In 1951, Bobby Thomson was 28 years old, the Ambassador Hotel was 30 years old, George Plimpton and Vin Scully were 24 years old. Plimpton was still years away from writing his classic books Out of My League and Paper Lion. Scully was the third man on the Brooklyn Dodgers broadcasting team that included Red Barber and Connie Desmond. He was years away from being the greatest play-by-play voice in baseball history. The Ambassador Hotel, featuring the Coconut Grove nightclub, was one of the world’s most notable lodgings, but it became infamous and, ultimately, extinct. And Joe DiMaggio called it quits on December 11, days after his 37th birthday.   Joltin’ Joe, Bobby, the Ambassador, George, and Vin…where have you gone?

So much of 1951 is gone, but not forgotten, including publications, ballparks, and other buildings. Gone or not, the work of many writers and architects in 1951 impacted the future. Welton Becket, 49-year-old architect, Robert E. Petersen, 25-year-old publisher, and John Steinbeck, 49-year-old writer, were all doing work that would impact people for years to come. The stories of Becket, Petersen, Steinbeck, and more are featured in this episode of Where Have You Gone?

This installment of Where Have You Gone looks at Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World”. It put the New York Giants into the 1951 World Series against Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and the New York Yankees.   Ever since October 3, 1951, the date and Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” have been linked. Since then, Thomson’s name has been chiseled into the story of baseball.   Thomson’s home run was the high mark of an exceptional career. Mickey Mantle had many highlights in one of baseball’s greatest careers. On October 4, 1951, at Yankee Stadium when the World Series began, Mantle (at bat) and Thomson (at third base) were only feet apart.    We’re decades away from 1951, but we’re striving to get closer to it, this season on Where Have You Gone? There are also stories about The Caine Mutiny, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, Herman Wouk, and Paul Gregory.

One of the champions of radio in 1951 was Gordon McLendon, creator of the Liberty Broadcasting System. Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee were part of the creation of the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS).    Lawrence and Lee became one of America’s great writing duos. Their work stands the test of time. If Gordon McLendon’s work has not lasted in the same way, he remains an inspiration for anyone enthralled by the spoken word.   The work of Rube Walker on the baseball diamond is even less well known today, but also memorable.   Lawrence and Lee, McLendon, and Walker all succeeded on, or near, Broadway. There are many Broadways and we will consider some of them on this episode of Where Have You Gone?   There are also stories about Margo Jones, Nedrick Young, Fielder Cook, and the Lux Radio (and Video) Theater.

The New York Giants had 17 wins and 19 losses when Willie Mays made his Major League Baseball debut on May 25, 1951. By the end of September, he was a fixture in the Giants’ lineup and helped put his team in a pennant race for the ages with the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was a high point in the history of Major League Baseball.   In 1951, the Lux Radio Theater celebrated its 17th anniversary and Meredith Willson turned 49 years old. NBC’s The Big Show of September 30, 1951, was beginning its second season on the air with a broadcast from London, England.   Radio was already beginning to lose its battle with television but competed for the hearts and minds of the audience with new programming ideas.

On September 20, 1951, Ford Frick was elected Commissioner of Baseball. The next day, A Place in the Sun opened at the Loew’s State in downtown Cleveland. Also on the 20th, screenwriter Michael Wilson “appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities as an ‘un-friendly’ witness” and took the fifth.    In the fall of 1951, Saturdays were special. Saturday was the night for Your Show of Shows. Carl Reiner was playing second banana to Sid Caesar. Reiner was 29 years old.   Frick, Wilson, and Reiner were vastly different people with vastly different careers, but each made an impact on many people in 1951 and beyond.

We look at the 25th birthday of Route 66 and some of baseball’s all-time great broadcasters at the middle of the 20th century.   Route 66 turned 25 years old in 1951. In his book 1939 book The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck called it “The Mother Road” and the moniker stuck. It ran through baseball cities large and small. It was immortalized in the song “Get Your Kicks on Route 66”.   Route 66 is a long road, and the 1951 National League season was one of those special longer seasons, longer by three games thanks to the playoff between the Dodgers and the Giants.   Some of the all-time greats were at the microphone broadcasting baseball games through car radios on roads like Route 66 in 1951. We can still listen to the voices and the heroics of bygone times today.   There are also stories about the other extended MLB seasons from 1946 to 1962, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Randy Turpin.

In his extraordinary career, Oscar-winning writer-director Eric Simonson has bridged a unique cross-section of American drama from Norman Corwin to Mark Harris. His documentary, A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin, won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Documentary, Short Subjects. 

