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Source: Norman B – Speaker Talk at Mobridge, South Dakota – Date Unknown.mp3 File: norman-b-speaker-talk-at-mobridge-south-dakota-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:49:33
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Ladies and gentlemen, we've been looking forward to this day when we could have with us one of the leading speakers in America on AA. We have just that here today, and I promise you we'll be with you after this speech. One of the pioneers of radio, television, and color TV, you will remember him for Chesterfield Hours with the Bing Crosby Show, later with the Theater Guild of the Air and the U.S. Steel Show.
He is still working on radio and TV, and he's just finished a tour of the nation, lecturing on his book. This is Norman B., the story of his life. Ladies and gentlemen, Norman B.. Thank you very much, Liberace. How do you do, ladies and gentlemen? How do you do? This is Norman B.. There's a way to carry on everything, and the right way to address a group of alcoholics is to say your name. I have said it. I am an alcoholic. I'm mighty glad to be here.
My routine has been rather tough. In the midst of the toughest part, I got a letter, and unlike so many letters, I've read it twice and immediately answered it in the affirmative. Not knowing what would happen a month hence, I said, yes, I'll be glad to come. That letter was from a fellow by the name of Bill Liberace Y.. Seems we've met before someplace. I think it was down in the Bowery in one of the most dingy bars in America. At any rate, that memory had faded. He brought it back since I've been here.
Every moment of the time spent here has been most enjoyable, and I'd like to say, first of all, thank you to all the men and women who have just helped me to be at home and be happy yesterday and today. Again, I say you're lucky because knowing what Bill Y. has done in the music world, Carnegie Hall in New York and other concerts, tours, I do believe that this is the first time I've ever seen him do a lot of work for nothing.
And maybe AA has modified his ego a little, as it has most of ours. Maybe he has found a certain portion of humility which is so important in our progress. Of that I'm sure. I say thanks to Brother Y., and thanks to Tom M., who cooperated with Y. in following up the mail that made this trip so pleasurable, and I am happy to be here. I will say this in my many trips and my many meetings of groups. I think, without question of doubt, you are the hardiest-looking bunch of ex-trunks I have ever seen.
And I may add, as a serious P.S., one of the most sincere. You take your work seriously. You're enjoying it. You're succeeding in it. Very often there comes to us a question, a serious question, a question that sometimes we can't answer, but a question we're always proud to hear. It's come to me many, many times. How is it that such a loose-woven organization can succeed so dramatically and carry out a program successful where doctors, ministers, priests, rabbis, psychiatrists,
[00:05:25]
and all the rest have failed? So I thought I'd make that my theme. When they told me they were going to record me this afternoon, I said, well, now that's good. Please send me a copy of the script because I've always been curious of what I talk about. And it is true. I arrived at this only today. The first thing we do is tell our story. Now, I'm not going into all the miserable details of how I got drunk first and how long I stayed drunk and the heartbreaks caused by that drinking. Suffice it to say that I am a minister's son.
I see no real reason why I should have become an alcoholic, nor my two brothers. Nevertheless, it happened. We're all in different works. We were all serious hurt, real serious. In my particular case, when I first joined radio in 1924, I was frightened. It was a big job. Within six months, I became, in 1924 and five, one of the greatest names in radio. My name was greater perhaps than the matinee idols of the day. If I mentioned some of those old programs, you old timers might remember some of them. But suffice it to say that those days were wonderful, tremendous, but they scared us very, very much.
We were in a field of unknown proportions. When you get a fan letter from Shingle Point, Alaska, you begin to wonder how many people are listening to your every word. No wonder we got scared a little. Before I knew it, I was drinking quietly, silently on First Avenue or Tenth Avenue in places where they soaked the mirrors behind the bar. I go there for two reasons. I don't want anybody to know I'm drinking, and I don't want to see myself when I'm drinking.
