Fill in the Blanks!

The January 14, 1957, issue of LIFE magazine (pp.122-123) contained a fill-in-the-blank section of ten public-service messages from the Advertising Council.  If you have been reading this blog, you should be able to complete this one below.  Sorry no prizes for the correct answer, except self-satisfaction. If you cannot fill in the blanks, well, as a consequence, you will have to read ALL of the blog postings. Good luck!

At the end of the section, readers were told, in part:

There probably isn't a day that goes by that you haven't heard or read at least one of these vital public services messages. Why? Simply because American business, recognizing the importance of these projects gladly donate space in their printed advertising and time from their radio and TV shows to bring you these messages. 

The Advertising Council, along with the nation's leading advertising agencies, directs and prepares these campaigns -- free of charge. Not one penny or taxpayer's money is used to pay the cost of this million- dollar advertising.

Blackmailers, Informers and Quislings

On July 4, 1950, Radio Free Europe (RFE) transmitted its first program, 30 minutes in length, to Czechoslovakia as an “audience building broadcast.”  The National Committee for Free Europe (NCFE) press statement released the day before outlined RFE’s future, even if it omitted RFE’s true sponsorship:

Owned and operated by the National Committee for a Free Europe, Inc., a group of private American citizens, Radio Free Europe will broadcast the true story of freedom and democracy to the eighty million people living in Communist slavery between Germany and Russia. Freed of diplomatic limitations, the broadcasts will be hard-hitting. 

Below we will look at how certain hard-hitting broadcasts of Radio Free Europe (RFE) from Munich were used tone-down for the second Crusade for Freedom campaign in the United States that began in September 1951.

In the summer of 1951, one of the most popular RFE broadcasts to Czechoslovakia, for example, was "All This We Know," which broadcast names of “known informers and spies” in that country. Here are excerpts from one of those programs translated into English, which, unfortunately, lack the speaker's emphasis and intonations:

This is the voice of free Czechoslovakia, station Radio Free Europe ... In a moment you will hear the names of several dangerous Bolshevik informers who are agents of the Communist police. Remember their names well and warn all decent people against them.

Hello Bratislava! Radio Free Europe calls the citizens of Bratislava! In the office of the Resettlement Bureau and the National Reconstruction Fund is employed one Comrade Absolonova. We warn you against her as emphatically as possible. She is a dangerous agent for the Communist police. Her task is to recruit for the State Security Police new agents and informers from among you people.

Absolonova is about 170 cm tall and blonde. She concentrates her attention on young men whom she seduces and then blackmails them into collaborating with the police. We warn you against this fanatical Stalinist informer ... Among the collaborators flnd unfortunate victims of this immoral woman is the student Valer Vesely ...Be on your guard against this miserable creature who is a victim and tool of Absolonova and thus an agent of the police. 

An example of an early newspaper advertisement of the Advertising Council for the Crusade grass-roots campaign was carried in the Tucson, Arizona Daily Citizen on Wednesday, October 17, 1951, and contained a reference to RFE's hard-hitting broadcasts:

  

The Crusade for Freedom is YOUR weapon against Communist Tyranny. Your support is needed to carry forward the hard-hitting job of Radio Free Europe, which is piercing the Iron Curtain with the Big Truth to halt the spread of the Big Lie of Communism.

We are all part of a struggle for men’s minds, which ultimately will be resolved as much by force of ideas as by force of arms. Shall our children and grandchildren be crushed by Communist tyranny? Or shall we pass on to them their rightful heritage of freedom?

A measure of responsibility rests upon each of us. Act now. Mail in the coupon below with whatever contribution you care to make. You will receive by return mail your Crusade for Freedom membership enrollment, lapel button and window sticker signifying your part in this critical battle against Communism.

The wording of another Advertising Council's 1951 newspaper advertisement was very close to that used by actor Ronald Reagan in the film and television support of the Crusade for Freedom:

Reagan's Text: 

This station daily pierces the iron curtain with the truth, answering the lies of the Kremlin and bringing a message of hope to millions trapped behind the iron curtain. Grateful letters from listeners smuggled past the secret police express thanks to Radio Free Europe for identifying Communist quislings and informers by name.

Newspaper Advertisement:

THE FIGHT IS ON! Already Truth... Communism's deadliest enemy ... is  winning major victories behind the Iron Curtain. Radio Free Europe is sowing fear and confusion among the Red rulers and their collaborators ... identifying informers and quislings by name ... and bringing a message of hope to millions of captive people.

The newspaper advertisement used four points to explain, "Here's what Truth does behind the Iron Curtain":

·      Names Blackmailers.

·      Exposes Informers.

·      Identifies Murderers

·      Brings Hope to Enslaved Peoples

The advertisement elaborated on the four points, e.g.

1. Name Blackmailers. 

Radio Free Europe warned the Czechs against Comrade Absolonova—gave complete details of her appearance and methods of blackmailing' young men...forcing them into collaboration with Communist police.  Also named a certain student who was one of her victims and collaborators.

According to another newspaper article, "After RFE told the people of Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, that Comrade Absolonova was a 'dangerous agent.' the Comrade was seen around Bratislava no more."

Sally Victor and The "Freedom Hat"

Sally Victor was born Sally Josephs in Scranton, Pennsylvania on February 23, 1905.  She started working in Macy’s department store in New York as a “saleswoman“ in 1923, moved into millinary and finally successfully created her own millinary shop.

The New Yorker magazine in 1954 called her "a magnificent sculptress of straws and felts," 

From Time magazine, March 30, 1959:

Sally Victor, 54, is not only the biggest fashion hat maker (more than $500,000 a year) in the multimillion-dollar millinery business (1958 sales: $300 million), but she is a trend setter ... the only milliner to win the Coty award, fashion world "Oscar."

