Golden Age of Radio

The Milwaukee journal – Jan 25, 1945 Swell Sound Effect Anent the celebration today of The Milwaukee Journal’s first 20 years in radio (a story about the growth of broadcasting is on the Editorial Page), Gordon Thomas the “Top o’ the Morning” emcee ran into a funny one Thursday. Thomas was relating that about 20 years ago battery radio sets were just beginning to be superseded by the kind that plug-in types were sometimes infested with gremlins, Thomas recalled, to such a degree that the plugging in was likely to be followed by a more or less violent explosion and sometimes a fire, Facetiously Thomas said: “The explosion sounded like this,” and then, had Jimmy Robertson, his operator, play parts of a routine sound effect record, full of whams, bangs and fiery cracklings, that can serve in all cases where “explosion” is called for the script. A few minutes later came a phone call from a woman listener, who told Thomas quite seriously: “That was a wonderful drama