I thought there was no problem in it. It was something that I did to bolster my courage to do the work that I had to do. But this thing grew and grew until I was blackballed from radio, from the agencies. At the height of my career, I couldn't get a job. I pass over this hurriedly because it's a long, long story. I'll bring you up to date on one or two of the points. The program that was mentioned in my introduction, the Chesterfield Hour, was one of the first and biggest commercials in radio.
We were six days a week across the board, as we call it, Ruth Edding, Bing Crosby, and the Boswell sisters alternating. Here is a big show, one of the biggest. The cost of a show like that on 300 stations, you can well imagine. And I was the announcer for each and every show. They called me Mr. Chesterfield. They'd go in and ask for a package of broken tires. This is how big that show was. So big, in fact, that Chesterfield's became first in sale, which they still advertise.
All right. After a year of that, working 15 minutes a day, six days a week, I complained. I came in drunk one rehearsal. So drunk that they said, you'd better go home. And I felt very hurt about it. Very hurt. So hurt that I went out and really got drunk. That was the day I bought a ticket to Bermuda, told my valet that if he mentioned where or what I had done, I'd kill him, and I took the Queen of Bermuda unbeknownst to anybody.
By the time I walked off the gangplank in Hamilton, Bermuda, or staggered off, I remembered none of the trip, of course. Somebody brought me back to the telephone, and I got a message there that I faintly understood that if I'd stay on the boat, my job was still good.
[00:10:08]
If you can imagine a man so stupid in his mind as to walk away from the choices of jobs of that world that he was in, then you can see how crazy I was. And that's just one sample. I did stay on the boat, and I got the job back. And when I was accosted by my boss to give him the reason why, I said, well, you gave Ruth Edding a vacation. You gave Bing Crosby two weeks off, and so on. I didn't get him. I needed a vacation from 15 minutes a day.
They said, all right, we'll give you a vacation if you'll go where we say. I said, okay, you're on, and they sent me to Keely Cure. Now, Keely Cure is one of the original cures for drunkards. I say nothing evil about it. I simply tell you what happened. When I went down there, I arrived early in the morning, about half past six. So when I got to the governor's mansion in Greensboro, North Carolina, there was nobody around. So I walked around the building, and the grounds were beautiful, and I was stark sober. I was afraid. I didn't know if I was going in a padded cell or what was going to happen.
But as long as I was so sober and there was nobody there, I went downtown and found a place where you could get bathed tub gin at 7 o'clock in the morning. It was the porter that was on the train that I was on. I knew about it. We keep ahead of those things when we're drinking. So with the three or four of those under my belt, I went back, and I finally got in. When the porter brought me upstairs, I said, just what kind of a racket is this? Oh, he said, boss, there's nothing to this. There ain't nothing to this at all.
He says, they're going to feed you a tonic and make you eat the hide of a wet mule. He says, then they shoot you in the arm every morning. He says, and the first thing you know, you're all right. He says, I can prove that you're all right, because everybody that's been here has come back. I was to learn there was no permanency in that cure. They did their best. They still do their best. But my heavens, you can do that at home, and all of us have. Simply don't go out. Stay in bed until you can eat something. Five days later, you dare look your wife in the face. Two days after that, you dare go to work.
All right, that was the Keeley cure. I finally got back on the air, but I didn't get off the liquor. A matter of two months later, I was drinking again, and this time worse. It always happens that way. When you are cured with these other methods, you feel fine for a while, and you say, well, now I can handle it. Oh, boy, what a mistake you made. There is no such thing as now I can handle it. And so as a result, I come to the point that I mentioned before, the blackballing of B. on radio. For almost eight years, I was out of radio. I earned my living as best I could.
I was a bricklayer. I put cement blocks on people's porches out in the country where I had a house. I painted bungalows at $8 a piece, and I worked in a factory for $24 a week, if I could collect it. Ten hours a day. I knew what hard work was. I knew what sadness was. I knew what brokenheartedness was. I tried to make up my mind during those years that I didn't want show business anymore. I didn't want radio anymore.
