The Busy Air

Kay Kyser, still sashaying around the bandstand and giggling at the studio audience, celebrated his tenth anniversary on the air. "Life is so daily with me," he cackled, "that I haven't had time to think about what has happened. But now that you mention it, I'm thilled the public has been able to stand me so long."

Romeo, his voice shaky with emotion, breathed into the microphone: "By yawnder blessed moon I swear. . . ." What was Milton Berle doing under that balcony? He was acting Romeo and Juliet. And it was no gag. The new show, Play It Straight (on Manhattan's WNEW), would give radio's funnymen a chance to indulge their traditional and unsinkable ambition to play Hamlet--or any other long-faced role they fancied.

Other would-be Pagliacci jumped at the idea. Minerva Pious, weary of Pansy Nussbaum, was a creditable Lady Macbeth. Ezra Stone, still unhappily and profitably playing Henry Aldrich at 30, would try Shylock. Jack Pearl would try King Lear; Morey Amsterdam was set to do Cyrano. Henry Morgan agreed to do a show, but couldn't decide on a role: "Anything but Shakespeare . . . I told them to get me something where a guy goes crazy. With a little nudge I can go out of my mind quite easily."

A week after the Senate confirmed his appointment, bespectacled FCChairman Wayne Coy was settled comfortably in the chair he had been occupying since Dec. 27. He liked his new job all right, but not his paycheck ($10,000 a year). By quitting as radio director of the Washington Post and chief of its radio station WINX, he had taken a "terrific slash" in salary, "more than 50%."

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