Rita Bell's Prize Movie

One ot the most beloved ladies in Detroit television history was Rita Bell Connolly, a graduate of Marygrove College with a business degree in public relations. Rita landed a job with the Detroit chapter of the United Way in the mid-1950s and sat on the boards of many non-profit service organizations around town. She was a member of the Women's Advertising Club and a much sought-after speaker.

While singing at a Wrigley's corporate event, a WXYZ-TV executive was struck by Rita's presence and personality--not to mention her wholesome beauty. He asked Rita if she might be interested in working on local television. Once she determined that the offer was legitimate and not a come-on from a corporate Lothario, she recognized what an opportunity it was and agreed to give it a try.

On Monday, April 29, 1957, Rita made her television debut on Lou Gordon's Midnight News Hour with a short segment at 12:15 am called Forecasts and Fashions where she gave the next day's weather report and some fashion news. Rita made history by becoming Detroit's first woman weather forecaster. It wasn't prime time, but Rita proved she had screen presence and was confident appearing on camera.

On the advice of the station manager, Rita dropped her maiden name and became known as Rita Bell, which had a distinct ring to it. The following year, Rita landed a better time slot and did local, state, and national weather at 7:10 pm.

WXYZ programmers noted from their market research and Rita's fan mail that she drew in viewers. Then on December 12, 1960, Rita landed a program that would become her life's work called Prize Playhouse from 8:30 am to 10:00 am. As her morning audience grew, the program was rebranded Rita Bell's Prize Movie.

Rita showed classic movies and during commercial breaks, she took calls from viewers. Everyday she would play a mystery tune, and if callers correctly guessed its name, they would get a cash prize of seven dollars. If the tune wasn't guessed, seven dollars was added to the prize total. WXYZ broadcast over Channel 7--hence seven dollars.

Rita Bell became the darling of Detroit daytime television, known for her sunny disposition, bright-eyed smile, and pleasant voice. She was genuine and charming. Her studio set was simply a huge, telephone dial prop hanging on the wall behind her and a table with a working telephone on it. Rita's hairstyle changed with the season as often as the telephones she used. The Prize Movie theme song was Al Hirt's catchy Cotton Candy.

In the spring of 1971, Rita and her husband Jerome F. Hansen took a well-earned, three-day vacation. Detroit Free Press feature columnist Shirley Eder filled in for her. The mystery tune had run for four months, but nobody knew the tune's name and viewers were grumbling. The cash prize reached $4,529. On April 23, 1971, Eder's first caller, Mrs. Shirley Gurich answered, "Pioneer of the Stars." After that, the show's producers started giving away products donated by local sponsors for on-air plugs.

In 1977, Rita lost her Prize Movie program with scheduling pressure from above and below. The ABC network began producing Good Morning America to compete with NBC's Today Show from 7:00 am to 10:00 am, and when WXYZ introduced Kelly & Company with popular newscaster John Kelly and his wife Marilyn Turner at 10:00 am, their show became the talk of the town and the most popular daytime talk show in Detroit television history. Rita was relegated to doing movie reviews and interviewing celebrities when they came to town to perform at the Fisher Theater or some other Detroit venue. Her career was clearly going backwards.

On June 1, 1978, WXYZ declined to renew Rita Bell 's contract after twenty-one years of dedicated service. A spokesperson for the station said, "Letting Rita go was a hard decision. There simply wasn't enough for her to do." Rita told a colleague that she expected to be released, "But it was still a gut-wrenching feeling."

Many a Detroit area kid has fond memories of staying home from school on snow days, sick days, and vacation days snuggling on the couch watching Rita Bell's Prize Movie in the sixties and seventies, but America's entertainment and viewing habits had changed and much of Rita's core audience outgrew her program. If you can measure a person's value by the esteem others hold for them, Rita remains one of the most admired women in Detroit television history.

After the morning talk show craze hit, Rita retired to Poway, California with her husband, a Detroit Free Press reporter. She succumbed to colon cancer on December 9, 2003 at the age of seventy-eight. Rita's ashes are inurned at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in Point Loma, California next to her husband, overlooking San Diego Bay and the mountains beyond.

Al Hirt's Cotton Candy 

Bill Kennedy at the Movies 

WXYZ's Fred Wolf and his Wacky Wandering Wigloo

"Master of Sparemonies," the "Old Percolator," "Swampy Joe," and "King of Detroit Morning Radio," Fred Wolf.

Pioneering Detroit WXYZ sportcaster Fred Wolf was born in Poughkeepsie, New York on May 26, 1910. When Fred was six-years-old, his father died. Fred's mother remarried and the family relocated to Detroit in 1920. The young boy grew up to be a gifted athlete courtesy of the Detroit Recreation Department and their community sports programs. 

Fred played baseball when he attended Cass Technical High School and had aspirations to play in the major leagues. As with most high school athletes, that dream never materialized. After high school, Fred studied engineering in a Ford Trade School apprenticeship program.

At the age of twenty, Fred worked as a pinsetter and began to bowl on a league. Within a year, he bowled his first perfect 300 game, he was hooked on bowling and became instrumental in popularizing what was once a pastime into a professional sport.

After Wolf completed his Ford apprentiship, he was hired in 1934 to work in Chrysler Corporation's engineering department. By World War II, he rose through the ranks to become a superintendent at the Chrysler tank plant in Warren, Michigan, where he supervised 450 employees. While at Chrysler, Wolf was captain of the Tank Arsenal team in their company's ten-team bowling league. Other team names were Dodge Main, Super-finishers, and De Soto Engineers, etc. 

Fred also bowled on a the Stroh's Keglers team in the industrial league where he was their strongest bowler. On April 29, 1941, he won the individual competition in Detroit's American Bowling Conference out of a field of 32 of the city's top bowlers. He bowled 647 [three game total] while the next best competitor totaled 619. Fred clearly had found his groove.

***

On August 14, 1944, at the age of thirty-four, Wolf hurt his back playing softball which forced him to retire from the semi-professional bowling circuit. He was made manager of the Stroh's Keglers and introduced the bowlers over the public address system and reported scores. Norman White of radio station WJR asked Fred if he ever thought about doing a bowling show on radio. "What would it take?" Fred asked. White answered, "Get a guest, write an interview. Write the whole show--opening and closing--but leave two spots for commercials."

