SPACE INTERVIEWS

RR: We'd like to approach your career through Captain Video, of course. We assume your connection to CV and DuMont was through your friend Larry Menkin. What can you tell us about that, after all these years?

IR: I first met Larry in the early 1940s, at the NYA Radio Workshop in New York City... this was a government project engaged in training young people for the broadcast industry. I was one of two staff composers and Larry was writing and directing radio plays. He had written for many network shows, including the Rocky King detective series. The NYA project had a full symphony orchestra and a jazz band! We broadcast both drama and concerts over WNYC, and occasionally over WCBS on Saturday mornings. Larry and I became good friends, and we collaborated on a lot of experimental radio drama using music as a key dramatic element. When the war cranked up, NYA was closed down. I went to the Office of War Information, where I wrote music and engineered broacasts. Larry and I were both drafted into the Army... I wound up as a Morse code expert in the Signal Corps.

RR: But you continued your close association after the war?

IR: We both went into commercial radio. Larry was signed to be program director of WPWA, a small station in Chester, PA, and he got me down there as Music Director. In addition to the usual small-town radio stuff, we managed to do some experimental radio, following in the footsteps of our NYA efforts. From there we both moved to WVNJ in Newark, New Jersey, with the same duties. In these postwar years, the disk jockies eventually made both a program director and a music director superfluous. Larry went to NBC for a while and I worked for WMCA in New York City, writing commercials and directing some of their entertainment programs. Then I was hired as Music Director of WFDR-FM, a classical music station where I was also a classical disk jockey! When this station folded, Larry and I did some of the very first TV broadcasts on the new DuMont TV network. Their first studio, as you know, was on the balcony of the Wanamaker Department Store.

RR: Can you remember the shows you and Larry worked on, besides Captain Video?

IR: We worked on Rocky King, Colonel Flack, Daytime Theatre, and Mono-Drama Theatre. The most unusual of these was Mono Drama. Larry stood alone in front of an easel and did dramatic readings. I supplied music cues from classical recordings. Eventually, when DuMont opened its new studios... I believe they were on E 65th Street... Larry became producer of Captain Video, and I supplied music cues and helped in the production when I had time. There was no money for a music director, I worked free. I did get hired as music director for the Colonel Flack series, which starred Alan Mowbray. Then Larry got a show at ABC-TV, writing and directing Crime With Father, in which a police detective and his daughter solved crimes. This was scored under my direction, with cues from classical recordings. Larry also wrote a series called News Stand Theatre, for which I was music director... again I scored with cues from classical recordings.

RR: : Any memories of Captain Video specifically?

IR: Digging through the neurons I came up with a Captain Video memory that caused a big laugh at the time it happened. The scene I remember vaguely occurred when our heroes were escaping from some place in which they were captured by the bad guys. They were supposed to break out of their confinement and escape through a large duct in the building or spaceship or whatever. The scene setup had a section of large corrugated sewer pipe about three feet in diameter and about eight feet long. A camera was focussed on one of the ends of the pipe and the actor, Ray Mulderick, one of the good guys, was to crawl through it toward the camera. Just before he reached the end of the pipe we were supposed to cut away to another shot so Ray could get up, run around the pipe, get in and continue the supposedly long escape crawl. Well, you can guess what happened. The TD cut to the wrong camera, one that showed the whole pipe and we saw Ray get out of the pipe and run around and get in at the other end! We all died laughing in the control room and quickly cued and cut to the next scene. It would be great if there was a kine of that.

RR: We understand you were one of the original science fiction fans!

IR: I read the very first issue of Gernsback's "Amazing Stories" in the late 20s... yes, I read it then! I have been a SciFi fan ever since. On February 1st, 2000, I was 82 years old.

RR: Let's hear a bit about your background, before and after Captain Video.

IR: I was a pianist in my youth, then became interested in composition in my late teens. I studied composition at YMHA with Horace Grinnell, who sent me to the Juilliard School of Music for advanced study. There I auditioned for the renowned composer Roy Harris, who accepted me as a student, and eventually gave me a personal scholarship. I worked with him for several years, developing my own personal style. Before being drafted into the Army, I had a number of classical works performed in public concerts. My "Sinfonia No. 1" was taken on a national tour by the conductor Edwin MacArthur.

