"The Golden Age of Radio"
(As originally broadcast on WTIC, Hartford, CT)



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Program 1 - April, 1970 - Stanley Quinn
Stanley Quinn was a writer and producer for the radio department of The J. Walter Thompson Agency. He was also the first guest on the new program, which, for the first few installments was called "The Golden Era of Radio." (Dick can't remember what brought about the change of the title.) The first few shows were actually done live in the studio, but later it was more efficient to record the guests whenever they were available and put the show together on tape. It was also handy, since Ed was able to look in his collection for shows mentioned in the interview.

The J. Walter Thompson Agency expanded into the new advertisement medium of radio. The Radio Department produced some of the most popular shows on the air during the 1930s and 1940s, including "Kraft Music Hall," "Lux Radio Theater," and "The Chase and Sanborn Hour," some of which we'll hear on this show. Thompson's success in radio was repeated in the new medium of television.

From Time Magazine, April 3, 1950, "The best show for us is the kind that, on the stage, is a great matinee piece," says Producer-Director Stanley Quinn, 35, who came to TV by way of Princeton and radio work in Australia. "Of course," he adds, "we give it tone every now & then with a little Wilde, a little Shakespeare." Working efficiently with his alternate producerdirector, ex-Vaudevillian Maury Holland, 43, Quinn has set up a well-oiled assembly line that uses low-salaried actors (maximum: $250), low-cost scripts (maximum: $500), and a tiny weekly budget of $6,000 (such dramatic rivals as Ford Theater, Philco Playhouse and Lucky Strike Theater average $20,000 a week). Says Holland proudly: "We spend less time fooling around than any other show on the air."

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