For starters, here is the majority of the press release put out for this date’s broadcast of Empire Builders:
The city under the
richest hill on earth is the locale of a melodrama which Empire Builders will
broadcast Monday night. The Old Timer, played by Harvey Hays, takes the
listeners a half mile underground with him, into the copper mines underlying
Butte, Mont.
The rescue that is
effected when a crazed employee seizes control of the hoisting apparatus on the
surface and attempts to run the elevator cage at its mile-a-minute pace up over
the hundred-foot frame at the top of the shaft, is said to be the most
difficult bit of radio melodrama ever attempted. The heroine whose quick wit
saves the situation, is played by Miss Virginia Gardiner.
Musical effects are
by Andy Sannella and his orchestra, while the sound effects were developed by
Harry Edison, sound-effect technician.
The story was
written by W. O. Cooper, a Chicago writer, who made a special trip to the Butte
mines to gather material for the story and to assure the authentic background
which marks all Empire Builders productions.
Bob MacGimsey,
three-part harmony whistler, also will be heard on the same program.
 |
| Wyllis O. Cooper, circa 1930. GN Goat magazine, April, 1930. Author's collection |
Wyllis O. Cooper (1899-1955) was a prodigious author of many
radio scripts in the heyday of commercial radio. His preferred genre seems to
have been stories of mystery and suspense – creepy, sometimes spine-chilling
material. Among other projects, he wrote for the popular series “Lights Out”
and “Quiet, Please.” Before his work evolved into that arena, however, Cooper hired
on with the McJunkin Advertising Company of Chicago – which had as a major
client the Great Northern Railway. Cooper became involved in writing scripts
used on Empire Builders. He is credited with writing the story for the Empire Builders program of November 11, 1929, and also for contributing to the "Glacier Park Winter" broadcast of November 25, 1929. On the night
of February 10, 1930, Empire Builders
aired another story that was authored by Cooper, simply entitled “Butte.” It did not
evoke quite the same macabre atmosphere of much of his later work, but you can
see elements of that style at play. And more so than nearly any previous
episode of Empire Builders, this
presentation left behind the relatively easy-going, mild nature of most of the
series’ earlier offerings.
Cooper traveled to Butte in January of 1930 to research and
secure background material to write the “Butte” broadcast story. Originally set
to air on January 20th, the program was pushed back to February 10th.
This was due to the delay of Major Royce’s Arctic Patrol, as described in my last blog entry.
This program opened with the announcer highlighting the
appearance again of Bob MacGimsey.
ANNOUNCER:
You are listening to
Empire Builders, a presentation by the Great Northern Railway. You will next
hear Bob MacGimsey harmony whistler. Mr. MacGimsey uses neither mechanical
devices, nor his fingers. He simply stands before the microphone and whistles,
just as anyone else would, except that MacGimsey produces two and three-part
harmony. Mr. MacGimsey is accompanied by Andy Sannella’s orchestra.
 |
| A doctor inspects the throat of Bob MacGimsey - nothing unusual is discovered. GN Press Release. Author's collection |
PIONEER: Mornin’, waiter. Thanks. B’lieve I’ll
spread myself this mornin’. Kind o’ hungry. Lemme see – reckon I’ll take this number
nine club breakfast, with – ah with oatmeal, ‘n’ scrambled eggs ‘n’ bacon, hot
muffins, an’ some coffee. Better bring the coffee first, though. This here
demi-tasse you brought for a starter just whetted my appetite for a big cup.
I have quite a number of Great Northern Railway memorabilia
items in my collection, but I’m short on dining car menus from the early 1930s.
I’d like to take a look at a few and see if any offer breakfast selections matching
the Old Timer’s choice in the radio script. My hunch is that there really was
such an option on the menu. Reading that passage of the script, I envy the Old
Timer. I enjoy breakfast on Amtrak’s Empire Builder dining cars, but to have a
meal like the Old Timer did, onboard the Great Northern’s Empire
Builder… that must have been something special. Just after the Old Timer
ordered breakfast, an old acquaintance of his named Joe entered the dining car.
