290225 Lewis & Clark: The Saving of Sacajawea (Part 2 of 3)

 

 

As stated in my previous post regarding Part 1 of the Lewis & Clark trilogy, no continuities of this episode have yet been located. However, we do know a few details about the broadcast that are noteworthy.

The February, 1929, issue of the Great Northern Goat magazine included this past-tense description of the broadcast of February 25^th:

… The program of February 25^th told of a later expedition in the Rocky Mountains and the locale was the headwater of the Marias, a river discovered by Lewis and Clark on their journey up the Missouri. This program was doubly interesting because it not only told of the Isaac I. Steven’s search for the fabled Marias Pass through the Rocky Mountains but the radio audience heard John F. Stevens, the actual discoverer of the pass, tell in his own words how he accomplished the feat in the winter of 1889. …

The Marias River and Marias Pass were named after a cousin of Meriwether Lewis, Maria Wood. It is presumed that a cartographer misread the name of the river on an early version of a map of that area of Montana, and simply dropped the apostrophe (“Maria’s River” versus “Marias River”).

John F. Stevens (1853-1943) was a living legend in 1929, and the Great Northern Railway was delighted to have another reason to draw favorable attention to the man, his deeds, and his association with the railway. By any measure, Stevens had a remarkable career in the field of engineering. He helped locate rail lines for many projects, and not just for the Great Northern. While Stevens was not the first person to discover Marias Pass (among fur traders and others, it was already generally known to be there), he did locate and assess it as a favorable pass for the Great Northern Railway to scale the mighty Rocky Mountains. This he did in 1889. Only a few years later, Stevens also located a favorable pass over the Cascade Mountains, which today honors him with the name “Stevens Pass.” There is also a “John F. Stevens Canyon” along the old line of the Great Northern Railway in Montana.

John F. Stevens statue being unveiled by John F. Stevens, III, grandson of the famed explorer, and an honor graduate of the Shattuck Military School.   Author's collection

On July 21, 1925, the Upper Missouri Historical Expedition – organized and sponsored by the Great Northern Railway – unveiled a larger-than-life statue of John F. Stevens, depicting him as he might have looked while up in the Rockies searching for Marias Pass in 1889. The bronze statue was sculpted by Gaetano Cecere. The statue stood for many years just a few yards from the GN’s mainline track through the pass, allowing sharp-eyed passengers to spy the statue as the trains rolled through the pass. It was lighted at night. Today, the statue has been moved to a location easily accessible to motorists who stop at the Marias Pass rest area. The statue of Stevens is erected very close to the Theodore Roosevelt monument at the same site.

This episode of Empire Builders provided a development that strained the relations between NBC and the Great Northern Railway. Ralph Budd, GN president, was a very knowledgeable historian of the Pacific Northwest. Evidence of his interest in the early history of the GN territory is clearly seen throughout much of his tenure as the railroad’s president. It was therefore of great irritation to him when NBC issued a press release for the February 25 broadcast that made it into print in some of the more widely-circulated papers. For example, here’s how that NBC press release appeared in the Washington Post:  “The hazardous return journey of Clark and Lewis by the overland route from San Francisco after missing their steamer there, will be depicted in the next chapter of the historic series on "The Empire Builders"…”

The historical purist in Budd bristled at the use of the names “Clark and Lewis.” He was appalled by the press writer’s comments about Lewis and Clark following the “overland route from San Francisco after missing their steamer there…” Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery never ventured further south than the Columbia River (which forms much of the border between the states of Washington and Oregon). As for the steamer nonsense – Robert Fulton constructed the first commercially viable steamboat in New York in 1807.

 

290218 Lewis & Clark: A Great President Appears on the Scene (Part 1 of 3)

After sending the broadcast technicians out to Portland, Oregon, for a remote broadcast of the Portland Symphony Orchestra on February 11th, the Great Northern Railway and their compatriots at NBC reverted to the first-season standard of dramatizing the history of the exploration and settling of the Pacific Northwest. The February 18, 1929, episode of Empire Builders featured the first of a three-part series on the western exploration adventures of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. The epic journey of the “Corps of Discovery” was made at the behest of President Thomas Jefferson. Among other motivations, the goal was to explore, map, and report on the natural resources of the newly gained Louisiana Purchase territory (which was determined to extend west to the Rocky Mountains). Lewis and Clark pressed on to the mouth of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean.

