In Which Bill Stern Races Through Film History and Crashes Into the Wall
Christopher Snowden
STERN SPORTS NEWSREEL, consisting of "Believe It or Not"-style sports
stories.
Like Walter Winchell, Stern spoke with a dramatic and very FAST
delivery. Abbott and Costello appeared on his broadcast of January 4,
1946, and here are three of the stories told.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
BILL: ...And that's the story of how Bob Fitzsimmons once fought for
the heavyweight championship of the world... despite the fact that two
armies tried to stop him! But that's not the end of the story. At that
fight was a young photographer named Edward Muybridge. He'd come to
take pictures of the fight. But AT that fight, Edward Muybridge could
not get good pictures. For every time he tried to take a picture, one
of the fighters would move a bit, and since in those days cameras
could not photograph anything but stationary objects, all his pictures
were blurred.
That gave Edward Muybridge an idea. Why couldn't HE develop a
camera that COULD take action pictures, pictures of people in action,
MOTION pictures? The more Edward Muybridge thought about that idea,
the better he liked it. And he got Bob Fitzsimmons, the heavyweight
champion, to advance him enough money to give it a try!
Since Bob Fitzsimmons was coming to California, Edward Muybridge
came along too. And IN California, Edward Muybridge developed his
first motion picture camera. And it worked! For he went out to a
racetrack, and he actually took pictures of a racehorse IN action...
and these pictures, of a racehorse IN action, proved that he'd created
a new invention! The invention... of motion pictures.
And that's the story. A story that started when a young
photographer named Edward Muybridge watched Bob Fitzsimmons fight for
the championship of the world, and then TALKED Bob Fitzsimmons into
taking him to California, so that HE, Edward Muybridge, might invent
motion pictures! But that's not quite the END of the story.
Because motion pictures WERE invented IN California, there was a
curious result. For not only was a California racehorse responsible
for proving that there WERE such things as motion pictures, but the
NAME of that racehorse... was HOLLYWOOD. And HOLLYWOOD, the HOME of
motion pictures, is NAMED after THAT HORSE.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
BILL: How about you two boys telling me that sports story that you
told a little bit earlier... you start, Lou, will you?
LOU: Okay, Bill... it's the story of a couple of basketball players.
One of them was named Francis Cristillo. He played for a basketball
team from Patterson, New Jersey--
BUD: Yes, and the other was named William Alexander. He played for a
team from Camden, New Jersey.
BILL: Yes, I remember those teams, and I remember too that Francis
Cristillo and William Alexander were both great basketball players,
playing for great teams! But go on with your story, boys.
LOU: Well, in 1922, both of these teams were undefeated. And finally,
they met in the last game of the year.
BUD: And that was SOME game, Bill! It wasn't just a battle between two
teams... it turned into a personal battle between Francis Cristillo of
Patterson, and William Alexander of Camden.
LOU: Everybody thought the game was going to end in a fistfight!
BUD: And they were right, because just before the game ended, Francis
Cristillo and William Alexander DID start to trade punches.
LOU: But... they were finally pulled apart!
BILL: Well? Well, go on with your story! What HAPPENED to Francis
Cristillo and William Alexander after they fought during that
basketball game?
BUD: Oh, they became friends, Bill, in fact they decided to become
partners.
LOU: And as partners, they became a couple of comedians! You see,
Bill, today... people know them as... Abbott and Costello.
BILL: Wait a minute! Those two basketball players were really YOU two
fellas?
BUD: That's right, Bill.
LOU: And Bill... if it hadn't been for basketball... we might never
have met. So you see, sports means a lot to us!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
BILL: ... But one of the most AMAZING stories I've EVER heard of
sportsmanship... happened many years ago at an automobile race. That
day... driving his racing car at a terrific rate of speed was the
famous Eddie Rickenbacker! As the cars reached the final lap, Eddie
Rickenbacker's car was out in first place! He was doing better than a
hundred miles an hour and THEN!!-- Then it happened! A tiny youngster
ran out on that track! The crowd watched in horror! For bearing down
on the helpless child was Eddie Rickenbacker's speeding racing car!
At that very instant, Eddie Rickenbacker SAW that child in front
of his car! He realized he either had to run over that child, or
swerve into the brick wall at the side of the track! INSTANTLY, Eddie
made his choice: he SWERVED his car, and he crashed into the brick
wall!
