Radio: Chorus Calls

The pedagogical premise of CBS’s Adult Education Board is that radio’s function as an educator is to stimulate rather than lecture. Two years ago this month CBS began a series called Americans at Work, examining and dramatizing a likely selection of the 31,000 U. S. occupations. To date, Americans at Work (Tuesdays, 10:15 to 10:45 p.m. E. S. T.) has kibitzed sandhogs, dynamiters, firemen, cops, cranberry growers, submariners, teachers, cartoon animators, the U. S. Marines, the Coast Guard ice patrol, test pilots, census takers, even game wardens.

Last week Americans at Work reached the 100 mark on its 31,000-marker tour, and spent the occasion with a notably stimulating bevy of working Americans—chorus girls. In its backstage once-over, Americans at Work picked up several pertinent facts & figures. Getting by in the chorus with face, form and a frill, for example, has been out for 20 years. A modern chorus girl must know her entrechats, also her chaineturns and tour-jetés, and do some singing on the side. At top form, she may expect as high as $75 a week, is usually out of front-line kicking at 25.

To catch the U. S. chorus girl with her hair down, Americans at Work last week took U. S. listeners backstage at a Broadway show, a Chicago hotspot, a Hollywood set. At the first-act curtain of Du Barry Was a Lady in Manhattan, Americans at Work cornered Betty Grable’s understudy, a blondy, Albertina Rasch alumna named Ruth Farm; and a tall, taffy-haired trouper named Ann Graham, from Birmingham, Ala. Ann, the chattier, said she had sung with Goodman and Vallée, aimed at musicomedy stardom and then marriage with a theatre-world mate. Said velvety Ann, discouraging any number of unseen stage-door Johnnies: “You know the average businessman can’t afford to stay up as late as we do.”

At the Chez Paree, on Chicago’s North Side, trim, blonde, blue-eyed Dorothy Laxon, 22, of Minneapolis, told her tale. She took up dancing at 12, got her stage start five years ago with one of Packer George A. Hormel’s traveling shows to advertise Hormel meat products. Rather than risk winding up her career as a Spam actress, Dorothy sent her picture to Chez Paree, has been one of 17 girls in the line there for four years. Dorothy’s ambition: a chance in a Broadway show.

In Hollywood, the CBS backstagers found famed Producer Earl Carroll and his hand-picked girls rehearsing at Paramount for A Night at Earl Carroll’s. He introduced two, Ann Barrisford, right from Hollywood, and Morine Howell, a college-bred cutie from Utah. Said Producer Carroll, “I have come to the conclusion that brown-eyed girls have better figures than blue-eyed girls.”