Two Boys From Mena: Lum and Abner: The Laughter Never Ends, Part 1

It was the program was about to begin. All across the country have a special place in the hearts of our first fictional characters who were set in the small town themselves part of their lives for so many years and remember them

all about it. We'll be playing excerpts from some of their early radio programs seeing scenes from a few of their Hollywood films and talking to the creators of love and Abner Chester Locke NORRIS But before we do any of that let's learn a little about the history of the law and have to program it first began on network radio on April 26 1931 show was set in what was then the imaginary town of Pine Ridge Iraq and saw Edwards and Abner Peabody who were two elderly gentleman who were partners in a general store which they called the John down store. All their partners for my and I own for a year. They were usually at odds with each other and this provided the primary comic element of the show. But after they made their nationwide debut over NBC Radio Lab an avid big game and immediate success but they probably never imagined their success story would last for

nearly a quarter of a century. Well after they left NBC Rock n GOF continued to delight their audiences on the CBS ABC and Mutual Radio Networks. Well when they finally retired and radio they had been on the air for the equivalent of sixty two days 24 hours a day all the lab and Avner of long since closed the doors of the jotting down storm recordings of many of their shows can still be heard on a number of radio stations throughout the country including several here in Arkansas. So this evening we're going to listen to segments from two of those early recordings. The one we're going to hear an hour is first heard in 1941. In this episode llamas plotting to impress a lady friend by taming Abner's pet lion Irving. Well as we join the sages from Bion Ridge llamas in the lion's cage inspecting a glass partition that he's installed a girl into thinking he can get close to the line without showing any fear. But as you might

expect the boys are in for trouble. Let's listen. Well I may as well get out of there. No use reckoning here any longer now that I know the gratification of going to work all right. Yeah you're no good. So our lawn bomb made you feel bad about that but I wait a minute wait a minute here along what's the matter. Look here why the door here don't all have our lives carried shorthair. Look here the north up here on the lawn. You can't get out of there last you read and go out on his side here. Oh my goodness my goodness gracious. Wow way that meaning. Yet Arabs are they now your slave. Yeah but I can't hear the rest of my life. No well I wouldn't bank gone at home here not a lot of living that they are on a

tear or. Or my Starmen they have I don't know about their. Oh stop being silly at a time like if we gotta get me outta here at blame that said a guy but he done that on purpose don't go ball and hammer the one thing lot of battling away. Why did you ever get in there first enough birthplace fire. Well I want to be here I had not room in here boy Cedric back in the glass and oh yeah the dreidel natural I didn't love the line in here I've always doing it now. Oh but how my. Got an integration or how do I get out I do it or in me. And you've seen how good we were the hand that Sam's headed out of town he got I did though and he won't be back till approach the next week and I know I am going to set in here where the battery gets bad. Well I don't know what the dedicated room should do that Raymond you want to have to open the gate and get the line out an Open the gate. Wrong line though a lot me and I bet on a lot of Jew gone open it

up ad where you don't want to get out if there's a line in a birth place now you take care I might not want to ever do it or say you bend down my house. Only now I'd see you go ahead and do it. Oh I'm older than I had planned on going that social then I say yeah yeah they go to the door open to let him out. Well there you go. He wants to stay in there. Thankee moving now. You're just parroting what you're doing to me. Well don't keep running around the family. I don't know where I'm around going to

watch. Good for you you scared doing them myself. Oh my goodness I thought he had me there a couple of times love here on ARS but you're safe now. And here it was no no wait a minute. OK here we go on our feet and not out don't want to come back come back here ever Sam said Rick offered. We gotta get out here and warn everybody and burn. Well I would guess that the townspeople of Pine Ridge didn't take climate Abner's antics down. We are a portion of another episode later both native Kansans Chet

Locke and Nora Scouse partnership goes back to their boyhood days chap was born in our lane and Norris was born in cold dark and saw the best of their families later took up residence in Mina now Chet's father was superintendent of a local lumber male Nora's his father owned a wholesale grocery business. Both boys worked in their father's respective businesses as youngsters boys went through school together and Mina although chap was a few grades ahead of Norris. Like most boys their age they played on their school's football team or after the boys completed high school. Chet went to Chicago to study art. He later returned arc and saw and enter the university in Fayetteville. Well now it is in the mean time also enter the university and both he and Chad became brothers in the Sigma Chi fraternity or later Chet left school and tried his hand at commercial art while NORAD's transferred to the