RR: And after the Golden Age of Live TV ended?

IR: I became Music Director for Talent Associates, David Susskind's production company, and worked on most of his network specials and some films.

RR: Most live TV veterans eventually wound up in soap operas, and I believe you did as well.

IR: For the soaps I devised a pre-recorded library system plus a method of cartridge delivery. Eventually most of the soaps and many night-time shows used the system. During my TV career I continued to function as a classical composer. I have conducted my music in many places in the world, and am still composing actively. I retired in 1986, and do not regret it since TV has become a commercial monster.

RR: I can read from an impressive list here just some of the TV specials and films you scored or prepared music for. There were about 30 different TV specials, such as "The Elephant Man" (ABC), "Death of a Salesman" (CBS), "The Devil and Daniel Webster" (NBC), and so on. About eight feature films, such as "Up the Down Staircase," "The Group," "Requiem for a Heavyweight," "The Power and the Glory" and "Black Like Me." You also composed themes for or were the music producer or music recording director for a bewildering number of TV series, such as Wide World Of Sports, ABC News, Peter Jennings and the News, Afternoon Break, The Young Set, and the Ron Cochrane Show. You won an Emmy in 1980 for the original scores for the soap opera All My Children . You also wrote for, or were the music director for, or music producer for, or music consultant for General Hospital, One Life To Live, A World Apart, Modern Romances, Everybody's Talking, High Hopes, about 20 in all. And you also wrote themes and music for many prime-time network programs, or, as you say, served as music director for, music producer for, or consultant for! Again, there were about 20 in all, incuding the pioneering early 50s science fiction show, Tales Of Tomorrow. You also did NYPD, Get Smart, Omnibus, Robert Montgomery Presents, and many more. The list goes on and on. You also composed music for or were musical director for commercials, for Air France, Goodyear, Alcoa, Zest, Tootsie Roll, and more, about a dozen accounts. And you composed or directed music for documentary and industrial films, including "A Radio View of the Universe" for the National Science Foundation. And of course you were music director for many network, local and international radio programs, including Studio Playhouse, Mystery Theatre, The Widow And The colonel, Tale Of A City, and so on.

IR: Let me straighten out some of that. I did compose for All My Children (receiving an Emmy Award) and Return To Peyton Place, but although for example I am indeed registered in BMI as composer of the Wide World Of Sports theme, I in fact served as music producer and recording director for it. Charlie Fox, the composer, and I went to London where I directed the recording and editing sessions. Again, for NYPD (for Talent Associates) I designed the music library, guided the composer, did the recording sessions, and directed the use of music on the programs themselves. This was my usual role. On the film "The Group" (directed by Sidney Lumet) I was responsible in the same way--- also for "Up the Down Staircase," where I was in charge of the recording sessions in Hollywood and the matching to the film, etc., etc. I was actually always more interested in writing music for concert performance than writing for films and TV, and I have had my works performed by symphony orchestras in the USA, South America, Europe and Russia. At some concerts I have served as conductor of my own music--- notably, in St. Petersburg in Russia.

RR: Whew! You were a busy man, and still are. Did you and Larry Menkin manage to stay in touch?

IR: At a distance. He moved to California, while I stayed in the New York area. I've lived in Chester, in Orange County, NY, for more than 28 years. We lost touch with one another only when he was stricken with Alzheimer's disease.

RR: Tell us a bit more about your earliest days in radio and TV.

IR: Back to the 1950s, I had already worked on some early TV programs but I was holding down a job as music director of WFDR FM, a classical music station in New York City. We had an announcer named Guy Wallace, who got a one-night-a-week free-lance job on a new CBS TV show. It was to go on every Friday night for 13 weeks, following the wrestling matches from Madison Square Garden. It did not have a specific starting time, but was supposed to follow the final match and fill the time until 11:30 PM, when the news would come on. The show, sponsored by Amalie Pennsylvania Motor Oil, featured a magician. Guy came to me to give him some tips about working in front of a camera, something he had never had to do in radio. I gave him all the tips I could, and on the following Monday he told me that the magician was horrible and the sponsor was about to cancel the show. Could I come up with an idea that he could take to the sponsor? I wrote up a sports interview program that would feature a different sports star every week to be interviewd by Guy. Whenever possible, the guest would demonstrate some of the finer points of his sport.

