Your Announcer
PITY poor Harlow Wilcox, NBC announcer whose voice is heard
on a variety of programs origination in that network’s Chicago studios. Harlow
earns an enviable salary-and practically every cent of it goes on the horses.
No-Harlow never has bet on a race in his life. The nags which preempt his
income are polo ponies.
Not that Wilcox courts commiseration. For what else should
he spend his money? After all, he’s only 35 and he’s in that state of blessed
singleness in which he can fold up his trousers at night with serene assurance
that (barring burglars) they will not be rifled by hands that leave telltale
finger-nail polish.
There was a time when Harlow lavished his excess funds on
Persian carpets, but that was before he fell victim to the more rugged
diversion of equine croquet. And there is more than mere love of the game in
the Wilcox addiction. He is one of a small group of young Chicagoans who are
eager to show the world that polo need not be exclusively a rich man’s game. Of
course the boys have no objection if the afferent still wish to carry on the
sport, but personally they desire to prove that the proletariat can pursue it
too, thus extending Jeffersonian principles of democracy.
Their medium of spreading the doctrine of putting the poor
on ponies is a privately conducted club in a suburb just south of Chicago. It
is Harlow’s contention that the only marked difference between a rich man and
one of restricted means is in the number of changes of clothing each possesses.
And that’s how he Polo and the Hunt Club dogma works out: The only difference
is in the number of changes of horses between players of the two classes.
The favorite Wilcox mount is steed which acquired its name
from its complexion. Buckskin: and one he is in the saddle it is difficult to
tell where Harlow leaves off and the Centaurs begin. Since word has been spread
about that Wilcox is something of an Adonis in his <jodphers> there has been a sudden mounting of feminine
interest in polo the girls cheerfully admitting that they take the 20-mile trip
to the club with mallets aforethought.
But all of that relates to relaxation and doesn’t bear on
the diligence with which Harlow applies himself to this trade of announcing All
of the verve which he puts into his avocation is equally stressed in his very
stylish make work. That’s why sponsors slyly hint, when signing their contact,
that it would be quite in line with their state of mind if Mr. Wilcox were
assigned to their program.
Like most of the announcers whose names have become
important to radio, Harlow, who was born in Omaha, Nebraska, March 12, 1900 is
a product of the singing and dramatic schools. His theatrical experience was
mostly of inflection. His academic education fostered that faultless diction,
and the combination functions to give him a manner of address that reveals him
as one of the air’s master salesman.
To listeners an announcer often is just the go-between for
the audience and the performers, but to the advertisers who foot the hills he
is no part of the picturesque. He either helps to move merchandise off the
shelves or her is promptly shelved himself. The swelling list of class accounts
handled by Wilcox is sufficient tribute for him.
Yet when he first applied to Chicago radio stations for a
job as announcer he was rejected as unsuited to the job. Only for the fact that
the manager of an obscure broadcasting unity liked Harlow’s voice and gave him
a chance, he might still be filling his original Chicago job of sales manager
for a manufacturing concern.
The experience which he rolled up on that first microphone
job led to his eventual engagement by the Columbia Broadcasting System where
his most important assignment was the Myrt and Marge programs. NBC lured him
two years ago.
If the much-cited maiden’s prayer is what it’s cracked up to
be-then Harlow about six feet, weighs 180 pounds, has shiny black hair and
brown eyes.
Harlow Wilcox: His announcing is in demand- he is the
answer to proverbial maidens’ prayers- he keeps a string of polo ponies.
Harlow Wilcox announces, among others, the Fibber McGee and Molly broadcasts Mondays over an NBC-WJZ network at 8 p. m. EST (7 CST : 6 MST
: 5 PST) and the Princess Pat Players every Monday over the same network at
9:30 p. m. EST (8:30 CST : 7:30 MST : 6:30 PST).
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