TRIBUTE TO A BROADCASTING GREAT - JOHNNY OLSON
by Randy West

Loved for his energetic studio audience warm-up, exciting vocal delivery, and his unfailing ability to read even the toughest tongue-twisting copy, Johnny Olson was a mentor to me. He nurtured a fascination with television when I was a child in New York, and he continued to encourage my pursuit of a career in the field during many visits to see him years later in Los Angeles.

Johnny was thoroughly unassuming and actually a bit shy off-stage. He took great pride in his professionalism, he loved the business, and he valued the friendship and respect of those he worked with. He was a devoted family man, in his later years flying weekly from Los Angeles or New York to West Virginia to spend his days off with the love of his life, his wife Penny. Penny Olson had been his on-air co-host, vocalist and occasionally Associate Producer on a number of radio programs, as well as on some of television's earliest talk, variety and game shows.

On Sunday evening, May 22, 1910, upon delivering a twelve and one-half pound infant, Hannah cried to her husband Sivert Olson, "Oh, Yonny!" That, combined with the fact that the blessed event caused sister Ella to miss her date with beau Leonard Wick, is said to have been the inspiration for the newborn to be named Yonny... uh, rather Johnny Leonard Olson. Apparently naming children becomes a less creative undertaking by the time of an eleventh birth.

John Olson's broadcasting career began when Windom electrician Oscar Estenson wired a crude radio transmitter in his electrical repair shop. Fourteen year old Johnny sang "No, No, Nora" into the microphone during a break from his part time job in a local jewelry store. Encouraged by his brother Curt who worked at the electrical shop, Johnny took to the air for three more Sunday afternoon pirate broadcasts. The thrill of the experience lingered even after a man from the Federal Radio Commission, precursor of the FCC, paid a visit to suggest they add frequency control to their crude apparatus to avoid blotting out all the stations up and down the dial for a 50 mile radius. The visitor also suggested that they obtain a radio station license. It was easy in those days; a Catholic priest in Appleton, Wisconsin had just gotten one by simply writing to the then Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover.

Despite father Olson's lack of enthusiasm for his son's prospects as a singer, John's fascination with wireless was nurtured when he and his brothers built a homemade crystal set and the family erected a 60 foot antenna that enabled John to listen to the pioneering stations of the 1920s. He recalled evenings monitoring KDKA, WGY and WWJ, stations with signals strong enough that the headphones from the crude receiver could be placed in a bowl to reflect the sound so that several family members could listen simultaneously.

Years later Johnny would credit his success to those early experiences, as well as to his mother's hearing impairment and difficulty understanding English. He recalled, "She just demanded I 'speak up' when I began to talk and read. She wanted to hear me, and I 'spoke up' when I acted in high school plays and began to sing and talk before audiences before I was fourteen years old. Because of her interest and demands, I amplified an average baritone voice into one that is loud and clear".

But pay was meager. John was contemplating the offer of a job repairing watches at his now brother-in-law Leonard's jewelry store in Mitchell, South Dakota, when, on a visit, he learned that a new station had just signed-on in town. A letter to the owner netted a $25-a-week offer to manage the new KGDA. At the age of 18 John became the youngest station manager in the country, and the responsibility started Johnny's serious dedication to broadcasting.

KGDA's broadcast day began at 5:30 AM with an hour of piano, song and farm reports from Johnny. Then, a two-hour show of Johnny's patter and platters was followed at 8:30 when John cracked the mike again as "Farmer Bill". The one-man operation demanded creativity. Still in his teens, Johnny wrote, sang, and acted in skits as a number of characters including his popular "Cousin Olaf" and "Bumpy, the bus boy". John did it all in small market radio: news, comedy, variety, audience participation shows, band remotes, and children's programs. He accompanied himself on ukulele and banjo, sold time, wrote scripts and commercials, composed and read poetry, preached religion, and covered every manner of sporting event.

For live coverage of a 23 day bicycle race, enterprising Olson hitched an amplifier to a telephone line, had the operator connect him to the station, and then connected a microphone with 150 feet of outstretched mike cable. Each time the cyclists peddled by, Johnny snatched an interview by jogging alongside for 300 feet. He then continued the live coverage while recoiling the cable on his return to his starting point, prepared for another interview on the bikers' next lap. When the stock market crash of 1929 resulted in a cut in salary to $18-a-week, John simply supplemented his income by working in plugs for local stores and restaurants that paid off in new clothes and free meals.

