Walter M Windsor - Life Story: Forks in the Road

Forks in the Road: Chapter 4

HIT THE ROAD TO RADIOLAND

My hitchhiking technique must have improved with experience, because I encountered very little difficulty getting from Reno to New York. I did, however, have to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to get to the family homestead on Highland Place.

I went the rounds of the New York stations, seeking employment. At several of them I was auditioned; the comments were favorable, but jobs were not open. The head of programming at WHN particularly liked my work and asked if I would be willing to work away from New York. I answered in the affirmative, and he said he occasionally got requests from out-of-town stations to recommend announcers. Not long after, the phone rang, and this fellow said there was a man in town from WTOL in Toledo, Ohio, looking for an announcer. I went to WHN and auditioned for the Toledo sales manager, and he hired me for the magnificent sum of $27.50 per week.

To prepare for my career in Toledo, I purchased a copy of the Toledo Blade at the Times Square Newsstand, which, in those days, offered papers from all over the world. I read up on what was going on in my new home city, and particularly I studied the radio program listings. WTOL was a brand new station, which had just come on the air a few days before my arrival. I noted a prominent daily program on the schedule called Polish Music Hall, and I wondered what kind of polish was sponsoring this show.

After I arrived and started work, I quickly learned, among other things, that the word was not polish, like in furniture wax, but Polish, like in the language spoken in Poland. There was a large segment of Polish in the Toledo population, and the host of this program was one Stanley Wyczatyzki, pronounced Vish-a-titz-key. Among my initial duties was introducing him and signing him off every day, for which there were words in Polish that I learned to speak. I also was required to “log” the commercials on his program. This was not easy, because he would be talking away in Polish, and I had to listen carefully to pick up English words like “Ford” and “Coca-Cola.” I believe to this day that old Stanley was sneaking in a few unidentifiable ads for which WTOL was not being compensated.

One of the funniest things that ever happened to me in radio took place at WTOL. I “ran the board” myself in the early morning, At eight o’clock, an exercise program came on from the studio, which I introduced from the announcer’s booth. Another announcer was coming on to do the next program, so it was worked out that, when it came time for me to deliver the middle commercial in the exercise show, I would carefully open the soundproof door and edge into the studio, that being the exercise lady’s cue to turn the mike over to me. She was accompanied by a pianist, who punctuated the exercises with appropriate music. On this particular morning, Exercise Lady was conducting a bicycling exercise. She called out:

“One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, all right, girls, spread out your legs and relax, here comes Walter Windsor!”

Everyone in the place cracked up - the engineer, the pianist, people in the office, and I, but I don’t know if the poor lady ever figured out what she had said or done to cause such a commotion.

They didn’t do the great amount of live programming in Toledo that we did at KFOX, but I was able to track down some local talent and put on a few musical shows. Singers Preston Sadler, Blanche Berndt ,and Ilah Seguin had 15-minute weekly shows. I did one called Song Shop, on which the pianist and I pretended to be demonstrating songs in a music store. We built an hour for Sunday called Rainbow Varieties, which involved all these people, plus a male quartet and a trio of three sisters. I was having a ball producing and hosting this show and acting like a poor man’s Fred Waring. The "stars" worked for “experience.”

At this point, the time came for classes to resume at LBJC. Had I won that election as Student Body President, I would have felt obligated to return. But I was riding high in Toledo, and so ended my formal education.

Fork #8.


Walter interviewing James Melton in 1938.	Walter interviewing Ella Fitzgerald in 1938.

I also had the opportunity to interview celebrities who came to Toledo. One such was James Melton, opera singer and movie star, whom I assisted, during his booking in Toledo, in buying an antique fire engine to add to his collection of vintage vehicles. Another was Ella Fitzgerald. Both of us were nineteen years old at the time. She was appearing at a local theater with the Chick Webb band, with which she had made a tremendous record hit of A-Tisket A-Tasket. It was a very pleasant interview, and she very kindly remembered it and me when our paths crossed now and then in later years. A small photo was taken of Ella and me at WTOL, which I kept and cherished. She came to Orlando for a Jazz Festival in 1982. I visited her backstage and presented her with a copy of the 1938 photo. She was delighted, and she posed with me for a new one. She was one of the greatest vocal performers in the history of popular music.

