February 27 More than 350 old-time radio fans turn up during TWTD broadcast at the Museum of Broadcast Communications in River City. They were there to see a re-creation of a Jack Benny radio show featuring TWTD listeners who auditioned for parts in an original comedy script written by Mary Ellen Little, directed by Yuri Rasovsky.
May 1 Publication date of book, WBBMRadio: Yesterday and Today by Chuck Schaden, commissioned by station W
BBM to commemorate the 65th Anniversary of the station and mark its 20th year as Newsradio, the all-news format. Publicity Club of Chicago later honors Chuck with the Silver Trumpet Award for his history of WBBM.
May 5 Chuck emcees a celebrity-studded special anniversary dinner event for radio station WBBM, marking its sixty-fifth year on the air and twenty years as an all-news station.
May 6 WBBM Old–Time Radio Classics presents a special two-hour program marking the sixty-fifth anniversary of the station. Remote broadcast from the historic Wrigley Building, where the station had studios for many years.
May 12 TV appearance: Chicago Tonight WTTW Chicago, Channel 11. “WBBM’s 65th Anniversary.” Host Bruce DuMont, subbing for John Calloway, discusses the history of radio station WBBM with broadcasters Chuck Schaden, John Hultman and Jim Conway.
May 20 Marshall Field’s State Street Store Book Department hosts a book signing for Chuck on behalf of WBBMRadio: Yesterday and Today. There’s also a window display highlighting the book at Kroch’s and Brentano’s Wabash Avenue store in Chicago’s Loop.
June 4 TWTD broadcast includes a “live” Trivia Quiz Show with contestants selected from the studio audience. Chuck is host, Yuri Rasovsky is director and the answer-authority guest is Jefferson Graham, author of Come on Down! TV Game Show Book.
June 14-18 In Southern California, Chuck records interviews with actors Candy Candid() (Jimmy Durance Show) and Bob Hastings (Archie Andrew•): actor/ musician Phil Harris; actresses Mary Lee Robb (Great Gildersleeve). Elvia Allman, and Paula Winslowe (Like of Ray): announcers Del Sharbutt and Andre Baruch; singer Ilea Wain; writer Ray Singer; and producer Phil Cohan.
August 21 Chicago Tribune Book Review: That’s Not All. Folks by Mel Blanc. Reviewed by Chuck Schaden. Excerpt
Bugs Bunny almost died on the night of January 24, 1961. Mel Blanc, whose voice characterizations for Warner Bros.’ popular cartoon rabbit and scores of other animated film favorites, was the victim that night of a head-on collision on a stretch of Sunset Boulevard known as Dead Man’s Curve. Blanc’s car was demolished and almost every bone in his body was broken.
Mel Blanc made a full recovery from that near-fatal accident but, ever the trooper, not before recording in the hospital the voice track for The Bugs Bunny Show, an animated series on ABC-TV. Later, from an elaborate bedside sound studio that was set up in his Pacific Palisades home, more than 40 episodes of The Flintstones were recorded — as Blanc, still in a body cast, gave life to Barney Rubble.
Blanc’s voice was also in great demand on radio. Blanc loved radio and he found plenty of work with Abbott and Costello, Eddie Cantor, Fibber McGee and Molly, Baby Snooks, Burns and Allen, Judy Canova and Jack Benny. He practically built a career in itself with Jack Benny.
Now 80-years-old and still active [and] …in spite of that near-fatal accident and [his] advancing years, [he] vows ‘That’s not all folks!’
October 6 In a phone call to New York. Chuck interviews !toward Koch. the writer of the “War of the Worlds” program from the 1938 Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast.
October 29 WBBM Old Time Radio Classics presents a special two-hour broadcast commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” program. Guest, on the phone, is Howard Koch, who wrote the script for the famous broadcast.
November I Publication date for Chuck Schaden’s Nostalgia Calendar for 1989.
November 6 Chicago Tribune Book Review: Flywheel. Shyster and Flywheel. A book of scripts written by Nat Perrin and Arthur Sheekman for the 1932-33 Groucho and Chico Man radio program. Edited by Michael Barson. Reviewed by Chuck Schaden. Excerpt:
In the fall of 1932, Standard Oil and Colonial Beacon Oil joined forces to sponsor a radio comedy show called “Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel.” The stars were two of the Marx Brothers, Groucho and Chico, already famous for their antics in four movie comedies. Groucho appeared as wisecracking attorney Waldorf T. Flywheel and Chico as Emmanuel Ravelli, his incompetent assistant. The series was written by Nat Perrin and Arthur Sheekman, young veterans of several Marx Brothers films.
You might think there’d be little of interest in 25 scripts from a 55-year-old radio program. But after a few pages, it’s hard to stop reading. You will be impressed by the writing and realize that all those crazy Groucho-Chico ad libs in the movies were carefully crafted ribbons of humor. You will congratulate Groucho and Chico for their impeccable timing and acting ability. And you will thank Michael Barson for finding and distributing this time capsule from radio’s glory days.
November 22 Chicago Tribune columnist Rick Kogan writes:
As radio moves energetically into the 1990s, it does so with on increased awareness, if not sure understanding, of a place called the cutting edge, a land of personality cults in which fast just isn’t enough. And as much as we might expect someday soon to be listening to a station that offers “all the news that’s fit to hear in 27 seconds,” or finally have a certifiable lunatic shouting a three-hour stream of obscenities over the air, we also can expect, thank goodness, to find Chuck Schaden.
Schaden represents a sit-yourself-down-and-think-for-a-while stop on the dial. In a way, he is like one of the towns people would stumble into in ‘Twilight Zone” episodes…
Actually, he is more than one stop on the dial. His Those Were The Days can be found …Saturdays on WNIB (and) Radio Classics can be heard (seven days a week) on WBBM. Altogether Schaden is on the radio 13 hours each week, a relatively small slice of time but nevertheless an important one.
Some people will mistake what Schaden does for mere nostalgia. That is no crime and actually has the makings of a fairly interesting debate. But when one listens to such Schaden offerings os Hallmark Playhouse, Jack Benny and the continuing holiday adventures of the Cinnamon Bear, it is unmistakable that he is offering something more than memory message. “That’s the key” Schaden told me. ‘The secret is that the material holds up.”