We did a demo of the show for the sponsor (I even wrote the commercials!) and, lo and behold, we sold it!! Since there was no time to set up the new format, we did the next show with the magician, but I fired the TV director and hired my friend Byron Paul, who had used me on Omnibus and Opera Television Theatre. I produced the rest of the series, writing the commercials as well. Our guests were of the caliber of Craig Wood, the championship golfer, and the show successfully ran out its 13 weeks.

I remember one Friday night waiting in the control room for the wrestling match to finish. It seemed to go on forever and began to eat into our time, and I had a guest and client to worry about. We had the CBS program department call their TV producer at the Garden to see if he could speed up the match. Somehow he got word to the referee, and within the next minute, to my surprise, one wrestler dumped the other and the match was over! We all knew that wrestling was fixed--- even back then--- but the response time was amazing.

One last note on that topic. The TV director I replaced was Yul Brynner! I have often wondered if that kicked him into the great career he had.

RR: Tell us a bit more about Tales Of Tomorrow. That was a pioneering live SF anthology program, aimed at an adult audience, but it was exactly contemporary with Space Cadet and Captain Video. It was not seen by as many people as it might be, because it was on ABC, which didn't have that many affiliates in the early days, compared to CBS and NBC. I never saw it myself.

IR: That show was studio rehearsed on Friday and broadcast live on Friday evening. Of course the cast and director worked all week from Monday on. On Thursday the tech crew showed up at the rehearsal hall to see what they had to do. I usually came on Wednesday--- talked to director and producer--- took timings--- and went home to pick the music. Then came in again on Thursday to see the rehearsal run-through. Somehow we never bothered to have a music conference--- I was trusted by producer and director. After the first studio run-through I was given notes by producer and director and made requested changes... I always had plenty of spare music cues on hand, if needed. Then we did the dress rehearsal, then went out to dinner (usually at the Des Artistes) came back, and went on the air! I had a superb engineer, Jack Kelly, to spin the records for me. George Wittaker was the audio man, very religious. During a tough show, very often the air in the control room would get blue, and in the midst of all the profanity, George could be heard chanting, "Do not take the name of the Lord in vain." Allyn Edwards was the regular announcer, and the theme music came from Prokofiev's ballet score to "Romeo and Juliet." The studio was TV-1, ABC's largest studio, which was built in the old horse stables on East 66th Street.

Our actors were generally in the earliest stages of their careers--- Leslie Nielson is a good example of that. And Paul Newman. James Dean did one for us, right out of The Actor's Studio. He felt that TV acting should be totally free and that he could go anywhere on the floor and the cameras should follow him no matter what he did. He got a good lecture on hitting marks and moving on the right dialogue lines. I guess it prepared him for Hollywood.

RR: You said you remembered some spectacular bloopers from Tales Of Tomorrow?

IR: One catastropy you can see today on the available video tapes. It was "Appointment on Mars," starring a very young Leslie Nielson. At the end of a tense drama, Nielson's character has been stabbed by the bad guy as they stand on the Martian surface. The final scene was supposed to show Nielson shooting the bad guy, and then a fade to black from the stony landscape of Mars. The wounded Nielson was supposed to pick up a pistol in the foreground, and shoot the other guy upstage, in the background. But the gun wouldn't fire or was empty or was the wrong gun! He pulled the trigger a few times, and then, supposedly dying from his stab wound, decided to limp and crawl all the way upstage over the rocks to choke the villain to death!

It took far longer than in rehearsal, of course, and I sweated out the playing of the final music, which was timed to cover the original scene. Fortunately, it was just long enough, and I was able to hit the act curtain on the fade out.

"The Picture of Dorian Grey" was a natural for Tales Of Tomorrow, and the producers tried to do a thorough job. They had a whole series of protraits painted, each one showing a different stage in the aging of Dorian, right up to the final one showing a withered old man. This last portrait was revealed in the final shot of the show, and when the young-looking Dorian rushed up to his attic to see it, a gush of blood was supposed to ooze out of the painted jacket at the position of the heart... and we cut to Dorian clutching his chest and collapsing, and fade to black.