The Program Director of the station was unfortunately a hopeless alcoholic. He couldn’t meet the responsibilities of his job, and it fell the lot of the rookie announcer to fill in for him. Finally he went into the hospital for an extended stay, and I was doing most of his job as well as my own. I enjoyed this, but became convinced that WTOL was taking unfair advantage of my youth. So I went to Mike Kent, the manager, and made a fatal mistake. I learned the hard way that you never give an ultimatum to your boss. When I told Kent that I wanted either the money or the title of the job I was doing (preferably both), or else I would leave, I was invited to leave. Promptly. Lesson learned; I never made that mistake again.

Back in the ranks of the unemployed, I struck out for nearby cities Cleveland and Detroit in search of a job that would move me upward. I was almost hired by station CKLW in Windsor, Ontario (Canada), which served Detroit. They had a great idea to have me deliver the news as The Voice of Windsor. Then they found out I was not a Canadian citizen, and law prevented their hiring me unless they could prove there was no Canadian citizen who could do the same job.

The man at CKLW did, however, tell me he thought they were looking for someone at WKBZ in Muskegon, Michigan. This wasn’t exactly the size market I had in mind, but the funds were running out. I phoned WKBZ and made an appointment for interview and audition. I was immediately hired, for twenty-five dollars a week.

Grant Ashbacker was the owner and manager of WKBZ, and he was another of the eccentrics. For example, he had a theory that nobody should speak on the radio any faster than one hundred words a minute. He would sit at home with a stop watch and clock his announcers, then raise hell with those who spoke faster than his standard. After a warning or two, he would fire an announcer who was guilty of this unforgivable sin. I spoke, as I believe I still do, fairly rapidly but with total clarity. When he caught me exceeding his rate for the third time, he called and told me I was fired, to come in the morning to pick up my check. When I went in the next morning, I found this was a device he used to control expenses. He offered to give me “another chance” if I’d continue at $22.50 per week. I had no choice but to agree.

While in Muskegon, I had the opportunity to resume acting with the local Little Theater. I played the leading role of John Shand in What Every Woman Knows and found that I still got a big charge out of appearing live before an audience. After all, in radio you never know whether anyone is listening or not! Just make a mistake, though, and you’ll find out in a hurry. But the stage still was quite a lure to my ambitions.

Ashbacker’s other principal eccentricity had to do with “swing music.” He was definitely against anything that could remotely be placed in that category. There was one shelf of records that we were forbidden to play except, grudgingly on his part, between 5 and 6 p.m. on Swing Serenade. I had started, even with my meager earnings, to build a record collection, and I was very excited about the Artie Shaw Band. One day I bought a 78rpm album of Shaw playing celebrated Broadway show tunes in dance tempo. I took this album to work with me, and that evening played a couple of the tunes on the air. As I recall, they were Begin the Beguine and My Heart Stood Still. The phone rang, and Ashbacker told me to come in the next morning for my check. When he offered me “another chance” at $20.00, I refused. He told me I’d better take it, because there was no other station that would hire such a fast-talking swing-happy announcer.

I went to a phone and called the nearest station, which was WOOD in Grand Rapids. The program director recognized my name and said he had heard me on WKBZ, and that he liked my work. He asked me if I would be willing to take a job as summer vacation relief. I accepted and went to work at WOOD the next day.

During that summer in Grand Rapids, at a very well-run station, the main newscaster had a very serious illness and was away for some time. I was serving as his temporary replacement. Toward the end of the summer period, I started my search for another job. Through a Help Wanted ad in the Bible of radio, Broadcasting Magazine, I found work at a new station. KFDA was just about to go on the air in Amarillo, Texas. Not only would they pay me the same as I was earning at WOOD, but would also permit me to do all the news and sports, which suited my ambitions at the time. I accepted the job.

Then I found I would have to be in Amarillo a week before my summer relief period ended in Grand Rapids. So I went to my immediate boss and asked to be relieved a week early. He could not believe that I wanted to leave! Seems Mr. Newscaster was not coming back, and they had decided they wanted me to take his slot permanently, with a nice raise. The only problem was that they had failed to advise me of these intentions. I felt very keenly that I had given my word to KFDA, and they were depending on me. I was taken to see the “big boss,” who tried his best to convince me that a future in his organization was best for me, but I chose to go to Amarillo.

