The Cecil and Sally Radio Program

Cecil and Sally: A Study in Obscurity by Doug Hopkinson

Copyright April 2009, All Rights Reserved

About two years ago a friend of mine sent me an audio CD with two episodes of a radio show called Cecil and Sally circa 1930. My first thought was, what the heck is this? Probably some dusty old soap opera I'm not going to want to listen to.


When I played the CD what I heard was a couple of teen-age kids having silly conversations with each other. The two episodes I had were not sequential. The show was extremely simplistic in nature. It also sounded as if the recording was made too fast. The girl's voice and giggles are really what made it sound too fast to me. The boy sounded like Arthur Lake (Dagwood Bumstead). I was convinced it was him until I began to research the show. Once I started digging, I found that Cecil and Sally was not an obscure radio show at all but rather, a forgotten gem that wooed the nation and succeeded . It was one of the earliest radio shows to be distributed via electrical transcription, just on the heels of Amos N Andy. Tracing the history of the this radio show and it's two main actors revealed many other intertwined stories. I found myself going off on different tangents several times and collecting information on other subjects when they intersected with the Cecil and Sally story.


In January 2009 I was very lucky to make the acquaintance of a gentleman by the name of Wayne Eberhart, who sold me a number of transcription discs of Cecil and Sally. Wayne happens to be the grandson of Vincent Kraft.


Vincent Kraft (left) owned and founded radio station KJR in Seattle, WA back in 1922. He was also co-owner of the Pacific Broadcasting Corporation along with Frederick Clift. Pacific owned radio station KYA in San Francisco, which broadcast from the top of the Clift Hotel. KJR and KYA were both later sold and became part of Adolph Linden's failed ABC Network. My point here is the transcription discs were owned by Vincent Kraft and stayed in the possession of his family all these years. Wayne discovered the discs in his grandfather's house as a youth. He even broadcast them to the public from his high school's radio station. He also recorded 2 episodes onto 45 rpm records which he still sells to this day on his e-bay store. Incidentally, those 2 episodes are the same ones that I was given which started me off on my quest.


In real life, Cecil and Sally were Johnny Patrick and Helen Troy. John Patrick Goggan was born May 17, 1905 in Louisville, KY. As always, the more research you do, the more seemingly conflicting information you will uncover. Depending on the source Johnny was: A) abandoned by his parents and raised by his Aunt and Uncle, or B) abandoned by his parents and raised in various foster homes and boarding schools, or C) raised in a military family which frequently moved around from military base to military base, or D) Traveled a lot with his family until he was made an orphan (whatever that means) or E) Born and reared in the Island City of Galveston TX. The most complete biography I found listed his parents as John Francis and Myrtle (Osborn) Goggan. It also provided a list of schools he attended. They were, Holy Cross College, St. Edward's College, St. Mary's Seminary, Harvard University and Columbia University.

Quite an impressive list but no details are given as to when or how long he attended any of them. One source claims he had a delinquent youth. A 1932 article in the Galveston Daily News named Johnny as the grandson of Thomas Goggan who was a well known music store owner in that city. All sources agree that in 1924 or 1925 he decided to strike off on his own and get a job. Depending on the source, it is said Johnny was hired as an announcer at radio station KPO or as a switchboard operator at radio station KYA. Both were San Francisco radio stations, however, KYA was not established until December of 1926 while KPO was in operation since April of 1922. Both accounts could be true but one thing is for sure, our Cecil, Johnny Patrick, met his Sally, Helen Troy, at radio station KYA in 1928.


Helen Troy was born December 23, 1903 in San Francisco, CA. She was educated in Traverse City, MI at Sacred Heart Convent. After graduation she studied music, piano and organ in Chicago, IL. She went back to Traverse City for 2 years then to Detroit and finally to San Francisco, always employed as a theater organist. In 1928 she was hired as a staff organist at radio station KYA. This is where Sally met Cecil.


Helen made her stage debut beside her Uncle at the age of five on what was then known as the Keith Circuit. The Keith Circuit was a very dominant entertainment chain that was owned and operated by two (not very nice) men named Benjamin Keith (left) and Edward Albee (below Keith). They originally made a fortune by staging unauthorized productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. They used their money to build a chain of theaters across the U.S. They borrowed the variety entertainment concept from the originator, Tony Pastor, and used it to produce continuous, multiple daily performances in their theaters. They called it "vaudeville". They did not invent the word but they were certainly responsible for making it a familiar term in the U.S. and Canada. Incidentally, some of you may be familiar with the motion picture company RKO. The "K" in RKO stands for Keith as in Benjamin Keith....But I digress...


