by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Past posts on this blog have covered some of the early history of radio in Los Angeles, including one by my colleague, Steve Dugan, as well as others in a series called “The Spirit of Radio.” One of the offerings under that banner highlighted a press photo of John S. Daggett, a Los Angeles Times reporter and then a real estate agent who rejoined the newspaper just before it launched its fledgling radio station, KHJ, in spring 1922.
At the time, Daggett wrote in the paper that the call letters were to stand for “Knowledge, Happiness and Judgment,” but, soon, that changed to “Kindness—Happiness—Joy.” Moreover, he went from being its manager to the station’s first celebrity personality, known far and wide through greater Los Angeles as “Uncle John.” Under this moniker, Daggett hosted a children’s hour at 6:30 p.m., featuring “Queen Titania, the Fairy of the Microphone,” while he also penned a Times column, simply titled “Uncle John’s Column,” directed at his young audience. He left KHJ when the paper sold the station in 1927 to Cadillac dealer Don Lee, and, while he returned to radio, his star dimmed by the Great Depression years and he died in Pasadena in 1945.
Speaking of Pasadena, the featured artifact from the Museum’s holdings for this edition of “The Spirit of Radio” is a holiday greeting card from KHJ mailed on 28 December 1923 to the Benshoff family, residents of the Crown City. Will Alton Benshoff migrated there from Ohio in 1891 while in his early Twenties and was an architect, whose work included the Lincoln Avenue Methodist Church (1898), moved in 1981 when a post office was built on the site to the Heritage Square Museum in Los Angeles.
Benshoff later became secretary and treasurer of the Stevens Hardware Company, a longstanding Pasadena business owned by the father of Benshoff’s wife Claudine, whose family moved from Pennsylvania to Los Angeles in 1884 and to Pasadena two years later (her brother Arthur was a founder of the well-known Turner and Stevens Mortuary (now Pierce Brothers Turner and Stevens, owned by Houston-based Dignity Memorial). By the end of the 1920s, Benshoff became the secretary of the First Methodist Church of Pasadena and remained in the city until his death in 1959, the year his wife also passed away.
The card is printed on one side and includes photographs of the station studio and operating room, as well as portrait of the 45-year old “Uncle John.” A message “extends Christmas greetings and best wishes for a New Year replete with Kindness—Happiness—Joy.” The item was mailed in a Times envelope, which has a front side image mimicking the then-famous Automobile Club of Southern California directional signs with its “Greater Southern California / Straight Ahead” message.
On the reverse is a rendering of the paper’s headquarters, built in 1912 from the ashes of the structure leveled by an act of domestic terrorism two years prior, and the message that “More ‘Want’ Advertisements are printed in the Los Angeles Times than in any other western newspaper.”
Daggett’s popularity was reflected, as noted above, with his weekly column, so, for December 1923, he had five of these published in the paper. For his offering of the 2nd, he addressed his young readers thusly:
With the dawn of December, lads and lassies, the spirit of Christmas mantles Mother Earth. You are to play individual parts of kindness, happiness and joy in this Yuletide spirit of “Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men . . .
Uncle John asks you today to think of the many activities of life which make up the Christmas spirit of which we speak. It is not all play, for this is the busiest time in all the year. Think of the job confronting Santa Claus! Never before was it so stupendous! Never before have such extremes of situation commanded his thought and attention. America is prosperous, while the lads and lassies of other countries are almost destitute. Think of the shipping departments of great stores! . . .
You, lads and lassies, and your fathers and mothers can do much to solve this problem. Do not delay! . . . and do not forget those who are less fortunate than you . . . Shop early and help Santa Claus, poor old overworked saint that he is.
Daggett also told his readers of a world peace talk given over KHJ, as well as Near East Relief Fund then underway, and specifically the request that all Americans eat a simple dinner rather than a regular Sunday meal and send the difference in cost between the two to the Fund. Such a simple gesture, Uncle John reminded his audience, meant that “you will understand that a world peace can only come through a spirit of unselfishness, patience and love.” It should be remembered that this was five years after the First World War. Concluding his article, Daggett implored “lads and lassies, you can do it all with a smile and earn a happiness and a satisfaction which will jingle as sleigh bells in your hearts and be written on the pages of history as the greatest Christmas anthem of the age.”
The following week, Uncle John took the opportunity to tell readers that, in lieu of his usual story read at the end of the children’s hour on KHJ, he had a stand-in, while Daggett went to the Gamut Club, a long-standing institution of music lovers in the Angel City, to hear the Russian String Quartet. While there, he hit upon the theme for his column of the 9th, the matter of concentration, and he noted that, as he was writing late at night after the concert and that increased advertising meant that “there isn’t much room left for poor old Uncle John” on the page devoted to radio, the core message was “radio is teaching people the art of listening with concentration.”