While recuperating from his back injury at home, Fred was listening to the World Series on the radio and wondered outloud to his wife Emily if a bowling tournament could be broadcast the same way. "Why not?" Emily answered. 

Fred shopped the idea around to Detroit radio stations before finally being accepted by WXYZ-Radio beginning his long broadcast career. His first weekly show was named The Ten Pin Talker. It was only fifteen minutes long, sponsored by E&B breweries. Wolf reported bowling scores from around Detroit and profiled top bowlers. Broadcasting opened up the bowling and the professional sports world for him.

Radio's The Ten Pin Talker led four years later to television's Make It and Take It, a program where local bowlers would try to make some of bowling's most difficult combinations for cash. Following the success of that program, WXYZ gave Wolf a bowling series called Bowling Champions in 1950. Wolf began live, lane-side broadcasting which became popular locally.

Championship Bowling title card

In 1956, the American Broadcasting Company, WXYZ's parent company, asked Wolf if he would like to announce a coast-to-coast program called Championship Bowling for ABC Sports. That program began a twelve-year national run which did much to popularize bowling nationwide and advance the sport.

In the early days of television, bowling was a winter sport, so the WXYZ station manager asked if Wolf could report on something besides bowling. Soon, he was reading baseball scores, announcing boxing and wrestling matches, commentating at golf tournaments, and hosting the popular Hot Rod Races from the Motor City Speedway where midget race cars competed in 25 lap races, and as an added bonus, there was a demolition derby event which Detroiters took an instant liking to.

Demolition Derby Carnage

While Fred Wolf was pioneering television sports programming, he was also a WXYZ-Radio morning deejay beginning in 1950 until 1965. His show was broadcast from 6 until 9 am every weekday morning. WXYZ-Radio originally broadcast from the Mendelssohn Mansion on East Jefferson Avenue. 

To gin up interest in his early, music radio program, Wolf asked the station manager if he could have an eight-by-ten foot broadcast booth built three feet off the ground in front of the mansion. He also wanted it to have large windows on three sides so motorists and pedestrians could see him spin records. It was a quirky idea, but the mini radio studio was paid for in radio endorsements for Peterson glass and Chaplow Lumber Company, so the project was given the go-ahead. 

Fred christened the booth "Wolf's Wacky Wigloo." It became an overnight sensation drawing in 35% of the morning radio audience. People drove by the Wigloo on their way to work and honked. Wolf told a reporter for the Detroit Free Press, "I like broadcasing from the Wigloo. I can see my listeners drive or walk by. It is more interesting than working in an enclosed studio."

WXYZ had outgrown its downtown studios and urban renewal was about to decimate the Black Bottom area where the studio was located. The station decided to build something they called Broadcast House in Southfield, Michigan. The radio station was slated to move into their new digs in June 1959. Wolf realized he was losing his Wacky Wigloo in the demolition process. On a personal note, he did not want to drive to Southfield from Grosse Pointe Woods. He would have to get up at 3:00 am to make it to work.

As he had done with the original Wigloo, Wolf came up with an original idea. He asked McDonald Trailer Sales if they could modify a thirty-foot trailer and replace the back end with glass on three sides. The station would install the turntables and other broadcasting equipment to make the trailer into a mobile radio studio. 

The cost of the trailer would be paid for with radio endorsements. WXYZ management was skeptical but approved the project on the strength of Wolf's popularity and his success bringing in new sponsors and advertising dollars.

Fred Wolf and his Wandering Wigloo.

The first stop for the newly rechristened Wandering Wigloo was the University of Detroit campus on the corner of Livernois and McNichols. Wolf pulled up at various familiar locations around town like the State Fair Grounds, City Hall, Detroit Institute of Arts, the Detoit Zoo, and private businesses, especially car dealerships. The Wandering Wigloo would broadcast from businesses for a week if they bought 5 spots a day of targeted advertising for 26 weeks. The Wandering Wigloo soon proved its worth.

The promotion was so successful that radio stations from around the country sent their people to Detroit to witness this public relations innovation. WXYZ soon built a second trailer for deejay Paul Winter, a third trailer was located in Dearborn, and a permanent broadcast booth was installed at the Sears Shopping Center in suburban Lincoln Park. Radio engineers were doing remote broadcasts from 6 am until 10 pm everyday. 

Everything was fine until a change of management tightened up their radio broadcasting programming. In short, the dee jays were to talk less, run jingle advertisements, and play music taken from a Top 40 play list. This was the radio industry's response to payola scandals in the music recording and broadcast business in the late 1950s. "Pay for Play" was illegal, and the play lists were the only way radio stations could insure against it. AM radio became repetitive and boring.

Wolf, who was generally a team player, let management know he was displeased. "I play happy music for my morning listeners as they get ready for work. I refuse to play rock & roll." Music trends had changed and his show's ratings dropped.

Wolf decided to retire from his morning radio show in August 1965, but Fred was too valuable to WXYZ to let him go, so he was bumped up to Vice President of Public Relations and official Channel 7 spokesperson. Wolf continued to do special broadcasts like the annual Port Huron to Mackinac Island Gold Cup Races and the Buick Open Golf Tournament.

***

In 1978, a stroke partially paralyzed Wolf and left him unable to speak, though he continued swimming using only one arm. At the age of ninety on August 7, 2000, Fred died in his Grosse Pointe Woods home of complications from a second stroke with his wife Emily by his side. The Wolfs were childless. Fred had a private funeral service and was buried in Roseland Park in Berkley, Michigan.

Emily Rybacki Wolf followed her husband to the grave two years later. At her husband's death, Emily said of him, "Fred was a very upright, kind man and a natural athlete." She must have been a remarkably supportive wife for her ambitious husband who worked long, irregular hours with a punishing broadcast schedule. Whatever they endured together over the years, they were married for sixty-five years. 

Fred Wolf produced over 800 local bowling shows on WXYZ radio and television, including 272 hours of announcing nationwide on ABC's Championship Bowling series. Wolf was a championship bowler in his own right and was inducted into the American Bowling Congress Hall of Fame, the Michigan State Bowling Association Hall of Fame, the Greater Detroit Bowling Hall of Fame, and he served as president of the Detroit Sports Broadcasters Association.

