Harry Silleck Grannatt was born in Colorado Springs, CO in 1898.He

rarely used his middle name (which was mother's maiden name), and in

more formal settings referred to himself as HarryS. Grannatt or more

commonly Harry Grannatt. In fact, heappears to have been sufficiently

uncomfortable with his middle name that he variously spelled it as

Selleck or as Silleck.Ultimately, he often just used HSG to identify

himself and thatwas the author's name he used in several

publications.Grannatt was REALLY tall. Grannatt discovered Mel Blanc,

who later became the voice of countless cartoon characters. Blancwas

just 16 at the time and in his autobiographical accounting ofthat

discovery, he claimed that Grannatt was nearly seven feet tall. In

fact,Grannatt’s medical records indicate that he was 6 feet 4 inches tall

but, as he wasextremely thin, he seemed even taller than his

considerable stature as the photo(above) suggests.The Grannatt family moved to Los

Angeles when Harry was a toddler where Harry enrolled in the Normal Training School

which was a private institution, funded with charitable donations, and seems to have

sought to train young people for possible careers in teaching. Following a highly selective

admission process, Grannatt quickly distinguished himself. As a 13 and 14-year old student,

he won several debates onsuffrage and the Los Angeles Times headlined an account of one

of his speeches“Youth’s Logic Charms Women”. A columnist mentioned “the boy orator’s

burrning eloquence firing suffrage audiences”. The Grannatt family moved to San Francisco

shortly after Harry’s graduation from the Normal Training School and the 15-year old

Grannatt went to work as a clerk in an insurance agency. He was drafted in 1917 and

following World War One he remained in San Francisco while working as an agent for the

Firemen’s Fund Insurance Company.

Apart from his insurance work, the world of literature

andentertainment seemingly called to the young man and

hereportedly began sporadic participation in San

Franciscoradio stations just as that industry was being

founded. A talented pianist, it’s likely his radio activity

focused onmusic. However, in San Francisco he drew

attention as anincredibly prolific writer of both words and

music with akeen wit in addition to being a fine

performer.Grannatt moved briefly to Seattle around 1924,

still working as an insurance agent,and perhaps engaged in

some radio work there as well. But it was his move toPortland, Oregon, in 1925 that

opened his entertainment/radio career.Arriving in Portland, Grannatt quickly

encountered a program formally known as KeepGrowing Wiser Order of Hoot Owls

(more popularly Hoot Owls) broadcast weekly byone of the city’s most prominent

stations, KGW. While the program’s style evolved over time, the Hoot Owls always

used a somewhat formal program structure arising from its founding concept as a

radio“club” or mythical lodge whose offices had outlandish names. The Hoot Owls head

owl, Charles F. Berg, was the Grand Screech. The program‘s music director was the

Grand Piano and the Episcopal Bishop of Oregon was the Grand Sermon. Given his huge

height, Grannatt was inducted as the Grand String Bean (Broadcast Weekly referred to

him as “the elongated lightning streak”). The program opened with a roll call of Hoot

Owl officers—known as the Degree Team—followed by a “business meeting,” during

which typical club business was handled including the reading of correspondence,

answering listeners’questions, acknowledging gifts

and consideration of listeners’ membership

applications. The Hoot Owls’ “rites” at each

meeting included singing ofthe official Hoot Owl

song to Owlorgan (a circuscalliope) accompaniment

and the riding of the group’s imaginary mascot, a

goat named Sweet William, by newly initiated

members. Sunset Magazine dubbed the Hoot Owls

the “Laughter Lodge of the Air”.The Hoot Owls was the first scripted variety radio

program in the U.S. With songs, doggerel/poetry and skits, its weekly romp on the air

required considerablewriting and, gradually, Grannatt began providing increasing

amounts of fullyscripted material for the program in addition to performing. By 1929,

Grannatt had become the program’s principal script writer (although script for

individual bits were still contributed by other members of the Degree Team for which

Grannatt simply left “holes” in his full program script). Mel Blanc, whose comicvoices

and dialects were an important element of the program, was one Hoot Owl who either

wrote or improvised his own program segments. To say the program was spontaneous

would be an understatement. For example, in May 1931 Oregon governor Julius Meier

appointed Harry Grannatt and another Hoot Owl Degree Team member, Ted Baum, to

the State Fair Committee with the assignment of assisting in the Fair’s publicity

planning. During the Hoot Owls’ May 8, 1931 broadcast Portland chief of police Jenkins

interrupted the Hoot Owls’ live show to arrest Grannatt and Baum on air “for stealing

police badges in the state capitol”.The pair had apparently purloined them as a prank,

while attending a meeting of the State Fair Committee, in a pre-arranged stunt to

promote the Fair. Another Degree Team member, Dean Collins, was also arrested on air

