The Our Miss Brooks Radio Program

Background

The Post-World War II era of Radio's Golden Age found Television steadily emerging as a serious rival to the preeminence of Radio. Thus, many of the Radio Networks began scrambling as never before to capture--or retain--as much of their audience as possible by way of fending off growing competition with Television. One of the more successful gambits employed by the major networks of the era was acquiring big name Stage and Screen talent to lead their dramatic features.

Between 1944 and 1955 Radio networks managed to coax increasing numbers of Stage and Film luminaries into dramatic showcases for their talent--and sponsors:

• 1944 The Comedy Theatre of the Air with Harold Lloyd
• 1944 The Star and the Story starring Walter Pidgeon
• 1944-1952 The Man Called X starring Herbert Marshall
• 1944 Results Incorporated starring Lloyd Nolan and Claire Trevor
• 1945-1951 The Saint with Brian Aherne,Vincent Price, Tom Conway and Barry Sullivan
• 1945 The Danny Kaye Show with Danny Kaye
• 1945 Textron Theatre with Helen Hayes
• 1945 The Adventures of Maisie starring Ann Sothern
• 1946 Favorite Story with Ronald Colman
• 1948 Electric Theater with Helen Hayes
• 1948 Our Miss Brooks starring Eve Arden and Jeff Chandler
• 1949-1953 Richard Diamond Private Detective starring Dick Powell
• 1949-1954 Dangerous Assignment starring Brian Donlevy
• 1949 The Martin and Lewis Show with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis
• 1949 Meet the Menjous with Adolphe Menjou and Veree Teesdale
• 1950 T-Man starring Dennis O'Keefe
• 1950 Christopher London starring Glenn Ford
• 1950-1951 The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe starring Sydney Greenstreet
• 1950-1952 Tales of the Texas Rangers starring Joel McCrea
• 1950-1952 The Lives of Harry Lime starring Orson Welles
• 1950 The Halls of Ivy starring Ronald Colman and Benita Hume
• 1951 Rocky Jordan starring George Raft
• 1951 The Private Files of Rex Saunders starring Rex Harrison
• 1951-1952 Bold Venture starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall
• 1951-1955 Barrie Craig Confidential Investigator with William Gargan
• 1952 Bright Star starring Fred MacMurray and Irene Dunne
• 1952-1954 I Was a Communist for the FBI starring Dana Andrews
• 1953-1954 Rocky Fortune starring Frank Sinatra
• 1953 The Six-Shooter starring Jimmy Stewart
• 1953 Theatre Royal with Laurence Olivier
• 1954 Crime and Peter Chambers starring Dane Clark

But the networks weren't only competing with Television. Programming syndicators such as Frederick Ziv and Harry Alan Towers had become highly successful in bringing top-dollar Film talent to Radio with increasingly attractive options contracts valued in excess of $500,000 for some of the era's most popular Film actors. The successful syndicators were for the most part fronting their own costs to develop their Film Star vehicles, gambling that those huge names would bring in commensurately huge profits--from sponsors directly, or through syndication deals with the four networks of the era.

And indeed, the sponsors were key to the major networks developing their own productions. All four major networks routinely aired promising big name vehicles without sponsorship, as 'sustaining' programming in the hope of attracting a well-heeled sponsor. But with the competition for ad revenue, those sustaining programs were always a gamble. If the networks believed enough in their newest Radio vehicle they'd often air it sustaining for as long as thirteen to twenty-six weeks in hopes of enticing a major sponsor. The networks also devised several time-slicing or time-sharing gambits for smaller local and regional affiliate sponsors so as to recapture the networks' production costs if they failed to find a sponsor to bankroll the entire production.