Fork #9.

Once again hitchhiking was the mode of travel. My few belongings and I made our way from Michigan to the Texas Panhandle. A few miles short of Amarillo, where I was soliciting my next ride, I was offered a lift by a fellow on a big motorcycle. I had always been afraid of these machines, so I declined. He went on ahead, and I soon got another ride and made it to town. Almost immediately I reported to KFDA so they would know I had arrived. Who should I run into in the lobby but the fellow with the motorcycle! He, too, was on his way to go to work for the new radio station. Since we both needed a place to live, we went out looking together and decided to become roommates, renting a furnished room. He and I shared the early shift at KFDA, he at the controls, I at the mike, for what we called The Yawn Patrol. He rode his cycle to work; I walked. Bill Atkinson was a fine technician, and served me as Chief Engineer in both radio and TV in later years.

War broke out in Europe, and we stayed on the air around the clock with network reports on the developments with Chamberlain, Hitler, Mussolini, and the various invasions. I was usually the guy who stayed all night, dozing on a couch in the lobby, with the engineer waking me up when we had to make a station break. I began to wonder about the news and sports I was supposed to do. All the news was coming from the networks (ABC and Texas State Network) except the reading of a canned script, The Christian Science Monitor Views the News, which was a free service to the station and which I had the privilege of reading each day. As for sports, there were none, and no plans for any.

The ownership of the station changed hands quickly and abruptly soon after it went on the air. A local man, who had done all the engineering and planning and who had obtained the license, had to borrow money to complete the process and get the station on the air. As soon as it was operational, the people who loaned him the funds ousted him and took over. I did not like the new regime, and this soon resulted in my resignation, just in time to keep from being fired. The only happy results from my choice to go to Amarillo were from meeting Atkinson and fellow announcer Bill Kilmer, both of whom became my closest friends for many years.

On my last day, Atkinson finally talked me onto the back of his motorcycle and I rode to the bus station. That was my first, last, and only time to ride on a motorcycle.

I headed once again for New York, another round of auditions, and lo and behold, I was hired for the announcing staff at WMCA at forty a week. This was not a network-affiliated station, but one of the leading non-network stations in the city, I was alerted to the fact that the station was in labor negotiations with AFRA (American Federation of Radio Artists) and this would require me to join the union. I did so, only to learn, in less than a month, that the new union agreement improved the wages of the announcers but required the station to employ only ten. I was Number Eleven, so I was terminated.

There followed a period in which I freelanced in New York as a radio actor and announcer, recorded a lot of commercials, put in a brief stint at a station up the Hudson River at Kingston, and tried my best to crack into the songwriting game. I met Bob Trolan through a singer at one of the stations, and he became my collaborator. We turned out some pretty good songs I also wrote some alone, and some lyrics to the music of other friends. It became a golden time for embryo songwriters, because ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), which controlled most of the familiar music of the era, was engaged in a legal battle with the broadcasting industry that resulted in no ASCAP music being played on the radio for nearly a year. The radio folks started their own licensing organization, BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) and solicited new songs from unknown writers.

New publishers sprang up to issue BMI songs in order to augment the steady diet of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair and other public domain titles that were filling the airwaves. I had made the acquaintance of a number of big band leaders through my radio work. One, Frankie Masters, agreed to play one of our songs, Talking with My Eyes, and because of this, my partner and I were given a publication contract by Regent Music. There was one hitch; Regent at that time was promoting another song with “eyes”in the title, and wanted to avoid the confusion it might create. So they paid us an advance of thirty-five dollars ($18.75 each) for the rights, planning to publish our song as soon as the other “eyes” song had run its course. Unfortunately, the ASCAP-radio war soon ended; all the ASCAP music returned to the air, and our song died in unpublished obscurity.

