Bob Sanders: Priceless little books still make my day

In the first of these columns about a century ago, I told my reader that if we were to be able to carry on a decent conversation, there were a couple of reference books he needed to have close at hand.

One of them was “The Radio Heroes,” a book about the Golden Age of radio when there were cereal serials like Jack Armstrong the All-American Boy, and Superman, and soap operas like Ma Perkins and Pepper Young’s Family, etc.

I think the other one was a movie encyclopedia called “The Filmgoer’s Companion.” My copy is torn and tattered with many loose pages, because it is used almost every day. I need an updated model, if there is one.

In the meantime, mine is essential.

I have a couple of must-haves to add to the list.

First, another one about movies, particularly the music in movies. There was a time, remember, when most Hit Parade songs came out of Broadway or Hollywood. The book is “The Melody Lingers On (The Great Songwriters and Their Movie Music)” Roy Hemming Put together worlds of information, trivia, gossip ... everything you ever wanted to know about the great musicals and the songs in them.

He chooses a bunch of legendary songwriters, from Harold Arlen to Richard Whiting. He tells you about every song they wrote for the movies. You learn, for example, that it wasn’t her voice coming from Jeanne Crain’s sweet, wistful face as she “sang” “It Might as Well Be Spring,” it was Louann Hogan’s. And in “Centennial Summer,” not a one of the stars could sing worth a toot, so all singing voices had to be dubbed in

Speaking of “State Fair,” that was the only film for which Rodgers & Hammerstein wrote the music, although a lot of their Broadway musicals were made into movies. You learn how these great writers would be hired by a movie studio to grind out songs on an assembly line basis… and many of those songs would become popular classics. Another book you, of course, have to keep handy is Leonard Maitlin’s “Movie Guide.”

If you are a World War II buff as I am, there is a priceless little book about a certain period of that war that you must have ... It’s a hard-back, but the size of a paperback. It is “The Ragged Rugged Warriors,” by Martin Caiden and it is packed with information … and some de-bunking. I’ll tell you about it, but, right now, the old clock on the wall says our time is running out. We’ll be back with more about “The Ragged, Rugged Warriors” and the Flying Tigers and how incredibly lucky we were at Midway, same time, same station.

In the meantime, keep those cards and letters coming to Dr. J.R. Brinkley, XEG, Del Rio, Texas, covering North America with 500,000 watts of beautiful power.

Bob Sanders is a longtime radio personality with WAUD in Auburn and writes a weekly column for the Opelika-Auburn News.