Hello, Everybody!

The Dawn of American Radio

Anthony Rudel

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780547444116
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Radio

"A lively overview" of this pre-internet mass-communication tool and "the entrepreneurs and evangelists, hucksters and opportunists" who flocked to it ( Publishers Weekly ). Long before the Internet, another young technology was transforming the way we connect with the world. At the dawn of the twentieth century, radio grew from an obscure hobby into a mass medium with the power to reach millions of people. When amateur enthusiasts began sending fuzzy signals from their garages and rooftops, radio broadcasting was born. Sensing the medium's potential, snake-oil salesmen and preachers took to the air, innovating styles of mass communication and entertainment while making bedlam of the airwaves. Into this wild new frontier stepped a young secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover, whose passion for organization transformed radio into an even more powerful political, cultural and economic force. When a charismatic bandleader named Rudy Vallée created the first on-air variety show and America elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who communicated with the public through his famous fireside chats, radio had arrived. With extensive knowledge, humor, and an eye for outsized characters forgotten by history, Anthony Rudel tells the story of the boisterous years when radio took its place in the nation's living room. "Entertaining and informative." — The Denver Post "Rudel, with extensive professional radio experience, revels in the enterprising personalities who set up shop on this technological frontier....[And] vividly re-creates the anything-goes atmosphere of the ether's early days." — Booklist

Chapter 1

MILFORD, KANSAS. Population 200—not counting animals.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Milford, Kansas, was a one-horse town on the western plains; there were no paved roads, no sewers, no water system, no high schools, and no sidewalks. Situated across the river and one mile down a dirt road from the nearest train depot, Milford happened to be located about ten miles from the geographical center of the United States. Its other claim to fame was that amid the town's rows of dilapidated structures there was one lone architectural curiosity: a building that had been transported from the 1906 St. Louis World's Fair after the fair had closed. Located on the Republican River, which flows to Junction City, the county seat of Geary County, Milford was near the godforsaken spot of land from where Horace Greeley had been inspired to report that the buffalo hurried through the region, "as I should urgently advise them to do."

But Milford's rise to national fame—or infamy—would really begin in October 1917, when late one evening, the town's new and only doctor welcomed a patient to his neat, simple office. Perhaps the man, a local rancher, was put at ease by the official-looking framed diploma from the Eclectic Medical University of Kansas that hung on the wall; or maybe the fact that the doctor and his wife owned the adjoining apothecary and soda fountain, with its neatly appointed shelves of vials and bottles, filled the rancher with confidence; or maybe the doctor's affable manner and his distinguished red Vandyke assured the new patient that he'd found someone in whom he could confide. Whatever the reason, the man eventually worked his way around to telling the doctor about his real problem.

"Doctor," he said, "I'm forty-six. I've got a flat tire. I'm all in. No pep."

Today an entire pharmaceutical industry has grown around the problem we so loosely call erectile dysfunction, but in the early twentieth century the condition, so vividly described as a "flat tire," was known in polite circles as "lassitude."

The doctor, whose medical experience came primarily from earlier, nomadic years staying one step ahead of the law while working with other quacks, medicine shows, and anatomical museums, was unable to offer much encouragement. Depressed, the rancher talked enviously about his well-endowed goats and their prodigious sexual athleticism.

"Yep," the doctor chuckled. "You wouldn't have any trouble if you had a pair of those buck glands in you."

Intrigued by the idea, and perhaps willing to do anything to ante up the randy factor, the rancher eagerly pressed his case.

The rancher stared intently into the doctor's eyes and enthused, "Well, why don't you put 'em in me?"

And with the breezy air of a man who had nothing to lose, Dr. John Romulus Brinkley, emboldened by the purchased medical degree tacked to his office wall, assented. In one of the more unlikely transplants of the era, by one of the more unlikely medical professionals, Dr. Brinkley, using one of the rancher's own goats as the donor, implanted tissues from the poor animal.

Within two months the rancher was boasting all over town about his resurrected prowess, and other local men who found themselves in the same predicament made their way to Dr. Brinkley's. Among the earliest patients was one William Stittsworth, whose wife gave birth one year later to a healthy son whom they named Billy in honor of the generous donor goat.

