Proving Ground?

The summer slumps were back. Radio's high-priced winter wonders were off--or taking off. Some were headed overseas, like Bob Hope (on his fourth trip) and Jack Benny (on his third). Some, like Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby, were doing hospital turns at home. Others--like Fibber McGee and Molly at their Southern California ranch--were back on the soil. In their places, for the most part, were programs whose budgets were only a third as big, and whose routines were not a third as good.

Although "summer replacements" should be radio's proving ground for aspiring rookies, the number it has developed into the big time in past years can almost be counted on the paws of a three-toed sloth. Chief summer survivors: lush, busty Songstress Hildegarde, baby-prat tling Red Skelton, Frank Sinatra.

Summer, 1945, promised to be no different. Most summer shows will feature second-drawer favorites, supporting play ers going solo (like Harry James for Danny Kaye, Ray Noble for Sinatra) or seasoned, borrowed troupers like Herbert Marshall, Ray Bolger, Roland Young.

Looking glumly at summer prospects, and the brisk fall trading in old standbys, trade paper Variety bluntly accused radio of drying up its talent sources.

Variety was promptly answered last week by two defenders of the tried & true.

Said NBC's program boss, Clarence Menser, who believes radio's experimenting should be done in private and not on the air: "The Heinz Co. doesn't make 100 million people sick ... in order to find out whether their food is any good."

Comedian Fred Allen was willing for radio to dredge up new writers ("Most radio favorites are only mouths spawning the brain-roe of tired little men . . .") but was sourly suspicious of radio-born comedians: "A comedian who has had only radio knows only the reactions of transient mobs, who float from program to program posing as audiences, and tends to gear his antics [to] this moronic element, forgetting the millions of intelligent listeners."

"There is no substitute for experience, and in radio's present phase, comedians who have laid eggs in Waterbury and stolen bows in Bozeman, Mont, are best equipped to survive. . . . When you are ill, you certainly won't call in a doctor who still has the price tag dangling on his stethoscope."

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