During this period in New York, I hung around several of the big bands. One in particular was that of Jack Teagarden, the great trombonist. His vocalist at the time was Lynn Clark, the wife of my friend Gene Clark from Kingston. Teagarden had adopted a new theme song for his latest band, after years of using I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues. The new one was called Blue Atmosphere, a beautiful instrumental. Since it had no words, I naturally got the idea of creating lyrics for it. I submitted them to Teagarden, but at about that time the band left New York for the road and I never received any response. So I collaborated with the great Teagarden, but nobody ever knew it. It’s still a beautiful song.

About this time I happened to remark to my father that the first I could recall of anything that directed me to a career in broadcasting was when I wrote a short story in English class in high school called The Big Telecast, which was somewhat uncanny in its imaginative description of the as-yet-undiscovered medium. He disagreed, and he told me that when I was much younger, about seven or eight years old, I used to listen to Uncle Don on WOR . He quoted me as having said:

“Daddy, when I grow up, do you think I could be on the radio and be Cousin Walter?”

Elliott Roosevelt, son of the President, was forming a new national radio network, to be known as TBS, the Transcontinental Broadcasting System. I was successful in getting through to him and his chief aides and was tentatively set to become its chief announcer. I even negotiated with some good announcers I had met in Toledo and other markets relative to joining our network staff. Unfortunately, the proposed network never got off the ground and the project was abandoned without my ever working on a paid basis for even a day.

It was about this time that I became better acquainted with my Uncle Oscar, my Dad’s younger brother, his wife Elyner, and their sons, my cousins Bill and Jack. The boys were only slightly younger than I, and I had the opportunity to visit their home on Long Island in Rockville Center and observe some Winkopps living a far brighter and better life than existed at Highland Place. Previously, Oscar had been the “rich uncle” who, when he came to visit his mother, would give her money for the movies and present me with a nickel for an ice cream cone. He was a very successful salesman, and enjoyed playing the ukelele and singing old-time songs. He and Elyner retired in South Florida, where I was able to visit them in later years. Oscar died shortly after my father, his wife several years later. My family and I were able to enjoy visits to and from Bill and Jack and their families over the years. Bill now lives in Paoli, Pennsylvania, and Jack in South Florida.

I was talking to my Grandma one day about life and love, and I was very touched by her statement that she didn’t believe in love. She had never experienced it, as she had more or less automatically replaced her sister in Grandpa’s house and bed while she was still very young. She enjoyed going to the movies; she was crazy about Clark Gable. She would never miss certain commentators on the radio, such as Lowell Thomas and Gabriel Heatter. And she always listened to her grandson when I was on the air, always referring to me as “Choon-ya” (Junior). Hers was a household where German had been spoken almost as much as English, but when the trouble broke out in Europe, she laid down an edict that no more German was to be spoken under her roof. She was intensely patriotic and was almost as fond of F.D.R. as she was of Gable.

I was offered a staff announcing job at WAAT in Jersey City. Although it was located in New Jersey, this station could be heard throughout the New York metropolitan area. I was living with the family at Highland Place, and it was a long commute each day from there to Jersey City, by elevated train, subway, and tubes, but it paid a satisfactory wage and left me time to pursue freelance work and songwriting. One of the programs I developed at WAAT was Your Neighbor, a homey sort of chat during which I read poems and quoted other inspirational writings. It was sponsored by the Hollywood Memorial Park of Union, New Jersey. I was soon told that the client was very happy and the ad agency wanted to meet me. I visited the agency in Newark. At lunch, one of the partners made a comment that opened a can of worms.

“You must be doing very well at WAAT, considering what we are paying you for just the one fifteen-minute program.”

It turned out they were paying more of a talent fee for my services as Your Neighbor (15 minutes, five times a week) than WAAT was paying me for a full week’s work. The upshot of all this is that I left WAAT and went back to WMCA, where Hollywood Memorial Park bought fifteen minutes a day for Your Neighbor and this became my sole regular work. I was paid just as much for 75 minutes a week as WAAT had paid me for forty hours!

But I was too successful. The cemetery filled up. All the lots were sold. The program was discontinued. So much for success!