But I needed to go back to my own field of mechanics and hard work. But all the time, I knew I was lying in my own heart. I wanted to get back. I had to get back for two reasons. One, because there is where my heart was. Two, because I had to make friends of those enemies that I had created through my own foolishness. And so I struggled and tried hard. Eventually, I got back. I got back by a telephone call that came eventually to a factory in which I was working. It was wartime, and you had to get permission to leave the job, and I got it because radio was on the special list.
This radio was on the special list, and they sent me to Washington, this was one of the old friends of mine, who had taken over a small station in Washington, D.C., and I went down there, and I took a job at 50 bucks a week, feeling, well, now I'm back in my field, however, ego, weakness, whatever it was that prompted these foolish moves on my part, was still there, no one had told me how to heal those
[00:15:27]
wounds, I hadn't been healed mentally or physically, and so within a month, I was drinking down there, one day, I lived right in the same building, because there was a rooming shortage, and I turned one of the rooms into a bedroom, and as I walked through the studio one day, I mumbled something to the announcer that was on the job, the boss was tuned in, he heard the mumble, knew I was drinking, and came rushing down, he came rushing down, and he called for me, and without hat or anything in this emergency, I went with him, he brought me to a doctor, and he says, Doc, the boy is nervous, fix him up, he fixed me up by prearrangement, with a shot in the arm that knocked me out, and I woke up, in another little institution called Green Hill, now there is an institution, the Green Hill Sanitarium for Drunks, dear friends, I'm going to show you how happens, when I woke up I found myself in a dingy room, it looked like a hospital room, except that everything was dirty, and the first person I saw was an uncomely nurse, and she was dirty, so was her beautiful white gown and her white shoes, nothing was right, it seemed like there were cobwebs all over, and I said, where am I, they said, Green Hill, take this, and they gave me something to drink, then they gave me, it was rye, then they gave me a shot here, right here in the chest, I found out later, that's so you could always smell it, now, they said, do you want another to drink, I said, sure, this is great, and I had three rotten ryes, that's not rock and rye, that's rotten rye, it was warm, and it wasn't so good, but I drank the drink, and they followed that up with some warm beer, the second one was warmer than the first one, and all of a sudden she comes in and found I wasn't sick, so then, hot mustard water, I puked, now, after that was all over, and I gagged enough and was settled, they fed me, now, the doctors say that it takes five hours for you to digest enough food to keep you going, if I'd watched the clock, I'd know it'd just be about four and a half hours later, they gave me another rye, still warm, and so on, until I vomited again, and then food, and then sick, and then food, for ten days, and always this shot in the chest, it smelled like something you shouldn't bring in the house, this was a treatment to make you hate the sight, thought, and taste of anything alcoholic, still there, people still pay $475 to go in, well, I'll tell you how good that treatment was, I had lost 15 or 20 pounds, they shook my hand and said goodbye, now you're healed, here's some vitamin tablets, good luck, I jumped in a cab, threw the vitamin tablets out the window, and said stop at the first bar for God's sake where I can get some cold beer, so I don't think that treatment worked very much, at any rate, I fought through a year there, and finally drank myself so thoroughly out of that job that I don't dare go back to Washington since, I called up the boss and told him how to run the station, what was wrong with him and the whole institution while I was lit, and then I jumped on a train, came back to my country place in New York alone, left my wife and her sister and all my goods and worldly chattels and nobody had a center, this was one of the messes, one of hundreds of messes which I don't care to take time to tell you, but there it was, out again and out like a light, I knew something had to be done, something drastic, but I didn't know how to do it, it was one of those quandaries that we get in,
[00:20:03]