Johnny lived the vagabond life of a radio journeyman, advancing from the KGDA experience, through pharmacy classes at the University of Minnesota, back to WIBA in Madison, through part time work as a soda jerk, court reporter, short-order cook, and through a fling with music. Before "talkies", he sang at the local movie house between the silent pictures. While performing at The Wonderland Theater he always remembered his mother's admonition to "speak up". Later John carried that advice to new opportunities as vocalist with "The Rainbow Revelers", as founder of "The Rhythm Rascals", and as singer and manager for Hip Haynes' "The Hips Commanders". Perhaps somewhere, 78 rpm records of "The Hips Commanders" on the Broadway Record label still exist, with a young John Olson crooning "Wabash Moon" and "Walking My Baby Back Home".

In the 1930s, all twelve of Hip's "Commanders" crammed into a customized Buick bus and drove to Chicago to seek their fame and fortune on the big band circuit. There they auditioned for bandleaders Wayne King, Lawrence Welk, and Jan Garber, but it was Jules Stein, the head of MCA, who signed the group. This was in the days before MCA's acquisition of Universal Studios, when the company was a powerful talent agency. Despite the Commanders' budding success, John soon left the group; he missed radio.

Work with "The Rhythm Rascals" ultimately took the newlyweds to Hollywood for national radio appearances. Johnny augmented that work by hosting "Missing Persons", "Man on the Street" and "Chef Milani" locally on the Warner Brothers' owned KFWB. Simultaneously, Johnny continued the Rascals' radio shows by transcribing the daily, one-hour program on disc, complete with commercials, for the loyal Milwaukee audience. "The Rhythm Rascals" was produced in Los Angeles for WTMJ, and later in New York for WMLO.

Of this early experiment in radio syndication, the trade publication "Variety" reported, "The return of Johnny Olson to Milwaukee, if only by way of a soundtrack, as is the case here, ranks as a shrewd bit of business action by a broadcaster... Several years ago Olson developed into Milwaukee's top local mike personality with a reputation and popularity, competitor broadcasters here admit, which hasn't been matched since... The program is Olson at his smoothest as a personality, and adroitest (sic) as a showman. It didn't take long to get the hour pretty well sold to local merchants. Olson knows his Milwaukee audience and his Milwaukee merchandisers, and the three-way wedding looks like solid going for all concerned".

Dennis Morgan was another Wisconsin-born radio singer who had crossed paths with Johnny; they became friends, destined to meet again years later as neighbors in Van Nuys. Dennis had migrated west for film work as a contract player at MGM and Paramount, and went on to a 35 year film acting career. While at a particularly lively Christmas party at Dennis' San Fernando valley home, Johnny had the inspiration for his "Rumpus Room" program. This early "houseparty" idea debuted in Los Angeles on KMPC, and later originated back at WTMJ.

The "Rumpus Room" was an energetic, nightly, 10:30 to midnight, informal music and variety show that had upwards of 300 teen-aged studio audience members dancing and crowding around the mike for live, ad-lib fun with Johnny. Involving the audience to the extent that "American Bandstand" did years later generated a six week wait for tickets to visit the "Rumpus Room". The show ultimately proved to be the Olsons' ticket to New York when it was picked-up by NBC's Blue Network. It later brought Johnny his first season of network television when "Johnny Olson's Rumpus Room" was picked-up by ABC-TV in 1946.

Following the FCC's ruling that NBC's operation of both the Red and Blue Networks was an anti-competitive practice, in 1943 Edward J. Noble, the Lifesaver candy millionaire, purchased the Blue Network for $8 million. Overnight, Edward Noble had become a media mogul, and John wrote him a letter. In January 1944 the Olsons arrived in New York by train and settled in a $50 a month basement apartment in Forest Hills. The morning after their arrival, Johnny promptly paid a visit to Edward Noble's palatial office in Radio City. In a very humorous case of mistaken identity, Johnny was hired to start immediately. John said, "While I may have been given the job partly by mistake, I made good at it".