During this New York period, I was able to renew acquaintances with Joe Helgesen and Bill Woodson. Both were working actors and became involved in Broadway shows. Joe understudied the lead in Country Girl, but never got the chance to go on; I enjoyed visiting him in the dressing room on a number of occasions while he waited for the call that never came. I often spent the night at his apartment in Manhattan rather than ride the subway and “El” all the way back to Brooklyn in the wee small hours. Woodson did considerable performing on the road, and was Jose Ferrer’s understudy in Cyrano de Bergerac. He did get to replace Ferrer for one performance, for which he received rave reviews. His career moved back to radio and TV, where his distinctive voice enables him to continue to prosper. But Joe ran into hard luck; when he phoned me in 1961 in a desperate search for TV work, I couldn’t immediately help him. I asked him to send me some information on what he had been doing in TV. After we hung up, the operator called me back; it seems he left the pay phone without depositing the added charges and they wanted to know where they could locate him. I didn’t know, and I never heard from him again. I regretted this very much, as his family had been so good to me in the past.

It was also during this period that I became a devotee of the Broadway theater. But I could not afford to buy tickets; prices ranged from $2.20 to $4.40, which at the time seemed very high. So I adopted a time-honored trick of unemployed actors. I hung around the chosen theatre until intermission. Then I mingled with the crowd on the sidewalk or in the alley, and went in with them when they returned for the second act. I was always able to find an empty seat. So there were many shows for which I saw only Act Two. Fortunately, some were revived in later years to enable me to see the whole show.

Throughout this period in New York, I had constantly sought an announcing opportunity with NBC, then my ultimate goal. The legendary Pat Kelly was in charge of announcers there, and he was very complimentary of my work and the auditions I did for him. Finally, when I needed a job and he had nothing to offer, he asked me if I would be willing to go to an NBC-affiliated station in a smaller market, get more experience and be ready for the next vacancy in New York. I agreed, and soon found myself at WSGN in Birmingham, Alabama. I enjoyed considerable success there, where a system of “talent fees,” paid by advertisers to their chosen announcers, made it possible for me to double my salary. I remember saying that if I could ever get to a hundred a week, I could afford to get married. And I got close.

Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941, and I was busy relaying the news to Alabama, including an award-winning broadcast from the roof of Birmingham’s tallest building during the first practice blackout. Your Neighbor was revived at WSGN for the Neuhoff Packing Company. I started a program called Moondreams, on which I recited romantic poetry and song lyrics over organ music played by Bill Kilmer, who by then was also on the announcing staff at WSGN. Kelly never called, because the government required NBC to split up into two networks, and, since WSGN was on the “Blue Network,” which was spun off, WSGN was no longer an NBC affiliate.

My New York draft board rejected me for my visual deficiency, then called me back again. Feeling this time I would be inducted, I said my goodbyes at WSGN. My talent fees were parceled out to the other announcers, and I was given a hero’s sendoff. The draft board again rejected me. I was totally unwelcome back in Birmingham.

About that time, a friend advised me of an opening at KLO in Ogden, Utah. Not far from Salt Lake City, this station had the potential of becoming a factor in the larger market. I took the job and headed for Utah.

KLO was owned by a media baron who was into newspapers, radio and movie theaters. His daughter had just graduated from Stanford University, along with her boyfriend, George Hatch, and they married. The daddy put young George, with no experience, in charge of KLO. George was a nice fellow and a quick learner. He would take me to lunch or dinner and pick my brain about radio. He decided to put alternate studios for KLO in Salt Lake City, and he moved me there to do the programming. He gave me an unlimited allowance to buy the finest and most complete library of records that I could possibly assemble. This was a dream project that I really enjoyed. What a library that was; I wonder what ever became of it.

Eventually George started a new station in Salt Lake City, KALL. He began operating the Intermountain Network, acquired other radio properties and went into television in a big way. At one point, he acquired Republic Pictures. I like to think that he had a good teacher when he first came to Ogden. Several years later, I was passing through Utah and phoned George from the airport. I was anxious for him to know that I was now a General Manager.

“I always thought,” he responded, “that you’d make a better manager than you did an employee.”

The draft board summoned me again, and this time there was no doubt. They were accepting people for what they called “limited service.” I left Utah and was inducted by the draft board in Brooklyn on October 31, 1942. It was Halloween, and goblins awaited me.