it took something very drastic to bring another cure to B., there was a slight battle at home and the wife left me and left a note under the telephone, the telephone note said can't take it anymore, we have ten dollars left, here's five, well I had no ramshackles for it and I got in it and I drove as I thought to the movies, I was going to go to the movies to forget all this, but somehow or other the lights of a gin mill stopped me before I got there, after all I had five bucks, well coming back that night is sort of a mystery to me, you'll find if you examine me carefully a scar on my forehead, I couldn't make the last turn, I hit a telephone post and somebody came out of a house just in time to save my life, I had cut my artery and I had broken my leg in three places, before it was a mess I woke up again, this time in the Smithtown jail, you see I was accused of drunken driving, the town doctor who hurriedly examined me asked me as just a plain drunk with a bruise and a bandage, the bandage had already been put on my head by the thoughtful neighbor who had saved my life, the bandage on my ankle was for what he called a turned ankle, a strained ligament, after I got out of that jail house, fortunately the next morning I was in shape enough to telephone and I called the only one I could think of, my banker, and he said yes, you have ten dollars left in the bank, which was the bail, and he brought it down and helped me home with this broken leg, and he was failing himself, and somehow we found the house locked and he got me in and there I stood or sat or lay for two days before anybody, this was the middle of winter, finally another neighbor saw the light and came in and got me out of my mess, called a doctor and by this time my broken ankle of course had been poisoned and I was in a pretty sad situation, well it was while I was at the hospital during that episode that my wife came back and brought with her one of the very finest of women that I have ever met, a radio actress with whom I had worked on a job in which I had lasted about two weeks, but she never forgot me, nor did she forget me when she had a similar problem in her own family, some uncle was an alcoholic and had been helped by a certain man who she asked me would I talk to him, and I said of course I would talk to anybody who could help me because I was in such a mess, and so I was introduced to the Peabody system.
The Peabody system is a method that was used by a very wealthy man in New York successfully on himself and his friends, and it was the use of the subconscious mind, by reading truisms every night, things that you knew were true, every night just before you went to bed, you would implant them on your subconscious mind and in this way change habit patterns, well it had worked for many people. And so I read the book The Common Sense of Drinking and I practiced with this man who came all the way from New York twice a week to bring me these little slips of paper that I was to copy longhand just before I went to bed.
I went through a complete year of this process and the habit patterns did change, my mental outlook changed, and I found that I was hanging up clothes where I had heretofore been a little careless and thrown around the room, other little things happened, I didn't drink, I felt fine. And while the cast was still on my leg, I went to New York and I got a job. I got a job sitting down writing radio scripts with a man I'll never forget because of his kindness, and you've heard me on his programs many times.
He's the owner of the Journal of Living, which makes Serotonin, Geritol, and a few other things like that. I worked with him through the years. He was the man who helped me out in a tight spot, hired me although he didn't need me. He said, how much can you live on? I said, 35 a week. He said, you got it. Sit down and go to work. When I left that job, I was making over 200 a week and very successful. But while I was there, I was asked to write an article for his magazine, the Journal of Living, and I wrote that article, The Story of My Drinking, and I gave it a title that since has been a landmark in my life.
[00:25:15]
Remember, I had been dry for about two years through the Peabody system, having studied it for a full year and practiced it for about another year. So I wrote the article and it was called, I Was an Alcoholic. All right, that proves my point. Other things happened, and that's the time where the magazine, the Saturday Evening Post, came out with the story of AA. That's the time Bill W. opened a little meeting house behind the Red Door on 24th Street.
That's the time when I went in to one of those meetings, stood up on my feet after two or three other people had spoken, and told them how they should do it. As I said this morning, a month or so later, I was as drunk as a hoedown. You can never tell. Something's wrong. Something was wrong with the system, with Peelecure. Something was wrong with Green Hill. Something was wrong with the Peabody system, or certainly I would have lasted longer than that.
All right, time passes again. Now I'm thrown out of everything. I'm back on my offerings. I don't know what to do. Finally, after many, many hard months and poor months, I decided I'd try once more in the city in which I had failed, in New York City. And so with the encouragement of my wife, who had since returned, of course, after that accident, and a few dollars that I'd been able to earn on the side and weekends that are in the country, I would spend as many hours as I could during the week, what we call hitting the pavement, going to these various agencies trying to get a good job in radio.