Johnny was quickly tapped to replace Garry Moore on "Everything Goes", and soon went on to host "On Stage Everybody". Later came a string of shows that included "Whiz Quiz" and "Break The Bank". New Yorkers were also introduced to the venerable "Rumpus Room" when it was first reincarnated for middays as "Johnny Olson's Pantry Party". John became one of the busiest performers on the network. By 1949 he was presiding over 20 half-hour shows each week. They included "Johnny Olson's Get Together" from the WJZ Playhouse on West 48th Street, "Johnny Olson's Prince Charming" from the Mutual Guild Theater on West 52nd Street, and a pairing with Arlene Francis at the network's prestigious Radio City Studios for "What's My Name?".

Johnny transitioned from radio to TV with "Ladies Be Seated"

The interview that followed had a flavor similar to Art Linkletter's conversations with children on the "House Party" program that debuted in January of the following year on CBS. Johnny Crooners' youngsters publicly washed their family linen when they answered questions such as "What does daddy do?". One girl responded with "Daddy is a laundryman. It's good. We don't buy anything. He brings all our towels and clothes home free". Another answered "he cuts piggies". It reportedly took Johnny ten fun-filled minutes to figure out that the girl's father was a podiatrist.

"Ladies Be Seated" would prove to be an important addition to the Olson resume, and another example of the value of being at the right place at the right time. John was honing his ad-lib skills and further developing his energetic, fun and friendly style during the birth of a new entertainment medium. In its infancy, television was hungry for new talent. John had the ability, ambition and passion; his success with "Ladies Be Seated" on radio made John an obvious choice for a landmark test of the new medium. He remembered the Sunday morning when the entire cast and crew of "Ladies Be Seated" headed to one of only six television stations in existence in the United States at the time, General Electric's experimental W2XB, recently re-christened WRGB. It was a broadcast worthy of press coverage, and the newly crowned "Miss WJZ", a young Bess Myerson, was part of the entourage.

John recalled, "I rode into the dawning world of television in 1944 on a train. It was New York Central's old Empire State Express, once the world's fastest... [it] transported us swiftly along the lordly Hudson River to Albany and then a few miles west to Schenectady... it was a serious trip. Television was a new and unknown quantity... We were apprehensive about what it might do to our jobs". Johnny remembered being excited about the opportunity, and wide-eyed about the budding technology. "We did what rehearsing we could... we studied the lighting arrangements and visited the control room where engineers had the choice of images from three live cameras and from three reels of film. I was very impressed with it all". Likewise, the Blue Network executives and the GE engineers were impressed with Johnny.

Here's how John recounted his first TV appearance: "I hopped out of a Valentine-like cardboard entrance in a minstrel costume and we had our usual opening:

"'Ladies be seated, the party has only begun.
Ladies be seated, so let's all join in the fun.
Ladies be seated, a laugh doesn't cost you a dime.
Ladies be seated, and let's have a wonderful time!'"

"Our audience was lively and responsive... there was only one incident. Lights became so hot they melted mascara on women's faces in early television. GE tried to lick the problem with a type cooled by water. In the course of our program, one of these exploded and sprinkled part of the studio audience with warm water. 'My God, my time has come', shouted a pregnant woman caught in the downpour. When she found it hadn't, she laughed. Penny and some others wiped up the water. We finished the program with everybody convinced that television had great possibilities".

Johnny at 30 Rockefeller Plaza interviews Joe Masaniello on NBC radio's "Second Chance"

While continuing on "Rumpus Room" and "Ladies Be Seated", Johnny commuted weekly to Chicago in 1949 to emcee ABC-TV's "Fun For The Money". His children's talent competition program "Kids and Company" originated from New York for the DuMont network in 1951 and 1952. And in 1953 and 1954 Johnny even danced and sang on a local DuMont summer variety show called "The Strawhatters" that was broadcast from New Jersey's Palisades Amusement Park. Later, he performed skits on Merv Griffin's NBC daytime show "Play Your Hunch".

John formed two important alliances in these early halcyon days that would later pay dividends. He was teamed with Jackie Gleason in 1955 for work on "The Honeymooners" for DuMont, and was chosen to host "Time's A-Wastin'", a radio pilot for ABC from the new producing team of Goodson and Todman. This chance employment with advertising executive Bill Todman and former radio announcer Mark Goodson would ultimately lead to Johnny's greatest fame.

