Moon River

Show Information based on John Dunning's book "On The Air"

Mood music and poetry.(ca. 1930s-1940s).

Perhaps the best-known, best-loved, best-remembered local show of the network radio era, Moon River was boosted to national prominence by WLW's 500,000 watts, so powerful a beacon that the show got fan mail from Europe. "Turn on a faucet and out came WLW," wrote Dick Perry in his history of the station.

Perry traces the show's origin to a meeting in 1930 between writer Ed Byron and owner Powel Crosley Jr., who ordered Byron to create a poetry show to accommodate an organ he had just bought; Byron then retired to a speakeasy and sketched out some notes while a violinist played Caprice Viennois. This became the show's haunting theme; Clair de Lune was played as a backdrop to the poetry readings. The narrator was pivotal: his was the voice of both signatures and most of the poetry contained within them. Many of the personalities went on to national careers, and Byron became a well-known writer-director in New York (see MR. DISTRICT ATTORNEY).

As for Moon River, its closing was pure radio, frozen in time.

Down the valley of a thousand yesterdays

Flow the bright waters of Moon River

On and on, forever waiting to carry you

Down to the land of forgetfulness,

To the kingdom of sleep,

To the realm of Moon River,

A lazy stream of dreams

Where vain desires forget themselves

in the loveliness of sleep.

Moon River,

Enchanted white ribbon

Twined in the hair of night,

Where nothing is but sleep,

Dream on, sleep on,

Care will not seek for thee.

Float on, drift on,

Moon River … to the sea.

BROADCAST HISTORY:

Ca. l930-1940s, WLW, Cincinnati. 15m.

NARRATORS: Bob Brown from 1930; also, Harry Holcomb, Palmer Ward, Charles Woods, Don Dowd, Jay Jostyn, Jimmy Leonard, Ken Linn, Peter Grant, etc.

Many vocalists including the DeVore Sisters, Doris Day, Rosemary and Betty Clooney, Lucille Norman, Ruby Wright, Anita Ellis, Phil Brito, Janette Davis, Barbara Cameron, etc.

CREATOR: Ed Byron.