No recording exists of this broadcast, and as yet, no continuity (script) for this trilogy has been located either. However, we do have a few forms of documentation from the time of the broadcast to illuminate certain details.

For many years, the Great Northern Railway produced a small publication called the “Goat” [beginning in the early 1920’s, the corporate logo of the GN utilized a Rocky Mountain goat]. This publication was designed primarily to inform passenger and freight agents of news concerning the railway and its business partners. It was not an employee’s magazine, but it could probably be called a “house organ.” The Great Northern Goat was published on an inconsistent but mostly monthly basis from March, 1924, until the merger in 1970 that formed Burlington Northern. The February, 1929, issue of the Great Northern Goat contained a few paragraphs about the Empire Builders broadcast of February 18^th:

 “This program told dramatically how President Jefferson sent Livingston and Monroe to Paris to negotiate for the purchase of New Orleans and how the French practically threw all of Louisiana into their laps. Then the program took up the journey of Lewis and Clark, it told of their exciting adventures near the Great Falls of the Missouri, of the meeting of Sacajawea and the members of her own tribe after years of separation, and of the party’s arrival on the Pacific Coast.”

A newspaper column appearing in the Christian Science Monitor, under the title “The Listener Speaks,” gave a Tuesday recap of the previous evening’s Empire Builders program. In reviewing the broadcast, the article stated “the most thrilling incident was the cloudburst at Great Falls, in which their encampment was entirely swept away. The ‘Old Timer’ left them, in his description, comfortably established in the good graces of the Shoshone Indians with whom they will remain until next Monday. They will then travel back by the Overland route.”

The article added, “at the conclusion of the story a long telegram from the Governor of Montana in which the progress of that State was clearly set forth was read as an interesting commentary upon the rapid development in the country explored by Lewis and Clark.”

[CSM citation courtesy of radio historian R.R. King]

 

 

 

290211 - Portland Symphony Orchestra

Of all the Empire Builders episodes to air, this particular one stands out for the unique reason that it not only was broadcast from a remote location (Portland, Oregon), but it showcased a local symphony orchestra and not some signal event of the Great Northern Railway. The only other times the Empire Builders show was not broadcast from the NBC studios (either in New York or in Chicago) was the June 10, 1929, broadcast inaugurating the GN’s new “Empire Builder” passenger train, and of course the initial broadcast of January 12, 1929, dedicating the new Cascade Tunnel.

The Portland (Oregon) Symphony Orchestra, 1929-30 season. Author's collection

 

Throughout the course of this radio series, the Great Northern Railway deliberated tried to showcase cities or other locales along the route served by their trains. Many of the broadcasts were developed as historical sketches, often with completely fictionalized stories, but at other times reliant on at least some elements of historic fact. Even in the Portland Symphony Orchestra broadcast, the program opened with the Old Timer discussing the settlement of the city of Portland, and the way it got its name.

From the continuity (script) of the February 11, 1929, episode of Empire Builders:

Old Timer: “Back in 1845, jest one year after the first building had been set up in what is now the city of Portland, Oregon, a name was a pretty important thing. Two New England Yankees, Lovejoy and Pettygrove, had jest laid off 16 blocks of the townsite, an’ they had to call it somethin. Lovejoy, he was a Massachusetts man, an’ he held out for callin’ the new town Boston, but Pettygrove, he come from up Maine way, an’ he said they’d call the town Portland or nothin. Well, weren’t nothin’ to do but to flip a coin, an’ see who won, an’ that’s what they did. Pettygrove called heads, an’ heads it was! That’s how the city of Portland got its name!”

When the New York studio announcer and the Old Timer concluded their opening commentary, the attention of the show was handed off to an announcer standing by in Portland. The conductor of the Portland Symphony Orchestra, Willem Van Hoogstraten (1884-1965), was introduced to announce the musical selections to be performed. Here are the first two musical pieces performed on the air that evening (click on them for versions available on YouTube):

·        Fourth movement (or the allegro) from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony 

·        The Overture to Rosamunde, by Shubert

 

These performances entailed about twenty minutes of the thirty-minute broadcast. Most of the remainder of the time was allotted to Frank Branch Riley (1875-1975). Riley was a highly-educated man, with degrees in Economics from Stanford University and Law from Harvard University. He made a name for himself across much of the United States (particularly in the East and the Midwest) as a goodwill ambassador for Portland and the entire state of Oregon. He was a very popular speaker on the lecture circuits. In this broadcast of the Empire Builders, two minutes of air time were allotted to Riley to extoll the virtues of the state of Oregon.