Eddie Rickenbacker's car was demolished. Somehow... he lived
through that smash-up... A smash-up caused by Eddie Rickenbacker's
saving a tiny child's life.
Maybe you'd be interested in knowing who the story says that
child WAS, whose life Eddie Rickenbacker saved! That child... has
since grown up to be... the great movie star FRED MACMURRAY.
Strange, isn't it... that Eddie Rickenbacker should risk his own
life to save the life of Fred MacMurray! But it's much stranger, when
you realize that FRED MACMURRAY, according to the story the very boy
whose life Eddie Rickenbacker once saved... is TODAY playing the part
OF Eddie Rickenbacker in the MOVIE of Eddie Rickenbacker's LIFE...
Portrait! Of Eddie Rickenbacker! Whose life is being played on
the screen... by the boy whose life... he once saved.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Chris Snowden
Neil Midkiff
>
> Sportscaster Bill Stern had a long-running radio show called THE BILL
> STERN SPORTS NEWSREEL, consisting of "Believe It or Not"-style sports
> stories.
I choose "Not" -- at least for the first and third stories. Bud and Lou
may well have met on a basketball court, as unlikely as it seems.
-Neil Midkiff
William Ferry
have long felt that this was one of the most unintentionally funny programs
ever, largely because of the wacky stories Stern delivered in that "THIS is
the MOST important thing you WILL EVER HEAR"-style, especially accompanied
by the Hammond organ "sting" at the end of each amazing story. A typical
Stern factoid would go something like this...
"This is BILL STERN with the four-hundred-eleventy-seventh edition of the
COLGATE Sports NEWSREEL. Reel one: HERE'S the STORY of HERBERT MUCKENFUSS, a
strapping farmboy from Shreveport, Louisiana. For four years he traveled
daily by cattleboat to the University of Alabama, to major in Animal
Husbandry. He tried out unsuccessfully for the water polo team, was
repeatedly REJECTED by the Women's Lacrosse team. But he enjoyed his
greatest success on the gridiron! In four straight seasons, he led Alabama
in rushing, averaging an astounding 4,261 yards each game! He intercepted
five times as many passes as the entire Ivy League five times over! He went
on to win the Amos Alonzo Stagg Trophy an unprecedented FOURTEEN times! And
the MOST AMAZING thing about Herbert Muckenfuss was...HE had NO HEAD!"
--
Yours for bigger and better silents,
Bill Ferry
"Christopher Snowden" <unk...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:2338ad06.04020...@posting.google.com...
David Totheroh
They may have met on a basketball court, but a confirmed endomorph
like Lou the star of a championship bball team? I vote NOT on all
three stories.
Mack Twamley
"William Ferry" <vze3...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:dnMVb.10723$M8....@nwrdny02.gnilink.net...
> Thanks for a great chuckle of recognition. I'm an old-time radio fan, and
> have long felt that this was one of the most unintentionally funny
programs
> ever, largely because of the wacky stories Stern delivered in that "THIS
is
> the MOST important thing you WILL EVER HEAR"-style, especially accompanied
> by the Hammond organ "sting" at the end of each amazing story. A typical
> Stern factoid would go something like this...
>
rather sadly, Bill Stern (who had only one leg) had the reputation of even
making up plays as he announced a sporting event, to make the action more
exciting. Since these were the days of radio, he got away with the
deception. But he was exciting to listen to......
Brent Walker
Don't know if my previous post went through so I'll try again....
The way I always heard the Muybridge story is he was hired by Leland
Stanford to win a bet that all of a horse's legs left the ground at
the same time. That was the 1870's and I think Fitzsimmons came along
later.
Bud and Lou were 10 years apart in age...so I doubt they'd be playing
basketball against each other (especially since Lou was known as
athletic in his younger days and I don't know that Bud ever was).
As for the last bit about Fred MacMurray and Eddie Rickenbacker...it
just shows how brilliant the studio PR men/women were back in the
glory days of the movies!
Regardless, those are some very entertaining stories!
Brent Walker
Brent McKee
" Mack Twamley" <mack...@dslextreme.com> wrote in message
news:102fk63...@corp.supernews.com...
"When Radio Was" occasionally has some of the Bill Stern broadcasts
on. Frequently when he had movie stars on you occasionally got the
feeling that they were wondering what the heck they were doing there.