Asking the young folks to close their eyes and focus on the music, not the vigorous “impulsive shock of hair waving” by the conductor or the musicians at work on their instruments, when at a concert, Daggett noted that focus on the sounds was obvious with a broadcast of a performance. After trying some similes (giving a rose to a loved one, flying high above the earth in an airplane, a boxer focused on his goal) which he admitted might be strange to parents, Uncle John tried one related to prayer and the concentration required in “asking [God’s] forgiveness for sins which you have committed” by averring that, just as one could not pray without concentration, “you can never fully appreciate beautiful music with your eyes open.”
Daggett returned to Christmas with his column of the 16th and again discussed gifts and the unfortunate:
Have you told Santa Claus everything you want for Christmas, lads and lassies? Another question—If you feel that Santa Claus is going to be very good for you this Christmas, have you arranged to give away some of your old, discarded toys to little lads and lassies who may not be so fortunate as you? There are charitable institutions in every city that would be glad to see that the outgrown velocipede or kiddie-car finds a little boy or girl that they will fit.
Beyond this, Uncle John asked his young fans to remember that helping those in need ”will give you a deeper appreciation of your home and circumstances of living and that may prove valuable to you in the development of your character.” Adding that he was in favor of asking St. Nick for fewer gifts, but ones of more durable value, Daggett suggested that, instead of requesting toys, children who listen to his show remember the music heard on KHJ and “whisper to Santa Claus, ‘Please, dear Santa, send me a violin and ask mother and dad to let me take lessons so I can learn to play.”
Uncle John went on to comment that “we have learned at KHJ that those who have acted on this suggestion from Santa Claus are in so many, many cases people in poor circumstances who can ill afford the expense of a teacher” and that they pondered why “more people who can afford it, do not select a lad or lassie and pay for the teaching.” To his end, he went on, “go to the Orphans’ Home. You will find there a dear little girl or boy who will respond to your generosity. Perhaps you may even discover a genius.”
For his piece published two days prior to Christmas, Daggett wrote of a fictional family celebrating their Christmas day and opening presents (including a mute for a boy’s violin—a reference perhaps to the prior column?) He told of how the father left to deliver gifts to others and noted that “Daddy was gone a long time on that Christmas day” and that, after dropping off those presents, “he went to a grocery store near the Plaza Church in Old Los Angeles and loaded his machine with boxes and bags of fruit, cereals, tea, coffee, crackers, candy, nuts, sacks of flour and many other things.”
This patriarch then, continued Uncle John, asked “have I bought $100 worth,” of the merchant, Giovanni Piuma, who told him he had not but could not fit more goods in the car, but the father decided to deliver what he had to those persons who were on a list provided to him by the Associated Charities of Los Angeles and return for a second load. Piuma, incidentally, started his commercial enterprise as a grocer as well as a winemaker leasing the basement of the Temple family’s adobe house at Misión Vieja, or Old Mission, where the Mission San Gabriel was founded in 1771 south of modern El Monte. When his business grew, he relocated to Los Angeles and, even though Prohibition ended his winemaking efforts, his store continued.
Daggett added that the father told the son who received the violin mute that his act of charity constituted “the happiest Christmas he ever had” and speculated that the young man might some day charter “an airplane [that] will go forth to carry the happiness of Christmas cheer into remote regions.” Uncle John closed his holiday message by noting that “need is not remote, lads and lassies. It may be found in the square where you live, and it is not always a want of clothing, more often it is hunger for love, faith and companionship.”
For his final column of 1923, Daggett wished his young fans a new year that would be “the happiest thus far in your young lives” and added that “Little Queen Titania of Fairyland gave me a thought about the Yuletide season” that Uncle John wished to share, which was that “Christmas is a garden of kindness, happiness and joy” and that anything youngsters had done during the holiday season “is a little seed planted in the garden of the New Year.” He exhorted readers to “nurture it with the sunshine of your happiness and the raindrops of your joy” while warning to watch for the “weeds of discontent, envy and selfishness which spring up in every garden of life.” He asked that they ask their parents to identify these invasive plants and that they were “your best day laborers when it comes to rooting them out.”
The radio personality added that the father was “the big oak tree” and the mother “the beautiful vine” in the family’s garden, while “you are the little play-fellows, elves of the fairyland of childhood who are some day to shed your fairy wings and become serious toilers in life.” He asked his young readers to remember how fortunate they were to not have to worry about the necessities of life and he reminded them that “the garden which I have tried to picture for you is your real kindergarten.” He noted that Queen Titania related that fairies are happy because of their creating that feeling and asked that children “carry out that fairy idea, and try to bring more kindness and love into the garden of your everyday life [so] you will learn the secret of fairyland.”