Colgate-Palmolive-Peet's long history of Radio sponsorship

From Broadcast Radio's inception in the mid-1920s to well into the waning days of the Golden Age of Radio, Colgate-Palmolive-Peet had been one of Radio's most prolific sponsors. From soaps to variety to adventure drama to sports, Colgate-Palmolive-Peet employed Radio in every way imaginable to promote their growing family of laundry products and beauty and health aids:

• 1927 The Palmolive Hour
• 1934 Colgate House Party
• 1934 Palmolive Beauty Box Theater
• 1935 Music At The Haydn’s [Observatory]
• 1935 Theatre of Romance
• 1936 Bachelor’s Children
• 1936 The Goldbergs
• 1937 True Adventures
• 1937 Your Adventurers
• 1938 How To Win Friends and Influence People
• 1938 Stepmother
• 1939-1951 Colgate Sports Newsreel
• 1941 Colgate Spotlight Variety
• 1941 Guy Lombardo
• 1941 Hobby Lobby
• 1942 Can You Top This?
• 1943 Inner Sanctum
• 1943 The Judy Canova Show
• 1944 Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge
• 1944 Theatre of Romance
• 1946 A Day in the Life of Dennis Day
• 1946 The Mel Blanc Show
• 1947 Gramps
• 1947 Mr. and Mrs. North
• 1948 Our Miss Brooks
• 1950 Satan’s Waiting
• 1950 Strike it Rich
• 1951 King’s Row
• 1952 Bob and Ray
• 1953 The Phrase That Pays

In 1806, soap and candle maker William Colgate opened up a starch, soap and candle factory on Dutch Street in New York City as William Colgate & Company. Colgate suffered a severe heart attack, sidelining his growing business for several years. After recovering enough to continue his business in earnest, William Colgate & Company began selling cakes of soap in uniform weights directly to consumers. William Colgate was also a deeply religious Christian and civic-minded lay-worker who helped found the American Bible Society, best known for its Good News Translation of the Bible. When William Colgate died in 1857, William Colgate & Company reorganized as Colgate & Company under the management of Colgate's son, Samuel Colgate. It was in 1872 that Colgate & Company introduced Cashmere Bouquet, a perfumed soap. At its introduction, Colgate & Company issued the following advertising copy to promote the product (from the July 22nd, 1872 edition of the Janesville Gazette):

"A healthy body is the tabernacle, but a
filthy, sickly one the prison, of the soul.
Let those who are filthy and sick, and
would be well, heed this proverb and place
their reliance upon the use of Colgate's
Cashmere Boquet Soap, so elegantly perfumed,
to guard against threatened disease,
and to regain the blessing of health."

Even more telling of the era, was this promotional copy for Cashmere Boquet and Colgate's Violet Toilet Water--from the November 7th 1877 edition of the Iowa State Reporter (reprinted precisely as found):

"It will be found upon inquiry of representative store-keepers in city and town, that ladies no longer depend on foreign makers for their Perfumery and Toilet Articles.

To Messrs. COLGATE & Co., the credit is largely due for this marked departure from the old preference.

Their Cashmere Boquet Soap and Violet Toilet Water, is universally esteemed by the tasteful and refined, as the most delicate and recherche of purfumes."

Both of the above were fairly representative promotional copy for feminine requisites of the era.

In 1873 Colgate introduced its first toothpaste, first in jars then in tubes. Colgate's first toothpaste in a tube, Colgate Ribbon Dental Cream, arrived in 1896. That same year Colgate hired Martin Ittner, under whose direction Colgate & Company founded one of America's first applied research labs. By 1908 Colgate & Company was mass-producing toothpaste in tubes. Samuel Colgate's brother, James Boorman Colgate, became a primary trustee of Colgate University.

Meanwhile, over in Milwaukee at the turn of the century, the B.J. Johnson Company had devised a soap--'Palm-olive'--rendered entirely from palm and olive oils, a formula B.J. Johnson had developed in 1898. B.J. Johnson's vegetable oil-based soap became so popular that B.J. Johnson adopted Palmolive as the firm's new name. At the dawn of the 20th Century Palmolive had become the world's most delicious(?) popular bar soap.

