SPACE INTERVIEWS

RR: I have to start with a confession, that it is easy to fall into erroneous mind-sets even when you know better. For example, I tend to think of you as flying in from Hollywood to take the role of Tom Corbett, yet I have a number of radio shows from 1947-49 where you play roles, and these are all New York based programs--- for example, the very first broadcast of T-Men, January 14, 1947. So you were right there at the very beginnings of postwar TV, in the very earliest days of DuMont and CBS and NBC.

FT: Yes, remember I was born in Manhattan! At first, as I recall, DuMont had studios located on Madison Avenue, and, I believe, 52nd Street. [515 Madison Avenue.] This was a very cramped space, tiny radio studios, never designed for TV, and as their schedule expanded they rented space in the old John Wanamaker Department Store, downtown but not quite in Greenwich Village.

RR: Jim Caddigan was the DuMont executive who had to come up with programming in those days? It seems he had a completely free hand.

FT: Completely... he was able to experiment with programs and program concepts very freely, because Dr. DuMont had really bought the station as a tax writeoff, to compensate for his profits from TV set manufacture. In fact, one of the DuMont directors had been a production line worker at the DuMont factory in New Jersey--- Frank Bunetta--- how he got tapped to be a TV director, I can't tell you, but that's how open the organization was. Bunetta was the first director on the first Jackie Gleason show, Cavalcade Of Stars. They worked out of a theater just east of 7th Avenue, maybe the Adelphi. I worked with Bunetta once, I got this call for "Hands of Murder," and I showed up and here were four or five fellows, all of whom I knew, there was a very small group of actors doing TV in those days. Stage actors were good, but actors with movie experience were preferred for early TV, because the actor has to always be conscious of the overhead mike. When you make a fast cross, you have to wait for that mike to catch up before you deliver a line. Bunetta, I know, did a Philco Playhouse, and I was on that show too. Anyway, Bunetta had these five or six actors, and he gave them a few pages of the script, and said the rest was coming in, the producer was working on it, because the writers were on strike. We changed the name from "Hands of Destiny" to "Hands of Murder." We asked Bunetta what parts we were to play and he said he didn't know, he just hired all the people who could learn a script fast! We parceled it out between us, and the show went on and did all right.

RR: You were involved in one of Caddigan's first programs?

FT: Yes, one of his first trial balloons was A Woman To Remember, the very first five-a-week series on TV. [2/21/49 to 7/15/49] It was an interesting concept, it was a soap opera about a soap opera. That is, the characters were actors who were putting on a radio soap opera. We used an existing radio studio for the TV show, so that all the radio equipment in the room was real. I played one of the two male leads on the show, which ran for 26 weeks. The studio was tiny, with three rows of seats against a wall, in which people taking studio tours sat to watch the live performance. The director and producer was Bob Steele, who had directed a radio soap opera, Aunt Jenny, 12 Noon, CBS, 5-a-week, and the writer was John Haggard. They created Woman To Remeber and Caddigan bought it.

I better describe this small studio to you. It had the control room with window, and the usual radio studio equipment. As I recall we had only two cameras, and sometimes as many as four sets, three not counting the studio itself. On top of that there was a railing behind which were those three rows of seats. I suppose they were there originally for live audiences for the old radio shows done in that studio. There were times when I was playing a tense scene that I could have reached out and touched some of the studio tourists in these seats! Our producer's office set, I remember, consisted of a blank wall on which was mounted a Venetian blind, fronted by a table and two chairs. The weird thing about it was, when you looked at the studio monitor, the set didn't look bad! It really came over pretty good.

RR: This was in the uptown studio. What was the first "downtown" show, do you remember?

FT: The first show done downtown, I think, was Famous Jury Trials [October, 1949 to March 1952] This was based on an earlier radio show, and the format established on the radio show created frenzy on TV. Here was the reason. The show opened in a courtroom with someone testifying, and faded out to a flashback of the events covered in the testimony. But of course the flashback involved the same actor or actress seen in the initial courtroom scene, and the problem was that the different sets were in quite far apart in a large studio. The actors quickly became breathless running from set to set. Donald Woods was the narrator and I believe I did either the first or second show.

RR: This was a very small world in those days, was it not? Everyone knew everyone else?

