Radio Curtsies

For U. S. radio, as well as for almost everybody else, the Royal Visit to the States last week was a great event (see p. 15), and radio made a great to-do about it. Newscasters kept for U. S. tuners a here-they-come, there-they-go vigil from the moment the Royal train rolled across the Suspension Bridge at Niagara Falls last week until Their Majesties left Hyde Park Sunday night for Canada. Radio strove as vigorously as the press for news angles and side slants, but broadcasters generally watched their step more carefully, trod on no regal corns. This was largely due to the fact that many of radio's privileges during the visit depended on keeping on the right side of the State Department.

Coverage. Newscasters on the Royal pilot train throughout the tour of Canada brought home several tidbits from the tour. A few:

> Said His Majesty, after the train had passed through four time zones going westward: "If this keeps up, I'll lose a day's pay."

> Introduced to a correspondent from Boston, His Majesty mused: "Oh, yes, something about a tea party, wasn't it?"

> Broadcasters were instructed to pronounce the word "equerry" with the accent on the second syllable, slurring over the k sound. Reason for this, they discovered, was to avoid embarrassing the King, who has trouble with k, usually says e-wary.

After a busy two days in Washington, CBS's Bob Trout told the radio audience a few tales out of school. Best: In the Capitol rotunda, awaiting Their Majesties, members of Congress twitted stogy-chewing Vice President John Nance Garner about his formal duds, inquired what sort of curtsy he would drop when the big moment came. In response, reported Trout, the Vice President grasped two velvet ropes for support, did knee-bends until a "shhh" warned of Their Majesties' approach.

Salutes. Only U. S. sponsor with the right to mention the King & Queen commercially was Canada Dry, by appointment purveyor of drinking water (60 gallons each day) to the Royal party.

^ For Camel cigarets, Lyricist Johnny Mercer wrote and sang a five-stanza Calypso-style greeting, set to Benny Goodman's music. Excerpts:

This June the seventh will go down in history

And what a great day it will be

As the British King and Queen

For the first time will be seen

Setting foot in the Land of the Free. . ..

And for further detailed news

I suggest that you peruse

Mrs. Roosevelt's own column, My Day.

We, the People (JellO, Ice Cream Products), which specializes in airing human curios, dug up for the occasion a fluttery visiting Englishwoman, Mrs. Lucille Baring Wilson, introduced as "Miss Lucille Baring of London, England." Said Miss Baring: "I remember when Elizabeth was a little girl ... she had all sorts of pets--dogs, birds, turtles and two little black pigs named Emma and Lucifer. . . .

"When the King and Queen were the Duke and Duchess of York, they lived next door to me in London. . . . The children's favorite playmate was their Uncle, the Prince of Wales. . . . Queen Elizabeth told me their uncle taught them American slang. . . . And I'll never forget the day the children came to lunch, hardly able to speak because their uncle had given them their first chewing gum."

> Sunday afternoon, while Their Majesties were resting at Hyde Park, NBC rallied a thin red line of Hollywood's British players, put on a full hour of British-accented heigh-ho. Cissie Loftus sang My Old Dutch, Vivien Leigh and Basil Rathbone recited from the Brownings; and Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce and C. Aubrey Smith O. B. E. sang Three Little Fishies (see p. 47). Having thus offered Their Majesties some idea of the state of the Empire in Hollywood, the gathering, 44 strong, responded to a champagne toast proposed by U. S.-born Play Actor George M. Cohan. Listeners heard no pops or gurgles, only the punctilious tinkles as the toasters smashed their glasses one by one.

For Home Consumption. Through most of this williwaw, one man who kept his head screwed on was MBS's Commentator Raymond Gram Swing, an oracle in England because he speaks plain English in weekly BBC broadcasts from the U. S. to 1,000,000 British homes. Officially summing up for the BBC on Saturday, Commentator Swing told Great Britain:

"Here is a queer conflict between the occasion and the persons. The occasion, if you stop to think about it, is bristling with importance. . . . Here were meeting the heads of the two greatest democracies of the world. . . . That makes it something to worry about, to be sure nothing happens that can be misunderstood, overestimated, underestimated, distorted, omited. . . . The King and Queen, as persons, have overshadowed the occasion. . . . We had expected to like them, and we found we liked them more than we expected."

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