The huge Kansas City, Missouri and Oakland, California based soap manufacturer, Peet Brothers, merged with Palmolive to become Palmolive-Peet. And in 1928, Palmolive-Peet bought the Colgate Company to create the Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Company. It was the Peet Brothers 'Crystal White Soap Chips' that eventually evolved into Colgate-Palmolive-Peet's famous 'Super Suds Soap Flakes.' Peet Brothers' own Crystal White Soap Chips had long been promoted as "the billion bubble soap."

Super Suds' claim to be capable of 'all but filling two trailer trucks with suds' came under the scrutiny of LIFE magazine in its October 20th 1947 issue.

Colgate-Palmolive-Peet once responded to a 1947 challenge to that same claim by Super Suds by promising to fill two trailer trucks with the suds output from a single box of Super Suds. LIFE magazine followed the challenge to completion in a three-page article from their October 20th 1947 issue titled "Speaking of Pictures . . . Soapsuds prove an adman's claim." And indeed, a single box of Super Suds did in fact fill a single--even larger--trailer truck to overflowing by about 300 cubic feet with its output of soap suds. An ad executive's dream come true, to be sure. Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Company ultimately dropped the 'Peet' in 1953, becoming simply the Colgate-Palmolive Company.

CBS promotes a High School based comedy with Star talent

Education at all levels had become a national priority during World War II and even more important to the Nation's recovery in the wake of a world war. Indeed both CBS and NBC, the two giant networks of the era, had embarked on a long-running era of educational programming, in several cases conferring College Equivalency credits from participating schools and colleges. 'College by Air,' though a highly laudable undertaking for its time, soon became eclipsed with the hundreds of thousands of G.I.s returning to high schools, colleges, trade schools and universities under the aegis of the 1944 G.I. Bill of Rights and its generous educational subsidies and stipends.

In CBS' view, the timing seemed perfect to mount a situation comedy anchored around a typical high school English teacher and her interactions with faculty and students while trying to scrape by in a post-War Economy on an educator's comparatively paltry income. CBS first teased the eventual Our Miss Brooks concept to the trade papers in a January 10th 1948 press release. According to Eve Arden, the initial idea for 'Our Miss Booth' came from an unnamed "young man" who'd submitted a rough script for the proposed series. Rather than hire the unnamed aspiring scriptwriter, Eve Arden said that CBS simply bought the concept from the author then turned it over to the CBS script department. As it turns out, that 'unnamed young man' was Don Ettlinger, the young free-lance writer who'd proposed the "Our Miss Booth" script with actress Shirley Booth in the lead. Shirley Booth was not new to Radio. She'd initially appeared with hubby Ed Gardner in Gardner's highly popular Duffy's Tavern (1941-1952). Her appearances in Duffy's Tavern ended with her divorce from Gardner in 1942. She continued to appear in numerous Radio productions as either herself, or in many of the more prestigious drama productions of the era. But Shirley Booth was also a very socially conscious actress whose Stage, Film, and Television careers would soon eclipse anything she'd done over Radio. It had been the CBS project's initial producer Harry Ackerman that had proposed Shirley Booth for the role of Miss Booth. Her wise-cracking in the role of Duffy's daughter in Duffy's Tavern had seemed the ideal résumé for the proposed role of the droll, wise-cracking Miss Booth. Changing the name, CBS ordered an Our Miss Brooks audition recorded in New York with Shirley Booth during the Spring of 1948.

Shirley Booth's audition for Our Miss Brooks

The initial audition script's plot found Miss Brooks meeting Madison High School's new President of the School Board, Mr. Osgoode Conklin, for the first time. The expository elements of the audition described Miss Brooks as living with The Davis Family. Miss Brooks awoke--late--for an appointment to meet the new President of Madison High's School Board. Mrs. Davis was portrayed as an eccentric character with a penchant for exotic recipes. Mrs. Davis' teenage daughter Ruth was portrayed as an aspiring teenage sophisticate. Ruth was apparently too sophisticated to be seen in her boyfriend Walter Denton's hot-rod, 'Bessie,' leaving Miss Brooks to travel to Madison High alone with Walter that morning. Alas, enroute to school Walter had a traffic accident with another--rather blusterous--driver. Miss Brooks disembarked from 'Bessie' to walk the remaining distance to school. Miss Brooks arrived at Madison to find the Madison High faculty all aflutter in anticipation of meeting the new President of the School Board. Mr. Darwell , the Madison High Principal was equally anxious to meet Mr. Conklin.