FT: Actually, if you were there at the birth of TV you did know everybody, since there were not that many people involved. The agencies and networks knew mainly radio performers, but most of them could not do TV since they could only work from a script, not memorize lines. About ten actors did almost all the work, and thank heavens, I was one of them.

RR: Despite all Caddigan's efforts and creativity, DuMont had only two shows with much of an audience, Captain Video and Rocky King, Inside Detective, with Roscoe Karns. What do you remember about Jim Caddigan as a person and as creator of TV programming?

FT: He was very good to me, personally. He gave me a lot of work.

RR: Any favorite stories of those pre-Tom-Corbett days?

FT: In radio, and later in televison, there were three primary hand signals given by the director to the cast. One was one finger extended into a circle meaning speed it up, we're running slow, another was two hands together, fingers touching, then pulled apart, meaning slow down, stretch it out. The third, the finger touching the nose, meant right on schedule. Well, it was a warm day on the set of Woman To Remember, and I guess the air conditioning was off, it was pretty hot in the studio. There were just three leads on the show, a female lead, Pat Wheel, a male lead, John Raby, and myself. Pat and I had this close scene, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a frantic speed-up signal, so I started to pick up the pace, and Pat caught it from me, she was very dependable and speeded up too. But the signal continued, so I went faster and faster... the two of us were racing through the lines, as if we didn't like them. And finally we come into the theme music, and the director comes out of the control booth crying, "My God, Frank, what have you done?!? We're two minutes under!" And I looked, and there was the audience there... and all these little ladies were fanning themselves with their hands. And that's what I had seen out of the corner of one eye! To me it looked like the circular speed up signal! Ah, well.

As primitive as it was, the show didn't really come over that badly. John Haggard and Bob Steele really had an interesting idea. The major labor was spread among the three leads, with Pat being the dominant character in one show, John in the next, and me in the next, to divide the burden. Sometimes Pat or John would be written out of the script to get a day off, but I was in all five shows every week. I was sort of the steady man. Caddigan loved the show, and also he liked my mother, who had appeared with Judy Holliday and Paul Douglas in the big Broadway hit Born Yesterday. Eventually he hired mother, Mona Bruns, on the show to play my aunt!

Another story will illustrate how efficient Bob Steele and John Haggard were in putting on this daily program. It was a very snowy, icy day in Manhattan, and we were living in the London Terrace Towers on 23rd and 9th, and I would walk every morning to the 8th Avenue Subway entrance and grab that to get to the studios. With snow and slush all over the place, when I got to the long, long flight of subway stairs, I slipped and went all the way down, and I hit on my right wrist and arm. I knew I was hurt, but the show must go on, so I continued to the studio. I didn't say anything but the wrist started to swell and I couldn't really conceal it, and the pain became quite serious, so I rolled up my sleeve and admitted it. Caddigan, Bob and John sat down and reassembled the program, so that I was cut out of it. This was a major revision! They sent me off in an ambulance to a doctor and the show went on... and it went all right! They whipped it all into shape in something like two hours. I had a Calles fracture in my right wrist, but the next day I was back in front of the cameras, with an Ace elastic bandage concealed by my long sleeve shirt. The fracture was OK in about two or three weeks. That was the only Woman To Remember show that I missed.

After that I spent a year playing Cliff on One Man's Family, and then left that to do Tom Corbett. Strangely enough, about that time, Mother came on One Man's Family. We had a fine cast. Burt Lytell, Margie Gateson, Lillian Schaff, Nancy Franklin and Paul Thorson.

RR: Was there much difference in the TV studio facilities of NBC, CBS, ABC and DuMont?

FT: DuMont was always way behind NBC, CBS and ABC in studio facilities.

RR: Did you ever appear on a Captain Video program?

FT: No, although of course many Broadway actors did. Probably early TV eventually used all the available actors in New York, other than radio performers, who usually couldn't memorize scripts. I do remember that Olga Druce, the producer who fought to increase Captain Video's budget and quality, later became a director doing TV soap operas. And she also hired my mother! A bit later my mother went on A Brighter Day, where she played Aunt Emily, the female lead, for many years. And Dad was doing Captain Burke on Martin Kane, Private Eye. and of course I was doing Tom Corbett, so the Radio-TV Mirror listed us as the "first family of television." We were actually running against each other to some extent. On your web site I don't think you mention anywhere that Al Hodge had created the role of The Green Hornet on radio, and played the part until he left to serve in WWII.

