Vox Pop

The flourishing business of quizzing the U. S. populace has few practitioners more indefatigable than Parks Johnson & Wal lace Butterworth, who serve as interlocutors for the CBS show, Vox Pop. Together they have wandered up & down the land paying citizens $1 to answer such queries as: How many feathers on the average hen?* What was our President's name 30 years ago?/- Should a gentleman remove his hat before striking a lady?**Along with this pert questionnaire, Vox Pop offers its listeners interviews with cinema stars, politicos, "typical Americans," statistics on the number of one-armed paper hangers, wooden Indians and wooden covered bridges in the U. S. Although its formula is a bit musty, its competition fierce, Vox Pop has a Crossley rating of 10.8, sometimes attracts more than 1,000 letters a broadcast. Last week it headed confidently into its ninth year on the airwaves.

Largely the creation of Interlocutor Johnson, a onetime adman, Vox Pop got under way over station KTRH in Houston, Tex. during Franklin Roosevelt's first Presidential campaign. In its early career, Vox Pop was beset by drunks and loquacious looneys. Nowadays the show is conducted with propriety in Rotary Clubs and similar establishments. Its schedule calls for attendance at private parties and national events of all descriptions.

Last summer it made arrangements to broadcast from Hyde Park and Elwood, Ind., in honor of the Presidential candidates. Unfortunately, after the Elwood show was set to go, Newschief Paul White of CBS, to which Vox Pop transferred in 1939, forbade any mention of Wendell Willkie, on the ground that his name was controversial. Obediently Interlocutors Johnson & Butterworth discussed with the citizens of Elwood the Tomato Festival then taking place. This went on until an old gaffer cackled: "Why don't you ask about the most important thing in Elwood--Wendell Willkie? Man and boy I've known him 50 years. I've even got his first diaper. It's down in the First National Bank on display."

Strange are the characters Vox Pop has attracted to its mike. Faced with the problem of naming the Father of All Waters, Mrs. Vanderbilt, wife of Rhode Island's Governor, answered tersely: "Pluto." Among those it has interviewed Vox Pop includes Jock Scott, a Scot who has walked around Africa, the U. S. and Canada, and bared his heroic feet for Interviewer Johnson (see cut); Jim Moran, the sedulous wag who claimed he once sold an icebox to an Eskimo in Alaska. For Vox Pop Moran attempted to demonstrate that people could lose their inhibitions by throwing eggs into electric fans. Done up in a shower cap with windshield wiper, rubber gloves and raincoat, Moran explained his theory of release, let fly at an electric fan. There was a dull plop. The man at the fan had neglected to turn it on.

* 8,000.

/- Franklin Roosevelt.

** Yes.

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