''The Colgate Sports Newsreel'' was a radio program focusing on
sports
Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, th ...
. It has been called "one of the most successful and most listened-to shows in radio history"
[Buxton, Frank and Owen, Bill (1972). ''The Big Broadcast: 1920-1950''. The Viking Press. SBN 670-16240-x. P. 55.] and "one of radio broadcasting's most entertaining and engaging programs." However, much of the information reported as fact was actually fiction.
The program was first broadcast in October 1939, on
NBC Blue
The Blue Network (previously known as the NBC Blue Network) was the on-air name of a now defunct American Commercial broadcasting, radio network, which broadcast from 1927 through 1945.
Beginning as one of the two radio networks owned by the N ...
.
Although
Colgate dropped its sponsorship in June 1951, the show continued on
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
as ''Bill Stern's Sports Newsreel'' through September 1953. It then switched to
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
, where it ran until June 1956.
[Silvia, Tony. (2007). ''Baseball over the Air: The National Pastime on the Radio and in the Imagination''. McFarland & Company, Inc. . P. 92-93.] During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, the ''Newsreel'' was among the programs that NBC rebroadcast by transcription to members of the United States armed forces stationed abroad.
Bill Stern, the star, made the program memorable with his enthusiastic, dramatized delivery. He was already both the narrator of MGM's ''News of the Day'' newsreels, and a sports announcer.
[Dunning, John. (1976). ''Tune in Yesterday: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, 1925-1976''. Prentice-Hall, Inc. . P. 139-140.] Thus, the format of this program came naturally.
For most of its run, the show was sponsored by Colgate brushless shave cream. The opening theme "was sung in barbershop quartet style to the tune of ''
Mademoiselle from Armentieres''"
and mentioned the sponsoring product prominently. Although the singing group was not named in the program, a news brief announcing the show's launch in 1939 identified it as the Armchair Quartette.
The theme's lyrics varied a bit over the years, but the basic form was as follows:
Bill Stern the Colgate shave-cream man is on the air.
Bill Stern the Colgate shave-cream man with stories rare.
Take his advice and you'll look keen.
You'll get a shave that's smooth and clean.
You'll be a Colgate brushless fan.
From September 14, 1953, through December 10, 1954, Budweiser sponsored the program. Its final sponsor was Allstate, from December 13, 1954 through June 22, 1956.
Format
Stern dramatized sporting events from the past. His standard introduction indicated his dramatic approach to storytelling:
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is Bill Stern bringing you the ____th edition of the Colgate shave cream Sports Newsreel ... featuring strange and fantastic stories ... some legend, some hearsay ... but all so interesting we'd like to pass them along to you!
The program treated sports people and their accomplishments almost mythologically. Tony Silvia wrote: "
tern
Terns are seabirds in the family Laridae that have a worldwide distribution and are normally found near the sea, rivers, or wetlands. Terns are treated as a subgroup of the family Laridae which includes gulls and skimmers and consists of e ...
delighted in telling stories about the players that cast them as heroes beyond the reach of mere mortals. Rather than humanizing his subjects, Stern embellished their prowess -- on and off the field -- to the point where listeners were spellbound by the story behind the story of any specific team or game." Use of sound effects, organ music and dramatization augmented this approach.
Stern's page on the National Radio Hall of Fame's website cited his dramatic technique by saying, "Although some of his reports stretched the limits of credibility, no one doubted that Stern was a master storyteller who used emphasis, repetition, and pauses to perfection." Similarly, his Hall of Fame inductee page on the American Sportscasters Association's website notes the style of his broadcasts as follows: "Stern had a special flare
icfor the dramatic, and employed organ music, full dramatizations, and sound effects in his broadcasts. His voice and broadcasting style reflected his enthusiasm for the sports he covered."
The program's appeal was frequently enhanced by inclusion of big-name guests. Radio Historian John Dunning wrote: "
ten he persuaded top stars --
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential f ...
,
Jack Benny
Jack Benny (born Benjamin Kubelsky, February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974) was an American entertainer who evolved from a modest success playing violin on the vaudeville circuit to one of the leading entertainers of the twentieth century with ...
