Brian,
I captured about 6 minutes of video from “Gildersleeve on Broadway” into a low resolution AVI file….
Walter Tetley and Harold Peary Walter Tetley, Harold Peary, and Richard LeGrand
…I have attached two stills from that video. These scene with Walter Tetley and Harold Peary together suggest that Tetley, though not very tall, was far from being a Munchkin. The third person is Richard LeGrand who reprises his radio role as Mr. Peavey, the druggist. In the couch scene, the bellboy gives Gildy tips on making it with women, using the pillow as a prop. “Gildersleeve on Broadway” was the second of four Gildy films made in 1943 and Tetley appears uncredited.
I dropped by my local NPR radio station this afternoon (WAMU in Washington, DC) to sit in on the taping on next Sunday night’s old time radio show. I have become popular there since last September when I started them on the road to using CD-Rs and MP3 for their old time radio broadcasts. I mentioned your web site to Ed Walker, the host of the show. He was very interested in your web site. Ed and Willard (“Today Show weather man”) Scott used to be a radio duo in DC until the mid-1970s. I mentioned to Ed that I thought Walter was actually a few years younger than his official bio states. Rather than being born in 1915, 1923 makes more sense. According to John Dunning’s Old TIme Radio Encyclopedia, he was 18 we he joined the Gildersleeve program in 1941. In another article in the same book, Dunning describes how Walter, at age 9 was drafted onto a show called “Raising Junior” which ran from 1930 to 32. He then appeared on New York radio as a real juvenile in the 1930s before his voice failed to change. Why would he lie about his age? My guess is that it had to do with getting ‘”working papers” when is was under 16 years old old. When I was growing up, I need them to get a part time while I was in high school (in New York).
Ed instinctively disagreed with my age idea bring up an appearance Walter had made on a Fred Allen Christmas show, as Scottish poet Robert Burns, circa 1938. Walter was a regular on Fred Allen’s program from 1936 through June 1940. That was a one-hour comedy-variety show out of New York. I didn’t see any inconsistancy in this. I then remembered I had seen a photo of Walter, as a child, in full Scottish garb. I have attached that fuzzy photo, scanned from Frank Buxton’s book “The Big Broadcast.” BTW, Dunning’s book is great and Buxton’s is crap.
I gleaned one more fact from Dunning: June Foray worked a season (or two) on the Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show (1946) when it was still the Fitch Bandwagon.
Jonathan O