OLD TIME RADIO - 1 CD - 4 mp3 - Total Playtime: 3:52:50
Eugenia Lincoln "Jinx" Falkenburg (21 January 1919 – 27 August 2003) was an actress, expert swimmer and tennis star, and one of the highest-paid and most ubiquitous cover-girl models in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s - one of the first supermodels. She married journalist and influential publicist Tex McCrary in 1945.
Known as "Tex and Jinx" to most American households, the glamorous couple pioneered and popularized the talk-show format, first on radio and then in the early days of television. They hosted a series of interview shows in the late 1940s and early 1950s that combined celebrity chit-chat with discussions of important topics of the day.
Falkenburg first met John Reagan "Tex" McCrary when he came to photograph and interview her for a military publication after she opened in Hold On to Your Hats. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Air Forces. They were about to be engaged in 1942 but World War II intervened and, after a globe-trotting romance during the hostilities, they married on June 15, 1945, in a civil ceremony conducted by New York Supreme Court Judge Ferdinand Pecora, famous for investigating the 1929 stock market crash and its aftermath.
During the war Falkenburg traveled extensively on USO tours entertaining troops. The most arduous was a 42,000 mile 80-stop series of shows in the rugged China-Burma-India theatre of operations. In 1945 she was awarded the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal for her contributions.
Backed by some of his well-connected friends like millionaire statesman Bernard Baruch, McCrary convinced David Sarnoff, the chairman of RCA which owned NBC, to give the couple a morning show on the network's New York radio station, WEAF. The show was called "Hi, Jinx" and first aired on April 22, 1946. Reviews ranged from "sprightly" to "rather intense discussions of foreign affairs." In a cover story about the couple, Newsweek wrote: "A soft-spoken, calculating Texan, Tex McCrary, inched up to the microphone and drawled 'Hi, Jinx.' A voice with all the foam substance of a bubble bath answered, 'Hello Tex.'" Over time they came to be known as "Mr. Brains and Mrs. Beauty."
The McCrary's radio show was broadcast five mornings a week on New York radio station WEAF, and became a hit with critics and the public for tackling controversial issues like the A-Bomb, the United Nations and venereal disease along with talk about theatre openings and New York nightlife. Their guests would be a mix of popular entertainers such as Mary Martin, Ethel Waters and Esther Williams and public figures such as Bernard Baruch, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Truman, industrialist Igor Sikorsky and Indian statesman Krishna Menon.
McCrary wrote the scripts and taught Falkenburg the art of interviewing and the basics of broadcast journalism. Over time she was considered the better interviewer, eliciting candid responses, often from the show's more intellectual guests. Her technique was to ask questions until she understood the answer and so presumably, did all the housewives at home listening to her. "They developed an audience that was ready to start thinking at breakfast," wrote New York Times columnist William Safire who as a teenager was hired by McCrary to do pre-show interviews of guests.
In January 1947, McCrary and Falkenburg had their first network TV show, Bristol-Myers Tele-Varieties, also known as Jinx and Tex at Home, broadcast Sunday nights on NBC. The program combined film and live interviews of celebrities in their residences. In May 1947, The Swift Home Service Club combined household tips with breezy interviews. Another radio show, Meet Tex and Jinx got such a big audience that in 1947 and 1948 it became a summer replacement for one of radio's most popular shows, Duffy's Tavern.
In the winter of 1948, Falkenburg traveled to Berlin, Germany, during the height of the Berlin Airlift, when the city was under blockade by the Russians and emergency supplies were being flown in by allied planes. She flew in with comedian Bob Hope and songwriter Irving Berlin to do highly publicized Christmas shows for airmen and occupation soldiers.
McCrary and Falkenburg found their popularity growing, and at one point in the early 1950s they hosted two radio programs and a daily television show and wrote a column for the New York Herald Tribune. Some of their shows were broadcast from Peacock Alley in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
Armed with tape recorder and microphone, Falkenburg often did interviews outside the studio. She covered many major stories of the day, including the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in London and the wedding of Grace Kelly to Prince Rainier of Monaco. In 1958, she was the only female reporter on the press plane that accompanied then Vice President Richard Nixon on his trip to South America where he encountered rock throwing crowds in Venezuela. She also was on assignment and appeared on camera in the historic finger-poking televised "kitchen debate" in Moscow between Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Safire maneuvered the two leaders into the kitchen of the model home, whose manufacturer was a client of McCrary's, for a public relations coup of the first order
EPISODES LIST
Tex And Jinx 470903 - Guest - Nabny Walker
Tex and Jinx 471104 - Guest - Walt Disney
Tex and Jinx 500106 - Guest - Mary Gordon
Tex and Jinx 541124 - Guest - Fred Allen
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This product was added to our catalog on Saturday 27 September, 2014.