,
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Nicknamed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Chairman of the Board" and later called "Ol' Blue Eyes", Sinatra was one of the most popular ...
and skater
Sonja Henie
Sonja Henie (8 April 1912 – 12 October 1969) was a Norway, Norwegian figure skating, figure skater and film star. She was a three-time List of Olympic medalists in figure skating, Olympic champion (Figure skating at the 1928 Winter Olympics, ...
were just a few -- to do guest spots. Each star had a personal tale that related in some way, however small, to sports."
The program often originated from wherever Stern was preparing to broadcast a sporting event. Therefore, he often included a coach or player from the history of one of the teams in the current contest.
Facts or Fabrications?
The "stories rare" mentioned in the show's opening theme may have resulted from the fact that much of what Stern reported in the ''Newsreel'' never actually happened. Bill Davidson, one of Stern's writers, said as much in a
TV Guide
TV Guide is an American digital media company that provides television program
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or t ...
article that was reprinted in
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
magazine:
Every week, another writer and I -- on Stern's direction -- would unabashedly make up so-called "true sports stories," mostly about historical characters who were dead and could not protest. One of my classics was about Abraham Lincoln, who, having been assassinated at Ford's Theater in Washington, regained consciousness just long enough to say to Secretary of War Stanton, "Tell General Abner Doubleday not to let baseball die." After that whopper, NBC ordered Stern to label his dramatizations "sports ''legends''" ...
Referring to Stern's lack of veracity on the ''Newsreel'', Dunning wrote: "On his ''Colgate Sports Newsreel'',
tern
Terns are seabirds in the family Laridae that have a worldwide distribution and are normally found near the sea, rivers, or wetlands. Terns are treated as a subgroup of the family Laridae which includes gulls and skimmers and consists of e ...
was known to tell the same story twice, a year or so apart, using conflicting facts and passing both versions as truth. Stern covered his tracks, reminding listeners that his stories were 'some true, some hearsay, but all so interesting we'd like to pass them along to you.'"
Not all criticism of Stern's cavalier attitude toward the facts came in retrospect. In 1949, radio critic John Crosby wrote: "Even the word 'hearsay' is a rather generous description, implying ... that Stern's stories have reached stature of legend ... This is misleading. Many of the most lurid of Stern's "legends" originated in the teeming brains of his writers and started their way to legend only after Stern put them on the air to his devoted audience..." Crosby went on to cite one example of Stern's "legends": according to the ''Newsreel'',
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventio ...
's "deafness was the result of a pitched ball that hit him in the head when he was a semi-pro ballplayer which he never was ... The pitcher who threw that ball, according to Stern, was
Jesse James
Jesse Woodson James (September 5, 1847April 3, 1882) was an American outlaw, bank and train robber, guerrilla and leader of the James–Younger Gang. Raised in the " Little Dixie" area of Western Missouri, James and his family maintained stro ...
."
Jack French's 2008 article in Radio Recall pointed out several false "legends" on the Stern show, in addition to those cited above:
*Pitcher
Christy Mathewson
Christopher Mathewson (August 12, 1880 – October 7, 1925), nicknamed "Big Six", "the Christian Gentleman", "Matty", and "the Gentleman's Hurler", was a Major League Baseball right-handed pitcher, who played 17 seasons with the New York Giant ...
inspired
George Gershwin
George Gershwin (; born Jacob Gershwine; September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned popular, jazz and classical genres. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions ' ...
to write "Rhapsody in Blue."
*Sportswriter
Grantland Rice
Henry Grantland "Granny" Rice (November 1, 1880July 13, 1954) was an early 20th-century American sportswriter known for his elegant prose. His writing was published in newspapers around the country and broadcast on the radio.
Early years
Rice wa ...
advised
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Nicknamed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Chairman of the Board" and later called "Ol' Blue Eyes", Sinatra was one of the most popular ...
to give up boxing and concentrate on singing.
*A boy whose arms and legs were amputated after he spent a night in the snow in below-zero temperatures went on to win a swimming championship the following year.
Broadcast History
Note: "NA"—information was not listed on the cited page.
References
External links
Jerry Haendiges Vintage Radio Logs: ''Bill Stern's Sports Newsreel''62 streaming episodes of ''Bill Stern Sports Newsreel'' from archive.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Colgate Sports Newsreel
American sports radio programs
1930s American radio programs
1940s American radio programs
1950s American radio programs
1939 radio programme debuts
1956 radio programme endings
NBC Blue Network radio programs
NBC radio programs
ABC radio programs