The effect was done by mounting a piece of plastic tubing and a rubber bulb onto a hole in the portrait. For fear of staining the painting with stage blood, the producers did not test the action beforehand. When the climax came, the stage hand hiding behind the painting was cued by the stage manager to squeeze the bulb. As the camera dollied in (and it had to dolly because zoom lenses had not been invented yet) the stage hand gave the bulb a violent squeeze and a red hose-like stream barreled out of the painting right into the lens of the camera! Yes, we immediately cut to the actor, doing his best not to die of laughter.

Another science-fiction-related incident occurred on the Tales Of Tomorrow broadcast of "The Universal Solvent." Victor Jory was a scientist living in a rooming house, who in his room was busy devising a liquid that would dissolve everything except its container. The next door roomer was a young lady that the Jory character was interested in. One day he succeeded in his quest, and set about devising a dramatic experiment to impress the young lady--- and the TV audience. He got a huge round glass tub about 3 feet across and several feet high. He filled this with his magic fluid, water, and invited the girl next door to come and see and be impressed. The tub was rigged with hoses and pumps at the bottom. When Jory threw things into the tub, the camera would close in to show the things hidden by rising bubbles. Then we would cut away to Jory trying to make time with the girl, while stagehands rushed in and removed all the stuff. Then a cut back to the tub would reveal it to be empty except for a few gentle bubbles rising.

All went well during dress rehearsal. But Jory was getting a bit interested himself in the actress playing the next door roomer, or else he got carried away by his part, because during the broadcast he tossed everything he could lift into the tub. The stage hands managed to get the tub clear while the camera was on Jory and the girl, but when we cut back, it turned out Jory had thrown the stuff into the tub with such force that it dislodged the hoses and pumps and they came floating up, bubbling away in a beautiful close-up shot! I can't remember what happened after that, but we finished the show somehow. I suppose we forged ahead as if nothing were wrong... but I do remember all went home laughing!

RR: Everyone on early TV has an elephant story. Do you?

IR: This occurred on True Story at NBC. I was their music director, and my wife and I sold several scripts to the program. The series (once a week, early Saturday afternoon) was produced by Jerry Layton and directed by H. Wesley Kenny. (I even got to direct one of the shows.) We worked in Studio 8H.

This story was about a circus and we had all the scenery and props for a small travelling circus, including a rented live elephant. All went well during the blocking and then came the dress rehearsal. Halfway through, we in the control room heard a roaring noise from the studio. It was so loud it covered all the dialogue. The elephant was urinating! Of course the rehearsal stopped, and when the elephant was finished, the stagehands rushed into the studio with brooms, mops, towels, blankets, etc., anything that could stop and mop up the flood. I never knew an elephant contained so much fluid! Well, the crew did their best, but the flood rushed out under the studio doors and into the lobby outside the studio. Then it poured down the elevator shafts into the main, ground-floor lobby. I would have loved to see the reaction in the lobby--- tour groups and all.

The crew finally managed to mop everything up and we did our dress rehearsal. The elephant was otherwise perfectly well behaved, and our show went on the air on scheudle. I was lucky to be working in the sealed control room, because the smell in the studio was fantastic! As a matter of fact, the NBC lobby on the street level smelled for over a week!

RR: Anything else we need to know?

IR: I've been a guest lecturer at New York University, Columbia University, Westminister College, and the University of Missouri. I was invited to the "Sessione Senese per la Musica e L'Arte" at the University of Sienna in Italy, in the Summer of 1982, where I conducted the premier of my "Essays for Small Orchestra." I was invited to join the faculty there, and taught composition at summer sessions from 1983 to 1986. I am the producer of a chamber recital series in Sugar Loaf, NY, and have been composer-in-residence for the Highlands Symphony Orchestra since its incorporation in 1988.

[Click here for a second interview with Irving Robbin. This concentrates his days with David Susskind's Talent Associates, which most critics consider a key part of the last stand of quality TV programming, before everything of cultural merit was swept away by the sitcoms and garbage that dominate network TV today.]

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