Breaking Walls

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Production was done for these serial episodes of Yours Truly Johnny Dollar in a single day. Bob Bailey was paid three-hundred-dollars per week. Adjusted for inflation, a single week’s work on Dollar paid a little less than thirty-five-hundred dollars. Between October of 1955 and November of 1956, fifty-five serials would air. To pen these scripts, Jack Johnstone tapped into his old writing mainstays.

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers It’s 6PM on Wednesday, January 11th, 1956. I’m at Colbee’s Restaurant on the ground floor of the CBS headquarters at 485 Madison Avenue. I’m about to have a bite to eat with the man you just heard, Mandel Kramer. Yesterday at Edwards Air Force Base in California, U.S. Air Force First Lt. Barty R. Brooks died in the crash of a F-100 Super Sabre. The accident was caught on film. Word from Memphis is that young singer Elvis Presley recorded a new song called “Heartbreak Hotel.” Today’s cover of The New York Daily News shows Grace Kelly in Monaco, but the interior pages talk about the rising problems in Vietnam. South Vietnam President Ngô Đình Diệm issued an ordinance giving his government almost unchecked power to deal with any opposition. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union has approved technical specifications for an R-13 submarine-launched missile. And earlier today, The 1956 Chevrolet Corvette was announced. It’ll cost three-thousand-one-hundred-twenty dollars. It features a new body, convertible top, optional power steering, optional hardtop, and rollup glass windows. The V6 option has been dropped in favor of either a two-hundred-ten or two-hundred-twenty horsepower V8 Engine. A 3-speed manual transmission is now standard. The main national news is the debate on whether or not President Dwight D. Eisenhower will seek a second term. After suffering a heart attack in September of 1955 Ike is still undeclared, meeting with an array of doctors to gauge whether the rigors of running for reelection will cause undue health issues. The United Press reported on Tuesday the 10th that sixty percent of the more than four hundred doctors polled felt that Dwight would be able to serve. Perhaps some insight into Ike’s psyche was gleaned when on Monday, January 9th, he once again took over full White House duties, including naming Bernard M. Shanley Appointments Secretary. Meanwhile, on NBC radio, Keys To The Capital is airing.

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers The man you just heard is Hans Conried. Famous for both his dramatic and comedic portrayals on both radio and TV, By January of 1956 he’d been involved in radio for two decades. Here he is on the February 24th, 1956 episode of Yours Truly Johnny Dollar. By early 1956, those still involved in dramatic radio had advanced the medium’s production to a high art. Most radio drama still remaining was by then based in Hollywood, with much of the news programming based in New York. For Roberta Bailey-Goodwin, then a teenager, accompanying her father to weekly recordings was a family ritual and she got a firsthand look at the artists plying their craft. “The Todd Matter” was written by E. Jack Neuman under the pen name of John Dawson. Gloria Tierney's landlady, Ethel Stromberg, was voiced by Vivi Janiss. The surname Stromberg has multiple origins. In Swedish “strom” means river, while “berg” means mountain. In Germany it's a habitational name from places like Rhineland and means “flat mountain.” Barbara Fuller was Gloria Tierney. Frank Gerstle played Dan Mapes. Marvin Miller, famed for both announcing and acting, also played a small role in “The Todd Matter.”

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers The weather on Monday January 9th, 1956 warmed throughout the day. It hit forty degrees Fahrenheit by nightfall. The front cover of The New York Daily News featured a photo of patrolman Ray Cusack, who rescued many children from a fire in Hempstead, New York. Dwight Eisenhower was still undecided on whether or not to seek a second term, while Democrat hopeful Adlai Stevenson claimed Ike’s recent State of the Union Address was merely a veiled State on the Republican party. Meanwhile the families of both US diplomats and UN officials fled from the Jordanian sector of Jerusalem after violent anti-western riots broke out for the second day in a row. If you turned on your radio at 8:15PM eastern time, you’d have heard a Boston Symphony concert on NBC, and Metropolitan Opera auditions on ABC. WOR aired True Detective, but if you wanted the best in radio detective fiction you’d have turned on CBS, where Bob Bailey was starring in Jack Johnstone’s production of Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, written by E. Jack Neuman. The prison where Vance served time is Sing Sing, originally opening in Ossining, New York in 1825. Among the executions in their electric chair were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, on June 19th, 1953, for Soviet espionage. A good mink coat cost about twenty-five-hundred dollars in 1956. Both Orin Vance and Don Freed were voiced by Lawrence Dobkin. By 1956 Dobkin was a radio legend with experience in both New York and Hollywood. The Westin Hotel Chain was launched in 1930 by Severt W. Thurston and Frank Dupar as Western Hotels. They were the first hotel chain to introduce credit cards in 1946. Today the chain, called Westin since 1981, is owned and operated by Mariott. There are Westin Hotels in both the Times Square and Grand Central area. In January of 1956, 57th street was home to various art exhibitions like Kay Sage’s surrealist paintings at the Catherine Viviano gallery, a contemporary Greek Art exhibition at Sagittarius gallery, a European group show at the Matisse gallery, and art and artifacts of various Central African tribes at 57th and Lexington. The Sutton theater, also on 57th street, was showing The Night My Number Came Up starring Michael Redgrave and Sheila Sim. Gloria Tierney’s fictional apartment at 1231 East 57th is an impossibility. The address would put it in the East River.