PIONEER: Hello there, Joe! C’mon and set down here
with me. Haven’t seen you in a long time! Just come up from Butte?
1st
MAN: Well hello there, Old Timer!
No, I’ve been over in Great Falls on business. Going on out to Seattle. I came
up from the Falls last night on number 224, and stayed at Havre overnight, so I
could catch the Empire Builder this morning…
Okay – fact check time. I may not have Great Northern dining
car menus from 1930, but I sure do have a lot of the GN public timetables from
that era. The Great Northern Railway did indeed have a daily Train 224 – it was
a local service that ran between Great Falls and Havre (Train 223, also a daily
train, ran the opposite direction, from Havre to Great Falls). The Old Timer’s
pal Joe would have caught the 5:30pm departure out of Great Falls, and would have
arrived in Havre at 9:30 that night. The next morning, the westbound Empire
Builder (Train 1) was scheduled to pull into the depot at 7:00am, departing 15
minutes later. The radio story works out perfectly.
It turns out Joe was traveling with a friend of his named
George. The two of them joined the Old Timer at his table for breakfast. An
interesting exchange occurred as they made introductions:
1st
MAN: Shake hands with my friend,
George Brown, from Dallas, Texas.
2nd
MAN: How do you do, sir? What was
the name?
PIONEER: Pleased to meet you, Mr. Brown. Why, most
everybody out here calls me the Old Timer. (CHUCKLE) I’ve been round this
country since ‘way back when. Set down.
That’s it, pal. No offense, but all you’re getting is “Old
Timer.” His real name is just going to remain a mystery.
 |
| Newspaper illustration of Harvey Hays from April, 1930. Brooklyn Daily Eagle |
After Joe and George placed their orders for breakfast, the
men began to chit-chat. The Old Timer asked Joe what was new down Butte way,
where Joe was from.
1st
MAN: Not much, Old Timer. I’ve
been away for a week. Oh, yes, you knew Charley and Alice Cavanagh, didn’t you?
PIONEER: Sure do. Knew ‘em before they was married,
too.
1st
MAN: Oh, is that so? Well, they
just moved into a beautiful new home out on Broadway, down there in Butte.
Alice fell heir to quite a fortune, I understand, an’ they bought a new home.
Wonderful place, too!
PIONEER: Well, I don’t know’s I ought to tell this,
but there’s an inside story to Alice’s inheritance …
1st
MAN: Inside story! What do you
mean? Didn’t some uncle o’ hers die and leave her a lot o’ money?
PIONEER: (CHUCKLE)
No, indeedy! That money –
Their breakfasts arrived, but as they began to eat, the Old
Timer explained how it came to be that the Anaconda Copper Mining Company (ACM)
was actually behind Alice’s big windfall. He admitted Alice might not be too
happy knowing that he was sharing her story, but he plunged in anyway.
Alice Monahan and Charley Cavanagh were both from Butte, and
knew each other growing up. Charley went to work in mining, but relocated to New
York. ACM hired Charley to return to Butte to do some studies of their mining
operations. In the meantime, another fellow from Butte, Dan Clegg, took a fancy
to Alice. Alice, however, most decidedly did not fancy Clegg, who among
other bad traits was a heavy drinker.
One day Charley was tasked with going down to the 2,800 foot
level of the Mountain Consolidated Mine, and he asked the Old Timer to come
along down with him. The Old Timer made no bones about how uneasy he was with
the idea, but Charley cajoled him into it. Alice was with them top-side, and
she tried to ease the Old Timer’s fears too.
ALICE: You won’t mind it a bit, Old Timer.
It’s just like riding in an elevator. Why, I’ve been underground dozens of
times, I just love it.
PIONEER: (Dubiously) Well, I d’know, Alice, I’m not
so crazy about it. I’d rather stay on top o’ the ground till they put me
under it!
CHARLEY: Oh, come on, Old Timer! It’s perfectly safe
– look at the fifteen thousand men that work underground here every day!
PIONEER: Yeah, but I’m no miner, Charley. Say, is
that tall thing over there where you go down the shaft? Looks like an oil-well
derrick! How high is it?
