Mrs X: “I’m Dennis O’Keefe’s wife”
Steffi O'Keefe is an attractive, demure housewife with an intriguing accent. In a previous life, Steffi Duna was an exotic actress and dancer who played a variety of ethnicities in some two dozen films of the 1930s. Born in Hungary where she studied dance and performed all over Europe, she came to Hollywood in 1932 unable to speak English. She learned quickly. Despite her Eastern European background, she was often cast as a fiery Latin femme fatale. A sampling of her character names during that period: Carlita, Carmelita, Chiquita, Cheema, and Cheeta. When she married O'Keefe in 1940, she abruptly ended her career and devoted herself to a new life as a wife and mother.
Earl Gammons, a vice-president at CBS: “I wrote the first singing commercial”
In 1926, while a publicity man for WCCO in Minneapolis, Gammons wrote "Have You Tried Wheaties?" Actually, he wrote new lyrics to an existing jazz favorite. Some sources also credit station manager Henry Bellows as a co-writer. At the time, Wheaties was a relatively new (and struggling) product of the Minneapolis-based Washburn-Crosby Company, which also owned the radio station. (Note the call letters.) A barbershop quartet performed the jingle live on Christmas Eve, and in the days before practical recording equipment had made its way to Minnesota, they would perform the song live once a week for three years, for the princely sum of $15 a week. Each, we hope. Eventually, an advertising man figured out that sales were soaring in the local market where the song was heard, but nowhere else. A national campaign followed, and Wheaties was on its way to becoming an iconic brand. In 1928, the Washburn-Crosby Company rebranded itself as General Mills.
.Special guest Gregory Ratoff: “I am going to use 4 emotions
in answering questions”
The Russian-born Ratoff was a multi-hyphenate long before that term was coined. He was an actor, mostly in the 1930s, and a director, mostly in the 1940s, as well as a producer, often of his own films. His best-known acting role was probably as producer Max Fabian, who feuds with star Margo Channing in
All About Eve
(1950). Ratoff also has an unusual connection to the world of 007. Before most people had even heard of James Bond, Ratoff bought the rights to Ian Fleming's original Bond novel
Casino Royale
(1953). That led directly to an October, 1954 Americanized television version starring Barry Nelson as Bond. It was the first time the character appeared on camera.
After Ratoff's death in 1960, his wife sold the rights to Casino Royale to producers who turned it into the confusing, psychedelic 1967 comedy. It would not be until 2006 and the debut of Daniel Craig as 007 that the world would finally get a "real" adaptation of the original story.
This episode has not been reviewed. Information comes from alternate sources, including Gil Fates' handwritten notes. Quoted secrets are based on those notes and are believed to be accurate.
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