Miss Brooks encountered Mr. Boynton (Mason Adams), the school's Biology Teacher in the mailroom. Miss Brooks' revery in the presence of Mr. Boynton was interrupted by Mr. Conklin's arrival at Miss Brooks' classroom. Miss Brooks went to her classroom only to encounter the blustery gentleman who'd had the vehicular encounter with Walter Denton and 'Bessie' that morning. Understandably flustered, Miss Brooks managed to flub her way through Mr. Conklin's visit to her English Class. But when Miss Brooks adjourned to Mr. Boynton's Biology Lab for a visit, Mr. Conklin entered the lab unannounced to witness Miss Brooks standing atop one of the lab's tables in an effort to escape Mr. Boynton's prize lab mouse, 'Violet.' Needless to say, Mr. Conklin's first impressions of Miss Brooks were less than admirable.

Mrs. Davis came to Miss Brooks' aid owing to Mrs. Davis' childhood acquaintance with 'Stoney Face' Conklin by cajoling Conklin into coming to dinner with Mrs. Davis, Ruth, and Miss Brooks. Mr. Davis, if there was one, was never mentioned in the audition script. Complicating matters, Miss Brooks had arranged what she thought might be a romantic assignation with Mr. Boynton at the Davis' home later that evening. Mrs. Davis and Miss Brooks successfully played up to Mr. Conklin's sense of humor at dinner and the evening seemed to be accomplishing the fence-mending intended. Unbeknownst to Miss Brooks, Mr. Conklin had been approached earlier in the day by the mother of a Madison High coed complaining of a teenage lothario making overtures to her daughter. The girl's mother was also of the belief that the same teenage lothario was making similar romantic overtures to a female member of Madison's faculty. When Walter arrived at the Davis' home-- believing he'd be alone with Miss Brooks--he encountered Mrs. Davis, Ruth, Miss Brooks, and Mr. Conklin. The cast became complete again with Mr. Boynton's arrival as planned. Rather than explaining the day's events, Mr. Boynton's arrival only complicated them even further. Still confused, but his greater fears allayed, Mr. Conklin resolved to meet with Miss Brooks the following day to resolve any lingering misunderstandings. But Mr. Boynton's idea of an assignation revolved more around the physiology of a frog than that of Miss Brooks, capping off Miss Brooks' tumultuous day.

The Shirley Booth audition script was written by Don Ettlinger, Norman Tokar and Ed Jurist. It was directed by Edward Gray Downs and performed before a live audience with a New York cast. In the end, Shirley Booth felt that though the portrayal was well within her range, the depiction of a wise-cracking, sardonic English teacher was not a role she could reconcile with her personal convictions about the importance--and economic struggles--of high school teachers in American Society. Citing simply "artistic differences over the writing," Shirley Booth left the project.

In retrospect Shirley Booth's decision was the right one indeed. During the next nine years that Our Miss Brooks aired, Shirley Booth went on to her first Antoinette Perry [Tony©] Award for her supporting performance as Grace Woods in the Stage production of Goodbye My Fancy (1948), a second Tony for Best Actress as Lola Delaney in Come Back, Little Sheba (1950), and another Stage triumph in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1951). Only two years later, Shirley Booth was awarded a 1953 Oscar© for her Film reprise of Come Back, Little Sheba (1952) opposite Burt Lancaster. One of only eight actors to attain both a Tony© and an Oscar© for the same role, Shirley Booth joined the ranks of:

• Yul Brynner for The King and I (1956)
• Joel Grey for Cabaret (1972)
• Rex Harrison for My Fair Lady (1964)
• Anne Bancroft for The Miracle Worker (1962)
• Paul Scofield for A Man for All Seasons (1966)
• José Ferrer for Cyrano de Bergerac (1950
• Jack Albertson for The Subject Was Roses (1968)

