Information Please did its first broadcast last week (NBC Mondays 10:30 p.m. E.W.T.) for its new sponsor: Heinz (57 varieties). First guest for the picklemaker was wry, omniscient Fred Allen. He was very funny. He answered every query he could get his rasping voice on and, substituting for Questioner Clifton Fadiman in the second half, he stumped Experts Fadiman, Kieran, Levant and Adams with quotations from Philosophers Spencer, Kant and Hegel.
"I have always wanted an encyclopedia,"* cackled Allen, who had submitted the question himself. "You can give the $57 to charity. Charity always begins at home, and Mr. Levant knows where I live."
Gone Where? It was all good-natured fun, which had been getting scarcer on Information Please since last November when American Tobacco Co. began its notorious statement that the green on Lucky Strike cigaret packages (now white) "has gone to war." Information Please's Impresario Dan Golenpaul thought this advertising teaser in poor taste, told Lucky Strike: "You're lousing up my program, and I won't stand for it." American's truculent President George Washington Hill would not stand being talked to that way. Golenpaul asked to be released from his contract by Feb. 5, and President Hill released him.
The slogan was Lucky's way of saying that there would no longer be enough chrome green ( a derivative of bichromate) to make green ink. But WPB, which lifted restrictions on chromium last September after originally cutting its commercial use, denied that there was any special war purpose for chrome green. There were rumors that Lucky Strike, which sold more cigarets (59,500,000,000) last year than any other U.S. tobacco company, wanted a white package to compete with Chesterfield for the female trade. There was no question, at any rate, but that white packages were cheaper to produce than green ones.
After a few weeks, the talk about green's going to war was called off. American Tobacco said it had been so successful (November sales were 38% over 1941) that all the green packages were gone. Then Luckies produced a new slogan: "The Best Tunes of All Move to Carnegie Hall"—an advance plug for its new show ("all-time" popular melodies played by Mark Warnow's orchestra). Impresario Golenpaul asked a Manhattan court to make Lucky Strike cut this commercial plug while Information Please was still on Lucky Strike's time. The court seemed to be sympathetic, but denied Golenpaul's plea. Irritated listeners, the court said, would probably direct their resentment against the sponsor, not the program.
Gone Far. This controversy was a rare occurrence in U.S. radio, whose impresarios can seldom summon sufficient nerve to question the taste of a rich sponsor's advertising. It was also too tempting a publicity opportunity for Dan Golenpaul to overlook. As is the case with many a U.S.
promoter, Golenpaul's antecedents are obscure. He says they are "nobody's business." Whatever they are, he was an in-&-outer around Manhattan radio stations until the Information Please idea struck him. That happened one night in 1938 when he heard radio's Professor Quiz and reflected that the experts, not the audience, should be put on the spot.