A full accounting of Fred Wolf's awards and honors are too numerous to list here, but one stands out in particular. Fred held the American Bowling Congress' record for the most years between his first 300 game and his second in 1975--forty-four years. I am sure that factoid was a source of merriment at Fred's induction to their Hall of Fame. Fred was a bowling champion to be sure, but there have been many bowling champions before and since. Fred was one of a kind.

Shock Theater and Mr. X

Detroit/Windsor Sock-Hop-Jock Robin Seymour

Robin Seymour at the height of his popularity.

Robin Henry Seymour began his career in radio as a child actor on The Lone Ranger show on WXYZ in Detroit. Eventually, he became one of the country's most popular disc-jockeys. During World War II, Seymour spent part of his enlistment as a DJ on Armed Forces Radio.

Seymour's civilian broadcasting career resumed in 1947 in Dearborn, Michigan at WKMH. The newly formed radio station played mainstream pop music with news, sports, and weather segments. Soon, Seymour became the station's top jock who appealed to many of Detroit and Windsor, Ontario listeners. Seymour championed early rock & roll artists and was one of America's first DJs to play doo-wop music and black rhythm & blues which was labeled race music in those days.

As his popularity grew, Seymour began live appearances with his "Original Rock-n-Roll Revue" at Detroit's legendary Fox Theater. Seymour's personal theme song "Bobbin' with the Robin" was recorded in 1956 by a group popular at the time--The Four Lads. They were accompanied by the Percy Faith Orchestra.

Canadian broadcaster CKLW hired Seymour to host a television teen dance show in 1963 entitled Teen Town, modeled on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Clark's show was broadcast nationally, but Seymour's regional show was wildly popular in the greater Detroit area.

With the help of rising Motown artists, the show gained popularity and was rebranded as Swingin' Time. Local teens would dance to Top 40 hits and two kids were chosen from the audience to rate new records with an "aye" or a "nay." National acts performing in Detroit or Windsor appeared on Swingin' Time to promote their live shows and records.

Seymour had the good fortune to feature virtually all the Motown artists--The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Little Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, Martha and the Vandellas, and the list goes on. Many of them recorded on Gordy and Tamala records before the Motown label. Swingin' Time introduced white suburban teens to local black performers, helping bridge the racial divide in heavily segregated Detroit.

In addition to Motown artists, many local white rock group performers appeared on Seymour's show--people like Glenn Frey, Mitch Ryder, Ted Nugent, and Bob Seger. Because of technical limitations in those days, all of the performers lip-synced their records. The most frequently booked local group on his show was The Rationals--an Ann Arbor garage band. Seymour managed many of the early Detroit groups.

Robin Seymour shortly before his death.

When CKLW changed ownership in 1968, Robin Seymour was replaced by Tom Shannon, another popular Detroit DJ. America was undergoing drastic political and social turmoil and the music reflected that change. Ever try to dance to psychedelic music? The show dropped in the ratings and ended its run in 1969.

Robin Seymour passed away on April 17, 2020, at the age of ninety-four in San Antonio, Texas. He will be missed by thousands of Detroiters and Windsorites. Robin wrote an indie autobiography The DJ That Launched 1,000 Hits just before he died which is available on Amazon. It is a joy to read.

Robin Seymour's Bobbin' with the Robin theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJFyQuvGG8g

Early Bob Seger Swingin Time performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMUrxXwL-NM

 

The Story of Robin Seymour by Robin Seymour with Carolyn Rosenthal.

Soupy Sales Late Night Detroit Variety Show

After serving twenty-six months in the United States Navy in World War II--twelve in the Pacific theater--Milton Supman took his G.I. Bill benefits and earned a master's degree in journalism in 1949. While attending Marshall College in Huntington, West Virgina, Supman was bit by the show business bug and began working part-time doing standup comedy in local nightclubs and dee-jaying a morning radio show on WHTN-AM.

Supman moved to Cincinnati when he landed a television spot on WKRC-TV hosting a teen dance show called Soupy's Soda Shop--the first in the country. Supman worked under the stage name Soupy Hines. When his show was cancelled, a friend at the station told Soupy about Detroit station WXYZ-TV that was looking for live entertainers to round out its local programming schedule.

The unemployed, twenty-seven-year-old performer legally changed his stage name to Soupy Sales; took his young wife and baby to stay with relatives in Huntington, West Virgina; and drove to Detroit with $10 in his pocket. He auditioned for Channel 7 general manager John Pival to host a daily, children's lunchtime show. Pival was impressed and hired him. Soupy used his fast-talking, improvisational skills to good effect and soon made his program a success. Soupy wanted to show he had the talent to attract more than a kiddie audience.

When an 11:00 PM slot opened up unexpectedly two months later, program director Pete Strand reserved the time slot for Soupy to do an adult-focused, variety show of comedy and music entertainment. Soupy's On debuted on November 10th, 1953.

 

Unlike his lunchtime show which was roughly outlined and ad libbed giving it a spontaneous flair, the evening show was scripted and well-rehearsed. Soupy and his stage director Pete Strand wrote the nightly opening monologue and comedy sketches each afternoon for the evening broadcast. The show opened with Soupy doing a standup routine followed by a cutting-edge comic sketch and live guest performances by some of the best jazz muscians of the era.

Soupy was a jazz lover living in a jazz town. Detroit at that time was the home to twenty-four jazz clubs before urban renewal in 1959 wiped out the Black Bottom and Paradise Valley neighborhoods where most of the jazz clubs were located. Soupy's nighttime show soon became a scheduled stop for jazz performers like Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday, George Shearing, Della Reese, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis, who was living in the Detroit area at the time.

Soupy's house band "Two Joes and a Hank" led by Hal Gordon had some chops too. Guitarist Joe Messina and drummer Jack Brokensha later became members of Motown's Funk Brothers. Rounding out the group was Joe Oddo, who played bass, and Hank Trevision, who played piano. Soupy's theme song was Charlie Parker's "Yardbird Suite."