One of my favourite stories from Stern was one in which he claimed
that Babe Ruth got his first baseball bat from a kindly man who was a
bit down on his luck but had enough money to buy a kid he'd never seen
before a bat. That man's name was Harry Oakes, later Sir Harry Oakes,
who made a fortune in the Yukon after the Klondike gold rush (and was
murdered in Bermuda in 1943 leading to a very famous court case).
Stern then asked The Babe about this story and Ruth (who's memory was
never the greatest at the best of times) could neither confirm or deny
it, but said it was a great story.
--
Brent McKee
To reply by email, please remove the capital letters (S and N) from
the email address
"If we cease to judge this world, we may find ourselves, very quickly,
in one which is infinitely worse."
- Margaret Atwood
"Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more
constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of
openness to novelty. "
- Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002)
Tim Kelley
> have long felt that this was one of the most unintentionally funny programs
> ever, largely because of the wacky stories Stern delivered in that "THIS is
> the MOST important thing you WILL EVER HEAR"-style, especially accompanied
> by the Hammond organ "sting" at the end of each amazing story. A typical
> Stern factoid would go something like this...
>
> "This is BILL STERN with the four-hundred-eleventy-seventh edition of the
> COLGATE Sports NEWSREEL. Reel one: HERE'S the STORY of HERBERT MUCKENFUSS, a
> strapping farmboy from Shreveport, Louisiana. For four years he traveled
> daily by cattleboat to the University of Alabama, to major in Animal
> Husbandry. He tried out unsuccessfully for the water polo team, was
> repeatedly REJECTED by the Women's Lacrosse team. But he enjoyed his
> greatest success on the gridiron! In four straight seasons, he led Alabama
> in rushing, averaging an astounding 4,261 yards each game! He intercepted
> five times as many passes as the entire Ivy League five times over! He went
> on to win the Amos Alonzo Stagg Trophy an unprecedented FOURTEEN times! And
> the MOST AMAZING thing about Herbert Muckenfuss was...HE had NO HEAD!"
Now this one, I believe!
Your Obedient Serant
Tony Spadaro
Actually Paul Harvey does not limit himself to sports, but draws his
wonderful little "true" stories from many sources. I suspect most of those
sources are aged 12 years in the barrel.
--
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com
home of The Camera-ist's Manifesto
The Improved Links Pages are at
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"William Ferry" <vze3...@verizon.net> wrote in message
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Max Nineteennineteen
Well, it's good to know that Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story
carries on that tradition proudly. "And that cowboy, who earned the
reputation of being the best trick-rider in the history of the Buffalo
Bill show, soon changed his name to... Josef Stalin, dictator of all
the Russias. And now you know... the rest of the story."
Christopher Snowden
Old-time radio buffs know never to believe anything heard on Bill
Stern's show! I don't even like sports much, but I love to listen to
these shows, partly to hear his heated delivery, and partly for the
wild stories.
My favorite was the one about the champion swimmer... who had no
arms or legs. (And no, his name wasn't "Bob," although I wish it was.)
What's surprising is the high-grade guests he routinely had on
the show. Besides all the great sports legends, he had all the
big-band greats and almost every 1940s film star you can think of,
even people like Orson Welles. Eleanor Roosevelt did his show.
Occasionally, he couldn't do his broadcast himself, and his guest host
would be someone like William Powell or Frank Sinatra.
Chris Snowden
Dr. Giraud
the Wall
From: unk...@yahoo.com (Christopher Snowden)
Date: Mon, Feb 9, 2004 10:53 PM
Message-id: <2338ad06.04020...@posting.google.com>
Neil Midkiff wrote:
Chris Snowden >>
Woody Allen did a great spoof of Stern (and the swimmer story) in RADIO DAYS,
with a Stern-like announcer who told about the pitcher who kept losing limbs,
his sight, and eventually his life in a series of hunting mishaps. "And then he
won 20 games in that great league in the sky" (or something like that). Very
funny.
Shawn Stone
"If you was a moron, you could almost admire it."--Michael Parks, KILL BILL
VOL. 1
Brent Walker
This was standard practice in those days, particularly baseball games
(which were the only professional team sport anyone really cared about
in the 1930's). The broadcaster would be in the studio, getting wire
reports on a game in some distant city, and would only know whether a
given batter got a hit, walked or made out, and sometimes not even
that--only getting the new score at the inning without knowing how it
was done. So they would make up the results of each pitch as they
went along, sometimes improvising sound effects for the ball hitting
the bat or mitt. Ronald Reagan was one of the former sportscasters
who reminisced about doing this.