Although the procedure was filmed and real medical specialists were later invited to observe the magical rejuvenation surgery that Brinkley called his "Compound Operation," the exact surgical methods and procedures were never completely memorialized. However, Brinkley, who proudly proclaimed he was the first man to take a goat's testicle and implant it in a man, described his operation this way:

The glands of a three weeks' old male goat are laid upon the non-functioning glands of a man, within twenty minutes of the time they are removed from the goat. In some cases I open the human gland and lay the tissue of the goat within the human gland. The scrotum of the man is opened by incision on both sides ... I find that after being properly connected these goat glands do actually feed, grow into, and become absorbed by the human glands, and the man is renewed in his physical and mental vigor.

In actuality, Brinkley probably did not operate on the patient's testes, but somewhere higher up in the anatomy. The rejuvenation his patients discovered was likely due to psychological factors; just the idea that they had newfound vigor probably allowed them to relax and again become sexually active.

It was sensational. Dr. Brinkley was the talk of Milford, and soon enough, word of the surgery spread and men of all ages from the small towns and villages of the surrounding Kansas countryside were streaming into town, seeking the special surgery by the great man who could reinflate their flat tire: Dr. John Romulus Brinkley. The cost per operation was between $500 and $750, and that included the necessary goat tissue, which was purchased from local ranchers.

DUE TO HIS OWN vague and conflicting rewrites of his personal history, John Romulus Brinkley's years of learning, traveling, and avoiding arrest that brought him to Milford are imprecise. What is certain is that he was born on July 8, 1885, in the Great Smoky Mountains, and that even though his father was the local doctor, his family was poor.

After completing whatever formal education was available in his rural community, Brinkley got a job—with no pay—at the railroad office in Sylva, North Carolina. There the manager taught his young charge how to operate the telegraph, and Brinkley became intrigued by the machine's ability to exchange information with people somewhere on the other side of the mountains. Communicating with an invisible audience was addictive. Brinkley wanted more from life than what was available in this rural world, so he set his sights on becoming a doctor and getting out of the kind of backwoods world into which he'd been born. In 1907 he married and began a career as a "Quaker doctor," which was a cross between a somewhat respected medical authority and a vaudeville showman. This position yielded a platform from which a quick talker who had gained the audience's confidence might convince the crowd of the special curative powers of the liquids and herbs he sold. He may have been called a Quaker doctor, but in truth Brinkley was nothing more than a classic snake-oil pitchman, and his talent for fast talk would play a significant role in his later success as a radio pioneer and broadcaster.

In 1908 Brinkley moved to Chicago, where he worked at the telegraph office. But his dream of becoming a real doctor never left him, so he enrolled in the Bennett Medical College, taking classes during the day and working at night. Before his last year, Brinkley dropped out of school and began his years of wandering from town to town and job to job, including a stint as an assistant to a Dr. Burke in Knoxville. Dr. Burke was a "men's health" specialist who sold guilt-ridden patients worthless cures for the venereal diseases they had contracted. By 1913 the Brinkley family had moved to Chattanooga, where John worked at a satellite office of Dr. Burke's medical practice. By now the Brinkleys had three daughters, but theirs wasn't a happy marriage and they divorced.

In 1914 John Brinkley landed in Memphis, where he met and married Minnie Telitha Jones, the daughter of a local physician. For the next two years Brinkley practiced medicine in small towns throughout Arkansas. One day he saw an advertisement for the Eclectic Medical University of Kansas, which promised to give credit for past experience and would grant a full medical license if the candidate studied in Kansas City for one year. Brinkley managed to "earn" his diploma in a matter of weeks simply by mailing a few payments to the school. In February 1916, the state of Kansas issued medical license no. 5845 to Dr. John Romulus Brinkley. He was on his way to the medical practice he craved. During World War I he served as a medical officer, but the job in El Paso, Texas, was so stressful that after five weeks of service, most of which he'd spent resting in the infirmary, he claimed to have had a nervous breakdown and was discharged during the summer of 1917 by the surgeon general of the army.

In need of work, he ran an ad in the Kansas City Star looking for a town that could use his medical services. Milford, Kansas, responded—their only physician had moved away—and after a visit to see the unimpressive place, Dr. Brinkley decided this would be the ideal home for his new medical office. When he told Minnie that they would be settling in Milford, she burst into tears. But when fate, in the form of a flat-tired rancher, walked through his office door a few months later, Minnie's outlook, as well as their fortunes, changed.