Well, it was while I was doing that, with hope in my heart, fighting like mad to stay sober, that I met a fellow one evening after my last call around 5 o'clock. He says, what are you doing tonight, bro? Well, I knew that this fellow had had troubles of his own, and he looked very, very happy to me. His eyes were clear. He shone a little bit. He had no worries like I had. I said, I don't know, maybe go to a movie. He says, never mind the movie. Come on with me.
Well, I wound up in an AA meeting in Forest Hills, Long Island, and that was the brightest light in my whole life, because there I met some people. You see, I went to this AA meeting in an humble frame of mind, where I had gone to the Bill W. meeting, arrogant and full of wonderful ideas of my own and disdain for everybody else's ideas. I went to this meeting whipped, bowed down and humble, and I found no one to argue with me or to cause me to argue with them. I found friends. I found understanding people now, because I looked at them in a different way.
And I marveled that there was such peace, such equanimity. And I listened to three speakers. And then I went back and had coffee and donuts and was offered three jobs while I was there, little jobs to be sure. One job was going around with a piece of paper, questionnaire, asking people questions from some advertising firm, what kind of toothpaste do you use and things like that. An humble job for a fellow that had been on the top, but I took it.
Another fellow said, didn't you used to work for Paramount News? I said, yeah. Well, he says, it so happens that I've been AA for about six months. I've got my job back in the office. Maybe I can help you out. And he made a plea for me. And this I took home with me, too. Here were people trying to help me when I wasn't willing to help them. Helped me when I wasn't willing to help myself, and so I went to the next meeting, and the next, and the next, and I not only thanked this fellow that brought me, but I thanked God that I felt that now I could stay sober, and I fought along with my going to the meetings, I fought every thought that was against the program and the Twelve Steps.
[00:30:24]
And I earned a little money, and with that little money I began paying off the enormous debts that I had accrued. A dollar here, a dollar there. People that I was now willing to face were before I wanted to run away if I saw them. These were the subtle little changes that were going on in my mind, and it worked. That was over twelve and a half years ago. I have been able since then to do a great deal of the Twelve Step work.
In New York we meet all kinds of people, and I have helped people all the way from dock workers to motion picture actors and actresses. And I know one thing above all things, and that was the ability to help others that kept me sober and made me again successful in my chosen field. And I now say to you, what's the difference? What is the difference between the sugar cure that I tried that I didn't mention, and all these other things that I tried and failed? What is the difference between all these, especially the Peabody system and AA?
Why has AA succeeded? Why is it growing? Why have you, right here in Mobridge, grown from five to fifty in such a short time? Why is your faith stronger? Why do you gather together? Why are you planning on expansion and future conferences and growth and new groups? I'll tell you why. And although I can't say so, maybe, just maybe, this is the answer to that first question that I mentioned when I got on my feet, that comes to me and to you so often, how come AA succeeds? Well, I'll tell you why.
One reason, at least in my mind, is that in AA, we do cover the spiritual field. There was no mention made of any higher power when I went to chemicure. There's no mention made of basic Christianity, or be good to your fellow man, or anything of the kind when they gave me those dirty nurses, those dirty injections on that warm beard. And even the wealthy Mr. Peabody, who charged a man twelve hundred dollars cash on his desk before he'd start working with him. That's the sort of people he dealt with. He wanted to know that they were interested before he started giving out.
Even in this system, which has been good to a great degree in a great many cases, had nothing to say about that greater power. And then I began to realize why I had failed, as well as those treatments. Because I knew these things, being brought up in the home of a Methodist minister. I knew these things, but like so many people who are brought up too close to anything, they begin to run away from it when they can.
And so, you hear the story about minister's sons and deacon's daughters. It's not true. I mean about the daughters. I too had forgotten that. And so, I realized that from the day that I went to that meeting in Forest Hills, I had begun again to accept the faith of my fathers. In a different way, yes, but that was the same thing, the same spark, the same truth. The basic truth. And that's why Bill W. started a movement that's different. He himself, not a minister, not a minister's son, but a runner in Wall Street who saw the light and knew that he had to have help.