ALICE: Oh, I think Dad told me once. One
hundred and twenty feet high, I think he said. It’s right above the shaft and
that’s a half mile deep. That big wheel at the top is what the cable runs over.
See, there’s the cable running from the top of it over here to the engine house
… Look at that wheel spin. Way down below there’s the cage for the men and bins
for the ore. They’re coming up now, and coming fast. They call that frame the
gallows-frame.
The Old Timer, typically quite calm, even-keeled, and
self-assured, displayed an uncharacteristically timid reaction.
PIONEER: Gallows-frame. (Chuckles nervously) It’d
be a gallows all right if the engineer didn’t shut off the juice and you
happened to take a mile-a-minute ride up there over that wheel. No thanks, not
for me.
Alice and Charley talked the Old Timer through his
misgivings and tried to convince him of the safety of the mine elevator. Just
then, Clegg showed up – drunk and belligerent. Clegg had already been fired by
the mining company for his drinking. Charley tried to scold him into leaving.
Failing that, Charley had to sock ol’ Clegg upside the head to chase him off.
PIONEER: My, that was a wallop you gave him,
Charley! Had it comin’, though.
ALICE: Yes, it’s a shame about Dan. He’s
really smart, you know. He invented a lot of the safety devices around the
Anaconda properties, but he drinks, and he’s so – so wild!
PIONEER: Speakin’ of safety devices, Charley –
what’s to prevent the man in the engine house here from forgettin’ to turn the
power off when he’s pullin’ th’ cage up, an’ haulin’ it right up over the top
o’ that – what do you call gallows frame?
CHARLEY: Why, that’d be impossible, even if he tried
to. There are more’n half a dozen separate safeties there that would
automatically stop the cage. Couldn’t be done.
A miner named MacMahon showed up and joined Charley and the
Old Timer as they began to descend into the mine. Charley went on to explain to
the Old Timer why he just shouldn’t be worried about the mine elevator being
dangerous. Charley said:
Anaconda
has one of the finest safety records of any industrial organization in the
world. Why, take the hoisting arrangements, for instance. There are so many
interlocking safeties on every hoist – it’s absolutely impossible to have an
accident. Unless someone deliberately disconnects each separate switch – and
he’d have to be an engineer to do that!
When the three
men had descended into the mine a good distance, MacMahon pointed out a deposit
of ore that he wanted to show Charley.
CHARLEY: Yep. Good clean copper glance – chalcocite.
Guess I’ll knock off a couple of chunks. (SOUND OF HAMMER ON ROCK)
PIONEER: (chuckles) Better be sparin’ of that rock,
Charley. Aren’t you afraid you’ll run out someday.
CHARLEY: Sure, someday, perhaps – a hundred years
from now – or more. This hill you’re in, Old Timer, has given the world four
and a half billion dollars in mineral wealth in fifty years.
It turns out
Charley’s prophecy about the ore running out in a hundred years didn’t quite
play out. The Anaconda mine was effectively shut down in 1947. By the mid-50’s,
open-pit mining began and the massive Berkeley Pit was dug. This operation, too,
has been abandoned, leaving behind one of the nation's largest Superfund sites. But
that’s another story. Back to this one.
MACMAHON: Say, Charley, we’d better be startin’
back pretty soon, ‘f you have to get over to the precipitation tanks ‘fore four
o’clock.
PIONEER: Over to the what?
CHARLEY: The precipitation tanks. You
know, the company runs the blue “copper water” – copper sulphate solution, it
is – over the tanks full of tin cans and scrap iron. There isn’t a tin can in
Butte – the Anaconda buys ‘em all. And the copper water running over the cans
deposits metallic copper in place of the other metals.
PIONEER: Come on’ You’re stringin’ me!
MACMAHON: No he’s not, Old Timer. Years ago,
one of the miners had a pile of tin cans in his back yard, where the waste
water from one of the mines ran through it. He discovered, one morning, that
the tin cans had turned to pure cement copper. He sold the idea to the company,
an’ today we recover millions of pounds of copper that way!