RR: That's an oversight, because I have collected every audio tape I can find of Green Hornet broadcasts in which Hodge plays the Hornet and his alter ego Britt Reid. Hodge's voice is so distinctive, I love to listen to it in any role. The voice of Frankie Thomas, by the way, is also completely distinctive.

FT: Al Hodge and I were on a radio show together once, but never did any TV together. A standard WXYZ mystery show, directed by Ernie Ricka, can't remember the title, a one-a-weeker, was the radio show we were on. It happened once on that show, on many shows on both radio and TV ... never when I was there, fortunately ... that a whole cast would break up. Something struck somebody funny, and the giggles spread like wildfire.... and that was a dangerous thing.

I was surprised to read in Charles Polacheck's interview about how much kidding around there was on Captain Video. Don Hastings later went on Edge Of Night, and was on it for decades! I directed him once for a show at the Lambs' Club. He and Al Hodge were real sober citizens, it's hard to imagine them cutting up much! We didn't have much impulse to cut up on Tom Corbett. We had our hands full with that show. Our problem was always time, we always tended to run long. The guest performers would tend to slow down their lines when the red light came on and they realized they were being seen in 30 million American homes. We'd get to the second commercial and the producer would say, "Jeepers, we gotta pick up some time, here, Frank." So I'd speed it up. I said once, "I'm playing these scenes like I don't like the dialogue!"

RR: Michael Menkin has told me about some non-studio-areas being used on Captain Video and Rocky King and other shows, to give some space to the scenes. I can recall one Captain Video set that was just a long, dark corridor, obviously the corridor of the studio building, decorated with some elaborate fake girders, and this was the interior tunnel of a giant Space Ark. Do you recall anything like that?

FT: I remember we used a stairwell on Tom Corbett. We were uptown at the ABC studios, and we did a scene on one of the stairwells. Sure, you used anything you had that you could get the cameras and mikes to, that fit into the script.

RR: There's the famous grudge boxing match between Tom Corbett and Roger Manning, in about the first month of the program, still on CBS. The match takes place in a real-looking gymnasium, on a real-looking boxing ring.

FT: That was the actual studio, which in fact had been a gymnasium, complete with balcony bleacher seating! Mort Abrams, our producer at that time, was always fighting to make our show look good, and he usually succeeded. For the match they had an authentic light-bag mounted, and the sequence opened with me hitting the bag. I had been a boxer in my Marine division. I fought Jan in that one, and later I had a wrestling match with Frank Sutton--- Eric Rattison, the great rival of the Polaris unit. He was a little heavy. That gave me some problems! As for creative use of locations, I remember one show where there was a camera pointing out a window on the 10th floor, trained down to the street, where an announcer was interviewing people passing by. But the angle of the shot was from 10 stories up!

RR: What are some of the other TV programs you appeared in before Tom and the cadets came your way?

FT: Many. There was a woman casting for DuMont in those days, Elizabeth Meers, and her father produced a play I had done, called "The First Legion," and maybe for that reason she gave me a lot of calls, but I worked constantly. I was on Martin Kane, Private Eye, Famous Jury Trials, Studio One. I did the only Studio One play that was ever repeated, with a wonderful cast, Bob Sterling and Ilona Massey. I was on Philco Playhouse, Celanese Playhouse, and a very interesting program limited to six segments, called Volume One, a half-hour show, created by a famous radio director/writer, Wyllis Cooper. He created Lights Out and Suspense. They finally talked him into doing TV, and he agreed only to do these six stories. [June 16 to July 21, 1949] For the first broadcast, we did something called "The Bellhop's Story," with only three characters, played by myself, Jack Lescoulie and Nancy Sheridan. Well, the next morning after the broadcast at an ungodly hour Bill called me up. I worked a great deal for him, so we were on friendly terms. I had worked on Quiet, Please, which is the show he did after Lights Out. Anyway, he called and said, "Frank, have you seen Variety, well of course you haven't seen it, I have an advance copy, I wanta read this to you, kid, 'Television Comes of Age, with Wyllis Cooper's Volume One'." And that was the review! It was indeed a very interesting script. Cooper was the only director I knew who could give line readings that were right. Generally the way directors read a line was never going to be the way the actor would read it, anyway, but Bill would give you these readings and you'd assume he wasn't right and then you'd try it and realize he was right! When they had his funeral, there weren't too many of us there. But he was unique! He had been a veteran, and when they folded up the flag, one guy got all mixed up, and the flag got folded all wrong. I was sitting next to Bill's wife and she turned to me and said, "You know, Bill is upstairs laughing his head off!" And he probably was.

