Topical Guide 880
Mark Dorset
Performance
Leaving Small’s Hotel, Chapter 2:
“Yeah,” I said, and after that I did not say another thing until the evening, when it was time to read “Have You Ever Wondered Why Microphones Don’t Resemble Ears?” the third episode of Dead Air.
Here is Kraft’s reading of the episode from Chipps & Company’s series of readings from Leaving Small’s Hotel for LTV Studios:
Myths, Misinformation, and Disinformation: “Uncle Don” and the “Little Bastards”
Leaving Small’s Hotel, Chapter 2:
Bob turned to his second banana and alter ego, Baldy the Dummy, and asked, “What were the last words of our dear departed Uncle Don?”
“Gee, Bob,” said Baldy. “I haven’t thought of Uncle Don in years. I used to listen to him all the time when I was a little splinter. Poor guy.”
“I asked you what he said.”
“Well, you know, I’ve heard two versions of the story, Bob. In one, Uncle Don said, ‘That ought to satisfy the little bastards,’ and in the other he said, ‘That ought to keep the little bastards happy till next week,’ but in both versions the mike was on. Too bad. That was his best show.”
“And his last.”
“Yeah.”
Don Carney was the stage name of Howard Rice (August 19, 1896 – January 14, 1954), an American radio personality and children’s radio show host. Carney was best remembered as the host of Uncle Don, a children’s radio program produced between 1928 and 1947 and broadcast from WOR in New York. […]
The program featured “Uncle Don,” as Carney was dubbed, singing, playing the piano, telling stories and introducing many different events pertaining to the lives of the children, dubbed as Don’s “nieces” and “nephews,” who listened to the program. […]
Carney soon generated possibly the largest audience of any locally produced children’s show in broadcasting history. […]
Uncle Don ended abruptly in 1947 and for a long time there was speculation in regards to how and why the program ended. The reality is that he simply left the program, but a popular urban legend is that Carney was fired after an embarrassing incident at the conclusion of a 1947 broadcast. According to the legend, after ending his program with his usual “Goodnight, little friends, good night” sign off, Carney thought he was off the air and exclaimed, “There! That ought to hold the little bastards”—but his microphone was still live, and his comment was broadcast to his radio audience. The legend goes on to state that public outrage caused Carney’s termination from radio.
David Mikkelson, “Did Uncle Don Call Kids ‘Little Bastards’ on the Air?” on Snopes.com “We know you count on Snopes to provide the unvarnished truth, and it’s our mission to deliver the facts – without fear or favor.”
We know that this Uncle Don “bastards” rumor is false, and we know exactly how it became associated with Don Carney. It was an extant legend told about a number of different children’s show “uncles” and “big brothers” in the early days of broadcast radio, and — in true urban legend fashion — when Uncle Don eventually became the most famous exemplar of that form of radio host, the story gravitated to, and became permanently attached to, him.
We know this because in May 1928, several months before Don Carney debuted as “Uncle Don,” the very same story appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Examiner, related in a first-person account by a “radio station Big Brother” identified only as “J.K.”:
[…] Despite the occasional attempts to perpetuate it in newspaper columns, this rumor might have significantly declined in prevalence after Don Carney's death (or at least been less frequently associated with his name) were it not for a series of popular “Blooper” records that rekindled public awareness of the legend. Starting the mid-1950s, writer and producer Kermit Schafer began compiling several albums of alleged boners, fluffs, and outtakes from radio and TV and issuing them in record jackets deceptively claiming that the recordings contained within were “authentic.”
Although the “Bloopers” records led listeners to believe that they were hearing actual recordings of broadcast blunders, much of what Schafer presented actually consisted of fabricated “re-creations” based on (often apocryphal) secondhand sources. In this vein, Vol. 1 of the “Blooper” series presented Uncle Don front and center, in a clip of impossible clarity and audio fidelity which had clearly been staged in a modern recording studio. […]
Thanks to Schafer, generations of Americans too young to remember Uncle Don were left utterly convinced that he was responsible for the seminal blooper of the radio era, due to their exposure to what they thought was a "genuine recording" of a broadcast that never took place.
See also:
Myths: Myths and Hoaxes TG 138; Characters in Myths TG 646; Myths and Misinformation TG 510
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