ABC Network - Seattle 1929-The Cliff

Racing toward the Cliff

Camlin lobby and exterior (right)

Coming from a modest family

background, Adolph Linden found

success in no small measure through his marriage to Esther Elizabeth Anderson,

daughter of the president of Puget Sound Savings and Loan for which Linden

worked. Upon his father-in-law’s death in 1923, Linden became president of the

bank and was fully enjoying the fruits of financial and social prominence.

In 1923, while still a vice-president of the bank,

Linden formed a partnership with another of the

bank’s vice-presidents, Edmund W. Campbell and in

1925, they created the Camlin Investment Group and

decided to pursue construction of the Camlin. With

both men in significant control of the bank, they

apparently jointly began using bank funds for the

Camlin’s construction. The group, whose name was a

contraction of

their two last

names,

produced an elegant residential hotel in

downtown Seattle and the majestic

Camlin remains a Seattle landmark. The

decision to use funds from the bank in that

way, however, is revealing both in terms

of the judgments involved as well as the

path on which it set Linden who later observed that using Puget Sound Savings and

Loan funds for the Camlin was the biggest mistake of his life.

One of Linden’s attorneys later observed that Linden was really more an artist than

a business man which could help explain both Linden’s approach toward the

Camlin’s construction as well as his other decisions in 1929.

With ABC, Linden was already painting on a much broader canvas than had

previously been the case. The Camlin was a Seattle property and had no

relationship to other hotel properties. While ABC’s four radio stations were

geographically distributed, they were, nevertheless, a joint regional undertaking.

It was the American Broadcasting Company – under Linden’s ownership – that

sought to expand to nationally significant proportions (and achieved some success

in that goal). But those ventures were not Linden’s sole exercises in further

spreading his wings.

Notwithstanding ABC's operating at a significant loss, 1929 found Linden pursuing in

a host of new undertakings which included negotiating for an airplane to fly

between Tokyo and Seattle as a publicity venture (he had already chosen his

pilot). He was also pursuing going into the production of motion pictures (talkies!)

and had taken an option on property for a soundstage and flown in experts from

New York and Hollywood to consult on facility design. In an effort to promote the

sale of the ABC stock, which was for the first time offered to the public in June,

1929, he purchased Seattle’s Business Chronicle, a local financial news publication.

And, in addition to working on developing a newspaper content syndication

business, he was also exploring a radio program production partnership business

with Radio Productions, Inc., a New York based corporation.

With the meteoric growth of ABC’s business scope in program in 1929, Linden’s

attentions to these other arenas for his vision, energy and financial resources were

obviously misplaced.

And then there were the concerts.

In May, 1929 Linden announced a Midsummer Stadium Concerts series to be held at

the University of Washington. A 20-event program was announced (it was

ultimately unclear whether there were 20 or 21 events actually presented)

featuring the 70-piece

American Broadcasting

Company Orchestra

accompanying a variety of

largely imported artists. To be

held at the UW’s Husky

Stadium (with a capacity of

30,000), the series had major

soloists imported from New

York and San Francisco. The

Wednesday and Sunday

concerts scheduled every

week beginning June 9,

offered series subscription

prices with single seat

admission of $1 for Sunday

concerts (the equivalent of

about $15 in 2020) and 75 cents for Wednesday events.

To promote ticket sales about which he must have been somewhat worried after

having signed the various artists, Linden launched kind of a contest which was

open to “civic, fraternal, business, musical, charity or benefit organizations, clubs,

societies or organizations of established standing in Seattle or Washington” to

compete for a prize of $1,500 for the entity that sold the most tickets.

With artists including Marian Anderson (2 performances), the Chicago Grand

Opera’s Mina Hager, the Metropolitan Opera’s Paul Althouse and Arthur Hackett,

conductors included ABC’s own Francesco Longo, Meredith Willson (who Linden

had lured to ABC from New York) and Mishel Piastro (then the assistant conductor

of the San Francisco Symphony). Where FREE summer concerts in New York’s

Central Park the often produced audiences of 20,000 in a city of nearly 7 million,

Linden’s 3-month long extravaganza sought to pay the sizable bills for these

concerts from ticket sales in a city of 360,000. The series’ most successful concert

drew an audience of 20,000 and Husky Stadium’s must have had nights in which

the vast majority of seat were empty – especially

when

the weather wasn’t cooperative.

While it was subsequently suggested that adverse weather significantly contributed

to both the concert series’ losses and ABC’s subsequent financial ruin, one has to

wonder at the grandiosity that suggested to Linden that this series was a gamble

worth taking when ABC was already so significantly treading water. On its face,

the concert series seemed at best unlikely to breakeven.

But Linden had grand vision, had been emboldened by his successes to that date

and seemingly inured to the possibility of failure.