She designed hats for First Ladies Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Truman, Mamie Eisenhower, Jacqueline Kennedy and Lady Bird Johnson. Queen Elisabeth II also wore hats designed by Sally Victor.

For the second Crusade for Freedom campaign that began in September 1951, she was asked by Crusade organizers to design, a “Freedom Hat” “to make their cause – and their need for money to carry it on – felt by the women of America.”  Sally Victor reportedly was delighted and was quoted as saying, “It’s about time we did something to make people talk. And there’s nothing that makes a woman much more talkative than a new hat...”

The “Freedom Hat” was described in newspapers as:

• The hat is a tricorne, patterned after the famous jaunty cap of Paul Revere.
• It is made of softest velour, in the same color of red we find in the American flag.
• It is trimmed with gold braid and gold mesh Liberty bells.
• It can be worn straight atop the head or tilted to the right, in the fashionable side-swept mode of 1952.
• The “Freedom Hat” is as wearable as an old pair of slippers, as chic as a Dior suit, but is more than that.  It’s official as a U.N. document.

The photograph of the “Freedom Hat” showed the 1951 Crusade for Freedom Poster behind a fashion model and had this caption: “Patterned after the chapeau worn by Paul Revere, this hat seems destined to be the most talked about hat in the world.” The article concluded, “The Crusade for Freedom hopes to make plenty of talk and maybe a little money from the hat.”  

The "Freedom Hat" was to be distributed in stores for fashion shows and window displays. A duplicate hat, described as "more wearable," was to be sold at a moderate price in store's under the winter collection of the "Sally V" line. There are no known figures about how successful the "Freedom Hat" was in raising funds for the Crusade for Freedom.

Sally Victor retired in 1968 and died in New York on May 14, 1977.

"Our Miss Brooks" Radio Appeal for Financial and Moral Support

In my previous posting we looked at the radio program "Life with Luigi" and the connection to the Crusade for Freedom and Radio Free Europe.

Another popular radio situation-comedy show on the CBS radio network was “Our Miss Brooks,” starring Eve Arden. 

She played a high school teacher on the radio show that aired from 1948 to 1957 and was adapted to television from 1952 to 1956. 

At the conclusion of one the programs entitled “Radio Bombay” that was aired on October 8, 1950, Eve Arden, the star of the comedy show, returned to the radio stage to make an appeal for contributions in the first Crusade for Freedom campaign:

If you are concerned about the threat of Communism, you should know this fact: the Crusade for Freedom, an organization headed by General Lucius Clay, needs your financial and moral assistance in the support of Radio Free Europe. This is a private radio station now working to bring to communist-dominated European countries the voices of their exiled leaders. Help Radio Free Europe by joining the Crusade for Freedom in your town. 

Life with Luigi: Rallying Americans with Radio

J. Carroll Naish as "Luigi"

In 1950, about 3.9 million households in the United States had televisions -- this was 9 percent of American homes. Radio was the primary source of entertainment, dramatic, comedy, and variety programs. 

Radio was also a rallying tool for the first Crusade for Freedom campaign for Radio Free Europe.

A very popular weekly radio program that aired from 1948 to 1953 was a situation-comedy show “Life with Luigi,” with famed Hollywood actor J. Carrol Naish, who, as Luigi Basco, feigned a heavy Italian accent. 

The show aired before a live audience on the CBS radio network Tuesday evenings from 9:00 to 9:30 P.M. Luigi Basco was a fictional new immigrant from Italy, who had recently arrived in the United States. The show’s premise was that Luigi wrote a weekly letter to his mother, who had remained in Italy, about his continuing experiences in the United States.

On September 19, 1950, the weekly half-hour long radio program was entitled “Crusade for Freedom Speech” and sponsored by the Wrigley Chewing Gum Company. The program's narrator started the program with a commercial: "You know friends, Wrigley's spearment chewing gum is a typically American product that appeals to peoples of all ages and nationalities in all parts of our country."

During the program, Luigi was visited by a Crusade for Freedom volunteer who not only had Luigi sign the Freedom Scroll but also to put a Crusade poster in his shop’s window and asked to seek out others to sign the Freedom Scroll. The Crusade volunteer also told Luigi that the scrolls would be collected and “enshrined at the base of a huge Freedom Bell in Berlin.” Luigi was unsuccessful as the people he asked to sign the Freedom Scroll ignored him because they were too busy, were in a hurry, or had other reasons not to listen to him about the Crusade for Freedom.

The teacher of his night-school citizenship class, Miss Spaulding, selected Luigi to give a speech about freedom before a meeting of 10,000 other immigrants. The topic selected by Luigi’s teacher was “What Freedom Means to Me.” At the meeting he told the assembly not only about his failure to gather signatures but also what the Crusade for Freedom meant to him. The results were successful and those 10,000 persons who had listened to him signed the Freedom Scrolls and $300 was collected.

Near the end of the radio program, listeners heard a recorded statement by  General Lucius D. Clay, Crusade for Freedom national chairman in New York:

Luigi, you give me a great hope. And you also fill me with considerable pride. It has not taken you long to learn what America really stands for. You have also found that because you believe in its ideals, you can reach the hearts and minds of its peoples. Thank you very much, Luigi, and the many thousands of other volunteers, who are undertaking the Crusade for Freedom. But thank you especially Luigi for your faith in your new country and your belief in freedom.

The fictional character Luigi concluded the radio show by reading from a letter to his mother:

Yes, Mama Mia, now you see why America is a wonderful country and is worth fighting for. Because only here is it possible for a little immigrant like your son to hear from a great general and a great American like General Clay. It is like I once wrote to you, in America: everything is possible. Your loving son Luigi Basco.