University of Oklahoma. Well eventually both boys returned to Mina and enter the business world. She had joined an automobile finance company and Norris began working at his father's grocery business. It appeared that the boys had settled down to a quiet life in me that she had married Harriet wood in 1926. NORRIS took Elizabeth bullion as his bride in 1989. Well little did they used to small town businessmen know that within a short time they have become household words across the nation as the stars of one of the most popular programs in the history of radio. Well as we mentioned earlier the setting with alarming new programmers Pine Ridge Arkansas when Chad and Norris began their careers in radio. Pine Ridge was only a figment of their imagination. It could have been the model for any number of communities that existed in the main area. Rogers for example which was just 18 miles from Mina had a general store that was operated by a man named Rick whom Chad and

Norris both knew. So when the La Moneda program went on the air it was decided that Huddleston historic be referred to on the program or not to be confused with their own jotting down store Huddleston story was to be a common competitor of rabid Abner's. While the popularity of law might have NO brought into the town a writer so much notoriety that the town officially changed its name to Pine Ridge in 1936. Well today the town of Pine Ridge is a little less lively than it was supposed to have been on the radio but its 17 citizens give or take a few still appreciate love and abjure the whole dick cut Austin's story is still there. Although Huddleston himself died some years ago. It is currently operated as a tourist attraction and people from all over the country and from different parts of the world still drop by to look at love and add remember Ben again. Capt. Mark who lives in Hot Springs wed rather is to Pine Ridge and reminisce in the Robin Adler

museum which itself looks much like the old John Brown store might have looked. We're here in the store at Pine Ridge I can sew. You may also know it is the famous jotted down store the lemon adversary and well this is one of the creators of those two likeable rules philosophers chap luck check you and your partner not risk of whom you call tough a word regularly on the radios of millions of Americans for about a quarter of a century. Well today most television series lose their appeal after two or three years. So how do you account for the popularity of the La Moneda series. Well I think the difference is there's a great difference between television and radio and television in its own spelled out for you in radio you had dainty and exercising your own imagination lies in nothing the way you want to see it. I'm sure all of our listeners had a different impression of what actually

looked like what the little town of Pine Ridge might be like what the jotting down store was. But television you have that overexposure of those of seeing it and hearing it and I think it soon wears itself out or Lou there are some exceptions. I Love Lucy show has been going for a long time been and looks like a drag Ned. And what's the Western with Jim Arness Gunsmoke. Well I get it wrong for ever although you stop making love and Abba shows in 1955. Chen I understand there are a number of radio stations around the country that play recordings of your old shows. Yes a syndicated shows unfortunately we only have about five or six years of recordings. Ressam weren't even recorded

and we have I think some 90 stations caring that was broke and we had no idea they would be any residuals in that time as we would tape them or recorded them we didn't have tape in those days. I've been told Chad had it not been for a flood you would add would probably still be selling cars and crackers and I would be spread. I was in the automobile finance business partner Nourse go off we call him toughie. It was associated with his father and the whole business and he called on country stores so he learned to know how to operate a small town store. Do this in good stead later. Sure but we have been doing a little black face

to black face characters I guess on the order of the two black crows are going sassafras black faced salmon in Wrigley later became Amos n Andy. And when we were doing the hot springs to do a broadcast we were little and in behalf of the flood relief. Don't or wherever we decide we better not do black face because there was too much competition in what we just said to rule characters and just as we went on the air the announcer said that about a name. So I said well I'll be lonely and I never knew anybody with that name I don't know where the name came from.