[00:35:01]
Not from Joe or Harry or Mary or his wife, but from a power, the same power that guides the sparrow and paints the lily and makes the trees grow and to clap their hands and the sun shines to make the earth happy. All I want to you is the power that makes you and I sober today because we've got faith in our program knowing that it's guided by that higher power. That's the difference, and that's why I want you to work hard for AA.
I want you in your happiness now that you're successful to turn to the poor slobs that I have seen right here in Mobridge that need bedding. Maybe the squaw I saw last night won't take it, but somebody will. That's my picture of AA, and I am very, very happy that I can tell it and tell it with a sincerity and a ring that you know is true when I say it. I always like to feel that the more people to whom we can talk, the greater will our happiness be.
AA is a very simple proposition. It's so simple that the average man can't understand why it works. Now, we here today are part alcoholics and part visitors, and I've often wondered what a visitor thinks of the type of stories and talk that we give in AA. I know that you know they're sincere, these speeches and talks, these bursts of honesty, opening up of our own hearts and souls, stories of our mistakes. They're confessions, if you will.
But when you feel such honesty, when you know such honesty exists, and then you see the light in the eyes and the happiness of those of us who are no longer slaves to alcohol, you know then that we've got a good organization and that when you find someone else, anyone else, friend or foe, that needs our help, bring them on in, but be careful. Don't send them away with your urgency. There's a way to introduce a drunk to AA, a very simple, honest, easy way. It's friendship. Don't get excited, don't hurry. My God, the guy's been drunk for 40 years, what do you want to do, cure him in a minute? Take it easy, tell him that we're good guys and bring him on in.
I thought maybe I'd like to explain to you now that I feel, inasmuch as I feel so wonderful about AA, that we, in our own little respect, are on the right side of the track. Right side. Treat it as you try to stay on the right side. I remember the story of a fellow who visited in the country. He was just a friend of the family, they liked to call him uncle, especially the kids, and this evening he came in and they had supper together, and little John, who was about six years old, at the dinner table, when dinner was just about over, he says, there's a mob, can Uncle sleep with me tonight? There's only a farmhouse, there weren't too many beds. And so it was agreed by Shaw, his uncle, so they slept together. They went to bed rather early, and after talking and joking at the fireplace, they went up to bed.
And of course Uncle had been driving a lot that day and he was tired, so he climbed right into bed. And so did Johnny. Ah, but Johnny didn't climb in before, he knelt down beside the bed, and as he did, Uncle thought, oh my, oh what a mistake I have made, what an example I'm setting for this poor kid, and he was so sorry. So, just as the child began to get up, he snuck out of bed and knelt on the other side of the bed, at which time the kids look up and say, hey Uncle, Mama's going to be awful mad at you, the pot's on this side.
That was the time, though. So let's stay on the light side, shall we?
[00:40:06]
I'd rather like to tell you just a couple of incidents that happened during my 30 years in radio. You'd never know I was that old, would you? I can remember a story that can only now be told because my boss that I lied to is no longer in radio. In the early days we were known by initials. I was A-O-N. A meant announcer and N meant New York, and the middle one you could choose, that was your identity. A thing taken from the early days when radio was shipped to shore, and the engineers were called sparks instead of engineers.
So we were given initials. I was A-O-N and made my name under that. That's a peculiar thing when we finally decided to use names again, or they decided that we could. I thought I was going to call myself Arthur O. to retain the A-O-N. But I decided, you know, ego, I thought, my goodness, this is my own name, I'll use it. And I did, and nobody could understand it. However, through the years it's worked out all right. I've changed the pronunciation. I used to say, this is Norman B.. Well, you ought to get the way they spell that one.