RR: Did you know Larry Menkin, who was in at the creation of Captain Video?

FT: No, we never met.

RR: You told me earlier that there was a connection between Tom Corbett and NBC's live sf series Tales Of Tomorrow. What was that connection?

FT: The connection was Mort Abrams, of Rockhill Productions, who was our first producer. It was Mort who got us the large standing sets that made Tom Corbett stand out among the other 1950 sf adventure shows: the Polaris control deck, the Academy spaceport with the big mockup of the Polaris fins and engines, our bunkroom and our classroom at Space Academy, Commander Arkwright's office, and so on. At some point there was some dispute, I don't know about what, but he was always fighting for more money for the production. He left Rockhill and went to ABC where he was the producer/director of Tales Of Tomorrow. It was very well done, with good sets and good people. My uncle worked that show, and Corbett too. He was also an actor. Calvin Thomas. One good broadcast he was involved in there was "A Little Child Shall Lead Them," with Burt Lytell. My whole family was in the business, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my father. While doing Corbett, I was spending a lot more time with the Corbett cast than with my own family, by the way. A lot more. We were rehearsing for the radio show or the TV show pretty much continuously. There was not a lot of spare time.

RR: Abrams' presence explains why the Tales Of Tomorrow sets are so impressive, in the few examples I have seen on video tape. When Tom Corbett moved to DuMont in 1954, it seemed to us kids, and to me as an adult watching on video tape, that the sets really got cramped. On the Polaris control deck, there hardly seems to be room to move.

FT: I don't remember that. We brought a lot of the sets along with us. I don't remember any particular budget problems with the DuMont sponsor, either, that would have required the sets to be downsized. Maybe we were just in a smaller studio, and things had to be reduced to fit.

RR: The other thing that's noticable is that there are no special effects at all on the DuMont run of the show.

FT: Ahh, well, we didn't have George Gould. He was the guiding genius of our special effects, and he left us with the end of the ABC run. He was bought away by CBS to do Rod Brown Of The Rocket Rangers which did not succeed. George was the man who used the matting amplifier so brilliantly, to superimpose live action on one set onto live action onto another, onto miniatures, onto artwork, anything. Superimposition had been done before but the foreground was transparent. George created an automatic travelling matte, a black void, into which the foreground action fit perfectly, so that there was no transparency. I remember a shot with us out on the hull of the Polaris, and my God, the Polaris looked as big as the aircraft carrier Lexington, and of course it was a tiny wooden model. We were in our space suits crawling around on a black set... it was very effective!

RR: To change the subject, you told me also that there was never the level of horsing around on Tom Corbett that Charles Polacheck mentioned on Captain Video.

FT: I think we were constrained by the fact that a major sponsor, Kelloggs, was spending a lot of money on the show. We didn't want to do anything on the air that would jeopardize the quality of what we were doing. Now, on our radio show, there was a lot more kidding around and pranks and trying to break people up, because the audience couldn't see what was happening. But on TV, I think the worst thing that ever happened was the time Woodrow Parfrey, playing a space pirate whom Tom had just blasted down, got up from the floor and walked off the set just as the camera was moving in for a closeup of him, and that was unintentional, not a prank.

Kelloggs, by the way, had a history of supporting space adventure that went back to the 1930s and the radio version of Buck Rogers. Later, Rockhill produced a radio version of the comic strip MARK TRAIL for them. We didn't want to jeopardize a good thing! I think the public always deserves the best you can give them.

James Caddigan	Michael and Kit Menkin	Charles Polacheck	Irving Robbin	Harry Persanis	Main Page