Television was maturing. While he continued to appear as a sidekick and substitute host for a number of shows, Johnny Olson was soon being heard more often than he was being seen. John's greatest success and recognition came as the most prolific announcer in television game shows. Starting with "Masquerade Party" in 1952, Johnny was the signature voice for over 30 programs, including some of TV's most successful game show hits. He announced Goodson-Todman's "What's My Line?", "The Match Game", "I've Got A Secret", and "To Tell the Truth".

Outside of the game show world, Johnny worked on occasions with TV legends Johnny Carson and Bob Hope, and he announced series and specials hosted by Sammy Davis Jr., Kate Smith, Victor Borge, Dom DeLuise, and Peggy Fleming. John even appeared in the feature film "The Sins of Mona Kent".

Bob Barker is among the emcees who have marveled at Johnny's impeccable reading skills and his ability to "cover" what few errors he made. It was not an accident or simply the result of his mother's repeated requests for him to "speak up". John meticulously pre-read and extensively marked each piece of his copy for phrasing, intonation, pronunciation, pace and style.

Hosts preferred working with Johnny not only for his professional delivery, but also for his ability to work any studio audience into a frenzy of anticipation in the moments just before air time. Buddy Piper, the creator of TV's venerable "Concentration", remembers that John's warm-up was well-crafted as early as the late 1940s when he would run through the audience with an umbrella that he used to shield guests from the periodic leaks that emanated from those early water-cooled studio lights.

Audience warm-ups were a part of broadcasting from the earliest days of radio, probably beginning when the first guests were permitted to view a broadcast from the studio. Early on, warm-ups consisted simply of a word of welcome from the producer, an introduction of the cast, a question and answer session hosted by a staff member or studio page, and/or a rousing musical number if the program featured a live band. Johnny Olson helped raise this pre-show mood setting session to an art form. The importance of this unique skill to the success of a program and Johnny's pride in his proficiency is reflected in his business card from the 1970s. On it, he enumerates three talents: TV Announcer, Warm-Up Specialist, and Audience Host.

John had learned from experience the importance of working to an attentive, receptive and reactive audience; one that could even be cajoled into laughing and applauding on cue. He developed a warm-up act that could reduce the inhibitions of even the most staid audience members, and created a wild, party-like atmosphere. He was the subject of several newspaper write-ups and broadcast interviews for his excellence in this job that is a strange hybrid of entertainer, party host, psychotherapist and den mother. Being the youngest of eleven children apparently helped. In the 1950s John said, "In a family that size you've got to learn how to give and take, how to appreciate the tastes and peculiarities of others, and that's really the basis of understanding people."

Television crew members are rarely shy when talking among themselves about audience warm-up acts; they hear them all, and they hear them repeated, day after day. While all warm-up personalities have a collection of well crafted routines that get repeated in the course of their work, Johnny developed a few tricks of the trade that kept each day in the studio fresh. Ray Angona, six time Emmy winning Technical Director for "The Price Is Right" and "Match Game" says, "Johnny would involve the production personnel and the crew members who were on stage just before tape rolled. He would interact with them, often setting them up to deliver the punch lines that we had come to know." Ray also reflected on one measure of Johnny's generosity that helped to endear him to his co-workers. "During the course of his warm-up, in addition to welcoming the audience on behalf of the executive producers, Johnny would also work the names and titles of 3 or 4 crew members into his act. It was a small touch, but gratifying when he mentioned your name. You knew that he cared about you and your contribution to the show."

Johnny's warm-up spoke the universal language of fun. His familiar (NBC) "peacock dance", complete with bumps, grinds and faux striptease, was a crowd pleasing ice-breaker. During warm-ups he would explain the game and the audience's role in the show while dancing wildly up and down the aisles. Johnny would tell mildly suggestive jokes that dated back to his days as a club singer while landing on people's laps, planting kisses on the cheeks of older ladies, and peeling-off dollar bills in an engaging and frenetic frenzy of energizing pre-show excitement.

John's enjoyment of people and the talent that he called "making good talk" was obvious in the time he took to chat with tourists and audience members. The late Jay Stewart, long-time announcer on "Let's Make a Deal", first met Johnny on a cold winter day when they were both working at NBC-TV in New York's Rockefeller Center. Jay recounted with amazement the story of seeing Johnny, wrapped in scarf and gloves, walking and talking along the line of people on 50th Street who were waiting to come in from the cold and watch a taping. Years later, Jay would see Johnny again. This time they passed in the lobby of the building at 1155 La Cienega Boulevard in Hollywood where they each maintained an apartment; "he had one of his polyester pairs of pants and jackets over his arm, and said he was running to CBS".