So anyway, shortly after we changed our names, radio became a little larger. In those days we were confined to studios. And then they found they could use these electric wires, the Western Union and the telephone and telegraph wires, and so we could broadcast out-of-studio events. And one of the biggest events of its time was the reception to the world flyers. This was a group of Army planes that went around the world in many, many stops, of course, in those years. This was about 1926. And they were to be received in Mitchell Field on Long Island.
Well, everything was fine. I was the guy who was sent, because the boss, Mr. Popenoe, said, you can say more about less than anybody I ever saw, so you go out and describe it. Well, this thing was advertised extensively because, well, it was a history-making event on radio. First time a chain had been hooked together by lines. We had three or four stations tied together, and the first time a remote broadcast was giving the news as it happened. And so as the very first radio reporter, I went out there to broadcast the doing.
The afternoon was fine. There was a little bandstand where all the people, the Prince of Wales was there, and we interviewed the flyers, and little pins were pinned on them, medals of honor and so forth and so on. I described the incoming planes and the doings around the stand, and everything was fine. But that was only the first bit of the broadcast. The big one was that night. They were going to have a celebration in honor of General Fitzpatrick, who headed the crew. Well, this was great. I took a little rest, and then I went to work on the evening one that had all the advertising. This was to take place in the officers' mess, and so when I went there, I expected to see a lot of bunting and flags and stuff. There was nothing at all.
In wonderment, I looked around and said, where's everybody? And somebody said, well, there's a couple of soldiers upstairs. I went upstairs into the barracks room, and there were two soldiers in work clothes. I said, what's going on here? Isn't there a celebration? They said, nothing. We heard about it. Well, I said, all right. Where's the captain's quarters? They told me. I went over there, and I found out that he had a date that evening, and so in order to facilitate his own personal calendar, he had held the reception in his home earlier in the evening. And there I was with a whole program scheduled, advertising full page ads, and a boss expecting me to do the whirlwind job of the season. Well, there was only one thing to do, and that was make a reception.
So I went back to the hall, asked these two boys if they'd work for me for an hour and a half, and they said, yes. We got a Victrola. We got some records, and we put some sand on the floor. I played the records, and when the time came, the engineers had everything ready, and I described this beautiful hall. The hall and its decorations were magnificent. Now, as the boys rubbed their feet on the stand, I explained it.
[00:45:51]
Eight Records, An Old Beat-Up Petrola, And Yours Truly. This is some of the history of radio that nobody knew before today. Now, to show you the difference… To show you the difference between that old-time radio and the last job I did on radio, which was Theatre Guild on the air, well, it's so gigantic, the difference. Let me say this, that for that one program, there were 15 hours rehearsals. There were at least 80 men engaged in writing, directing, and putting on that particular show.
There were separate rehearsals for the musicians. There were five rehearsals for the cast. Finally, a dress rehearsal Sunday afternoon, before an audience, and then the show itself Sunday night. All in all, each show cost $140,000 before it even hit the air. A quarter of a million after the time was bought on the air. These are the marvels of today. These are the years that I am so proud to have served, all the way from the fake broadcast that I mentioned to the perfection of today.
It's my great pride, too, to not only have been a pioneer in radio itself, but to have been the first to broadcast on TV. I broadcast the circus when there were no sets to watch it. Also, I was fortunate again to be the first to broadcast color TV when there were no sets to watch it. All in all, although I'm not doing too much on television or radio now, as I say in the last chapter of my book, no matter how much I, quote, retire, unquote, I will always be grateful to the friends who made it possible for me to come back and do what I have been able to do on radio in these last past years.
But more than I can ever say, I'm grateful to the force and to the organization that really was the one that made it possible. I'm grateful to AA and to you here for inviting me because I know you are the backbone of all of AA. I said in the beginning, you're sincere. I say it again now. I go away from here fast this afternoon, but I'll carry with me always the sincerity, the honesty, the down-to-earthness, the hardiness, the wonderful friendship that you've given me here in South Dakota. Thanks a lot.
Thank you very much, and I want you to know I do bring home a souvenir. That's cheap polka-poo poop over there.