Word of mouth built the foundation of John R. Brinkley's practice. The sexual-resurrection business was so lucrative that within months the doctor, using his earnings and money his wife had inherited, bought a large section of the dilapidated town. Overnight, sleepy, dusty Milford was abuzz with construction as Dr. Brinkley's new sixteen-bed hospital was being built.

But local success was not enough; in Brinkley's view, he was a superior man of medicine. "He had begun to realize that he was gifted beyond the run of doctors, and that he could not be bound by the rigid artificial ethics of the American Medical Association." The need to expand his business, to reach more people, to spread the word of his miracle cure, drove Brinkley; he was committed to doing whatever it took to let the world know that he was a top-notch doctor. Informing the world of his talents meant endless days bouncing along the dusty country roads of the vast American middle. He drove from town to town and told people of the sexual fountain of youth he'd found. It was an arduous marketing method, but there was little choice; there was no mass marketing, and doubting consumers would never believe the silent, lifeless words of a print ad. The pitch required the spoken words and confident manner of Dr. Brinkley, who, by his own account, had been "born with the magnetism of a super-powered salesman." Hoping to vastly increase business and gain credibility, he sent booklets describing the operation to members of the medical community, but no one responded. Brinkley, in need of professional marketing help, placed an ad in the Kansas City Star seeking assistance from an experienced ad man who could spread the word of the miracles occurring at the Brinkley Clinic in Milford. One interested applicant from Kansas City, a married man with two children who had a low-paying job and needed money, made the trek to Milford. Brinkley told him of the special surgery he could perform and the man instantly recognized its potential, saying, "Dr. Brinkley, you've got a million dollars within your hands, and you don't even realize it."

A new brochure filled with glowing testimonials from Brinkley's satisfied patients was mailed to one hundred newspapers; only two wrote articles. Yet even this modest response led to an increase in the transplant business. But of greater import, Chancellor J. J. Tobias of the University of Chicago Law School saw the article and was intrigued. Despairing of his languishing love life, the chancellor traveled to Milford for the surgery. So pleased was he that in June 1920 he invited Brinkley to Chicago to present him with an honorary Doctor of Science degree, a trophy Brinkley would hang on his office wall. But of greater import was an official statement the chancellor gave to the newspapers—a testimonial about Brinkley's wonderful surgery.

Brinkley's endless shilling was working. His fame—or notoriety—was growing, and a steady flow of hapless men streamed into Milford, driven by dreams of vigor and stamina. Capitalizing on his success, Brinkley again took to the road to further spread the word of his miracle cure. By 1921 the business specializing in sexual rejuvenation, a surgery in step with the comparatively sexually liberal Roaring Twenties, was booming. Telling interested writers that the procedure would turn any man into "the-ram-that-am-with-any-lamb," Brinkley's business became a virtual assembly-line process. The patients paid in advance and could choose the exact Toggenberg goat—a breed that left no unpleasant odors on the recipient—directly from a pen located behind Brinkley's house; it was like picking a particular lobster for dinner out of a tank.

By 1922, thanks to the generosity of the newly wealthy Dr. Brinkley, Milford was a rebuilt town. With medical associates performing most of the procedures at the Brinkley Clinic, or the Brinkley Hospital, or the Kansas General Research Hospital, or whatever he chose to call his place of business, John Brinkley was basically a traveling salesman, the Willy Loman of sexual rejuvenation. In February of that year Brinkley received a letter from Harry Chandler, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, inviting him to Los Angeles to perform his miraculous transplant on one of the newspaper's elderly editors. Wanting more business and fame, Brinkley accepted. After examining the patient, Brinkley assured Chandler that the surgery would improve the old man's condition and, as an added benefit, even the man's palsy. Chandler reportedly told Brinkley that if the procedure were successful, he would trumpet the accomplishment in the newspaper, but if the surgery failed he would expose him as a quack.