Helen would pick up her mail at the switchboard that Johnny worked. They became friends and developed a regular routine where Johnny would do Milt Gross characterizations and Helen would respond in baby-talk. (Milt Gross was a popular cartoonist/author of the day, famous for his Yiddish dialect humor.) They eventually worked up a couple skits. One day a regularly scheduled show had to cancel at the last minute and somehow Johnny and Helen got to fill-in. One source says after filling in for three weeks, they were taken out of the schedule only to be put right back in after the station received many calls and letters wanting more Cecil and Sally. And that is how it all began.


The show itself was titled The Funniest Things and in the beginning that is how it was listed in the radio schedules. This quickly changed to being listed as Cecil and Sally. It was often referred to in newspapers as "The Comic Strip of the Air". It began as a three day a week show but soon became a six day a week show in most places that it was broadcast. Some stations even played it twice a day. It was popular with children, college students, housewives and just about everyone else. The appeal of the show was its simplicity. It all revolved around a very average pair of American teen-agers that always managed to find themselves in a predicament.


The dialogue between Cecil and Sally was often entertaining. Sally could blather on and on following her own convoluted logic while Cecil would listen and interject contrary or insulting comments which were very subtle at times. The plots were always fairly believable; things that could easily happen to a pair of young teens. The show was "chapterized" in the sense that a storyline could run anywhere from 4 to 20 shows to conclude. Over the years Cecil and Sally lost money, found money, got arrested several times, solved crimes, went to college and eventually got married to each other. The simplicity of the writing was the genius of Johnny Patrick and the formula to success for the radio show as well as his future. He wrote every script himself. Cecil and Sally was just the beginning of his long and successful writing career.


The Funniest Things was first broadcast in 1928 on KYA. (The earliest published date of broadcast I have found so far is April 10, 1929) (left).


In November of 1928, KYA was sold to the new ABC network. The ABC network began as a string of radio stations running up the West Coast from Los Angeles, CA to Spokane, WA with it's flagship station being KJR in Seattle WA. The president and owner of ABC was Adolph Linden (left). Linden quickly expanded his network into Salt Lake City, UT and Denver, CO. By July of 1929, Linden had pushed into the Midwest market with radio stations in Lincoln NE, Muscatine IA, St Louis MO, Chicago IL, and Minneapolis, MN. There were already plans and deals set for the East Coast but they came to a screeching halt on August 23 when Linden announced all operations at ABC were suspended. The company filed for bankruptcy the same day. At the time of its demise the ABC network consisted of 20 different radio stations. As the story unfolded a scandal was revealed, fingers were pointed and arrests were made. Adolph Linden was the central figure and on March 28, 1933, after four years of litigation, he finally went away to Walla Walla State Penitentiary on charges of grand larceny where he spent the next five years until his parole on March 19, 1938. This is a story in itself and I find myself digressing yet again....


The point is, the ABC network greatly expanded the exposure of Cecil and Sally to the radio audience. With the failing of the ABC network, Cecil and Sally were off the air from August 24, 1929 until December 16, 1929 when they began broadcasting on KPO in San Francisco. Johnny and Helen quickly made a decision to move to electrical transcriptions. Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll as Amos and Andy, had already proven the effectiveness of syndication via electrical transcriptions not much more than a year prior. If a network of radio stations could increase a fan base, a syndicated release via electrical transcription would increase a fan base exponentially and that is exactly what happened. By 1930 it was estimated that Cecil and Sally had over 15 million fans. Their show was broadcast on 53 radio stations in 27 states, 5 Canadian provinces, the Hawaiian Islands, Australia and New Zealand. This is not the description of an obscure show.


A 1930 article gives credit in part to Dick Haller for the success of Cecil and Sally. He was vice president and general manager of Patrick and Company, which handled the business interests of Cecil and Sally. Haller was previously involved with a very popular radio show in Portland, OR called the Hoot Owls. This show had had a rather talented young performer by the name of Mel Blanc who soon moved on to Hollywood to bigger and better things. Dick Haller had also been production manager for the failed ABC network. One could draw the conclusion that Haller helped guide the young Mr. Patrick to the pathway of success via the electrical transcription.