Shirley Booth later went on to win the actor's triple crown by being awarded an Oscar©, an Emmy©, and a Tony© during her career. She was one of only twelve actresses to ever do so, joining:

Helen Hayes
Ingrid Bergman
Liza Minnelli
Rita Moreno
Maureen Stapleton
Jessica Tandy
Audrey Hepburn
Anne Bancroft
Vanessa Redgrave
Maggie Smith
Ellen Burstyn

CBS lands its Miss Brooks

With the departure of Shirley Booth from the project, CBS next considered Joan Blondell and Lucille Ball for the role of Miss Brooks. Lucille Ball had already commited to My Favorite Husband (1948) for CBS and General Foods. According to Eve Arden herself, CBS also recorded an audition with Joan Blondell. But it was reportedly CBS President William Paley himself that ultimately suggested Eve Arden for the role. Eve Arden agreed to a third audition for Our Miss Brooks. Enroute to the third audition several changes were made to the audition script:

• Osgood Conklin (Joe Forte) became the incoming Principal of Madison High School instead of its new President of the School Board, thus dispensing with Principal Darwell altogether.
• Margaret Davis' family was dumped, leaving Mrs. Davis simply Miss Brooks' eccentric landlady.
• Walter Denton (Dick Crenna) lost Ruth Davis as a love interest and Walter's hot rod 'Bessie' continued un-named.
• The New York accents were dispensed with entirely, framing a more neutral middle-America setting.

Absent the involvement of the Davis Family and a few of the faculty members employed in the first audition, the remainder of the basic plot remained the same for Eve Arden's audition. The dialogue was sharpened up by Al Lewis for Eve Arden's more sardonic and droll delivery. Performed and recorded on the West Coast before another live audience, the Eve Arden audition was somewhat sharper, more economical, and far more amusing than the Shirley Booth audition. In an addition to the original plot, Miss Brooks was also persuaded that a good impression with Mr. Conklin might assure Miss Brooks' promotion to the Head of Madison High's English Department.

In yet another perfect marriage of actor to role, Eve Arden seemed the ideal candidate for the role of Miss Constance Brooks. It didn't hurt at all that the performances of Joe Forte as Mr. Conklin and Jeff Chandler as Mr. Boynton helped sell the third audition of Our Miss Brooks.

And so it was that Eve Arden's audition for Our Miss Brooks got the green light from CBS and CBS Presents Our Miss Brooks premiered on Monday, July 19th 1948 in the prime time slot briefly occupied by Lucille Ball in My Favorite Husband. That slot had been the projected Summer replacement slot for Lux Radio Theatre. My Favorite Husband was moved to Friday night in the CBS schedule. The production cast for Our Miss Brooks premiered with:

• Eve Arden as Miss Constance 'Connie' Brooks
• Jeff Chandler as Mr. Philip Boynton
• Jane Morgan as Mrs. Margaret Davis
• Joe Forte as the incoming Principal, Mr. Osgood Conklin
• Jay Novello as the outgoing Principal Darwell
• Noreen Gamill as Martha Conklin
• Dick Crenna as Walter Denton
• Bob Stevenson as the show's announcer

Written by Al Lewis, Joe Quillan and Lee Loeb the Eve Arden audition script was polished up even more for the premiere broadcast. Larry Berns assumed the role of Producer-Director, aided by Carl Harwood. The Music Director for the production series was Wilbur Hatch. The initial series was performed and recorded before a live audience at the new $3,000,000 Don Lee-Mutual Studios in Hollywood--one performance each week for the West Coast and East Coast. Both NBC and CBS had been strapped for production facilities to keep up with the demands of their growing West Coast productions; so much so that CBS was forced to lease other networks' facilities on occasion to get a new production off the ground.