PIONEER: Well, dog my cats! I s’pose
you’ll be tellin’ me that you wash copper out o’ the miners’ clothes next!
MACMAHON: There’s something in that, too. Our
flotation process was discovered by a miner’s wife, who was washing her
husband’s overalls. Little particles of metallic copper rose to the top of the
soapsuds, and nowadays the flotation process we derived from that thing is
quite a factor in the recovery of copper.
If you hadn’t noticed by now, it’s clear that Wyllis Cooper
truly did accomplish some significant research in preparing this story. Up to
this point the story contains knowledgeable detail about the layout of the
Anaconda mine, the gallows frame hoisting system, and the presence of copper
ore called chalcocite. The explanation of copper precipitation is another
remarkable detail.
The men down in the mine shaft decided they were ready to
come topside, and they rang a bell system to alert the hoist engineer at the
surface to bring them up. Alice heard the signal and understood what it meant,
but she became alarmed when the hoist engineer failed to respond. She went to
investigate, and found a drunken Dan Clegg at the controls. He had knocked the
hoist engineer cold, and he launched into a tirade of half-crazed threats.
CLEGG: I’ll tell y’. I’ve knocked out ‘at
dumb eng’neer. ‘N’en I’m gonna hois’ y’r boy friend. I’ll hois’ ‘m! I’ll hois’
‘m! I’ll hois’ ‘m right over top o’ gallows fram ‘n’ smear ‘m all over whole
state o’ Montana! HAHAHAHAHAHA!
ALICE: Dan! You wouldn’t! You couldn’t do
that if you wanted to. The safety devices’ll work, and stop the hoist. Come on
now, and help me with Emmett!
CLEGG: Safe’y d’vices! Ha ha ha! Y’ li’l
fool, I’m engineer! I used be safe’y eng’neer here! I spent whole hour
disc’nectin’ safe’ ies. I know how. I w’s safe’y engineer ‘fore y’ ol’ man fired
me – th’ ol’ rat! I’ll kill him too!
(PAUSE) See! There – wire’s
bus’ed – ‘n’ there, ‘n’ there, ‘n’
there, ‘n’ there, ‘n’ there!
Alice’s father, Timmy Monahan, retired from ACM after many
years working there. It was Monahan who had fired Clegg for his drunkenness on
the job. On this day, he had come by the mine to see his friend the Old Timer,
and to chat with other old friends. He was on hand when Clegg was discovered,
and he tried to intervene.
MONAHAN: Here, here, what’s going on? Ye’re up to no good,
Dan Clegg! Come down out o’ that control stand!
CLEGG: I’ll show y’ wha’s goin’ on, y’ ol’
fool! How y’ like ‘at?
Clegg seemed to enjoy cracking people over the head. He did
not spare Monahan. He knocked him cold. Now it was up to brave Alice to try to
put a stop to the drunken madman. Clegg raved on about what he was doing.
CLEGG: (off) Alice! Hey, Al’ce! Watch ‘e
dial! Here comes yer sweetie, ‘n’ ‘at ol’ fool with ‘m, ‘n’ Bill MacMahon!
(ONE BELL WHIR OF MOTORS AND HOIST UP)
28 – 27 – 26 – 25 –
24 – up over the top y’ go, y’ fools! Y’ would smack me! I tol’ y’ I’d git y’!
(SOUND OF HOIST RISES) 19 – 18 – 17 – 16
– C’m on, d’ ye hear me? Take y’r las’ ride – right up and over top! “OVER THE
TOP” – ain’t that good. Ha, ha, ha!
About this time Timmy Monahan slowly came to, and Alice
pleaded with him for advice on how to stop Clegg.
MONAHAN: Alice! Alice! What’s happened? What hit me?
Ohh!
ALICE: (whispers, wildly) Father, Dan Clegg
has disconnected all the safety switches, and he’s hauling Charley and the rest
up, and he’s going to run the cage up over the top of the gallows-frame, and
kill them all! Oh, what shall I do? Father! Can’t you say something?
