Berowne's 215

(Also for Three Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "N" is for "new")

From time to time, I’ve paused in my weekly quiz questions to write a little about some of my life experiences.  Folks have been kind enough to show interest in such posts, and Tess K. has been tolerant and welcoming – so here’s another.

Around the year 1950 television was just starting out as a mass medium.  And Berowne was just starting out as an announcer.   The fabulous salaries for tv announcers, by the way, were very much in the future. 

Here is a picture, taken aeons ago, of young Berowne, struggling to make a living on a new – also young, also struggling – television station.  As you can see, there was a sort of perversion of production values; it looked like they had just set up a flat and hung someone’s shower curtain on it.  That was it for set décor.

The TV show I emceed was titled the Weekly Starshine Theatre and it was a fairly grandiose name for what was usually an old cowboy movie, featuring old cowboys, which had been produced back in the days when a new and fascinating element – sound – had only recently burst upon the film industry.

Not many cinema folk of that early day understood much about sound equipment, which was why the actors in a film carried on impassioned conversations by shouting at each other, hoping they’d be heard by the mikes hidden behind flower pots and such.

But I couldn’t have cared less.  I was on TV.  Not many could say that.  Not many were watching, either.

The sponsor was a famous grocery chain and their ad agency had the idea that, in addition to dazzling our audiences with topflight entertainment, like wornout old movies, there would also be a weekly “live” feature.  In the moments when the film paused, I was to introduce each week a different actual grocery-store manager of the sponsor and chat with him on camera.  Who wouldn’t be interested in that?

So there I was, standing with that first week’s store manager, Herman Schlumpfbinder or something like that.  He had been given lines to memorize:  “Say, that was a corking good film,” he was to recite.  “It’s great to see the fine old movies!” 

I wondered which copywriter in the ad agency was responsible for the phrase “corking good.”  Who talked like that?  But I said nothing, thinking it was possibly some sort of secret store manager code that I didn’t understand.

Things did not go smoothly; they rarely did in those days.
 

I think it’s hard for folks today to realize what tv meant in that early era. It was all so new.  As we waited for our cue I suddenly realized that Mr. Schlumpf-etc. did not look at alI well.  I could see that this magical new thing called television was just too much for him; he was overcome with stage fright.  He was clearly shaking and sweat was visibly pouring off him in rivulets.

I could have lived with that, but his condition affected me.  I feared what he might say or do and how I might have to respond.  I began shaking myself. 

Finally the cinematic masterpiece that was on the screen paused and I introduced my guest.  For a while he just stood there, staring at the camera, shaking and sweating and making odd little noises.  Then he pulled himself together and, suddenly animated, blurted out a single word: “Corking!”

I wondered what our TV audience, all two dozen of them, made of that.  Anyway, after that week’s episode the ad agency cancelled all future store manager interviews.