And tennis is out there people and it was time to go and then he said we would have a visit with Lum Edwards and Abner Peabody. We didn't realize that we were given some names that might last 20 years. Still though what first prompted you and Norris to get into the entertainment business. We're not going over the hot springs in broadcasting. It seems there was quite a male response to that broadcast and a station called us and asked us if we come back over and do it the following Sunday. So we went over nothing better to do. So I think we did five broadcasts over there in them and made the response was so encouraging that we. I decided to go to Chicago and have an audition in D.C. and the station manager in Hot Springs. Set that appointment

for us and we win and we were more surprised than anybody after already seeing that they not only offered this job on sustaining but they found us a sponsor. We were still going from a small radio station Hot Springs Arkansas to nationwide radio was quite a big step. How did you accomplish it in such a short time. Well it wasn't easy because the last time we had never really written the script we just put on some notes and ad libbed. But we were required to have a script when we went on the network. Strangely enough we were. Our first sponsor if you don't mention your name is Quaker Oats company. They put us on not only the red network but also the blue network so we had the book. We got a big head start. I must admit that's a little before my time the red and blue network.

Well later you said it was a monopoly required and separate it became NBC and ABC. There's been a number of occasions Chetwynd instant stardom is drastically affected the personal lives of people in the entertainment world. But you a nice appeared to wear your success well over the years. How did you make that adjustment from being a small town businessman and national celebrities almost overnight. Well I don't know we're certainly eased into it gradually and we were more amazed than anybody except the trap stars in Hollywood. I never did feel that it was a real pop star but I was so accepted into what I guess the folks back home that you were pretty popular and. And did you receive a lot of fan mail from the people in meeting strange men and of course they listened in very rarely and gave

us a lot of encouragement. I would say the southeastern states and through the Virginias and the Carolinas and Alabama Mississippi and Ohio Indiana Kentucky those were the States we had their biggest audience according to send me on Curtain to the gruesome pictures. But the only technical advancements today such as the advent of video tape the programs we see in here are usually carefully planned and edited to avoid mistakes. So it's really hard to imagine what it was like to have to do a 15 minute library you know show night after night. Can you tell us a little about what those days were like. Well there really we didn't have the facilities for some sound effects. We'd tried to avoid reading too many sound effects into our shows but we used to try to get the effect of raising a window for

instance. Finally then we know they would get a wind driven rain is it. And that's a better way they do it now that in the early days they had to get some ingenious way of making a sound certain sound of course our microphones were not nearly as sensitive day. And they were they were directional mikes you had to get right square in front of. And great improvement there. And of course we didn't have tape they could record a show on tape recording but it lost some of the quality. Now nationally all of our shows were live tonight a fact the only show that I know that was ever taped radio was

being Cosby Show and that was on a wire tape. So when you said it it was gone it was I don't think there are ways. And to be very careful I believe we figured earlier that you have done approximately fifty eight hundred radio programs in a period of 23 years and that isn't counting the 30 minute presentation that we did two years of 30 minute shows once a week. There we had cast and Charlie Weaver for a kid that he's better known as Charlie now. In France this expedition Bushman several How did you put your material together for your shows. Well usually you know where we were going and started writing toward the climax in the beginning it

used to take as a 10 hour straight a 15 minute script in writing another script and 45 minutes to an hour. You had your own little ingenious way Chad of making the program come out right on time that you're I don't know how we used the time our last page and we stick pretty well to that. Rafted we knew how far we had to go would have top of the page had four minutes to go. The clock for us. And if we had five minutes to go and landed we got back on time and then I'd get right on time. I don't know. There is time. You can read the same script 10 times and get 10 different time zone.

I think it's a pretty good formula. It always worked for you and the constant story was a basic part of the London Abner series. How did you happen to choose it as a setting for a lot of that in there. Real action when we first started we did not have a store we were in was a justice of the peace and there was a constable and we thought about a story which was another show coming from the east the statement's boys. They had a story for that reason we wouldn't use it but the show went off the air so we immediately opened a store and I don't pine ridge Arkansas didn't exist when your show first went on the air back in 1930 won the town of Rogers Arkansas later changed its name to Pine Ridge I believe in one thousand thirty six. So what connection did you have with the Rogers Arkansas that led this town to change its name. Just the name Dick Huddleston. We used to cover sins of real name and it was his idea to change the name of that ridge. It

takes it takes an act of Congress and NBC made a big publicity stunt. They sent a crew from Chicago and they broadcast the ceremony over the network. They're actually changing the name. So although you and Taffy were miles away from Arkansas you felt. An affinity with Arkansas the fact that you were using the Dakota Austin story in your series then we used the name of Pine Ridge because we depicted this part of the country. Mountains and pine trees and rushed a river runs right by fine ridge here and it isn't far down the road to Mina from Pine Ridge is it. No it's only 18 so I mean we'll chat as much as the humor of Lyman Abner is loved by so many people. There have been those who've said that Arkansas so-called image problem has been partially created through the humor of people like Opie Reid Thomas