“for making anuisance of himself” when he interfered with Jenkins’ efforts to arrest

Grannatt and Baum. Following the arrests, the remaining cast members were left to

finish the programon their own. The badges “weren’t worth 39¢” according to

Governor Meier, who nevertheless stated that he believed the badges were an

emblem deserving respect. Meier appointed a special prosecutor, Multnomah County

Judge William A.Ekwall (himself an occasional performer on programs like the Hoot

Owls), while the arrested trio retained defense counsel. On the premise that they

were arrested in the hearing of thousands of radio listeners, it was decided that the

preliminary hearing should also be broadcast live during the following week’s Hoot

Owls program. In succeeding weeks, various on-air “trials” carried on the prank,

although no records exist on the outcome of this good-natured stunt. Because KGW was

owned by the state’s largest newspaper, the Morning Oregonian, the newspaper’s

cartoonist, Tige Reynolds, was both a Degree Team member and frequent program

participant. Called the Grand Sketch, Reynolds cartoons were used to promote the

program in printed literature including for events such as a large public dinner which

the Hoot Owls called a Hungari. Grannatt’s scripted contributions to the Hoot Owls

consisted of skits (such as The Cheese Opera – which was set in Tillamook, Oregon,

home of the Tillamook Cheese Factory). Program skits also centered on holidays or

events (such as a salute toValentine’s Day and a holiday show edition called “Christmas

and Prunes”) or whatwas essentially an annual roasting of city fathers during Portland’s

Rose Festival week.

Grannatt also specialized in doggerel

and funny songs. His Dill Pickle ballads

were favorites (where the last line of

each stanza involved Dill Pickles

floating on water). Two of his most

popular were “Methuselah” and

“Noah”. [Click on the handwritten

lyrics to hear Grannatt perform

Methuselah] One appearance by

Broadway and film comedy duo Ole

Olson and Chic Johnson led to an

association between them and Harry Grannatt, which resulted in the Broadway

team’s negotiating the use of some of Grannatt’s funny songs in their vaudeville act.

Grannatt’s radio work in Portland wasn’t necessarily limited to the Hoot Owls,

however. Radio Digest Illustrated reported that he was a pianist for Portland’s KOIN

in 1929. KGW also owned Portland station KEX for a time and Grannatt wrote

satirical and zany humorous material for Circus Court of the Air (heard on KEX),

Powers Pied Piper (a vehicle created for Blanc) and programs such as The Christmas

Bazaar. KGW was a member of an early regional radio network (consisting of KGW,

Seattle’s KOMO and Spokane’s KHQ) called the Triangle Network. Among the many

things Grannatt wrote for the Triangle Network was “A Review of a Review” in

which he poked satiric fun at Harriet Clinton Howe’s review of Marcel Proust). And

he wrote numerous songs such as “Pass the Pills”. Two volumes of material written

for the Hoot Owls were published in Hoot Owl Classics Vols. 1 & 2, in 1928 and 1929.

The first, subtitled “Bed-Time Stories,”contained material penned by Dean Collins;

the second, by Harry Grannatt, included poems, jingles and short stories. The

volumes also contained unattributed cartoon art by Tige Reynolds. Grannatt

continued to write and perform when the Hoot Owls left the air in January, 1933

including “The Fizzies of 1935” for the Oregon Historical Society fundraiser of that

year and a 1937 fundraiser for the Portland Symphony

(now the Oregon Symphony). In 1941, the Oregonian

reported that insurance man Harry Grannatt, who had

a fine background in classical music and occasionally

gave lectures for the Portland Symphony, was the

announcer/host for KXL’s weeknight Concert Hour

program. Following the Hoot Owls' last regular

broadcast surviving Hoot Owls occasionally performed

on KGW and other stations, usually as a charity

fundraiser for the March of Dimes or other causes.

While Grannatt remained in the insurance business for

many decades, it is clear that his heart had been

given to the pen, the piano and the microphone.

Grannatt passed away in Portland in 1976.