Golden Age of Radio

The Milwaukee Journal – May 25, 1941 BILL HOFFMAN has the strangest job in radio. His task is to create sound effects giving life to Yehudi, the little man who wasn’t there, and to various assorted ghosts , goblins and ghouls on Mutual’s “Who Knows,” a dramatization of psychic phenomena . Radio has many sound effect men, but none with a job like Bill’s. People can disagree with authenticity of the noises he uses to identify sundry spooks, but no one can prove he’s wrong. And that’s an attractive novelty in the business of broadcasting. “After all, who really knows what a spook sounds like?” Hoffman says “When you think up sound effects for ordinary everyday things, you have something to go by. If you have to imitate the sound of horses’ hoofs, you know what a real horse’s hoofs sound like. But ghosts and goblins? You just have to have a lot of imagination, and then some.” One of Hoffman’s most frequent assignments is to get the sound of a “voice from the dead.” At f...