Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 10, 1992 TAG: 9202100172
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
TELEGRAMS IN TIME WITH THE TIMES
I'LL BET you didn't know this: On this date in 1933, the world's first singing telegram was delivered.Either on this date, that is, or on July 28. Sources differ. But it was 1933.
In either case, singing telegrams were an innovation opposed by executives of the Western Union Telegraph Co. No doubt, sitting around their conference table, puffing on their cigars, they said, "Poppycock! What foolishness!" when the idea was proposed.
Nevertheless, the singer was dispatched. And, apparently, the recipient loved it, because singers still dispatched singing telegrams in person until around 1950.
In fact, the '30s were filled with poppycock and foolishness. Those who remember the time can probably attest to it.
Those were the years of the Great Depression, and 1933, the last year of Herbert Hoover's unfortunate administration, marked its nadir, some would say.
Hoover's was such an unfortunate administration that his name is associated primarily with a host of depressing symbols: "Hoover blankets" were the newspapers used by the homeless to cover them-selves when they slept, "Hoovervilles" the encampments in which they lived."
"Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?" was one of the year's most popular songs.
It would be nice to know whether anyone ever sent a Western Union boy out to sing that at someone's front door.
But, in fact, several hours of research - and even the aid of several research librarians - revealed to me almost nothing about the original singing telegrams.
Oh, I found tidbits in the popular rags about the 1980s' resurgence of something very like singing telegrams. You know what I mean: belly dancers singing "Happy Birthday" in staff meetings, ersatz Zorros, Buddhas, gorillas bearing balloons.
Apparently in 1982 it was even possible in Chicago to hire someone to deliver "drop dead" messages. For a mere $42.50, an outfit called Dump-a-Date delivered nasty poems and dead flowers to the person you no longer loved.
But who sang the first singing telegram? That's what I want to know. What kinds of songs did folks wire to one another? How many singing telegrams were delivered in, say, 1935? And what did they cost to send?
The frivolity embodied in singing telegrams seems to me to fit well with other "sillies" of that era. In those desperate days, a man in St. Paul, Minn., dunked his head underwater 1,843 times, just to say he'd done it. (Another fellow stood around watching him do it, just to write it up for the news.) A fellow in New Jersey won $50 for eating 80 green peppers in one sitting. (His main competition ate 74.) Goldfish-swallowing hit its peak in 1939, and the decade also saw the introduction of miniature golf.
Who'd even bat an eye at someone singing, "ARRIVE AT NINE STOP SEND CAR"?
But maybe that's not the kind of message that was sung. I don't know. And I want to know. So if anyone out there remembers, buddy, could you drop me a line?
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.