Seneca Mills Falls, Penn Yan, NY
Seneca Mills Falls, Penn Yan, Yates County, NY. Shot 10/3/13
Senators, Ambassadors, Governors, Republican Nominee for Vice President (1950s Interviews)
Interviewees:
A. S. Mike Monroney, Democratic Party politician from Oklahoma
Estes Kefauver, American politician from Tennessee
Everett Dirksen, American politician of the Republican Party
Fred Andrew Seaton, United States Secretary of the Interior during Dwight Eisenhower's administration
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Republican United States Senator from Massachusetts and a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, South Vietnam, West Germany, and the Holy See (as Representative). He was the Republican nominee for Vice President in the 1960 Presidential election.
Herbert H. Lehman, Democratic Party politician from New York. He was the 45th Governor of New York from 1933 to 1942, and represented New York in the United States Senate from 1950 to 1957.
Everett McKinley Dirksen (January 4, 1896 -- September 7, 1969) was an American politician of the Republican Party. He represented Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives (1933--1949) and U.S. Senate (1951--1969). As Senate Minority Leader for over a decade, he played a highly visible and key role in the politics of the 1960s, including helping to write and pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Open Housing Act of 1968, both landmarks of civil rights legislation. He was also one of the Senate's strongest supporters of the Vietnam War and was known as The Wizard of Ooze for his oratorical style.
In 1946 Lodge defeated Democratic Senator David I. Walsh and returned to the U.S. Senate. He soon emerged as a spokesman for the moderate, internationalist wing of the Republican Party. In late 1951, Lodge helped persuade General Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for the Republican presidential nomination. When Eisenhower finally consented, Lodge served as his campaign manager and played a key role in helping Eisenhower to win the nomination over Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, the candidate of the party's conservative faction.
In the fall of 1952 Lodge found himself fighting in a tight race for re-election with John F. Kennedy, then a Congressman from Massachusetts. Due to his efforts in helping Eisenhower, Lodge had neglected his own Senate campaign. In addition, some of Taft's supporters in Massachusetts were angered when Lodge supported Eisenhower, and they defected to Kennedy's campaign.[10] In November 1952 Lodge was narrowly defeated by Kennedy; Lodge received 48.5% of the vote to Kennedy's 51.5%. This was neither the first nor last time a Lodge faced a Kennedy in a Massachusetts election: In 1916 Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr. had defeated Kennedy's grandfather John F. Fitzgerald for the same Senate seat, and Lodge's son, George C. Lodge, was defeated in his bid for the seat by Kennedy's brother Ted in the 1962 election for John F. Kennedy's unexpired term.
In February 1953, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. was named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations by President Eisenhower, with his office elevated to Cabinet level rank. In contrast to his grandfather (who had been a principal opponent of the UN's predecessor, the League of Nations), Lodge was supportive of the UN as an institution for promoting peace. As he famously said about it, This organization is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isn't created to take you to heaven.[11] Since that time, no one has even approached his record of seven years as ambassador to the UN. During his time as UN Ambassador, Lodge supported the Cold War policies of the Eisenhower Administration, and often engaged in debates with the UN representatives of the Soviet Union. In 1959 he escorted Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev on a highly-publicized tour of the United States.
Words at War: Combined Operations / They Call It Pacific / The Last Days of Sevastopol
The Siege of Sevastopol took place on the Eastern Front of the Second World War. The campaign was fought by the Axis powers of Germany, Romania and Italy against the Soviet Union for control of Sevastopol, a port in Crimea on the Black Sea. On 22 June 1941 the Axis invaded the Soviet Union under Operation Barbarossa. The Axis land forces reached Crimea in the autumn, 1941, and overran the area. The only objective not in Axis hands was Sevastopol. Several attempts were made to secure the city in October and November 1941. A major attack was planned for late November, but bad weather and heavy rains delayed the Axis attack until 17 December 1941. Under the command of Erich von Manstein, the Axis forces were unable to capture Sevastopol in the first stage of operations. The Soviets launched an amphibious landing on the Crimean peninsula at Kerch in December 1941, to relieve the siege and force the Axis to divert forces to defend their gains. The operation saved Sevastopol for the time being, but the landing was checked and repulsed in May 1942.