Brent Walker
David Manning
<31dd3eaa.04020...@posting.google.com>...
Bud and Lou
> > may well have met on a basketball court, as unlikely as it seems.
>
> They may have met on a basketball court, but a confirmed endomorph
> like Lou the star of a championship bball team? I vote NOT on all
> three stories.
Actually, Costello was a pretty decent high school basketball player
in Paterson, NJ (Abbott, on the other hand, never made it past the
fourth grade). One bio says that even at 5'4", Costello was very
agile, was a three-time state champion foul shooter and played in an
exhibition game against the Celtics. In his 1944 film Here Come the
Co-Eds (a picture that recycles quite a few silent-era sight gags,
incidentally), there is a basketball game sequence in which he makes a
series of trick shots. The director claimed Costello did all the shots
himself and never missed, which may very well be true -- these were
filmed in long shots but it certainly looks like Costello and not a
double. [suddenly lapsing into Bill Stern voice] BUT the MOST AMAZING
THING about Lou Costello's athletic pursuits is that, after MONTHS of
HOMELESSNESS, and eating NOTHING but ORANGES and DATES stolen from
Hollywood residents' trees, he was hired as a STUNT MAN for MGM's The
Trail of '98 and JUMPED - OUT - A - WINDOW while pretending to be ....
DOLORES DEL RIO!
Robert Miller
"Tony Spadaro" <tspa...@ncmaps.rr.com> wrote in message
news:daUVb.3453$4I6.6...@twister.southeast.rr.com...
>
>
> Essentially Stern is still on the air under the name "Harvey"
>
>
One of the first voices I remember hearing on radio was Paul Harvey, and a
half-century later the ol' trouper of the ether is still at it, on hundreds
of stations, three times a day!!!
But back when I was a kid, before I started my own career in broadcasting, I
also heard Bill Stern regularly during his fading, last years on radio, when
he was just doing a rather tame-and-tired, three-minute sports commentary
for Mutual on weekday afternoons.
I never made the connection between these two radio "legends" until many
years later -- when Chuck Schaden (Chicago's Mr. Old-Time Radio) played a
whole series of Stern's wildest "Colgate Sports Newsreel" shows from his
prime years in the mid-1940s.
Wow! You aren't kidding, Tony.
The punchy inflections, the back-beat timing, the mischievous playing with
the language, and the AMAZING surprise endings to shaggy-whatever stories...
Without Bill Stern in his prime as a de facto teacher and radio-role model
for the young Paul Harvey, we might never have grown accustomed to more than
fifty years worth of that ever-cheery, staccato-delivered:
GOOD DAY!
Tony Spadaro
Harvey got his style from Stern but I don't really know that for sure. Any
idea who was on the radio earlier? Was it a common style in the 30s and few
lasted to the 50s - Winchell was similar but not really that close to
either - for one thing he had the most stacatto stacatto I ever heard.
I have to admit I was amazed about 10 years ago to find out Harvey was
still alive --- I assumed he had shuffled off this mortal coil by 1960. The
first time I heard Larry King I thought it was Long John Neville. I was
trying to get a weather report at about 2 am and found myself listening to
this familiar voice wondering if I was catching a radio broadcast that
bounced off Tau Ceti.
--
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com
home of The Camera-ist's Manifesto
The Improved Links Pages are at
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com/links/mlinks00.html
A sample chapter from my novel "Haight-Ashbury" is at
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news:c0c7gk$5mn$1...@usenet.cso.niu.edu...
Robert Miller
> Which leads me to the question -- which one was first?
> I always assumed
> Harvey got his style from Stern but I don't really know that for sure.
Well, here goes...
Paul Harvey is 85 years old and got his start doing small-market radio
announcing in 1933, when he was in his mid-teens. After military service in
WWII, Harvey got his big break as a newscaster for Chicago's WENR, which was
on a time-share operation with WLS. ABC gave Harvey a national audience by
putting him on their radio network in 1951, and he's been there ever since.
Bill Stern was eleven years older than Paul Harvey and was already doing
network sports play-by-play in the mid-1930s when Harvey was still doing
local radio in Oklahoma and Missouri. Stern's first
interview-and-commentary shows began on NBC in 1937, and in 1940 he became
Columbia Pictures' regular narrator for their sports-related short subjects.
