20080731
A DJ/RADIO-ORIENTED 1 ACT PLAY FROM 1966/1967
Our unofficial senior advisor to this site, Bill Earl, writes:I completed (graduated from) 9th grade, junior high school, on a Friday in June 1966. 
In those days, we could start HIGH SCHOOL (Arcadia High school was only grades 10 thru 12 in those days) on the following Monday, during the SUMMER SESSION, for credit classes toward a high school diploma, which I did.
My first high school course was "Playwriting."
We were required to write an original one-act play during the six-week term.
If our teacher (regular Drama instructor) liked it, it would get produced during my remaining high school years.
I needed an original topic and came up with a play based on these events.
Back in 1962, my parents took me to meet Johnny Holiday at the KCBQ studios in San Diego.
We met him in the lobby.
I was only 11 years old.
He was gentlemanly and gracious.
Fast forward to June 1965.
Holiday left KCBQ in San Diego to become a 93/KHJ "B.J." (Boss Jock) but under a new airname "Johnny Mitchell."
In April 1966, fellow KHJ jock Sam Riddle hosted a teen dance show on local TV Channel 9.
Riddle had cut a decent hitbound record called "Lollipops & Teardrops."
The protagonist in the lyrics was a fellow named "Johnny."
To promote Riddle's record, Riddle invited fellow Boss Jocks Johnny Williams and Johnny Mitchell to do a bit while the song was to be played and the studio audience of teens danced to it. Riddle had both Johnnys sit on bar stools while the teens would stick an eyedropper to their eyes to look like tears, while at the same time making both men suck on lollipops....one after another, more than one at a time.
I watched this show, and was shocked by seeing the gentlemanly Johnny Holiday I met from 1962 be made into the butt of a comedy bit.
When it came time for me to come up with an original topic for my play, I recalled this "Johnny" affair from several months back...what a radio personality would be MADE to DO in the "big room"...Hollywood...as a promo bit.
Would this affect his home life?
His psyche?
In retrospect, the TV bit was basically a goof, and both Johnnys seemed to go with the flow.
But me being only 15, I took it to a more...psychological...level...and came up with this play. Many song title female names from that period I used in the play, "Caroline, No'", "Penny Lane", "Ruby Tuesday", "Eleanor Rigby", "Sherry, She Needs Me," etc.
Interestingly, I also made up a pseudonym for KHJ kingpin Bill Drake, calling him "PHIL HERON."
Seems that 42 years later, a "PHIL HERON" will be jocking on a California internet oldies channel, KXOK beginning this summer.
Coincidence?
You be the judge.
Here on adjacent "pages" for the first time in any public published form is the play I wrote when I was only 15 years old, with additions made by teacher request, when I was 16.
If K-BOSS sounds like KHJ, and KQ sounds like KCBQ, it's just a coincidence.
Of course ANY similarity to any real person is just that...a coincidence.
The play WAS to have been produced in the fall of 1967.
But the instructor, even though demanding rewrites, which I DID, felt it was getting dated (remember 1967 was "the Summer Of Love"), and so he moved on to OTHER original plays to produce, moving this one from the back burner into the deep freeze.
Arcadia High NEVER DID get to have this play performed during my era there, June 1966 to June 1969.
Enjoy the one-act play called "LOLLIPOPS & TEARDROPS."
Bill Earl
Still in "Boss Angeles"
July 2008
93/KHJ's DAVE HULL (11/85)
Previously unpublished pic.Hull is doing a "live" remote show from 93/KHJ mobile studio from a North Hollywood doughnut shop parking lot.
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