This company was incorporated in 1929 but wasn't listed in the San Francisco telephone directory until 1930. They specialized in producing small runs of personal recordings for musicians and non-professionals. In 1932 the company changed its name to MacGregor and Sollie, also located in San Francisco. This company lasted until 1937 when it became CP MacGregor Studios and eventually moved to Hollywood.


The MacGregor in these companies was C.P. "Chip" MacGregor.
Prior to starting these transcription companies he was manager of the San Francisco territory for Brunswick Records. Going into the transcription business was a natural transition for him. He made a name for himself in the transcription business. He not only produced them, he also distributed them. The list of radio shows he produced as syndicated electrical transcriptions is impressive.


The list includes The Shadow, Cecil and Sally, Sambo and Ed, Proudly We Hail, Al Jolson, Jubilee, Lux Radio Theater, Hollywood Theater, Eb and Zeb as well as musicians such as Leadbelly, Charlie Parker, Stan Kenton, Peggy Lee and many others. Many people felt that transcription discs were not equal to a live performance and took something away from a radio program. MacGregor countered this by maintaining that transcriptions allowed for a flawless performance and that losing the excitement of a live performance was a small price to pay. In 1941, he began producing (Skippy) Hollywood Theater. He was also the host of the show. It became one of the most successful syndicated radio shows ever. It had all the commercials built-in. It ran for 8 years and made Skippy peanut butter a household name.


Due to the fact that the format of the show was similar to Lux and C.P.'s role was the same as that of Cecil B DeMille; he became known as "The DeMille of Discs". He had his own radio show in the mid-Fifties called The C.P. MacGregor Show. There are two circulating shows that are both AFRTS broadcasts (circa 1957). MacGregor was on the radio as late as 1965 hosting Heartbeat Theatre.


Cecil and Sally were at the height of their popularity between 1930 and 1932. On Jan 21, 1933 KPO announced that Cecil and Sally was coming to an end as far as live appearances behind the microphone went. The article in the newspaper claimed that Johnny and Helen had exclusively been broadcasting live on KPO while everywhere else they were heard via electrical transcription. This is contrary to every other article I have found.


Within a week the newspapers reported there was a rumor that Cecil and Sally might be touring as a stage show. On Feb 18, 1933 an official announcement came out that there was a 3 act play entitled Cecil and Sally starring Johnny Patrick and Helen Troy that would open in Oakland, CA on Feb 26th. By March 20, 1933 Cecil and Sally were back on the radio in San Francisco but not live. KYA picked up their transcriptions and announced the show would continue right where it left off in January on KPO.


The touring stage play began in Oakland, CA on February 26, 1933 as a three act comedy sketch. It was written by Johnny Patrick, using scripts he previously wrote for the radio show. Aside from Cecil and Sally the play featured six other characters from the radio show; Uncle Thomas, Aunt Bess, the Widow Mason, Gregory Gilliwater, Dr. Morgan and Mamie.


It is unclear if any of these supporting characters were portrayed by the original cast members from the radio show. By May of 1933 the tour was in Fresno, Ca and was billed as a 2 act sketch. The tour progressed Eastward. In January 1934 they were in Lincoln, NE. In February they were in Cedar Rapids, IA with the next stop scheduled for Albert Lea, MN.


In March 1934, they played at The Strand in Oshkosh, WI. I have been unable to find any stops beyond Oshkosh.


Every review was favorable and the tour was considered a success. The actor that portrayed Gregory Gilliwater was singled out by one reviewer as being particularly good. His name was Ralph Bell. IF this was indeed the same Ralph Bell we all know from Barry Craig and CBS Radio Mystery Theater and many, many other radio shows; my math indicates he would have been 17 or 18 years old at that time. Then again, it could just be coincidence.


Helen Troy returned to San Francisco and to the radio in June of 1934. She became a cast member of a show called Carefree Carnival which was broadcast on radio station KGO, an NBC station . Her first appearance was on June 9th. There are 2 shows known to be in circulation. Luckily one of them has Miss Troy in it. Interestingly, she portrayed a telephone operator in this show, a role that was to have a profound effect on her future.