Jackson Bob Burns and Lyman Abner. If you are Norris ever feel that the London Avenue humor she had on favorable publicity on the state of Arkansas never we certainly did not. We were talking about our own folks and we never had that could assist them. Now understand Bob Burns was criticized on a number of occasions which I thought was unjust and great but we depicted these characters as a lot of the honest people. There was nothing derogatory about it that I could see and it was well known that we were small town people we were expected to be expected to be sophisticates. So. I don't think it left that image you know as as Runyon put it. Damon Runyon and praise that he had for you and your partner he said I would include in the current

phenomena Americana and a brace of young fellows out of the Ozarks Lum and Abner. They have made a specialty of corn for years and I'm talking about corn in the first connotation or the next brand the most enduring form of humor in the United States of America. And he went on to say it sneered at by city slickers but it has outlasted all other kinds. I never heard that Ring Lardner used to mention this in his column. Quite often it was a big thing and the success you had in radio led Hollywood producers to entice you into putting London ad on film although you made eight feature films and some short subjects. I'm told you were initially reluctant to make movies. Why was that. Us really we were afraid people would be disillusioned to learn what we really look like because we could tell from our sendmail that some of them thought it was church and it was tough. So when we finally decided.

Start some pictures. We started inadvertently dropping hints as to what he looked like so it wouldn't be a big shock. We wouldn't come right out and describe each other over a period of two three months I think we pretty well established what we really looked like. I understand you made one movie in Yugoslavia of all places. How did Lum and Abner end up in Yugoslavia. That's a long way from Pine Ridge just contracted to make a picture for an assured brothers and dependent producing company in Hollywood and they called us one day and I won't talk to us a bit wonder if we'd be interested in making this picture in Europe. We had visions of travelling all over Europe in the picture thinking of the wonderful came down to the final stages. It was to be shot in Yugoslavia and they had an iron curtain and I think Russia is at that time that we went and thoroughly

enjoyed it was an most interesting experience. Overall how did you feel about your movie as compared to the success of your radio show. There were moneymakers for some reason we never won an Academy Award. We haven't had the term just the pictures but they weren't too bad they weren't too good. Having spent 18 years in Hollywood you must've come to know a number of celebrities were there any time you were particularly close or well acquainted with most of the big stars and they were still big stars in my mind. Closest friends my closest friends for me Robert. And the Read it was Rob tailored Clark Gable and your office in Hot Springs I noticed a picture on your wall which showed you standing with a great Laurel and Hardy

if you know them very well. We're not real well but that was one occasion where Amos and Andy and Laurel and Hardy and lemon had be in the same room. Somebody conceived the idea of having a picture taken of three teams. I'm very proud of that picture. I sound like a name dropper. You asked me the stars that I had known that those were the big stars at that. Unlike a number of Arkansans who have left the state and become famous you chose to come back to reside in your home state. What brought you back to Arkansas. I don't know I think that back in my mind I always knew I was going to himself someday and build a home over on Lake Hamilton right out of hot springs. And my brother and his wife lived right next door and my sister and her husband the river across the lake. So on and my son and his wife live there so we have all of our family together.

Do you ever find yourself missing that Hollywood lifestyle. No. Really it was son then because you were a part of it I would feel like a complete outsider has been a Norse god chose to stay in California after you both retired from radio. What is he doing now. Randy said he was also fell behind in a set and said that he was rather on the gas cruise of the Indian lives country and he plays likely every day about 9 holes. You know it's really amazing Chad that so many people think that Norris is dead. Do you have any idea how the story got started. Well I think the first time it appeared in the paper and you know it's been in the papers three different times. I don't know whether they've actually written his obituary but they told of his death when it's really in the library and then when the customer they get the teams make step and reported him

dead. Then the third time more recently I've forgotten what that occasion was. Then you would have rather had me with as you look back on your career is there anything you wish you had done differently. I wish we did take a little more seriously as we found the easy way to do it. I don't know 24 and a half years it's better or you could ask for two boys For me know the story of lemon Abner will continue following the station identification.