Soupy portrayed an array of comic characters like belching Sheriff Wyatt Burp, European crooner Charles Vichysoisse, Colonel Claude Bottom, and Western cowboy hero The Lone Stranger. Other performers were Clyde Adler who played Indian mystic Kuda Dux and Mississippi gambler Wes Jefferson; character actress Bertha Forman, with fifty years of show business experience, played Soupy's mother-in-law; attractive blonde Jane Hamilton played ditzy literary critic Harriet Von Loon and hip-swinging floozy Bubbles, Soupy's on-screen wife.

 

Detroit's most recognized voice actor Rube Weiss--announcer for Detroit Dragway commercials and the official Hudson's department store Santa for many years--played Charlie Pan and the Lone Stranger's sidekick Pronto.

Rube Weiss

Soupy and his troupe pioneered late-night comedy shows and paved the way for programs like Saturday Night Live. His show was before the age of videotape and only one Kinescope segment (a fixed 16mm camera filming a TV program directly from the screen) survives from the show which is linked below. Soupy interviews trumpeter Clifford Brown at the end of Brown's performance.

The final episode of Soupy's On aired November 27, 1959. Soupy had done 3,300 morning and evening shows for WXYZ in six years when his variety show was cancelled. At the time, Soupy was the highest paid celebrity in Detroit television. When the station declined to renegotiate Soupy's contract, he was free to shop his talents in Hollywood.

In a statement to Detroit local media, Soupy took a moment to make it real. "I've been working in a state of exhaustion for years. My workday begins at 9:00 am and ends at 2:30 am. I get three hours of sleep at night and another two hours in the afternoon. You wear a little ragged after awhile. I see my fans more than I see my own family," Soupy said. "But let's face it. Here in Detroit, local live television is dying because the networks are producing more of their own programming and crowding out local talent."      

Soupy Sales relocated to Los Angeles and appeared in some television episodes and several movies but never became a television or movie star in Hollywood. He wasn't leading man material, and his face was too well-known for him to be a convincing character actor. But he recreated himself as a "TV personality" and made a steady living as a panelist on the game show circuit doing programs like Hollywood Squares, $20,000 Pyramid, To Tell the Truth, and What's My Line.

Here is the only surviving clip of Soupy's On from 1956 featuring jazz great Clifford Brown.

Lunch With Soupy 

Detroit's Shock Theater

In 1957, Universal Pictures syndicated a television package of fifty-two classic horror movies released by Screen Gems called Shock Theatre. The package included the original Dracula, Frankenstein, Mummy, and Wolfman movies. Shock Theatre premiered with Lugosi's Dracula in Detroit on WXYZ channel seven at 11:30 pm on Friday, February 7, 1958.

Each syndicated television market had their own host. Detroit had one of the first horror movie personalities in the country. The show was hosted by Mr. X--Tom "Doc" Dougall--a classically trained actor who taught English at the Detroit Institute of Technology and moonlighted as a vampire on Friday nights. Unlike later horror movie hosts who would spoof their roles or riff on the movies they showed, Dougall was grimly serious and set a solemn tone for what was to follow. What most people don't know about Professor Dougall is that he co-wrote several Lone Ranger and Green Hornet scripts for WXYZ radio.

The opening of the show was memorable, but I was only nine years old when I started staying up every Friday night to see the classic monsters and mad-scientists--The Invisible Man comes to mind. This is how I remember the opening:

The show's marquee card came up with ominous organ music and a crack of thunder in the background. Replete in vampire garb with cape, Mr. X walked slowly on screen holding a huge open book announcing the night's feature in a scary voice. Next, he would say, "Before we release the forces of evil, insulate yourself against them." With a sense of impending doom, Mr. X continued, "Lock your doors, close your windows, and dim your lights. Prepare for Shock." The camera came in for an extreme close-up of Mr. X's face, more lightening and thunder effects, and finally his gaunt face morphed into a skull. Then the film would roll.

There was something positively unholy about the show which made it an instant success with my generation of ghoulish Detroit Baby Boomers. The show's ominous organ music set the mood for the audience. The piece was listed only as #7 on a recording of Video Moods licensed for commercial television and not available to the public.

No video link to Detroit's Shock Theatre's opening has surfaced, but the above newspaper ad for the show gives an idea of the facial dissolve special effect. If anyone knows where I can find a link, Gmail me so I can add it to this post. Thanks.

Detroit's Baby Boomer Kid Show Hosts:
https://fornology.blogspot.com/2017/12/detroit-baby-boomer-kids-show-hosts.html

Rubin "The Voice" Weiss and His Wife Elizabeth "Woman of a Thousand Voices"

Elizabeth and Rubin Weiss rehearsing.

Rubin Weiss was born sometime in 1921 in Detroit, but no public record was recorded in Wayne County. He may have been born at home which was more customary in those days. As a child, he performed in Yiddish skits and plays within Detroit's growing Jewish community. Rube attended Northern High School and earned a master's degree in English while attending Wayne State University.

In December of 1941, Weiss entered the United States Army and fought in the European theater of World War II and rose to the rank of captain. At war's end, Weiss decided to try his hand at acting in New York City, but after a year of struggling, he decided to return to his family in Detroit and landed a job as an English teacher at his high school alma mater from 1946 through 1952. To supplement his modest teaching income, he picked up what radio and advertising work he could get. As soon as he was sure he could make a living in radio, he quit his day job.

Early in Weiss' WXYZ-Radio career, he specialized in playing "bad guys," much to the disappointment of his mother. His voice was much larger than he was at five-feet, five inches. His voice was versatile, and Weiss often played four or five roles in a single fifteen-minute episode. He was a featured player on popular Detroit radio shows like The Green Lantern, Challenge of the Yukon, and The (original) Lone Ranger, where Weiss met his future wife Elizabeth Elkin in 1948.

Later in Rube Weiss' career, he would run into people randomly who had no idea who he was until he spoke in his distinctive, resonant voice. Not only was Weiss' voice familiar because of his work in radio and television, he was the raucous announcer for "Saturday, At Detroit Dragway" heard on pop radio stations all over the Detroit and Windsor airwaves in the 1960s. What many Detroiters do not realize is that Weiss played Santa for sixteen years at the Hudson's Thanksgiving Day Parade. When fans would meet Weiss in person, they often remarked, "You sound taller on radio," his retort was, "I'm six-five when I stand on my money."