Airing sustained for its first six broadcasts, Our Miss Brooks found a solid sponsor in Colgate-Palmolive-Peet beginning with the broadcast of October 3rd 1948, "The Conklin's Anniversary at Crystal Lake." It's just as well that Our Miss Brooks ended up with a soap and beauty sponsor. One of the recurring gags of the series was Mrs. Davis' abominable breakfast concoctions which would have put a definite damper on any potential breakfast cereal sponsors or other food and beverage sponsors. By the time of the Colgate sponsorship, the cast had added Gloria McMillan as Mr. Conklin's daughter Harriet and legendary character actor Gale Gordon joined the cast as Mr. Conklin. Bob Lemond became the show's announcer. The addition of Gale Gordon was the final additive that made Our Miss Brooks an almost instant hit across America. The combination of Gale Gordon's droll, testy quips and Eve Arden's insouciant sarcasm and wise-cracking produced 'Radio Magic' on a par with Howard Duff and Lurene Tuttle, Burns and Allen, or Jim and Marion Jordan.

Our Miss Brooks' ensemble cast almost immediately jelled into one of the era's overnight successes. By the end of it's first proper season Our Miss Brooks had garnered several awards from the various photo-journals and Radio and Television guides of the era. Our Miss Brooks was not however, without its critics. While The Billboard's review had been comparatively sparkling, Our Miss Brooks didn't fare quite as well from nationally syndicated Radio and Television critic, John Crosby, in the July 26th 1948 edition of the Portsmouth Times:

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

The most helpful provenances were the log of the RadioGOLDINdex and newspaper listings.

OTRisms:

The usual 'OTR Suspects' have managed to butcher well over half of the Our Miss Brooks exemplars in circulation. The OTRR alone has elected to introduce tens of thousands of inferior, artificially stereoized, heavily edited, and speed and pitch deficient recordings into wide circulation. As such it may be years more before a nominal set of Our Miss Brooks recordings enter wide circulation again. The circulating Robert Rockwell episodes in particular are almost uniformly butchered in one form or another. It would appear that person or persons unknown lowered the pitch of many of the Robert Rockwell exemplars to make Rockwell's voice more closely approximate that of Jeff Chandler. That of course changed the pitch and timbre of all of the other voices in those exemplars.

There's no escaping the sad fact that there are a great many highly successful OTR dealers and collectors of highly questionable integrity. Even more sadly, a great number of them have insinuated themselves and their manufactured 'wares' into several influential OTR groups, conventions, and organizations. Thankfully, at least one dead giveaway with any of the circulating recordings is manufactured 'stereoization.' If you view any Our Miss Brooks exemplar in an .mp3 editor and it's stereoized, you can be fairly certain the rest of its integrity is suspect. Our advice is to simply delete those exemplars and continue looking for more reliable encodes from more reliable sources. No encoder with integrity would artificially 'stereoize' any recording from the Our Miss Brooks canon.

We've speed-adjusted all of the previously manipulated recordings among our own exemplars as well as un-stereoizing any of our own holdings of Our Miss Brooks. We can only hope that all other stewards of Our Miss Brooks elect to do the same in time. Perhaps sometime during the next 5 to 10 years we can all undo the widespread damage that the OTRR has done to the circulating worldwide pool of Our Miss Brooks recordings.

The OTR Community's utter disregard--and disrespect--for the patriotic, dedicated efforts of the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) is yet again evident in virtually every circulating collection of Our Miss Brooks. Well over half of the circulating exemplars are of AFRS or AFNE orgin, while circulating with completely fictitious commercially-broadcast dates and episode numbers. That's simply fraud, plain and simple. We can't imagine why an entire community of collectors would continue to so uniformly misrepresent the actual origins of the Our Miss Brooks exemplars in their collections. Perhaps someone should ask their favorite OTR vendors and groups their rationale for all those misrepresentations.

Or perhaps it's simply that precious few among the OTR Community actually care about integrity.

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[Date, title, and episode column annotations in red refer to either details we have yet to fully provenance or other unverifiable information as of this writing. Red highlights in the text of the 'Notes' columns refer to information upon which we relied in citing dates, date or time changes, or titles.]