At Sevastopol the Axis opted to conduct a siege until the summer, 1942, at which point they attacked the encircled Soviet forces by land, sea and air. On 2 June 1942, the Axis began their operation, codenamed Störfang (Sturgeon Catch). The Soviet Red Army and Black Sea Fleet held out for weeks under intense Axis bombardment. The German Air Force (Luftwaffe) played a vital part in the siege. The Luftwaffe made up for a shortage of Axis artillery, providing highly effective aerial bombardment in support of the ground forces. Finally, on the 4 July 1942, the remaining Soviet forces surrendered and the Axis seized the port. Both sides had suffered considerable losses during the siege.
With the Soviet forces neutralised, the Axis refocused their attention on the major summer campaign of that year, Operation Blue and the advance to the Caucasus oil fields.
Grief Drives a Black Sedan / People Are No Good / Time Found Again / Young Man Axelbrod
In the beginning of the Golden Age, American radio network programs were almost exclusively broadcast live, as the national networks prohibited the airing of recorded programs until the late 1940s because of the inferior sound quality of phonograph discs, the only practical recording medium. As a result, prime-time shows would be performed twice, once for each coast. However, reference recordings were made of many programs as they were being broadcast, for review by the sponsor and for the network's own archival purposes. With the development of high-fidelity magnetic wire and tape recording in the years following World War II, the networks became more open to airing recorded programs and the prerecording of shows became more common.
Local stations, however, had always been free to use recordings and sometimes made substantial use of prerecorded syndicated programs distributed on pressed (as opposed to individually recorded) transcription discs.
Recording was done using a cutting lathe and acetate discs. Programs were normally recorded at 33⅓ rpm on 16 inch discs, the standard format used for such electrical transcriptions from the early 1930s through the 1950s. Sometimes, the groove was cut starting at the inside of the disc and running to the outside. This was useful when the program to be recorded was longer than 15 minutes so required more than one disc side. By recording the first side outside in, the second inside out, and so on, the sound quality at the disc change-over points would match and result in a more seamless playback. An inside start also had the advantage that the thread of material cut from the disc's surface, which had to be kept out of the path of the cutting stylus, was naturally thrown toward the center of the disc so was automatically out of the way. When cutting an outside start disc, a brush could be used to keep it out of the way by sweeping it toward the middle of the disc. Well-equipped recording lathes used the vacuum from a water aspirator to pick it up as it was cut and deposit it in a water-filled bottle. In addition to convenience, this served a safety purpose, as the cellulose nitrate thread was highly flammable and a loose accumulation of it combusted violently if ignited.
Most recordings of radio broadcasts were made at a radio network's studios, or at the facilities of a network-owned or affiliated station, which might have four or more lathes. A small local station often had none. Two lathes were required to capture a program longer than 15 minutes without losing parts of it while discs were flipped over or changed, along with a trained technician to operate them and monitor the recording while it was being made. However, some surviving recordings were produced by local stations.[7][8]
When a substantial number of copies of an electrical transcription were required, as for the distribution of a syndicated program, they were produced by the same process used to make ordinary records. A master recording was cut, then electroplated to produce a stamper from which pressings in vinyl (or, in the case of transcription discs pressed before about 1935, shellac) were molded in a record press.
