This is Your FBI: The Slapstick Holdup

The Equitable Life Assurance Society presents This is your FBI. This is your FBI. The official broadcast from the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation presented as a public service by the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States and the Equitable Society's representative in your community.

Has anyone ever phoned you to check up on what radio program you're listening to? It happens like this. Yes? This is the radio checking bureau. Is your radio turned on? Yes, it is. What program are you listening to, please?

This is your FBI. Just starting. Do you know who sponsors that program? Sure I do. It's the Equitable Life Assurance Society. I listened last week and heard about the Equitable Society's fact-finding charts for fathers and mothers.

My representative brought me a copy, so naturally I know that this is your FBI is sponsored by the Equitable Society. In about 15 minutes I'll be back with full information about the Equitable Society's fact-finding chart for fathers and mothers.

Tonight's FBI file, the slapstick hold up! America, as was to be expected, has changed in a quarter of a century. The movies people were seeing then, movies like Bobbromel and The Ten Commandments, were silent.

If Scott Fitzgerald was at work on a book called The Great Gatsby, and throughout the country in large cities and small towns, people were seeing road companies of plays like Laugh Clown Lab, Stepping Stones, and of course, the student prints.

In every city, even the split week stands, there was something which today has all been vanished from the American scene. There was the theatrical boarding house. Actors lived there while they were in town, and as sometimes happened, stayed on if the show closed in that particular place.