Uncle John then wrote to the boys reading his piece, calling on them to “do your bit, just as big brother did in the great war. The war is over, but the problem of a world peace is a bigger battle than was the grueling war, and you, my boy, will have to grow into your part and do your bit to attain its final victory.” He added that “it is only by getting all the little boys of today thinking about it that we can hope to have the men of tomorrow solve the problems.” This is interesting to ponder considering that the Second World War was to take place when many of Daggett’s young male readers and listeners would be young men, many fighting, during that conflict.
Speaking of war, it is notable that, on the 16th, the Times ran a feature on the radio page next to Daggett’s column that discussed the installation of two large radio receivers, 350 headphone sets and 18,000 feet of wire so that the veteran patients from the late conflict convalescing at the newly finished hospital at the Soldiers’ home at Sawtelle (now the West Los Angeles Medical Center of the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System.) Interestingly, the piece asserted that ancient means of communication, including “the Indian of the woods with his tom-tom, the Navajo of the plains with his horn, and the Aztec of the mountain with his signal fire,” set the early pattern for radio, which was greatly enhanced by new technologies utilized in World War One. Accompanying photos show the facility and disabled war veterans listening to broadcasts thanks to the new system.
Also of interest is a satirical offering in the “My Text Today” column in the left-leaning Los Angeles Record by Don Ryan, who later wrote some Hollywood screenplays. Lambasting moralists whom he called the “Puritans of Los Angeles,” Ryan, among other “recommendations” to ban dancing after midnight; shutting down movie theaters on Sundays; prohibiting cigarette and gasoline sales on the Sabbath; and clamping down on newspapers and their cartoons on the holy day, mockingly suggested targeting radio or, at least, limiting Sunday content only to sermons. He commented,
The other night when I was listening in there was so much buffoonery from Uncle John, an old rake who tells bedtime stories—that’s an evil word, bedtime—it has a very suggestive sound. This old rake, Uncle John, telling his—I’ll not use that word again—you know what I mean. This person caused such a diversion over the radio that everybody forgot to take seriously the Bible Institute’s requests to send in contributions immediately.
Ryan then suggested that the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, now BIOLA, located in the suburb of La Mirada, be “the only sending station and sermons the only thing permitted to be dispensed over the radio.” In his way, he concluded, tongue well planted in cheek, “shall we insure for thousands of impressionable souls, the sound slumber that comes with a clear conscience.”
With regard to religion and radio, the Times began running regular radio-related articles written by Kenneth G. Ormiston (1895-1937), a native of Azusa, who first came to local and national attention in summer 1911 as a Los Angeles high school student and “wireless” enthusiast who intercepted a wirelessly telegraphed message sent that involved Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis and led to his rival Edwin T. Earl of the Los Angeles Express being indicted, essentially for wire-tapping, when Ormiston provided the text to him and it was published—Earl was found not guilty at trial.
Almost immediately thereafter, Ormiston left Los Angeles to work as a wireless operator aboard steamships and then lived for some years in San Francisco. He married the daughter of the founder of the Peters ice cream empire in Australia and the couple had a son, while living in the Bay Area. Earlier in 1923, the family moved to Los Angeles and Ormiston began both writing for the paper that figured so heavily in the controversy of a dozen years before and operating the technical aspects of the operations at KHJ—in fact, it appears that it is Ormiston who is shown in the photo of the operating room.
A couple of Ormiston’s December articles mention programming involving Daggett, including on the 5th and 12th, but he soon left the paper and station to take over the operation of KFSG, the station of the Four Square Gospel Church of the powerful and controversial Aimee Semple McPherson. His close relationship with “Sister Aimee” was such that Ormiston’s wife believed there was an affair and, when he left their house, she took her son and returned to Australia.
Meanwhile, the sensational scandal that burst forth when McPherson vanished while at the beach in Santa Monica in spring 1926 led to speculation that she fled for a ten-day tryst with Ormiston in Carmel, near Monterey, though she stumbled out of the desert in the northern Mexican state of Sonora weeks later claiming she’d been kidnapped. The legal investigations, arrest, charges and then dropping of the latter, that ensued was a major cause celebre, but it was never proven that the two were together in Carmel, nor that McPherson’s claims of being kidnapped were untrue.
As for Ormiston, he returned to his work as a radio engineer and expert, editing a publication called Radio Doings, consulting on matters related to the industry, and was the chief engineer for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) station, KFI, for four years prior to his sudden death in January 1937 following an appendectomy. His wife, having secured a divorce, remained in Australia, remarried and their son, Frederick, died in action while serving that country during World War II.