In 1968 John recalled that his sole source of encouragement in the earliest years of his radio work came from the only other performer in his family, his sister Pearl. She was a pianist who toured in vaudeville, and John remarked that her premature passing was most likely the result of her work schedule. He said, "she toured on the Chautauqua circuit where I think she more or less worked herself to death".

Following his last taping of "The Price is Right" on Wednesday, October 2, 1985, Johnny flew east for the weekend. Upon returning to Los Angeles International Airport on Sunday evening, October 6th, he suffered what he thought to be a heart attack. He drove himself to Santa Monica Hospital, and reportedly was found in the hospital parking lot, unconscious, behind the wheel of his car. Johnny Olson died six days later, on Saturday, October 12, of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 75 years old.

October 7th, 1985 started as just another Monday morning in studio 33 at Television City. About 15 minutes into readying the stage for another week of taping, a shocked crew was given the news of John's condition. "The Price Is Right" did not tape that week. Director Marc Breslow later told UPI, "There isn't a single person at CBS... who didn't love Johnny Olson". Long time Goodson-Todman Executive Producer Frank Wayne said the company was shocked by John's death. He recalled having to review previous episodes of "The Price Is Right" to transcribe the transitional phrases that Johnny had been ad-libbing for the past thirteen years. The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences had recently saluted John Olson at the daytime Emmy© awards banquet for his more than five decades in broadcasting.

Most of John and Penny's estate was sold at auction during the second weekend of June, 1999. The large collection of Meissen and Dresden porcelain, Chinese ivory and jade carvings, antique furniture, crystal, furs and artwork fetched over $100,000 in three days of brisk bidding.
Notable among the items sold at auction were Penny's early musical recordings. The liner notes from her album "Hymns of Hope and Inspiration" indicate that Johnny was a spiritual man, having written as many as 70 religious hymns. John's large collection of tapes and kinescopes were donated to a Historical Society. Dozens of photographs from Johnny's decades of radio and television work are now in the hands of game show agent, author and fan, Fred Wostbrock

As Johnny's career was the inspiration for my life's work, I am proud to have given a new home to an attaché case filled with his personal effects, as well as his most prized personal mementos. From old snapshots, to his CBS ID badge, to personal writings, this attaché was apparently home to some of John's most treasured trinkets. The case itself was a gift from Mark Goodson, and it also contains John's newspaper and magazine clippings dating back to 1931, his collection of television scripts, the outlines and manuscripts from his long planned autobiography, his Emmy© award, and the microphone that he used during the many years he announced "What's My Line?". The RCA 77DX had been mounted and awarded to him by the CBS studio staff at the conclusion of the show's run.

The notes from Johnny's unpublished memoirs include a history of the broadcasting industry from the birth of wireless to the social and political impact of television in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of the milestones Johnny describe include the events of Christmas Eve, 1906 when a human voice first leapt through the air from Professor Fessenden's lab in Brant Rock, Massachusetts. John commemorates the first televised play that was broadcast utilizing the experimental mechanical disc system of television transmission in 1928. He goes on to recall the historic short wave broadcasts to Admiral Richard Byrd and his men at the South Pole, as well as General Electric's formation of the Radio Corporation of America and NBC's radio and television networks.

John Leonard Olson approached his work with great grace and enthusiasm, took tremendous pride in his performance and his reputation, and he retained a passion for the business that remained untainted by cynicism and sarcasm. His oft-voiced adage: "Let not trifles ruffle your temper".

I carry much of what Johnny Olson taught me to every taping. Yet, as I attempt to emulate his professionalism, I am continually challenged by the high standards he set.

The tribute that John might have been proudest of came simply from those he worked with through the years, the stage managers, directors, lighting, camera and sound people. In 1998 while I was working in Johnny's room - studio 33 at CBS Television City, the newly christened "Bob Barker Studio" - many of his friends and co-workers from the thousands of episodes he taped there remembered him fondly. They were unanimous in their admiration for Johnny and their high regard for him as an always warm, pleasant, up-beat colleague and friend. The most frequently repeated comment about Johnny Olson leaves a legacy he would undoubtedly be proud of: "he was always the consummate professional".