Upon his return from the tour, Johnny Patrick was less visible to the public, until September 18, 1934 when it was reported in the newspapers that he had filed for bankruptcy. Listed as one of his creditors was Helen Troy in the amount of $120.00.


Research shows that Patrick must have devoted his time to writing. His first play titled Hell Freezes Over, opened in NY in December of 1935 and closed in January 1936 after only 25 performances. It featured George Tobias, a character actor most well known for his much later television role as Abner Kravitz on Bewitched, although, he appeared in many, many Broadway performances as well as films and television shows. In 1936 Patrick was hired on by 20th Century Fox as a screenwriter. He was credited in 17 films between 1936 and 1938.


Helen Troy, on the other hand, was making her debut in front of the camera. In April of 1936 she picked up a small role in Song and Dance Man (a George M. Cohan story) which starred Claire Trevor. Ironically, her character's name in the film is Sally. She played a telephone operator, a role that she was most likely specifically chosen for from her work on Carefree Carnival. She did so well that she became typecast for it for the remainder of her rather brief career.


At the end of April she had already landed a term contract for Claire Trevor's next movie Human Cargo.


In 1937 she joined the cast of Eddie Cantor's radio show, Texaco Town. Her character was (of course) a telephone operator. Eddie always referred to her as "operator" until a naming contest was announced. Listeners were asked to send in their choice of a name and the reason for the name. The judges of the contest were Rupert Hughes, Walt Disney, George Burns and Gracie Allen. On the night of the show of April 18, 1937, Eddie Cantor told the audience that there were more than 250,000 letters submitted. Of these, five had the same name that the judges chose. The winner of the contest was then chosen on the basis of the reason given for the name. Cantor neglected to reveal that reason but the winning name chosen was Saymore Saymore. The winner of the contest was Miss Susie McKee of Valdosta, GA and received a trip to Hollywood for two as a prize.


Meanwhile, Johnny Patrick is said to have contributed to the NBC show Streamlined Shakespeare in 1937.


He was also reportedly linked to writing for Helen Hayes and her radio show. If this is true, she could very well have helped open doors for his play writing career that was yet to blossom. He continued his work with 20th Century Fox in 1938 until December 11th when it was announced that he was let go. After 1938 there are no screen writing credits to his name for the next 10 years.


As Johnny Patrick's career was slowly gaining speed, Helen Troy's was quickly winding down. Helen's last known radio appearance was on Texaco Town on Sept 29, 1937, which was the opening night of the second season. She was in six films in 1937 and one film each in 1938 and 1939. She was in two films in 1940 before retiring due to an undisclosed illness.


Sadly, Helen Troy passed away on November 1, 1942 at the age of 38.
She was survived by her husband of many years, Dr. Alton Edward Horton and her 2 children, Kathryn Jane (15) and Troy Thomas (18).
Interesting is the fact that during the Cecil and Sally years there was never any mention of Helen being married and having a family. Newspaper and magazine articles portrayed her as a young single woman although in their defense they never stated it as a fact. Newspapers even played upon this by noting that Helen received at least one marriage proposal a week in her fan mail which she personally responded to every time, kindly turning down the offers.
The math involved would indicate that Helen was married and already had a four year old son and a one year old daughter by the time she was hired at KYA.


The same media portrayal was applied to Johnny Patrick as well. All the articles stated he was a Roadster driving, eligible young bachelor living in his Golden Gate, ocean-view high-rise apartment. His biography indicates he was married in 1925 to a woman named Mildred LeGaye. There is never another mention anywhere I have found, about divorce, re-marriage or children.


It is also interesting to note that a newspaper article in 1932 stated that Johnny Patrick aspired to be one of the country's leading playwrights and that those who knew his work and temperament were predicting he would attain his goal.


In 1942, John Patrick wrote his second play The Willow and I which opened in NY in December 1942 and closed in January 1943 after only 28 performances. The play featured Gregory Peck and Martha Scott. Before the play even opened, John Patrick had volunteered to join the American Field Service, which provided medical support to the British Army fighting WWII. He served with Montgomery's Eighth Army in Egypt and saw action in India and Burma. This experience was the foundation for his next play, which he finished writing on a ship-ride home after his tour of duty in 1944. The play was titled The Hasty Heart which opened in NY in January 1945 and closed in June 1945 after 204 performances. This play featured Richard Basehart. The play's successful run led to a film adaptation in 1949 starring Ronald Reagan and then a television movie in 1983.