(SOUND OF HOIST RISES LOUDER AND FASTER)
CLEGG: (off) 10 – 9 – 8
MONAHAN: (weakly) The switchboard! Quick! Grab that
crowbar there. Throw it into the switch board – right through the glass – it
will short-circuit the switches. Don’t hold on to it. Throw it – or you’ll be
killed.
Alice flung the crowbar and shorted out the switch board,
and the whole contraption came to a sudden halt. Clegg was electrocuted.
Meanwhile, down in the cold, silent blackness of the elevator shaft . . .
PIONEER: Charley! What’s wrong? Are you
here?
CHARLEY: Right here, Old Timer! You all
right? You, Bill?
PIONEER: All right, but scared to
death. What’re we stopped for?
MACMAHON: Something’s happened up on the
surface. Don’t be scared, though – the safety’ll hold us – the cage can’t drop.
PIONEER: Well, I wish this thing’d stop
bouncin’ up an’ down!
MACMAHON: Oh, that’s all right! The cage always
does that when it stops. The slack in the cable, you know.
Judging by the dim light up above, the men estimated they
were still about a hundred feet from the surface.
Back to the men eating
breakfast in the dining car of the Empire Builder ... Joe and George quizzed the
Old Timer about how things played out from there. Joe commented about how
Clegg’s death had seemed such a mystery to everyone.
PIONEER: No, we all promised to say nothing about
the whole affair; but those people down at the Anaconda didn’t forget. Why,
look what could o’ happened. Outside o’ ruinin’ my health (CHUCKLE) Dan’d ‘a’
busted up half a million dollars’ worth o’ machinery, an’ killed these other
two guys too. So, as old Tim Monahan said, Alice was a hero – an’ when she an’
Charley got married, the Anaconda gave ‘em ten thousand dollars f’r a weddin’
present. And that’s the story o’ Alice’s inheritance and probably explains that
new house.
 |
| A Great Northern dining car interior, circa 1935. |
STEWARD: I hope you enjoyed your breakfast, sir.
PIONEER: I sure did, steward. (Chuckles) You know, I sort of suspect that’s why
everybody gets up mornings on these Great Northern trains – they don’t want to
miss those breakfasts.
With a short musical bridge, the announcer wrapped up the
show.
ANNOUNCER:
And so we leave the
Old Timer, going back to join a group of kindred spirits in the sun room of the
Empire Builder. There’s a man from New York, savoring a morning cigar over the
pages of the Wall Street Journal. Alongside him sits a rancher from Billings,
deep in the morning’s Great Falls Tribune. A famous actress skims over the
pages of the Illustrated London News between glances out of the windows. Two
engineers, returning to the Orient, compare notes on Chinese travel. One looks
up and grins. “Nothing like this on the South Manchurian railway south of
Harbin,” he comments. His comrade laughingly nods an assent. Such is the kind
of travel comfort found on the Great Northern’s trains between Chicago and the
Pacific coast – the new Empire Builder and the famous Oriental Limited.
Because of the rescheduling of this episode of Empire Builders (as mentioned near the
outset of this blog entry), some of the early information about this program
was put out in the January issue of the Great Northern Railway’s Goat magazine. In it, the following
description of the Butte story was provided: “The third program of the month
will tell of Butte, Montana, a mile high and a mile deep, whose immense copper
mines total many miles of underground workings.”
This phrase about Butte being “a mile high and a mile deep”
is evidently a moniker the community and its mining activity earned many years
earlier. What gets a little more interesting about this broadcast of the Empire Builders, besides its being one
of the earliest radio plays of W.O. Cooper’s long career, is that Cooper wrote
a story for the radio series “Quiet, Please” which he titled “A Mile High and a
Mile Deep.” That story was much more of a spine-tingling thriller than this Empire Builders story, but it too used
the copper mines of Butte as its milieu. The Quiet, Please broadcast occurred on two consecutive nights in
August of 1947.
 |
| Wyllis O. Cooper and Betty Reynolds White (no, not THAT Betty White) inspecting the railroad sound contraption used in the final season of Empire Builders, circa December, 1930. Author's collection |
Very cool.
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