its subsidiaries RCA Manufacturing Co., RCA Communications, Inc., Radiomarine Corporation and the National Broadcasting Co.
(2) Bertha (Betty) Brainard, 1890-1946, entered broadcasting as a theater critic for WJZ/Newark in March, 1922. She became the station’s Assistant Program Manager in 1923 and its Program Manager October 1926 when RCA bought the station and moved it to New York City. She was appointed head of programming for NBC in 1928 and in 1939 was named in charge of the network's new Talent Sales Division with a staff of 40 in New York, Chicago and Hollywood. She remained with NBC until her marriage, retirement and death, all in 1946.
(3) Brainard correctly assumed that European talent and facilities would be more available for live afternoon broadcasts in the United States than for an evening program that could run well past midnight in Europe. Although Sarnoff considered The Magic Key to be an important promotional vehicle for RCA, he was loathe to block out an hour of evening time for the program - an hour that could sold to a paying sponsor or two.
(4) The technical quality of this air-check was originally quite poor, but technical consultant Mark Durenberger reprocessed the 83 year old recording to overcome many of its technical imperfections.
(5) Author, commentator and film maker Floyd Gibbons made his mark in Network Radio’s early days. He died of a heart attack shortly after the start of World War II in September, 1939, at the age of 52.
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