It was in 1953 that John Patrick reached the pinnacle of his long career as a writer. He wrote a stage adaptation of the Vern J. Sneider novel, The Teahouse of the August Moon which opened on Broadway in October of 1953 and closed in March of 1956 after 1027 performances.


This play featured John Forsythe. Teahouse won Patrick the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best American play of the year, a Pulitzer prize in drama, a Tony award, a Donaldson award from Billboard magazine for best new play and the League of NY Theaters and Producers Aegis Club award. In 1956 he wrote the screenplay for the movie it became, which starred Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford, also in the cast were Eddie Albert and Harry Morgan. John Patrick went on to write at least 48 more plays over the following 39 years including a musical adaptation of Teahouse (1970), under the title Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen. None of his other plays had the same acclaim of Teahouse although many are still being performed in schools and small theaters to this day. As for screenwriting, John Patrick was responsible for several that resulted in prominent movies. Among them were Three Coins in a Fountain (1954), Love is a Many Splendored Thing (1955), High Society (1956), Les Girls (1957), The World of Suzie Wong (1960) and Gigot (1962). He also won two awards in 1957 for his screenwriting of Les Girls, the Screenwriters Guild award and the Foreign Correspondents award.


Unlike Helen Troy, John Patrick never got in front of a movie camera, although a few internet sites erroneously credit him with several film appearances. Patrick also liked to compose poetry and dabble in art. He did the artwork for two book covers in the 1990's. The books were The Growing Light by Martha Conley (1993) and Inches by William Marshall (1994).


John Patrick owned a 65 acre estate he called Hasty Hill, located in Suffern, NY. He purchased it following the success of his play The Hasty Heart. He also lived in retirement in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands for many years.


On November 7, 1995 John Patrick was found dead in his apartment at the Heritage Park Assisted Living facility in Delray Beach, FL. He was found by a housekeeper with a plastic bag over his head. He was said to have been in normal health for a 90 year old man and his death was ruled a suicide. The last thing John Patrick wrote was a poem he left behind. It was titled A Suicide Note. It read in part.., "... I won't dispute my right to die. I'll only give the reasons why. You reach a certain point in time. When life has lost reason and rhyme..."


Although in the end he wasn't remembered for having written Cecil and Sally, it isn't surprising. Many years had gone by and radio shows were and are ancient history to a modern society. This illustrates how short the memory of our culture has become and perhaps has always been. A few generations go by and memories pass on with the people that held them. In its day, Cecil and Sally was well known to millions of people. Today, very few people are even aware of this old radio show.


Cecil and Sally enjoyed a nice run on the airwaves. My suspicions are that no more transcriptions of the show were made after January 1933 as Johnny Patrick and Helen Troy were preparing to go on tour and after that they went off to establish themselves individually. They were finished as a team.


The radio show itself, however, was not quite finished. Electrical transcriptions made sure of that. Many cities enjoyed the show for years afterwards.


The exact number of shows in the Cecil and Sally series is not known but an article in the Avalanche Journal from Lubbock, TX on June 20, 1937 noted that the Cecil and Sally show was leaving the air on KYFO radio after 1392 broadcasts. The latest published date of broadcast in the U.S. that I found was February 22, 1938 in Uniontown, PA on radio station WWSW.


Cecil and Sally, a 15 minute West Coast radio show that through a series of fortunate events, timing, writing and foresight, captured the imagination and attention of millions of listeners nationwide for an entire decade. A 15 minute show that launched the short career of Helen Troy, the long career of Johnny Patrick and rubbed shoulders along the way with some very interesting and influential people associated with the radio industry. A 15 minute show that time has relegated to obscurity. A 15 minute show that deserves to be remembered in radio history.

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We thank Doug for his insightful and thorough research on Cecil and Sally. There's very little we can add to Doug's observations. As a personal observation, this was a truly delightful program for any era, but given the competing serial fare of the day, truly remarkable by contrast. Patrick's scripts were both charming and bitingly humorous. They poked holes in many of 'polite society' conventions with earthy, common-denominator type humor. Never cruel, but deliciously ironic and timely, given the post-Depression years of its setting.

Helen Troy's tiny, lispy voice in the character of Sally was particularly charming. It's easy to understand how hard it was for Cecil to refuse her every whim--or scheme.

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