310525 - On Time Hank [version 2]

Recording status:  recorded, not in circulation

On February 17, 1930, Empire Builders aired a story called On Time Hank. The Great Northern Railway claimed to have received a significant amount of positive feedback on that program, many listeners requesting that the story be repeated. I don’t know if that was truthful or just puffery, but either way, the GN elected to use the story once again on the night of May 25, 1931. With only a handful of remaining broadcasts before the series went off the air for good, it was probably expeditious to use this old story to fill in. I suppose the pool of available stories was becoming shallow.

For the broadcast of 2/17/1930, I wrote a fairly extensive essay. In fact, I encourage you to take a couple of minutes and read that one again first, then come back to this blog entry.

Rather than revisit every point I made in the earlier essay, I’ll leave it to you to read that one again for some of the details, and will instead focus this one on some of the notable differences. In summary, though, here are a few points that I wrote about the first time:

·       The script for the story of On Time Hank was originally drafted by the GN’s Harold M. Sims.

·       “On Time Hank” was a real person – Henry T. Mayfield (1862-1937), a veteran locomotive engineer in service to the Great Northern Railway.

·       The first airing of the story of On Time Hank was purported to make innovative use of flashbacks and sound effects. Sims believed that was a strong factor in making the story so popular among radio listeners.

·       Because the story entailed real railroad operations on the Great Northern, Sims was careful in writing this story to ensure accuracy (there were many real railroaders in the listening audience) and to reflect the railroad in a positive light – the radio show was, after all, an advertising vehicle for the company, more so than simple entertainment.

As noted in my blog essay of one week ago, the resurrected story of On Time Hank was initially advertised to air on May 18^th, but was replaced with The Billion Dollar Baby.

The press release issued by Harold Sims of the Great Northern Railway, announcing On-Time Hank as the story to be broadcast May 18^th , was prepared in late April. Here is the relevant content of that release:

“On Time Hank,” a railway melodrama and one of Empire Builders most successful radio presentations last season, will be repeated Monday night, May 18.

            Hundreds of requests have been received for the repetition of this thrilling story of the rails. Its popularity probably is due to the fact that “On Time Hank” is essentially a “sound” story, ideally adapted for radio and is packed with thrills from start to finish.

            The radio audience rides with the Old Timer in the cab of a thundering locomotive on the fast mail; the next moment it sympathizes with the heroine, the telegraph operator, who is confronted with the choice between love and duty; and finally the Great Northern’s Fast Mail roars into the action just in time to frustrate a bank robbery.

            While the story is partly fiction, the characters are real, “On-Time Hank” being a veteran engineer on the Great Northern’s Kalispell division, and the hero of many a “fast ride.”

            A dog, January, shares leading honors with the heroine telegraph operator, Sally. Sally will be played by Lucille Husting, while the cast includes such popular radio players as Don Ameche, John Daly and, last, but not least, Harvey Hays as the Old Timer.

 

Harold M. Sims, Executive Assistant to the President, Great Northern Railway

Sims wrote “while the story is partly fiction, the characters are real …” Well, I do know that On-Time Hank (Henry Mayfield) was real, but there is no indication that anyone else in the story was. This press release is notable in the fact that Hank, “a veteran engineer on the Great Northern’s Kalispell division,” was mentioned at all. The press release for the original airing of this story did not call attention to that fact in any way.

The continuity that I found for this iteration of the Hank story was located on microfilm at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, a few pages were missing. When I am able to access the recording of this broadcast (which I hope to do in a matter of weeks or months from now), I’ll be able to transcribe the missing dialog. In the meantime, the continuity from the original airing of this story is sufficiently similar to use to fill in the blank spots. Comparing the two continuities, it is interesting to note a few modifications made to the newer version.

In the original dialog, Sally (the telegrapher’s daughter) explains to her boyfriend, Jim, why the Fast Mail train is running late. The script originally had the Fast Mail running down an automobile in St. Paul, complete with a brief admonition to careless drivers. Sims probably thought this reflected poorly on railroad safety (and Great Northern train safety in particular). The revised script replaced the car wreck story with the following:

SALLY:          Everything’s on time. Twenty-seven – the Fast Mail – hasn’t got onto the division yet. She’ll be running nearly an hour late. They had to hold her in St. Paul for the mail from the east, and she left there two hours and a half late. She’ll be hitting it up through here about 10 o’clock tonight. 

Far better, I suppose, to blame the delay on an unnamed competing railroad who was late handing off the mail “from the east.”

Another noticeable modification to the dialog was during the action in the cab of the Fast Mail’s locomotive, with On-Time Hank at the throttle, assisted by his fireman “Irish,” and accompanied by the Old Timer who had hopped a ride with them.

When the Old Timer remarked at how fast Hank was driving the train, Irish told the Old Timer “When we’re late, Hank doesn’t slow down for anything short of a six degree curve.” Sims elected to tone that down a bit. Here’s the revised dialogue: “Look at the speed indicator – sixty-eight miles an hour. Hank sure does yank ‘er through!”

In the original telling of the story, the Old Timer responded to Irish by saying:

PIONEER:      Holdin’ onto that window frame doesn’t do much good. Maybe my holdin’ ain’t just right. That’s the fourth time I’ve slid off this seat box! Well, doggone it this may not be the smoothest ride I ever had, but I’ll take anybody’s word it’s the fastest. Your Empire Builder and Oriental Limited take these curves sort of reasonable, but my gosh!

Actor Harvey Hays - the "Old Timer"

Again, after an apparent reflection on the advertising impact of those comments, Sims found a different way for the Old Timer to express how impressed he was with the operation of the train. Here’s what replaced the Old Timer’s comments as shown above:

PIONEER:      Whew, doggone it, this may not be the most comfortable ride I ever had, but I’ll take anybody’s word it’s the fastest. Your Empire Builder is mighty easy ridin’ but up here in the front …

There were a few other minor edits, but they’re not worth commenting on. Suffice it to say, Sims clearly took the opportunity to review and revise the original script to ensure the Great Northern Railway was presented in a positive light, without sacrificing the dramatic nature of the story. After all, that was a significant part of what he was paid to do.

 

Modern-day view of the H.M. Sims home in St. Paul.

 

 

Until next time, keep those dials tuned to Empire Builders!