George L. Baker (1868-1941), Mayor of Portland, also took to the microphone for a one-minute proclamation of Portland’s attractions, and invited the listeners to come see his fair city for themselves.

 

Willem Van Hoogstraten, conductor of the Portland Symphony Orchestra.
Author's collection

 

At this point in the broadcast, Willem Van Hoogstraten once more took to the podium to conduct the Portland Symphony Orchestra, this time to perform the March of the Sardar from Caucasian Sketches by Ippolitov Iwanow.

The closing comments from the NBC announcer included these statements:

Announcer:
           “Beyond Oregon and Washington lies California, Hawaii, Alaska, and the Orient, sending forth their call to eastern Americans gripped by the wanderlust. Some day you will follow this trail and discover this new empire. When you go, the Oriental Limited, crack train of the Great Northern Railway, will take you in comfort from Chicago to this land of enchantment, or bring you speedily back through historic Northwest Adventure land.

Would you like to know more about the Pacific Northwest? Write to the Passenger Department, Great Northern Railway, St. Paul, or the station to which you are listening, and you will receive an interesting booklet called The Scenic Northwest.”

 

In an effort to gauge the level of interest in their radio series, the Great Northern Railway tried a number of approaches. Measuring systems such as today’s Nielsen ratings of television viewership (which are increasingly adapting themselves to digital signal delivery and the trending of social media data) have some of their earliest roots in efforts to scientifically judge the size of radio listening audiences. In 1930, the Association of National Advertisers enlisted the services of Archibald Crossley (1896-1985), who was considered a pioneer of American opinion polls, along with the likes of Elmo Roper (1900-1971) and Dr. George Gallup (1901-1984). Crossley’s rating system involved calling homes by telephone and asking people what they had listened to the night before. During the Empire Builders broadcast of February 11, 1929, the GN hired people to call listeners in the Portland area to ask what they were listening to. A substantial number reported they were enjoying the Empire Builders presentation of the Portland Symphony Orchestra (at least until, we would presume, interrupted by the phone call).

 

290204 - Discovery of the Columbia River

After launching the Empire Builders series with a 3-part nod to James J. Hill, the Great Northern’s own “Empire Builder,” the railway next drew upon the life and accomplishments of Captain Robert Gray to portray historic events in the early history of the Pacific Northwest. Gray’s exploration of the coastal areas of what would eventually become Oregon and Washington were dramatized in the Monday night broadcast of February 4, 1929.

Gray sailed his flagship, the Lady Washington, along the coast of a future Oregon and located what he named Tillamook Bay. He also located the mouth of the Columbia River. Gray and his crew encountered various groups of natives, resulting in at least one or two skirmishes and loss of life. This is dramatized in the radio broadcast when Marcus Lopez, Gray’s West African cabin boy, perished near the shoreline.

The script for this story contains a high degree of “ugly American” dialogue, including some casual use of the now infamous “n-word” in reference to some of the Native Americans. The exchange between some of Gray’s unvarnished deck hands and the Chinese people they encounter on their voyage back to Boston is likewise unabashedly rough and rude. But in real life, as in the radio play, Gray and his men accomplish the notable feat of being the first American vessel to ever circumnavigate the world. In the Orient, Gray successfully traded many North American furs for a large load of Chinese tea – much of which was spoiled on the trip across the Atlantic. Nevertheless, Gray was toasted in Boston for his ‘round the world voyage.

 

Illustration from crewmember Robert Haswell’s log of the voyages of the Columbia and Lady Washington

After a very brief stay of only a matter of weeks, Gray set out again for the Pacific coast, this time as captain of the ship Columbia. On his return to the area that now comprises northern Oregon and southern Washington, Gray and his crew definitively located the mouth of the Columbia River, which of course took its name from Gray’s ship.

As with most of the Empire Builders episodes, the Old Timer provides the opening narration, several transitional narrations to provide a segue to leap across spans of time, and narration at the end of the program to wrap things up. In this broadcast, the Old Timer is accompanied by his old hound dog, January (named for the month in which he was born – perhaps suggestive of the launching of the Empire Builders series in January).