The Blockbuster Series Mr. DA Did Not Start That Way

I received a number of document images from the University of Wisconsin NBC archives. They were about the early weeks of Mr. DA under Philips H. Lord. It was a 15-minute serial at that time. Reviews were not good. At NBC headquarters, they measured it against Big Town with Edward G. Robinson. They were very impatient about how the series was coming together. This particular comment in the New York Daily News raised some ire. The critic said that it had "shoddy episodes," "slovenly writing," and "inept acting." Ouch! That hurts!

1939-04-12 NY Daily News

There's a handwritten note from David Sarnoff to NBC president Leonard Lohr. It has just one word: "How?" But note how BIG Sarnoff wrote "Mr. Lohr" compared to the "How?" Yes, you can scream in cursive handwriting.

Early days of broadcasting were really tough. The show did get its footing in the following weeks. There are notes to the top executives that they should be patient because the show was only a few weeks old. By July ratings were headed up and Pepsodent began sponsorship.

There were other complaints about violence and there was a prison warden who complained that in one episode they used his name for one of the criminals! It was kind of a mess, because it was clear that the warden misheard when the facts were revealed. He was so upset that he hung up on the NBC exec who called him. The documents detail the systematic method they developed for coming up with character names. It was in effect at the time of this incident, so the NBC lawyers and Phillips H. Lord anticipated the problem. (Most shows had a system in place for this). I'll go through it at some point soon. All of this occurred before Jostyn came on the scene under Ed Byron's production management. Lord went onto other things. I think he was frustrated that even though Mr. DA would get some traction he lost patience with it and gave it to Byron.

Another batch of papers are about a lawsuit that Alonzo Deen Cole had against Lord in the late 1930s. Cole said there were certain promises made that the Mr. DA show would use his ideas for scripts and pay him accordingly. Cole lost. The court ruled that plotlines in the crime genre were so very generic, repetitive, and ubiquitous, that Cole could not win since his ideas were not really original. The Witch's Tale had gone off the air in 1938 and Cole was looking for work, and since Lord was already a successful producer, he was hoping to get hired. It obviously didn't work out. Cole was an odd character. He was one of radio's pioneers with Witch's Tale as its creator, producer, director, writer, actor, and syndicator. His career was pretty erratic. It must have been pretty clear after this that Lord would never hire him, but he did latch on with CBS when he was hired to "fix" a flailing show called Casey, Press Photographer. He did. But he never got any big paydays after that was over. The idea that Cole and Lord were in court was just fascinating to me which is what piqued my interest in getting the file of legal papers. I wrote up some details of Cole's life and they can be viewed at https://bluenotebulletin.blogspot.com/2020/04/what-became-of-alonzo-deen-cole-after.html

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