Deceased--Himan Brown

Himan Brown
July 21st, 1910 to June 4th, 2010

"Himan Brown dies at 99; pioneer symbolizes 'an entire era of dramatic radio entertainment'"

Brown, whose career in the fledgling medium began in the late 1920s, may be best known for creating 'Inner Sanctum Mysteries,' which debuted in 1941, and 'CBS Radio Mystery Theater' decades later.

by

Dennis McLellan

June 9th, 2010

latimes.com

Himan Brown, the pioneer radio producer and director of "Grand Central Station," "Inner Sanctum Mysteries" and other popular shows of the 1930s and '40s who returned to the airwaves three decades later with "CBS Radio Mystery Theater," has died. He was 99.

Brown died Friday of age-related causes at his longtime apartment on Central Park West in Manhattan, said his granddaughter Melina Brown.

In a career in radio that began in the medium's infancy in the late 1920s, the prolific Brown's credits include "The Adventures of the Thin Man," "Bulldog Drummond," "Dick Tracy," "Flash Gordon," "The Adventures of Nero Wolfe," "Terry and the Pirates" and many others.

Along the way, he directed stars such as Orson Welles, Helen Hayes, Edward G. Robinson, Mary Astor, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre.

"He was one of the great storytellers of the heyday of the golden age of radio," said Ron Simon, curator of television and radio at the Paley Center for Media in New York City. "He symbolized an entire era of dramatic radio entertainment."

Brown may be best remembered for creating "Inner Sanctum Mysteries," which debuted in 1941 and ran until 1952. The show's opening featured one of the most famous sound effects in radio history: an eerie creaking door.

"That great sound effect just gave you a sense of mystery and suspense, symbolizing Hi Brown's flair for the dramatic," Simon said.

Long after the rise of television, Brown returned to radio to produce and direct the Peabody Award-winning "CBS Radio Mystery Theater," which ran from 1974 to 1982.

"I knew that the kind of thing radio drama had, that one-to-one relationship with the listener, was always going to be there," Brown told The Times in 1974. "It is the most personal form of the media arts, just you and the speaker. There's imagination, a whole world of creation opening up. I believe a whole generation simply lost the ability to listen. We're trying to get that back."

The son of Jewish immigrants from the outskirts of Odessa in what is now Ukraine, Brown was born July 21, 1910, in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn.

Brown, whose father was a tailor, spoke only Yiddish until he entered public school. He joined a dramatic club at the Brooklyn Jewish Center as a child and appeared in revues at resorts in the Catskills as a teenager.

In a 2003 interview with the New York Times, Brown said he was a student at Boys High School when a shop teacher told him: "There's a new thing now, radio."

To be able to hear a Cincinnati radio station in Brooklyn over a crude crystal set, he said, was a "revelation."

Brown entered Brooklyn College at 16 and had graduated from law school by the time he was 21. But, thanks to radio, he never practiced law.

While still a teenager, he began reading a humorist's weekly newspaper essay over the air in a Yiddish dialect. Actress Gertrude Berg heard him and asked him to play husband Jake opposite her Molly Goldberg in a new radio show she was writing about a Jewish family in New York.

Brown became Berg's partner and, he later said, it took him more than a year to sell "The Rise of the Goldbergs" to NBC, where it debuted in 1929. Later known as "The Goldbergs," the classic show had a long run on radio before moving into television.

After several months, Brown later recalled, Berg gave him $200 and told him to "get lost."

But that was just the beginning for Brown, who began selling other shows to advertising agencies, including "Little Italy," a family show in which he played the father. He also began buying the rights to "Dick Tracy," "The Gumps" and other popular comic strips.

Brown, who brought "Inner Sanctum" to television for a short run in 1954, also produced a couple of movies and bought an old movie studio in New York for television production in the '50s.

But he never lost his love for radio, and he produced radio dramas that were broadcast from Brooklyn College's small AM radio station into his 90s. He was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1990.

"For me, the imagination is always more powerful than any movie star or scenery," he told the New York Daily News in 2000. "All I have to do is open a creaking door, and it's the fear you hear!"

In addition to his granddaughter Melina, the twice-widowed Brown is survived by his children Barry Brown and Hilda Brown; another granddaughter, Barrie K. Brown; and four great-grandchildren.

"Himan Brown, Developer of Radio Dramas, Dies at 99"

by

Joseph Berger

June 6th, 2010

The New York Times

Himan Brown, who long before there was television created immensely popular radio dramas like “The Adventures of the Thin Man” and “Dick Tracy,” employing an arsenal of beguiling sound effects that terrified or tickled the shows’ many listeners, died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 99.

His granddaughter Melina Brown confirmed the death.