Harry Chandler was himself a colorful figure: a maverick millionaire, real-estate magnate, and publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Chandler had risen to a position of tremendous power in the rapidly growing Los Angeles area and was himself somewhat of a huckster. Indicted by a federal grand jury in 1915 for his involvement in the Mexican Revolution, Chandler was a participant in many questionable, albeit hugely profitable land deals in Southern California. Because of his wealth and position as the head of a major newspaper, Chandler became the leader of the California Republican Party. Politically outspoken, in 1920 he led a failed effort to nominate Herbert Hoover for president. When that attempt collapsed, Chandler backed the Republican ticket of Harding and Coolidge and through the Los Angeles Times attacked the Democratic ticket, writing in an editorial that the Democratic vice-presidential candidate "adds no merit to the ticket. He is a radical of unsafe tendencies." That radical was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Brinkley accepted Chandler's challenge, and the surgery proceeded successfully. Chandler lived up to his promise to promote the surgeon, and soon Brinkley was the most in-demand doctor in Southern California; his patients, including the famous and infamous of Los Angeles society, flocked to see this miracle man. The Los Angeles Times reported that Dr. Brinkley, supported by a group of prominent Los Angeles businessmen, was planning to build a hospital in Ensenada that would be dedicated to performing his amazing surgery. "Goats to supply the glands to be used in the rejuvenation of mankind are being grown under contract by a rancher at El Monte." The story went on to report that "if the undertaking proves successful a group of Los Angeles business men stand ready to erect [their word, not mine] there an institution to cost from $500,000 to $1,000,000."

Owing to Chandler, Brinkley's success in Southern California was assured, and the doctor was kept busy operating on politicians and celebrities, including several of the era's leading silent film stars, all of whom insisted on anonymity. By the end of his visit Brinkley had earned an estimated $40,000.

LOS ANGELES, APRIL 13, 1922: KHJ, the first radio station west of the Rocky Mountains, goes on the air. The station's one-hour debut program, which ran from 6:45 to 7:45 P.M., began with "The Star Spangled Banner," some opening remarks by station owner Harry Chandler, three arias by members of the Chicago Grand Opera Company, a ten-minute bit by vaudeville headliner Hal Skelly, and bedtime stories and poems read by James W. Foley. "Thousands will sit in their homes, in public places, where magnavox are installed and hear the voices of some of the world's premier artists. Current world events gathered by the Times wire and cable news services will be transformed into ethereal waves, a departure in modern journalism."

Owned and operated by the Los Angeles Times, KHJ was Harry Chandler's newest toy. Rumor had it that the call letters stood for Kindness, Happiness, and Joy, but actually KHJ just happened to be the next call sign given out by the United States Department of Commerce, which had control over the brand-new radio broadcasting business. By the fall of 1922, KHJ boasted a program schedule that included a daily, except Sundays, midday forty-five-minute show of "news and concert program of particular value to radio dealers," an evening half hour for children "consisting of songs for children and bedtime story by Uncle John," and a ninety-minute nightly "deluxe program of instrumental and vocal music, news and educational matter." Finally, every Sunday morning from ten to eleven, KHJ aired a "Sacred service—Scripture reading, sermon prayer, and musical program."

One can only imagine John Brinkley, the great marketer and former Quaker doctor and pitchman, when he first encountered radio and realized the power of this new medium. Here was a way to entertain, to educate, and to deliver messages to widely scattered audiences. Here was a way to make your pitch directly to potential patients without having to travel to their towns. Far greater than his rather significant financial windfall, being exposed to KHJ and seeing its cavelike broadcast rooms that were padded with felt to reduce any reverberating noises that might go out over the air would become the most valuable aspect of Brinkley's Los Angeles visit. He returned to Milford and immediately started construction on his own radio facility. A license to broadcast, which had to be applied for and then granted by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, was easy to secure, and by the end of September 1923, KFKB went on the air. With its 1,000 watts, the station could be heard virtually across the entire middle of the country. Dr. Brinkley, the marketer, had found the ultimate marketing vehicle: radio. Here was the not-yet-understood power of the invisible signal carrying sound across and over all terrains and through walls directly into people's homes. Here was the way to really reach people, to talk personally to the consumer. Brinkley understood that this new medium was far more powerful than his traveling sales pitch, and even more direct than the silent film he had made and showed, called Goat Gland Baby. Radio was a way...