We take yet another look at the legendary poet laureate of radio, Norman Corwin, and the husband-wife acting team of Paul Douglas and Jan Sterling.   On September 2, 1951 Norman Corwin “intermittently watched [the] Giants-Dodgers game” in New York City.  He was in New York for a trade screening of The Blue Veil on September 5.    The film careers of Paul Douglas and Jan Sterling were taking off in 1951. That year, the couple, married in 1950, were both working on baseball films. Douglas was making Angels in the Outfield as manager Guffy McGovern of the struggling Pittsburgh Pirates. Sterling was making Rhubarb.   Stories include the 1951 Cleveland Indians, the 1951 American League pennant race, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

Another great playwright, Paddy Chayefsky, supporting players like actors Joe Mantell and Art Gilmore, and many of the Dodgers and Giants on October 3, 1951 are featured.   In 1951, Chayefsky turned 28 years old, and Mantell was 36 years old.  By 1955, Mantell and Chayefsky were both Oscar nominees for the film Marty. Mantell was nominated for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and Chayefsky won the Oscar for Best Screenplay.   On August 14, 1951, the film A Place in the Sun premiered in Los Angeles. It’s one of the iconic films of the 1950s directed by George Stevens and starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. In an uncredited role, Art Gilmore’s voice is heard as a radio announcer.    Gilmore was the namesake of the Art Gilmore Career Achievement Award from the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters. Gilmore was one of the founders of the organization.    We look at Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, the Society of American Magicians (SAM) and the International Brotherhood of Magicians (IBM), Ezzard Charles, Bill Veeck, and Eddie Gaedel.

We feature a look at two more legends, college baseball coach Rod Dedeaux and filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock.   On June 16, 1951, the 37-year-old Dedeaux and the University of Southern California Trojans baseball team was in Omaha, Nebraska playing the Tennessee Volunteers in the College World Series. It was USC’s first trip to Omaha for the College World Series.   In 1951, Hitchcock turned 52 years old. As “The Master of Suspense,” Hitchcock would have been the ideal director for the 1951 National League pennant race. His latest success, “Strangers on a Train,” had its Hollywood premier on June 30.   Stories feature “Alfred Hitchcock: The Art of Making Movies” at Universal Studios Florida, Hitchcock’s “The White Shadow”, Eva Marie Saint, the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress, Stan Freberg, and Death of a Salesman.

Opening day of the 1951 Major League Baseball season turns our attention to Jackie Robinson, the literature of Jackie Robinson, his childhood hometown of Pasadena, California, Pasadena’s legendary Vroman’s Book Store, and another literary legend, Ray Bradbury.   There are also stories about the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles, Langston Hughes and Vachel Lindsay.

Lucille Ball, John Wayne, Rod Serling, and General Douglas MacArthur take center stage as our look at 1951 continues.   On March 31, 1951, five days after Mickey Mantle’s big day at Bovard Field, the last broadcast of “My Favorite Husband” starring 39-year-old Lucille Ball, aired on the CBS radio network. Lucy’s transition from radio to television and “I Love Lucy” marked a fundamental change in American life. It also changed the lives of William Frawley and Vivian Vance.   On April 11, 1951, five days before the traditional Major League Baseball opening day in Cincinnati to kick off the 75th anniversary season of the National League, President Harry Truman went on radio and television to announce his dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur from command in Asia.   Also featured are stories of William Riley Burnett, Orson Welles, Norman Corwin, Leonard Bernstein, Sgt. Issac Woodard Jr., Lewisohn Stadium, Woody Guthrie, and MacArthur Park.

One of the seminal moments in American history took place on October 3, 1951, when Bobby Thomson hit what has become known as “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World”. Earlier in 1951, Mickey Mantle burst onto the scene as a rookie for the New York Yankees. These seemed like two good bookends for a story about 1951 as a turning point in American history.   We feature stories about Mantle and his big day at Bovard Field on the University of Southern California campus March 26, 1951, Dalton Trumbo, John Van Druten, Preston Sturges, Harold Lloyd, Sam Fuller, H. L. Mencken, and Charles P. Everitt.

Our new season begins with a special episode, an interview with Dr. Rock Positano. Dr. Positano is the author, with his brother John, of Dinner With DiMaggio, an intimate look at Rock’s friendship with the legendary Yankee Clipper.

Our road trip continues in the Motor City, Detroit, Michigan, with stops at the Henry Ford, Historic Hamtramck Stadium, Comerica Park, and John K. King Used & Rare Books. It is the final stop on our trip and the final episode of the second season of Where Have You Gone?

Marshall, MI is home to the American Museum of Magic. It also features the largest National Historic Landmark District (small urban category) in the United States. It is the next stop on our trip through Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan.

Colon, Michigan, is the Magic Capital of the World. For decades, it has been a destination for many of the greatest magicians in the world. It has been the final stop for some of them. Find the magic when Where Have You Gone? visits Colon, Michigan.

The second day of our road trip covers Marion, Ohio and Fort Wayne, Indiana. There is travel on the Lincoln Highway, a bookstore, and a ballgame. There are other historic landmarks along the way, all the things that make for good heritage travel.

Virtual travel is fine, but real travel is usually better. Come along for our recent visit to Columbus, OH, the first stop on a road trip through Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. The Columbus sites include important locations in the lives of James Thurber, Harold Cooper, Dave Thomas, and Howard Thurston. Discover places that have, and have not, survived the test of time.