290624 - Vigilante Days in Montana

I’ve recorded the title of the June 24 program as “Vigilante Days in Montana” due to finding this title among some of the Great Northern corporate records at the Minnesota Historical Society. In reviewing the continuity for the broadcast, however, it does not appear the show had anything to do with vigilantes. Instead, the Old Timer meets up with Jack, Betty, and Aunt Ella, who persuade the Old Timer to tell them an old story of the Blackfeet Indians. He proceeds to regale them with the tale of the three trials. Seems there was once this young Indian maiden named Bird at Twilight…

The Old Timer explained that she was “both wise an’ beautiful an’ she had many suitors, so many that she couldn’t choose between them.” She “devised tests for her suitors, an’ no one who couldn’t accomplish the tests was eligible for her hand.” The story of those tests, and the accomplishment of one fortunate suitor, then played out.

The Empire Builders broadcasts usually commenced with some form of statement about the GN's passenger train service, which up until June 10 featured the Oriental Limited. That changed, of course, after the Empire Builder train was introduced to the public on the June 10 broadcast. The last continuity I currently have prior to the June 10 program is the one for May 20, 1929. In this show’s continuity, the opening announcement was basically the same as it had been since the inception of the series in January. It demonstrates how the show's introduction highlighted the Oriental Limited. Here is the announcement as it appeared in the May 20 continuity: 

OPENING ANNOUNCEMENT:

The Great Northern Railway presents “Empire Builders” a program dedicated to the advancement of the American Northwest. We first hear the approach of the “Oriental Limited” the Great Northern’s Crack Train.

I do not currently have a continuity for the June 17 program, but for the June 24 program, here is a faithful transcription of the opening announcement from a file copy of the show’s continuity  (including strikethroughs made as the material was edited for the broadcast):

OPENING ANNOUNCEMENT:

The Great Northern Railway presents “Empire Builders” a program dedicated to the advancement of the American Northwest. We first hear the approach of the new “Empire Builder” the Great Northern’s Crack Train. new companion train to the Oriental Limited.

Notice how the Empire Builder train makes its appearance as the “new companion” to the well-known Oriental Limited. This is certainly not a big deal, but I think it’s interesting to note the transition in how the company called attention to its passenger trains with the arrival of a new premier service.

After using the June 17 broadcast to call attention to the opening of the summer season at Glacier National Park, Empire Builders on June 24 again focused on tourist accommodations and attractions to be enjoyed by those traveling to the region on a Great Northern train. Here's how the broadcast opened:

 

ANNOUNCER:    The program will now continue under the direction of the Pioneer. Here you are, old timer, we’re just ready for you. I hear you’re going to take us into Glacier National Park again tonight.

 

PIONEER:            Well, I reckon that’s right, Mister. Once I get a-holt of a good thing, I hate to leave it, an’ Glacier Park is SURE GOOD! I tell you, once I get inside the big entrance to that Park, an’ look up an’ see the shining Mountains I know I’m home. You know, back in the old days, the Injuns an’ most everybody else used that name, the Shining Mountains. They was called that because they sparkle so when the sun catches ‘em, that folks used to think they was full of crystal stones. Matter of fact, it was jest the glaciers twinklin in the sunlight. Well, they’re still a-shinin’, an’ they will be fer many a day. Many’s the time I’ve got off a Great Northern train there at the park, an’ stayed me the night there at the Big Tree Lodge, one of the finest taverns hotels I ever did see. Jest as beautiful an’ modern as any place in the world, an’ yet it fits there in the mountains jest as if it had growed natural. Come next mornin’, like enough I’d take me over to Two Medicine Lake or St. Mary’s Lake, an’ long ‘bout the afternoon I’d find my favorite spot of all Many Glaciers, over on the edge of Lake McDermott. The hotel there is jest as good as the one at the entrance to the Park, an’ the settin’ is somethin’ that even an old man like me kin appreciate. That lake there – Lake McDermott – is set like a blue jewel against a background of green pine trees, an’ over all the snow capped mountains. I tell you I’d like to talk poetic if I could, when it comes to Many Glaciers an’ Lake McDermott. I call to mind one summer’s day when I’d crossed the lake to the far side from the hotel – over on the lower slope of Mount Grinnell, I was – an’ there I saw three people, tourists they looked like, goin’ toward the little encampment of Blackfeet Injuns that’s there in the summer. Well, those folks looked to me like old friends, so I ‘lowed I’d catch up with ‘em an’ go along.

(TRANSITIONAL MUSIC IN AND FADE OUT)

 

This episode of the Empire Builders series brought to a head a growing concern of GN management about inaccuracies in the radio program content. I've commented on this before, but Empire Builders was first and foremost an advertising campaign. Any time the railroad paid to have information about its trains and the enticements of places it served (such as Glacier National Park), accuracy was paramount. Among the errors in this show’s first drafts that rankled GN management were using the incorrect term “Many Glaciers” (it is simply “Many Glacier”) and Bierstadt’s repeated faux pas of referring to the railroad’s lodging facilities in the park area as “taverns” instead of hotels.

 

Vintage Lantern Slide view of Lake McDermott (now known as Swiftcurrent Lake) and Many Glacier Hotel. Author's collection.

 

Press releases for this program include statements such as the following:

“The familiar characters of the Old Pioneer, Jack, Betty and Aunt Ella will act out an old legend of the Sioux Indians, who, with the Blackfeet, were the fiercest warriors known to this country.”

Edward Hale Bierstadt, the principal story writer for the first season of Empire Builders, made a case for infusing additional recurring characters into the story lines, in addition to the ubiquitous “Old Timer.” Jack, Betty, and Aunt Ella did not take hold the way the Old Timer did. I’ll have to do a little more digging, but I’m not sure they even made it into more than just this one script - though this begs the question, why refer to them as “familiar characters?"

Someone at the GN, probably Harold Sims, wrote the copy for the closing announcement of the broadcast:

 

Every day four fine transcontinental trains, two westbound and two eastbound, stop at Glacier Park station. The first of these trains, the Empire Builder, made its inaugural flight from Chicago just two weeks ago tonight. This newest of fast coast trains, fresh from the shops of the Pullman Company, embodies every travel refinement that the most skillful of master car designers have created. The solarium-observation car is a masterpiece of design. Here are many travel luxuries, including barber shop, shower baths, valet, ladies’ maid, and buffet. Here also are two luxuriously furnished, comfortable lounge rooms; in one will be found the latest radio equipment.

The Great Northern Railway’s companion train to the Empire Builder is the Oriental Limited, a transcontinental train which for five years has won the enthusiastic acclaim of discerning travelers. No extra fare is charged on these trains. Low round trip summer excursion fare tickets to Glacier National Park and the cities and vacation areas of the Pacific Northwest are good on both the Empire Builder and the Oriental Limited. Great Northern travel offices in nearly all the large cities of America will be very glad to help you arrange for your vacation trip this summer. They will relieve you of all worry in connection with train and hotel reservations. See a Great Northern representative soon about your travel plans or write to the Great Northern Railway, Saint Paul, Minnesota.

 

The final program of the first season of Empire Builders followed a week later, on July 1^st. That program featured the Prince of Wales Hotel north of the U.S./Canadian border. But more about that show next time…