Word: cliff
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...quite a week for Nye Bevan. He was much too shrewd to try now to wrest party control from Attlee, Morrison & Co.: why split the party when things are going his way? "One wave may shudder the cliff," explained a Bevan strategist, "but it's the steady tide that wears it away...
These outspoken children are heard by listeners in six states on The Cliff Johnson Family (weekdays, 8:15 a.m.), a 45-minute show broadcast over Chicago's station WGN. The Family's devoted audience, estimated at 600,000, has even eavesdropped, over a special hospital microphone, on the door-squeak cries of the newest member of the clan: Cliff Jr., who went on the air when he was one day old. Last week, his fans were responding with 6,000 cards, letters and telegrams and with gifts ranging from diapers to gold safety pins...
...Cliff Johnson, 36, got the idea for the show in 1941. One morning, when, his firstborn, Sandra, was only 18 months old, he took her to the studio with him, was officiating on a telephone quiz show when Sandra piped up: "Daddy, I have to go to the bathroom!" The listener response was so great that Cliff thought: "By golly, this could really be something." But radio was not yet ready to let a family run loose on the air. Besides, Cliff didn't yet have a big enough family. By 1947, the Johnsons had three more children...
Slow Start. Chicago was slow to respond. Cliff persevered, even though his wife dreaded the broadcasts so much that she "could hardly get through the program." Even the children were by no means born troupers. For two years, Linda was mostly a silent observer on the show and, off the air, referred to it as "a bunch of baloney." Says Cliff: "We just didn't press her, and she came...
...show's numerous sponsors pay Cliff $85,000 a year for his own daily invasion of his family's privacy. Of this, $20,000 goes into production costs, and the rest disappears in expenses, annuities for the children, and taxes. "I can't save anything," Cliff complains. And. thinking of the gentler tax rates of the '30s, he adds wistfully: "If only we'd had those kids 15 years...