Saturday, February 09, 2013
Precursor of Youtube
Polistra has featured Tom Breneman's long-running 'Breakfast in Hollywood' radio show before. Recently a different Breneman show appeared in the Archive.org listings. This show apparently didn't last long, which is too bad. It was more or less the direct ancestor of Youtube.
Tom Breneman's Laugh Parade began with Tom's own corny routine, but quickly got into the more interesting Youtubish part. Ordinary Americans were invited to record their own jokes or stories and send them in, with a significant prize for the best one each week. Tape recording was invented but not yet commercial in 1945. A few people had wire recorders or Wilcox-Gay Recordios, and office workers had access to a Dictaphone; but for broadcast quality sound you had to find a professional recording studio. As Tom said, "This is hard work!"
Most of the stories were awful, as you'd expect. Oddly enough the best one was from an upper-class Spokane lady, Mrs Joanne Desert of 1520 S. Rockwood Blvd. (Still one of the best mansions in the best part of town.) Her joke is fairly risqué for the time and very well told. Starts at 14:45 in the clip. [Sidenote: as mentioned in previous item about Breneman, Americans proudly gave their full address when participating in radio shows. We weren't all weeweed up about "privacy" back then.]
¶ 12:29 PM 