Rube Weiss said the most fun he ever had in his long career was being a regular on Soupy Sales' WXYZ-TV evening show at eleven o'clock. Rube and a talented cast of radio performers took their schtick to the small screen. His characters included big game hunter Colonel Claude Bottom, loudmouth pop tune composer Shoutin' Shorty Hogan, detective Charlie Pan, and The Lone Stranger's sidekick Pronto.

Weiss was a much sought-after freelance pitchman for Detroit and national brands. A short list of the brands he lent his voice talents to are Kay's Jewelers, Velvet Peanut Butter, Midas Mufflers, Chrysler Corporation, Kellogg's Special K, Lincoln Continental, and Marlboro cigarettes. 

Rubin Weiss passed away from an "internal infection" on April 25, 1996 at the age of seventy-six in Huntington Woods. Weiss' professional awards are too numerous to mention. Suffice it to say he won an American Federation of Television and Radio Actors Guild (AFTRA) Gold Card Award and several Emmy and Clio awards for his extensive work in radio. He is buried at Clover Hill Park Cemetery in Birmingham, Michigan.

***

Rube's wife Elizabeth was no less distinguished in her career than her husband, while also giving birth and being the proud mother of five children. Elizabeth Elkin was born in Detroit in 1925. Her talent as an artist and actor got her into Detroit's Cass Technical High School where she majored in Commercial Art. During World War II, Elizabeth became one of the youngest draftswomen in Detroit drawing plans for fighter airplane parts.

After the war, Elizabeth returned to the stage at Wayne State University performing in classical plays like Taming of the Shrew and Oedipus Rex at the Bonstelle Theater which was originally the Temple Beth El on Woodward Avenue (Piety Row) when it was built in 1902. Elizabeth honed her acting skills and landed a job doing summer repetory theater in New York City where she earned her Actor's Equity card. While appearing in The Importance of Being Ernest with the Actor's Company in Detroit, she became reunited with Rube Weiss, who was directing the play. They fell in love and married at Workman's Circle in 1949.

Elizabeth thought her regular voice was ordinary, but she could do dialects, foreign accents, or whatever a role required. A Detroit newspaper profiled her as The Woman of a Thousand Voices for her countless radio and television commercials.

Elizabeth and Rube's home was a gathering place for actors, artists, scholars, and comedians, where she became the hostess and gourmet cook. The Weiss home became so popular that the family was dubbed the Jewish Waltons. The family led a rich social life grounded in Elizabeth's love of Jewish culture.

Later in life, she performed in many Jewish Ensemble Theater Yiddish language productions. Rube would regularly appear on Detroit television celebrating Jewish holidays. Both of them were active in their synogogue and the Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit. Elizabeth taught an Institute for Retired Professionals (IRP) Yiddish language group for many years.

Elizabeth Weiss was a lifetime member of the Screen Actor's Guild and AFTRA. She received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Alliance for Women in Media, and she was inducted in the Silver Circle of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Like her husband, Elizabeth received many professional and community service awards too numerous to list here.

But without a doubt, Elizabeth was most proud of her large and devoted family of five children, sixteen grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren who continue to be inspired by her example. Elizabeth Elkin Weiss passed on at the age of ninety on September 18, 2015. Her funeral was held at the Ira Kaufman Chapel, and her remains are interred beside her husband at Clover Hill Park Cemetery.

SATURDAY, At Detroit Dragway

Detroit's Lady of Charm Brings Home the Bacon

Edythe Fern Melrose, Detroit radio station WXYZ's Lady of Charm, and her business executive husband, Forest U. Webster, formed their own radio and print advertisement production company called House O'Charm Studios in 1941. This shrewd move put Edythe on a firm business footing which was rare for a woman of her time. Together, she and her husband produced her popular women's radio program and also made commercials for many of the products she used and recommended on her show. The Lady of Charm's seal of approval was money in the bank for advertisers, and sponsors were lining up to get her endorsement. It is difficult to overestimate her influence over women consumers in the Detroit area in the 1940s through the 1950s.

The Lady of Charm had long dreamed of the perfect kitchen, and she asked her viewers for their ideas. Once Edythe worked out what she wanted, she hired Ann Arbor consulting architect Walter T. Anicka to draw up the blueprints of her vision. Because Edythe was a savvy business woman, she took advantage of the tax benefits of dedicating a sizeable portion of the home to create America's first test kitchen home with a media production studio. She was masterful at product placement and literally set the stage for all cooking and fashion shows to follow.

The state of the art kitchen appliances and gadgets used in the home were donated by some of America's top manufacturers simply for promotional consideration. Everything used in the home inside and out was the most modern and finest available. The Lady of Charm was known for mentioning the brand names of the products she used whenever she used them. Her list of advertisers was impressive:

• General Electric
• Frigidaire
• Hotpoint
• Wrigley's Grocery Stores
• Robinson's Furniture Company
• Fisher Wall Paper and Paint Company
• Palombit Tile
• Restrick Lumber 
• Hollywood Glass and Shower Door Company
• Harold C. Southard--Designer and Builder
• Grinnell Brothers (China and silver settings)
• and many more
  

Their ads ran prevalently in the Real Estate and Property section of the local Detroit newspapers linking their products to the House O'Charm. This form of advertising was an early example of effective cross-marketing.

The House O'Charm was built on Lake St. Clair lakefront property in St. Clair Shores and doubled as the residence of the Websters--Edythe and Forest. The street view of the home appeared to be on one level, but the house had seven levels. The exterior of the home was light-faced brick. The entrance was a raised flagstone patio leading to a reception hall and gallery which the rest of the house radiated from. Straight ahead and a few steps down was a sunken living room with a black marble fireplace. Wide 6' by 9' expanses of thermopane glass windows flanking both sides of French doors, providing an impressive view of Lake St. Clair and leading outside to a flagstone terrace and sun deck facing the lake.