Words at War: Mother America / Log Book / The Ninth Commandment
On 1 September 1939, Germany and Slovakia—a client state in 1939—attacked Poland.[46] On 3 September France and Britain, followed by the countries of the Commonwealth,[47] declared war on Germany but provided little support to Poland other than a small French attack into the Saarland.[48] Britain and France also began a naval blockade of Germany on 3 September which aimed to damage the country's economy and war effort.[49][50]
On 17 September, after signing a cease-fire with Japan, the Soviets also invaded Poland.[51] Poland's territory was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union, with Lithuania and Slovakia also receiving small shares. The Poles did not surrender; they established a Polish Underground State and an underground Home Army, and continued to fight with the Allies on all fronts outside Poland.[52]
About 100,000 Polish military personnel were evacuated to Romania and the Baltic countries; many of these soldiers later fought against the Germans in other theatres of the war.[53] Poland's Enigma codebreakers were also evacuated to France.[54] During this time, Japan launched its first attack against Changsha, a strategically important Chinese city, but was repulsed by late September.[55]
Following the invasion of Poland and a German-Soviet treaty governing Lithuania, the Soviet Union forced the Baltic countries to allow it to station Soviet troops in their countries under pacts of mutual assistance.[56][57][58] Finland rejected territorial demands and was invaded by the Soviet Union in November 1939.[59] The resulting conflict ended in March 1940 with Finnish concessions.[60] France and the United Kingdom, treating the Soviet attack on Finland as tantamount to entering the war on the side of the Germans, responded to the Soviet invasion by supporting the USSR's expulsion from the League of Nations.[58]
In Western Europe, British troops deployed to the Continent, but in a phase nicknamed the Phoney War by the British and Sitzkrieg (sitting war) by the Germans, neither side launched major operations against the other until April 1940.[61] The Soviet Union and Germany entered a trade pact in February 1940, pursuant to which the Soviets received German military and industrial equipment in exchange for supplying raw materials to Germany to help circumvent the Allied blockade.[62]
In April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway to secure shipments of iron ore from Sweden, which the Allies were about to disrupt.[63] Denmark immediately capitulated, and despite Allied support, Norway was conquered within two months.[64] In May 1940 Britain invaded Iceland to preempt a possible German invasion of the island.[65] British discontent over the Norwegian campaign led to the replacement of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain with Winston Churchill on 10 May 1940.[66]
The Great Gildersleeve: Leroy Suspended from School / Leila Returns Home / Marjorie the Ballerina
The Great Gildersleeve (1941--1957), initially written by Leonard Lewis Levinson, was one of broadcast history's earliest spin-off programs. Built around Throckmorton Philharmonic Gildersleeve, a character who had been a staple on the classic radio situation comedy Fibber McGee and Molly, first introduced on Oct. 3, 1939, ep. #216. The Great Gildersleeve enjoyed its greatest success in the 1940s. Actor Harold Peary played the character during its transition from the parent show into the spin-off and later in a quartet of feature films released at the height of the show's popularity.
On Fibber McGee and Molly, Peary's Gildersleeve was a pompous windbag who became a consistent McGee nemesis. You're a haa-aa-aa-aard man, McGee! became a Gildersleeve catchphrase. The character was given several conflicting first names on Fibber McGee and Molly, and on one episode his middle name was revealed as Philharmonic. Gildy admits as much at the end of Gildersleeve's Diary on the Fibber McGee and Molly series (Oct. 22, 1940).
He soon became so popular that Kraft Foods—looking primarily to promote its Parkay margarine spread — sponsored a new series with Peary's Gildersleeve as the central, slightly softened and slightly befuddled focus of a lively new family.
Premiering on August 31, 1941, The Great Gildersleeve moved the title character from the McGees' Wistful Vista to Summerfield, where Gildersleeve now oversaw his late brother-in-law's estate and took on the rearing of his orphaned niece and nephew, Marjorie (originally played by Lurene Tuttle and followed by Louise Erickson and Mary Lee Robb) and Leroy Forester (Walter Tetley). The household also included a cook named Birdie. Curiously, while Gildersleeve had occasionally spoken of his (never-present) wife in some Fibber episodes, in his own series the character was a confirmed bachelor.
In a striking forerunner to such later television hits as Bachelor Father and Family Affair, both of which are centered on well-to-do uncles taking in their deceased siblings' children, Gildersleeve was a bachelor raising two children while, at first, administering a girdle manufacturing company (If you want a better corset, of course, it's a Gildersleeve) and then for the bulk of the show's run, serving as Summerfield's water commissioner, between time with the ladies and nights with the boys. The Great Gildersleeve may have been the first broadcast show to be centered on a single parent balancing child-rearing, work, and a social life, done with taste and genuine wit, often at the expense of Gildersleeve's now slightly understated pomposity.
Many of the original episodes were co-written by John Whedon, father of Tom Whedon (who wrote The Golden Girls), and grandfather of Deadwood scripter Zack Whedon and Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog).
The key to the show was Peary, whose booming voice and facility with moans, groans, laughs, shudders and inflection was as close to body language and facial suggestion as a voice could get. Peary was so effective, and Gildersleeve became so familiar a character, that he was referenced and satirized periodically in other comedies and in a few cartoons.