E_Hoot_Owls

Others also joined fun. William Boone who was teamed with local

writer Dean Collins in the popular Dill Pickle Duets, would also often

play Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” on the “Owlorgan”. In an era

when the press was somewhat more collegial, the Oregonian’s

sponsorship of the program was no

bar to participation by staff from

rival newspapers. 1926 also saw

other additions, such as Ashley C.

Dixon, who owned rival KFJR and

wrote extensively for the program.

Among Dixon’s contributions were

the “Hoot Owls Midnight Ode

which closed the program and for

forty years thereafter remained

KGW’s official sign-off. The

“Midnight Ode” poignantly

captured the Hoot Owls’ sense of

humanity intertwined with the

romance of their weekly kilocycle

club.

Notwithstanding the program’s general level of frivolity, dealing as it

did with spreading a message of hope for a better future, the

“Midnight Ode” was taken very seriously and could only be delivered

by a member of the Degree Team or a very distinguished guest.

According to Hoot Owls cast member Edris Morrison: “It was

considered...a great honor to be asked to do it....One time someone

asked to give the [Ode]...and he [Charlie Berg] didn’t feel that the

man was worthy of it....Charlie was pretty violently upset about it.”

Dixon wrote numerous Shakespearean burlesques for the Hoot Owls

including “Richard the Thirteenth,” “The Curing of Hamlet,” “The

Merchant of Venice, California,” and “Twelfth Night - that became

the Thirteenth.” Dean Collins composed many of the Hoot Owl song

lyrics including the Dill Pickle songs and a verse segment called

“Bedtime Stories.” One key addition to the Hoot Owl cast was Melvin

Jerome Blank, who became Mel Blanc when he went on to thrill

millions as the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig

and a host of animated characters. The young Blanc contributed

fables in dialect and other comic voices on the Hoot Owls. Blanc, a

recent Lincoln High School graduate, was playing violin in Herman

Kenin’s Orchestra when Degree Team member Harry Grannatt heard

him sing and play his ukulele during one of the Multnomah Hotel’s

Breakfast Club programs. When Blanc was asked to perform the

popular standard “Juanita (to which the youth knew the lyrics) on the

Hoot Owls, he readily agreed only to discover on arriving at the KGW

studio that special lyrics had been prepared.

Blanc began his professional broadcasting career singing

the following into the KGW microphone:

Wanita

(to the tune of “Juanita”)

I’d be a wreck when I got the check

I prayed that she’d get indigestion

But such luck, it was out of the question.

They say nanny goats can eat soda cans and such

My girl eats things nanny goats won’t touch.

I call her my sweet Wa nita:

“Wanna eat, wanna eat,” Wanita.

Blanc (pictured right) also regularly

created sound effects, for which he

also later became famous (such as his

voicing the sputtering automotive

personality of Jack Benny's Maxwell

car). Another Hoot Owls performer,

particularly in the program’s later years,

was Clarence H. “Toley” Tolman, a

singer and musician who remained a

prominent member of the KGW musical

staff well into the 1940s.