Another of Mr. Brown’s creations was the radio drama “Grand Central Station,” but probably his most memorable was “Inner Sanctum Mysteries,” whose ominous opening of a creaking door and menacing farewell of “pleasant dreams” became signatures not just of the show but also of the heyday of radio itself, when listeners sitting on the family sofa or curled under quilts attached their own fanciful images to the sounds coming out of a box that had no screen.

While radio dramas are now celebrated as wistful nostalgia by people in their 70s and 80s, Mr. Brown never stopped believing in the form. In 1974, when radio drama was all but extinct, he began a nightly series called CBS Radio Mystery Theater that ran until 1982 and even revived the creaking door. He continued to produce radio dramas about influential Americans into his 90s for Brooklyn College’s station.

“I am firmly convinced that nothing visual can touch audio,” Mr. Brown said in a 2003 interview, his eyes sparkling. “I don’t need 200 orchestra players doing the ‘Ride of the Valkyries.’ I don’t need car chases. I don’t need mayhem. All I need to do is creak the door open, and visually your head begins to go. The magic word is imagination.”

In his prime, in the 1930s and 1940s, he was a jack-of-all-trades, once estimating that he produced or participated in over 30,000 shows. He wrote and doctored scripts, sold shows to advertisers, and directed actors like Orson Welles, Helen Hayes, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. As a teenager, he was the voice of the first Jake, Molly Goldberg’s husband, in the earliest version of the show about the Goldbergs, a homespun Jewish family in the Tremont section of the Bronx. But he also played the Italian father in another ethnic soap opera called “Little Italy.”

He became an expert in sounds that could instantly epitomize a character or a city. Foghorns and the clang of Big Ben became London. A belly laugh was a fat man.

“Grand Central Station,” an anthology show, was one of Mr. Brown’s first big hits, with its portentous opening declaring that the terminal was “the crossroads of a million private lives, a gigantic stage on which are played a thousand dramas daily.”

It was characteristic of his self-confidence that when listeners complained that the chugging sounds of a steam engine were not what you ordinarily heard at the terminal, he would reply: “You have your own Grand Central Station.”

Mr. Brown grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, the son of immigrant tailors from the outskirts of Odessa in Ukraine. Yiddish was the dominant sound in his neighborhood, but also important was a violin, which his parents insisted he learn to play well. He was entranced by the idea of catching the next wave to success, and a shop teacher at Boys High School told him, “There’s a new thing now, radio.” He was told that he could hear WLW in Cincinnati with a copper wire wrapped around a Quaker Oats box.

“What a revelation that was right here in Brooklyn,” Mr. Brown said.

Having done some acting at a local synagogue dramatic club, he persuaded the young NBC station WEAF that he could read a newspaper column in a Yiddish dialect. One of his listeners was Gertrude Berg, the resourceful inventor of the Goldbergs. Within a year, and with his help packaging the show, “The Rise of the Goldbergs” started a run that with its conversion to television would last 30 years. But after six months, Mrs. Berg fired him, buying him out for $200, he said.

Mr. Brown continued to work in radio as an independent producer while attending Brooklyn College. At a time when companies financed shows and attached their names to them, he would try to sell a potential sponsor, like the Goodman’s matzo company, on an idea for a radio play and, if successful, put the show together. One result was “Bronx Marriage Bureau,” about a matchmaker.

The degree Mr. Brown received from Brooklyn Law School aided his ascent: it helped him acquire the rights to fictional characters like Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon, Bulldog Drummond and the Thin Man. “The Thin Man” also had a typical Brown touch: the sound of a pull on a lamp chain as the self-styled detectives Nick and Nora Charles went to bed. “It was as sexy as I could get,” he said.

As he prospered in radio, Mr. Brown became a perceptive art collector. The eight-room Central Park West apartment he shared with his first wife, Mildred Brown, and his second, Shirley Goodman, a force in the growth of the Fashion Institute of Technology, was filled with paintings by Renoir, Degas and Picasso.

Mr. Brown owned a weekend home in Stamford, Conn., where he once rented a studio out to a young writer, J. D. Salinger, who at the time was working on “Catcher in the Rye,” according to his granddaughter.

Both of Mr. Brown’s wives died before him. Besides Melina Brown, he is survived by a son, Barry K. Brown; a daughter, Hilda; another grandchild; and four great-grandchildren.

Mr. Brown did not weather the shift to television. He turned “Inner Sanctum” into a syndicated TV show, but it did not last. Once characters were visible, viewers were no longer enchanted. The creaky door had lost its spell.

CBS Radio Mystery Theater

"The Colony"

Inner Sanctum Mysteries

"Corridor Of Doom"

October 23rd, 1945

staring

Boris Karloff