Radio Live! Television Live!: Those Golden Days When Horses Were Coconuts - Hardcover

Mott, Robert L.

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9780786408160: Radio Live! Television Live!: Those Golden Days When Horses Were Coconuts

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786408162 ISBN 13: 9780786408160

Publisher: McFarland Publishing, 2000

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During the "golden age" of live radio and television, writers, performers, and producers created their programs in an environment far different from the studios of today. With live programming, anything could happen, and often did. Robert L. Mott, a veteran writer and Emmy-nominated sound effects creator of the live era, recreates the days when television and radio programs were performed live. He includes personal reminiscences as well as a forthright look behind the microphones: horses' hooves were played by coconuts, African-American women were played by white males, and television actors might ad lib an entire program that didn't go as planned. Celebrities like Red Skelton and Jackie Gleason, as well as the unsung heroes in the sound booth and backstage, step up to the mike here. Behind-the-scenes photographs are also included in this account of the exciting-but not always glamorous-world that was "live on the air."

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About the Author:

In his forty-year career in television and radio, Robert L. Mott has worked on such live shows as Gangbusters, Phillip Morris Playhouse, Mr. Chameleon and Perry Mason. Also the author of Radio Sound Effects (1993, $42.50), he resides in Arroyo Grande, California.

From Booklist:

Libraries with active media collections will want to add this entertaining, anecdotal description of life behind the scenes of commercial radio and television to their shelves. Mott was that rare entity, a World War II vet who used his GI Bill benefits to earn a degree in radio writing. CBS hired him as a sound effects (sfx) specialist in 1951, and he worked on dozens of radio and TV shows over subsequent decades. In some chapters, Mott aims to instruct, describing the steps in a production process, the responsibilities of different staffers, or the functions of a key piece of equipment. Other chapters detail the challenges of producing sfx in venues awash with competing sounds (e.g., street noise, subways, and commuter trains). What most readers will enjoy most about this book, however, are its chatty descriptions of folks with whom Mott worked, as writer or sfx man, over the years: Garry Moore and Durward Kirby, Captain Kangaroo, Red Skelton, Henry Morgan, Dick Van Dyke, and plenty of others. A charming memoir and oral history. Mary Carroll
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