A fully-equipped kitchen to the right of the gallery was four steps above the living room level which included a dining room terrace and a breakfast nook . A stairway led down to a laundry and utility room. Another winding stairway led up to the maid's private apartment. A wide stairwell off the service entrance led down to the basement where the radio studio was located which included three production offices and a 13' storage wall. On the opposite end of the basement was a family recreation room.

Back on the ground floor, two spacious bedrooms, each with its own private his-and-hers bathrooms, were off the left end of the gallery. The master bedroom had a commanding view of the lake. The gallery was so long that each end had it's own fully-equipped, cleaning closet. This dream house also included an attached, two car garage facing the street and a boathouse on ground level facing the lake.

On November 28, 1948, the building was dedicated during a live radio broadcast when the Lady of Charm set the cornerstone. The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press each featured full, front page articles in the Real Estate and Property sections of their newspapers about the House O'Charm, with artist renderings of the home and targeted advertising.

***

Edythe and Forest were frequent vacationers to the United States Territory of Hawaii and admired the way tropical homes opened to the outdoors for inside-out living. Edythe was inspired to create a tropical-style home adapted to the often harsh Michigan weather.

Using modern construction materials and imaginative design, their new, innovative concept house would also double as a test home for products Edythe would later recommend for promotional consideration--not only kitchen products but also building materials and services used in the home's construction. Shrewdly, she and her husband deducted a percentage of the home's footprint from their federal taxes while taking full advantage of donated materials and product endorsements as they had done with the original House O'Charm--now for sale.

The new house was built in Grosse Point Woods and christened the Tropical House of Charm on May 28th, 1955. Unlike its predecessor, which was occasionally used for WXYZ tours and entertaining purposes, this home was not open to the public and more of a private residence. Harold C. Southard of Charm Builders once again was chosen to construct the tropical home. Edythe and Harold Southard were to build two more homes together in Grayling, Michigan. Closer examination reveals that Harold was Edythe's son from her first marriage, and in the interest of full disclosure, Edythe's television kitchen helper was her daughter-in-law Gretchen both seen in the above photo.

Tropical House of Charm facing Lake St. Clair.

The living room of the tropical house had 14' ceilings and a huge, sliding glass, thermopane wall that opened on pleasant days onto a 56' wide flagstone terrace leading towards Lake St. Clair. Waterproof marine-grade mahogany was used for exterior paneling. Inside the home, there were 30' of built-in planters filled with tropical plants and pygmi palm trees lit by a series of skylights. Edythe even had a flowering banana tree flown in from the Islands. A specialized wrought-iron stairway led to three bedrooms on the second level. The master bedroom had a lanai balcony overlooking the lake. Cork floors were used throughout the living and sleeping areas. The home was wired for television, telephone, and an intercom system. 

The dream kitchen had a built-in refrigerator, a double oven, and a dishwasher. The double sink was equipped with a garbage disposal. A convenient cooking island containing counter-top surface burners with plenty of storage was conveniently located. House O'Charm Studios filmed segments in her spacious test kitchen for her weekly television program and produced syndicated shows for other television stations in Michigan and Windsor, Ontario. She and her husband also produced television and print commercials for the products she tested and gave her seal of approval to. 

From her WXYZ salary, extensive product endorsements, and speaking fees, it is estimated the Lady of Charm made close to $100,000 yearly. In the 1950s, that was an impressive amount. She was active in Detroit and national business organizations and chosen Advertising Woman of the Year four times by the Women's Advertising Club of Detroit. In 1963, the Lady of Charm won the Zenith Television Award "for excellence in local programming and distinctive service to the community and its welfare." 

Edythe Fern Melrose was a television trailblazer and a woman ahead of her time. Miss Melrose left such an impression on comedian Lily Tomlin, who grew up in Detroit, that she based her Tasteful Lady character on Melrose.

Lady of Charm biography 

Edythe Fern Melrose--The Lady of Charm

The Lady of Charm

Edythe Fern (Culp) Melrose was born in rural Illinois in 1897, but she was raised on a farm in West Mansfield, Ohio. She grew up a farmer's daughter doing chores like milking cows and gathering eggs. "My parents had four daughters and we all did boy's work and household chores." Edythe went to a little country school until her father moved the family to Chicago, so his daughters could get a better education.

At first, Edythe was insecure about being a "country hick" or a "hayseed" at the Bush Conservatory of Music and Performing Arts. To avoid being labeled a "dunce," she became an overachiever and pushed herself to get the highest grades in her class. She learned about charm, personality, diction, poise, and proper speech habits--the standard expectations for young, educated women of that era. Unbeknowst to Edythe, these traits became the focus of her future career.

She graduated with honors from the Bush Conservatory and entered Columbia College in Chicago--a private, nonprofit college specializing in visual and performing arts, liberal arts, and business degrees. There, she graduated from the "School of Media Arts" where she learned about radio broadcasting and business management.

In 1929, Edythe became one of the first women in America to manage a radio station--WJAY in Cleveland. From 1933 until 1941, she emceed her own women's program which was popular locally. Edythe moved her program in 1941 to WXYZ-Radio in Detroit and renamed it "The Lady of Charm." By 1943, she created House of Charm Radio Productions and syndicated her program throughout Michigan, building her Lady of Charm brand. She had a pleasant radio voice, an infectious chuckle, and a wealth of common sense for women that she would sprinkle throughout her program. Her tag line was "A women's charm depends on the way she looks and the way she cooks."

Early television pioneers

Edythe's public image was motherhood and apple pie, but behind the scenes, she was a consummate business woman active in Detroit's professional business organizations. As the Lady of Charm, Edythe Fern Melrose was a much sought-after speaker in the Detroit area. Seven years later, she made the leap to television and became a television pioneer. Her program on WXYZ-TV Channel 7 ran from 1948 until 1960. She was always fashionably dressed and looked like she just left the beauty parlor.

Edythe was one of the first television personalities to utilize product placement, and she doubled-down by shrewdly mentioning the brand names of the appliances used on her studio set which endeared her to sponsors like Frigidaire, Hotpoint, and General Electric. 

Her recommendations were much sought-after by advertisers. She had a fully-functional replica of her home kitchen constructed in the studio at the Maccabees Building and later at WXYZ's Broadcast House in Southfield. Every year, kitchen appliance styles would change, and the Lady of Charm got whatever she asked for free of charge. Her studio kitchen always had the latest appliances and was an advertisement in itself. 

