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Show RADIO GARDENER Breakfast Club Appeals To Millions of Air Fans 1 ' . 1 P Network stations of the American Broadcasting company, would say that the audience's contributions are what makes for the remarkable success of the program. Many fans find other reasons. Some 875,000 of them applied for charter membership in the club in one week. Each program from Monday through Saturday at 8 a.m. will find 600 fans watching the program. Hundreds are turned away daily from the Chicago studios where the broadcast originates. Tickets are now required two weeks in advance. These people come from all the states in the union. They come to see Don McNeill, who has served as master of ceremonies on more network broadcasts than any other man, woman or child in radio. He has spent more than 4,000 hours before the microphone, and still gains in popularity. They come to see Nancy Martin, the singing schoolmam, or songster song-ster Marion Mann. They come to see Sam Cowling, the heckler, or Ed Eallatine, the orchestra director, or Ray Grant's Vagabonds. They come to see Fran Allison's characterizations of genial, gossipy, gauche "Aunt Fanny," which are so realistic that Fran's mother, back in Iowa, is in a perpetual dither for fear that kinfolk might be offended. They come to make the program, their program. Memory and inspiration time on the broadcast has reached the heartstrings of the Breakfast Club's Don McNeill, M. C. of the Breakfast Break-fast club program. fans. The prayer and impromptu assignments as-signments for D-Day will go down in radio as a classic of the year. When the program was started 12 years ago, no visitors were allowed. This rule was first broken in 1937, in response to a letter from a hopelessly hope-lessly tubercular marine, who wrote that seeing a performance of the club was chief among the things he wanted to do before his final hour. In 1938, the doors were thrown open to all comers. Since then half a million mil-lion people have seen the program pro-gram and watched the "gang" go through their paces. The program has attracted national na-tional attention in its effective war work. They are given credit for hav- AucliencesandEvents 1 MakeProgramofEver Increasing Interest By W. J. DRYDEN Released by Western Newspaper Union. Radio stations and networks throughout the country revised their programs, cancelled outright or drastically revised all commercial broadcasts, when word was received re-ceived of the death of President Roosevelt. Typical of programs undergoing complete revision was the Breakfast Club's broadcast on which Don McNeill, master of ceremony, cere-mony, paid tribute to the president: "One of the qualities about Mr. Roosevelt that I always admired," said McNeill, "was his sense of humor. hu-mor. In the tremendous job in which he gave his life he needed a sense of humor for balance. In fact, If he could speak to us now, he might say something like this: 'Never mind the flowery language lan-guage about me when my time had come the Lord knew I was not an indispensable man, so get back in there and finish off the job In a hurry, and make a peace so binding, so secure that this may never happen again. Get back to the days when you can quit worrying about your loved ones and when you can laugh and smile. Your face looks so much better that way. " Radio's favorite daytime variety show, the Breakfast Club, owes its popularity to its ardent fans in every ev-ery city, hamlet and nearly every farm in America. It has been adopted and considered as a part of rural America. By making an appeal to those in rural districts as well as in metropolitan areas, it proved that a morning hour variety vari-ety show could achieve immense popularity. Scripts have been eutire-ly eutire-ly dispensed with and the cas depends de-pends on native wit rather than on gag writers. Like the program following President Presi-dent Roosevelt's death, each program pro-gram is created by circumstances and the audience itself. There is no monotony, for the program is life itself, the life as played by its many fans. They create the program, pro-gram, play the parts, give the questions ques-tions and answers. Audience's Contributions. There are other reasons for this radio program clicking. Don McNeill, Mc-Neill, the genial m.c. of the program, pro-gram, which is carried over Blue .f iX" . " . ...J x i W 1 - 1 I When the entire cast takes the stage, things begin to hum over the air. ing started the waste paper salvage ! drive in the United States. They fo cused national attention on the crucial cru-cial manpower shortage in war in- ( dustries and early in the war received re-ceived the government's thanks for this work. At on,e bond auction Mc- , Neill sold $1,114,000 worth of war , bonds at the swank Winnetka dis- j trict. For this he received a treasury treas-ury citation. M.c. Don Mc.eill is an honorary honor-ary sergeant major at Fort Sheridan Sheri-dan and a reserve recruiting official 1 in the marines. He was recently awarded the degree of Doctor of Frustration by the Boswell institute. His greatest honor, however, he says, is the thousands of letters received re-ceived from his fans. The host of the Breakfast Cluh was born in Galena, 111., De 'en-" jr 23, -1907. That should r.ak nim 38 years old, but he insis.s that he is ! only 28. Several years later the Mc- j Neill family moved to Sheboygan, I Wise, where Don attended high I school. There is no record of any I previous schooling. He gained fame in high school by winning a fly-swatting fly-swatting contest. In 1925, he found his way to Milwaukee and enrolled in the college of journalism at j Marquette university, where he ' edited the student newspaper and j tooted a snazzy saxophone. His per- sonal representative, Jimmy Ben-j Ben-j nett, says that the" success of both I ventures can be determined by the i fact that he is no longer employed ; as a tooter of saxophones or a news-i news-i paper editor. 1 In 1928 he secured a job on a Mil-t Mil-t waukee radio station, announcing : programs, directing programs, riding rid-ing gain in the control room, rounding round-ing up guest speakers, editing the ' station's publicity releases and an-j an-j swering the telephone. He was paid $10 a week, which was later increased in-creased to $15 a week. When he recently re-cently signed a new five-year contract con-tract with the Blue Network, it was at a figure slighly above what he was getting at Milwaukee. After receiving his Ph.B degree he decamped to Louisville, where he became one of the Two Professors, Profes-sors, a comedy team over WHAS. In 1933 he went to Chicago, took over the not-too-well-known Pepper Pot program and developed the present Breakfast Club. Ever since Pearl Harbor, the Breakfast club calendar has been crowded with extra curricula r activities. The entire cast has appeared ap-peared before hospitals and camps. They have appeared at the Greut Lakes training station on several occasions. When D-Day broke. Don McNeill was on the way to the studio, He cleared the way for the omission of commercials, had patriotic music played and offered up a prayer The order was to slancl by for news flashes and the prayer, which waa written 15 minutes before nir time |