OTR BLOOPERS As contributed by the Internet OTR Digest subscribers (Disclaimer: some of these may be urban legends rather than bloopers) ========================= From: "bill harris" RADIO BLOOPERS No matter how well rehearsed you are, things still can go wrong sometimes. Here are a few bloopers I have collected from various sources. Announcer Harry Von Zell had a little trouble announcing President Herbert Hoover. "Ladies and gentlemen, the next voice you will hear will be that of the President of the United States, Hoobert Heever. Er....Heevert Hoober - I mean Hovert Haber!" Since Harry's problems announcing the Chief Executive, announcers are required to merely announce: "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States". And the actor playing a doctor: "Nurse, a hypodeemic nurdle, please." And the announcer who said: Girls, when you have to get up early to prepare his breakfast, do you wake up feeling lustless - I mean, listless? And so ends another garden tip program. Tune in next week, when Mrs. Van Bruen's topic will be "My Potted Friends." This portion of the Name of the Gum starring Robert Stick-er Stack - is brought to you by Wrigley's Chewing Game. Marshall Dillon preserves law and odor tonight on "Gunsmoke" At Johnson's Laundry, we don't tear up your clothes by machine, we do it carefully by hand. And the forcast for tomorrow is mostly Sunday. Try this remarkably effective cough syrup. We guarantee you'll never get any better. And there are some things that should not be said, especially if the microphone is still 'live'. Uncle Don, host of a childern's show concluded a broadcast and sighed, "Well, that'll hold the little basterds", unaware the the microphone was still open broadcasting those imortal words from coast to coast. Bill Harris [Editor's note: the "Uncle Don gaffe" has been attributed to several children's show hosts, so seems to definitely qualify as an urban legend. See http://snopes.simplenet.com/radiotv/radio/uncle2.htm for more information debunking this supposed incident] =================================== From: ERINSSMLE@aol.com One of the strangest radio bloopers occured on THE MA PERKINS SOAP. This program emanted from Chicago. One day Chicago experienced a terrific blizzard. Only two of the actors were able to to reach the studio. Ma herself and I believe Willie Fitts. They had to ad lib most of the program into which the two actors incorporated the blizzard. Ma and Willie decided to check the lumber yard for possible damage. Willie led the way out fo the lumber yard office into the midst of the blizzard and ad libbed the line; "I'll go ahead of you Ma, and break wind." The program erupted into muffled giggles and outright laughter. *****and now wee paws for station identification***** Hobie Wilson, President Bing's Friends and Collectors Society =================================== From: roy547@netcom.com (Roy Trumbull) I love the Tonto story when the actor got lost in the script and he knew it was a throw away line and adlibbed: "Uh, Kinosabe, Giddemup Scout." But they were doing a bag job on the bad guys second floor hotel room at the time. Had to play a lot of Liszt to recover from that one. =================================== From: "Michael Biel mbiel@kih.net" There's another Lone Ranger blooper I would love to have confirmed. Supposedly one actor, carried away with the realism of the sound effects, once said: "Listen! I hear a white horse coming!" In the late 50s the announcer on WRCA, New York said: "And now Kenneth Bringhart will bang you the news." Another I heard on WOR the day or two before Thanksgiving 1964, Lyle Van signed off his 6 PM newscast "This is Little Lyle . . ." He never got thru the rest of his closing which was supposed to be "This is Lyle Van, I hope you have a pleasant evening. Goodnight little redheads, and Everyone!" There was about two minutes of hysterical laughter in the WOR studios which they THOUGHT wasn't being heard, but was coming thru very faintly on WOR-FM. (My tape recorder was sitting there, not recording. Double drat!) And John Wingate had trouble getting through the "6:15 News Extra" that night. =================================== From: Joe Salerno John Todd - Tonto - was dosing during a b'cast. Tonto & LR are upstairs spying on the bad guys. LR says, "Let's go Tonto!" Todd replied "Get-em up, Scout!" The other one: The Sheriff blows his lines. He was supposed to say "Stop where you are, Get your hands up, (or something to that effect). When he realizes that he can't recover he suddenly gives up, "Aw, just shoot 'em!" =================================== From: "Robert I. Scherago" Here's one of my favorites that occurred while I was in the contrrol room at WTIC in Hartford in the '60's: During the Texaco Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, we actually had a live announcer in the booth ready to do a station break on Milton Cross's cue. (Ths amounted to two or three ten-second breaks in three or four hours.) Our erstwhile announcer was poised to deliver the station ID, when professional Met Anouncer/Commentator Milton Cross said, in his deep tones and New York accent, (multiple r's indicate his OTR trill) "This is the Texaco Metrrropolitan Rrradio NetWOIK!" Our announcer spent the next ten seconds in hysterics, and missed the ID entirely! =================================== From: Graham Newton I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the great Paul Harvey PSA blooper. This did happen, and I heard it off the ABC network line while I was working for CFCF radio in Montreal Canada in the early 1960's. It didn't incorporate any expletives, it was just plain funny... Harvey's announcer Chuck Bill was cued to do a sustaining public service announcement in the middle of the noon-time Paul Harvey News broadcast. I believe they were both in the same studio, and the PSA was on a very serious matter, but Chuck Bill broke up so badly that he couldn't regain his composure for the full duration of the spot. He finally regained enough composure to re-introduce Harvey for the balance of the newscast, probably about the time that the network stations re-joined after breaking away for local commercials... only the stations that carried no advertizing for that break would have broadcast the Bill-Blooper! It does exist, and somewhere I have a recording of it. =================================== From: tq@writeme.com My all time favorite blooper is a sports one heard live on WGN radio Chicago in the early 1960's. During a Chicago Cubs baseball game announcers Lou Boudreau and the late Jack Quinlan were doing a live ad between innings for Wiebolts department stores. The ad was one of those back and forth type and had to do with women"s unmentionables. When Lou came to a line having to do with pantyhose ( which were a very new garmet at the time, he totally lost it. You could hear everyone in the booth, including the engineers laughing and banging their fists on the counter. Both Lou and Jack were priceless. As Quinlan said after he stumbled through his last line, "that's the last time we'll ever get one of these to do". =================================== From: Mark Langenfeld I actually heard one of my favorite radio bloopers as it happened. During a network news feed in the mid '70's (sorry, can't recall the network or announcer), a quote was attributed to an unnamed presidential aide as follows: "According to a high Whitehorse souse ..." Some years before, I got tripped up while working as a shavetail newsman for WIBA radio in Madison, WI. The wire copy lead went something like this: "Troops from the elite Americal Division uncovered a cache of guerilla arms near the Ho Chi Minh trail yesterday ... " Somehow a picture popped into my mind of those G.I.'s flipping back a big camouflage tarp to expose a gigantic heap of hairy limbs and -- although not really all that funny -- it cracked me up. And, unfortunately, that story was second or third in the stack. I helplessly snickered and snorted through the remainder of the five minutes in a desperate, breathless mixture of hilarity and pain known only to those who have been there.