 

When Edythe did a cooking segment, everything was premeasured for her to save precious air-time. Every dish was prepared in two stages: one with ingredients for preparation on-air to be shoved in the oven and another already baked to take out of the oven. She would choose an invited guest or someone from the station to sit down at the end of her show and share the dish while seated at a tablecloth-covered, fully decked-out table with silverware and crystal service. After taping her show, Edythe's assistant finished cooking or baking the extra dish for Edyth's camera crew. Soupy Sales remembered, "We were the best-fed station in town."

WXYZ did not renew Edythe's contract in 1960 after twelve years on Detroit television. She revived her production company producing commercials and syndicated segments titled "The Charm Kitchen" and "House of Fashion" for other Detroit stations including CKLW in Windsor, Ontario. In addition to producing and appearing in ads, she wrote advertising copy for her high-dollar, corporate clientele. To produce her segments, she rented studio time and production facilities from WXYZ Broadcast House in Southfield.

During a studio taping for the Pontiac Motor Car Company on February 27, 1968, one of the station's directors asked Edythe to go backstage and attach a microphone to her bra. It was dark behind the curtain where she tripped over a cable and severely twisted her leg dislocating her knee. She was rushed to the hospital for surgery where her knee cap was removed confining her to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

She and her husband (Forest U. Webster) filed a lawsuit charging WXYZ with neglect for not providing a proper passageway backstage for her. The station dragged the lawsuit through two appeals taking eight years to work through the Macomb County Court and the Michigan Court of Appeals.

Just fifteen days after she and her husband were awarded a settlement of $952,000 for damages including back interest, Edythe Fern (Melrose) Webster died at the age of seventy-seven at her home on May 19, 1976. Services were held in Grosse Point Woods at A.H. Peters Funeral Home, and she was buried in Grayling, Michigan.

Edythe was a product of her times as much as a trendsetter for women of her day. Her friends and colleagues remembered Edythe as active in public affairs and concerned about her television viewers. Longtime friend Diane Edgecomb told The Detroit Free Press that "Edythe was a classic, a real television pioneer. She was a genteel women's libber all her life." Business associate and friend Marion Ryan said, "Edythe had a very charming personality and a nice way of putting people at ease. She will be missed." 

Lady of Charm Brings Home the Bacon 

Lunch With Soupy Sales in Detroit

Soupy Sales was born Milton Supman on January 8, 1926, in Franklinton, North Carolina. His father Irving Supman immigrated to America from Hungary in 1894. He was a Jewish dry goods merchant. Later in life, Soupy would quip that the local Ku Klux Klan bought their sheets from his father's store.

Milton's nickname came from his family. His older brothers were dubbed "Ham Bone" and "Chicken Bone." The youngest son was "Soup Bone." Milton (Soupy) Supman enlisted in the United States Navy and served in the South Pacific. After the war, he earned a Master's degree in journalism. His oldest brother became a doctor, and his other brother became a lawyer. Soupy had little choice but to go into show business.

After graduation, Soupy worked as a morning DJ and performed a comedy act in nightclubs. In 1949, Soupy Sales began his television career on WKRC-TV in Cincinnati with "Soupy's Soda Shop," television's first teen dance program. The show was cancelled after a year. Soupy moved to Cleveland and did a late night comedy/variety program called "Soupy's On!" where he took his first pie in the face which became his trademark. After a couple of seasons, Soupy left Cleveland for health reasons. "The station manager was sick of me," he quipped.

In 1953, Soupy Sales relocated to Detroit and worked for WXYZ-TV Channel 7, the local ABC station. Soupy not only had the Lunch With Soupy program, he also hosted a Friday evening variety show called Soup's On, which featured musicians and jazz performers who were working one of the twenty-four jazz clubs operating in the Paradise Valley entertainment district in old Detroit. Top performers like Louie Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Della Reese, Dinah Washington, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis, to name a few, made guest appearances on Soupy's popular show. After an appearance, jazz artists would regularly sell out their venues.

Lunch With Soupy had a fixed kitchen set with a window, a table and chair to the left, and a door at center stage in the background that would interrupt Soupy mid-sentence with frantic knocking. Naturally, Soupy would stop, mug for the camera, and answer the door. Usually, Soupy played against only an arm and a voice appearing from the door jam.

Soupy wore a dark Orlon sweater, a white shirt with an oversized checkerboard bow tie, and a beat up top hat. Besides the pie-in-the-face running slapstick gag, Soupy was know for the Soupy Shuffle (his signature dance) and his Words of Wisdom like, "Be true to your teeth and they won't be false to you."

Pookie the Lion and Hippy the Hippo

If it was noon in Detroit and you were planted in front of a television set with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and Soupy was on, you knew you were in for a good time. Regulars on the show were hand puppets Soupy interacted with. He was the straight man for voice artist Clyde Adler who did the off-stage puppeteering and voice characterizations. The show's favorite puppets were:

• White Fang, "The Biggest and Meanest Dog in the USA." He appeared from the left corner of the screen only as a giant white shaggy arm and paw with black triangular claws. White Fang spoke in unrecognizable grunts and growls which Soupy repeated in English for comic effect. White Fang often threw the pies when Soup's jokes bombed.
• Black Tooth, "The Biggest and Sweetest Dog in the USA." She had a black shaggy arm and paw with white triangular claws. She had feminine grunts and groans, and always flirted with Soupy. Her trademark move was pulling Soupy off-camera and giving him big, noisy kisses.
• Pookie the Lion appeared on the ledge of the window behind Soupy. Pookie was a hipster with a wicked wit. He lip synced novelty records or prerecorded bits. My favorite memory of Pookie was a routine called "Life Got You Down, Bunky?" It was a pep talk he gave Soupy every time Soupy complained about feeling blue. Comically, it was inspirational.
• Willie the Worm, a latex accordion worm that popped in and out of an apple. Willie was known as "the sickest worm in all of Dee-troit." Willie had a perennial cold and an exaggerated sneeze. He read birthday greetings to Detroit-area kids. Sadly, Willie's health failed him. He did not survive the show's move to the Big Apple in 1964.