Stern was only 64 when he died of a heart attack in 1971
Elizabeth McLeod
>
> Which leads me to the question -- which one was first? I always assumed
> Harvey got his style from Stern but I don't really know that for sure. Any
> idea who was on the radio earlier? Was it a common style in the 30s and few
> lasted to the 50s - Winchell was similar but not really that close to
> either - for one thing he had the most stacatto stacatto I ever heard.
"Paul Harvey News" dates back to 1950, when Harvey took over the time slot
from H. R. Baukhage, and he's been heard continuously on ABC ever since. He'd
been in radio since the mid-thirties, working his way up from small-time
Oklahoma stations to WENR in Chicago, where he began his asssociation with ABC.
Bill Stern was a football and boxing commentator on NBC beginning in 1934,
coming to broadcasting from a career in vaudeville -- he had no journalistic
traning or background whatsoever. The "Colgate Sports Newsreel" series began
in 1939, and continued thru 1950. Beginning in 1938, and continuing into the
fifties, Stern was also the sports commentator for the Hearst News of the Day newsreel.
Stern was clearly an influence on Harvey, but he wasn't the only influence.
There's also a lot of Edwin C. Hill, Gabriel Heatter, and Upton Close in
Harvey's style -- Hill's "Human Side of the News" programs in the thirties
often included vignettes which were clear antecedants of "The Rest of the
Story," and Heatter also used material of this type. Upton Close was
politically very similar to Harvey, and originated the "Hello, Americans!"
opening that Harvey helped himself to after Close's retirement.
Tony Spadaro
was only 5 in 1950 and my older brother was only into dramatic programs (if
one wishes to call the Lone Ranger dramatic).
--
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com
home of The Camera-ist's Manifesto
The Improved Links Pages are at
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A sample chapter from my novel "Haight-Ashbury" is at
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"Elizabeth McLeod" <liz...@midcoast.com> wrote in message
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Tony Spadaro
slipped memories. By the time he was announcing, it was at the game. He got
the story from an older broadcaster and eventually replaced that person with
himself.
--
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com
home of The Camera-ist's Manifesto
The Improved Links Pages are at
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A sample chapter from my novel "Haight-Ashbury" is at
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com/writ/hait/hatitl.html
"Brent Walker" <haub...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:b6e233b9.04021...@posting.google.com...
deejay
>It was later pointed out however, that it was
>another one of Reagan's slipped memories. By the time he was announcing, it
was at the game. He
got > the story from an older broadcaster and eventually replaced that
person
with
> himself.
I believe that Reagan did do ticker recreations as he described. Before
going to Hollywood, he was at WHO in Des Moines, which carried Chicago Cubs
games. Most baseball games (and all Cubs games) were played in the daytime
then, and the stations originating their broadcasts, even the most powerful
ones, could not be heard much beyond their local cities before sundown. For
most teams, maintaining their own regional networks was too expensive and
anyway, not many stations could afford to buy the broadcast rights (this was
during the Depression, remember). In fact, some teams (both St.Louis teams,
for example) ceased live broadcasts altogether for a time in the mid-1930s,
in the belief that their declining revenues during that era were worsened by
live broadcasts discouraging people from attending the games. So if a
small-market station such as WHO wanted to carry out-of-market games,
recreations were the only solution. Given the station and the
circumstances, Reagan was certainly recreating from a studio, not from
Wrigley Field in Chicago. Even in some major league cities, the flagship
stations themselves still recreated at least some games well into the
postwar era. (I remember that when I was growing up near Pittsburgh
venerable old KDKA was still recreating Pirate road games as late as the
early '50s).
Deejay
*********************************************
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think
little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and
Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination."
--Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859)
Tommie Hicks, Jr.
there was an old relic then who had a daily syndicated five minute
show named Earl Nightingale. Now ol' Earl didn't have the rapid pace
of Stern or Harvey. He would do these homilys in a slow deliberate
syrup dripping style. I thought this guy was so hokey that I enjoyed
hearing him in a "camp" way. The young announcers at the station
would always try to outdo each other imitating him vocally. When ever
his record transcriptions came in (he was not on tape)there would
always be some literature enclosed showing Earl accepting some kind of
award. Every promotional photo of him I saw was the same one that
must have been taken in the '40's.
Tommie Hicks
"Robert Miller" <rob...@niu.edu> wrote in message news:<c0c7gk$5mn$1...@usenet.cso.niu.edu>...