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RADIO
1. Blackout (Time Capsule/1943)
(Condensed from the January 25, 1943 issue of Time Magazine)
It could not be so--yet it was. After 15 years and some 4,000 airings, Amos 'n' Andy were scheduled to leave the air next month. Campbell Soup Co., its domestic output halved by the tin shortage, no longer was willing to spend $1,800,000 yearly to sponsor the pair five nights a week. Millions of loyal radio fnas will miss them. So will Henry Ford, who writes fan letters, J. Edgar hoover, James Thurber, Vincent Astor, and countless others whose addiction approaches that of the late Hearst editor, Arthur Brisbane, who sometimes telephoned breathlessly after the broadcast to find out what would happen in the next episode.
Since March 1928, when Freeman F. Gosden, onetime egg-bearer for Thurston the Magician, became the long-suffering Amos, and Charles J. Correll, onetime Peoria bricklayer, became turgid, blustering Andy, they have had but one vacation--eight weeks in 1934. No radio performers have made more broadcasts. They were radio's first great national program. They were the chief instigators of the habit of listening to a fixed program night after night. |