When Soupy took his show to WNEW-TV in New York City, it went into national syndication. This was the height of Soupy's popularity. His guest stars included the likes of Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, Jerry Lewis, Judy Garland, and Sammy Davis. 

Soupy doing the Mouse dance

On New Years Day in 1965, to fill a few extra moments at the end of the show, Soupy made an off-the-cuff remark to the kids in his television audience. He suggested they go into their parents' rooms, find their parents' wallets, and take out the green pieces of paper with pictures of bearded guys and mail them to him. In return, Soupy said he would send them a postcard from Puerto Rico. The show was aired live and no transcripts or videotapes exist, so the exact language he used is not known.

Soupy's remark was an ad-libbed gag not meant to be taken literally, but an angry parent filed a complaint with the FCC. The way the press reported the story, it sounded like this was the biggest heist since the Brink's robbery. Some adults were livid that a TV personality would manipulate children for commercial gain.

Show business legend has it that the prank netted some $80,000. Soupy revealed publicly that he netted only a few real dollars which he donated to charity--the rest was fake money.

The station suspended Soupy. The outcry from Soupy's fans swamped the station's switchboards and packed their mail room with demands that Soupy be reinstated. Within a week, his suspension was lifted. Soupy worked for two more seasons before he gave up the top hat and bow tie and moved to Hollywood to become a panelist on many game shows including What's My Line, To Tell the Truth, Match Game, The Gong Show, and Hollywood Squares in the 70s and 80s.

Milton (Soupy Sales) Supman died of cancer October 22, 2009, at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx. He was eighty-three years old. Soupy Sales is best remembered by his many fans for his trademark pie-in-the-face gag, but in the comedy world, Soupy is remembered for his inventive, anarchic brand of riotous, television comedy. 

 Soupy and Pookie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8e_uRzhMU

 

Soupy's On Nighttime Variety Show 

Detroit's Wrestling Titans

If you grew up in Detroit in the 1950s through the 1970s, chances are you remember Big Time Wrestling (BTW) on WXYZ--Channel 7 which aired on Saturdays at 3:30 pm until 4:30 pm with announcer Fred Wolfe. BTW captured the rough and tumble world of Detroit's blue collar angst. Detroit wrestling fans had a strong work ethic, respect for fair play, and a hatred for dirty tactics and cheating. They particularly loved grudge matches, loser leaves town matches, and wars of attrition which could last twenty minutes or more. BTW wrestlers were not pretty boys from the West Coast or elite snobs from the East Coast--they were blue collar heroes who had to work for a living. 

Dick, the Bruiser

Early wrestling story lines involved coastal invaders coming into our town bragging how tough they were. They would abuse and destroy our mid-level wrestlers trying to climb the ranks and then turn and insult the crowd proclaiming Motor City wrestlers weren't that tough. They would leave town, then a month or so later, these sore winners would return to wrestle our top guys and get their clocks cleaned. A notable exception to this rule was the most hated wrestler in the business--Dick, the Bruiser. He beat the hell out of everyone. In and out of the ring.

Leaping Larry Chene (not Shane)

Some of Detroit's fan favorites were Lou Klein--the Man of a Thousand Holds, Dick "Mr. Michigan" Garza, Haystack Calhoun, Bobo Brazil, Ernie Ladd, Killer Kowalski, George "The Animal" Steele, the Junkyard Dog, and my favorite, Leaping Larry Chene.

Chene (Arthur Lawrence Beauchene) was tragically killed at the age of thirty-five in an early morning car accident on October 2, 1964 while returning home to Michigan from a match in Davenport, Iowa the previous night. Leaping Larry Chene was a credit to his profession and sorely missed by his fans.

That same year, Edward Farhat and his father-in-law bought the BTW television rights and secured exclusive rights to promote wrestling events at Cobo Arena for a mere $50,000. Edward Farhat, better known as The Sheik, was the most hated wrestler in Detroit. Farhat's character usually came out dressed in a robe and an Arab headress. He wore wrestling shoes with exaggerated pointed toes and had a camel printed on his wrestling shorts. The Sheik was the focus of Detroit's frustration with the Middle Eastern oil crisis, and The Sheik did everything he could but set a Ford Pinto on fire in the middle of the squared circle to incite the crowd against him.

Rocky Johnson is Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's father.

The Sheik's signature move was the Camel Clutch, but he was also known for "blinding" his opponents with his patented magic fire ball effect. Once his opponent was disoriented, The Sheik would attack him mercilessly and stretch him out for a win. Usually, medics stood by to roll the loser out of the arena on a gurney while the crowd gave the man a howling ovation. As a kid, I was mesmerized by the fireball. A few years later, I discovered that magician's flash paper could be purchased at any magic or novelty shop in town.

The Sheik with his manager Dave Burzynski.

 

Under Farhat's leadership, BTW matches suddenly became edgier and bloodier with ethnic overtones. In the 1970s and 1980s, Detroit faced the oil crisis and stiff competition from foreign competitors. Farhat imported Japanese wrestlers like Kenuke Honda and Toyota Matahashi to exploit this economic reality. 

The Japanese tag team worked their way up the ranks until they won the BTW title belt by throwing Sumo salt into the eyes of their opponents--shades of The Sheik's fire ball move. Then, in front of rabid Detroit fans, the Japanese wrestlers destroyed the officially sanctioned title belt and replaced it with one made in Japan. They bragged their belt was better quality and less expensive. Those were fighting words in Detroit and the new champions were led out of the arena under police protection and left the country with the belt--as the narrative went. In professional wrestling, the line between reality and fantasy gets blurred, and if you can get the crowd fired up, that's money in the bank.

The Camel Clutch

When the national economy went belly up in 1980, BTW could no longer draw big crowds to fill Cobo Arena or other big venues in the Midwest. The advent of cable TV and two national wrestling federations--one out of Stamford, Connecticut and the other out of Atlanta, Georgia--helped spell the death knell for regional promotions. Professional wrestling went dark in Detroit.

Alex Karris meets Dick, the Bruiser at Lindell's AC sports bar: https://fornology.blogspot.com/2017/02/alex-karras-and-dick-bruisers-detroit.html