An Interview with Peggy Webber - Part Two

My 97-year-old neighbor

Peggy Webber: Bob Carroll got me my first job and he remained my friend.

Kliph Nesteroff: He is remembered today as Lucille Ball's writer. He wrote for her for years and years. Did you ever appear on Lucille Ball’s radio show My Favorite Husband?

Peggy Webber: No, but I remember I was buying a gift for someone right next to CBS and my mother was with me. Lucille Ball was in there. I didn't know her, but I knew of her. She was shouting at the salesman, "I've got a show lined up, but I'm married to a Spaniard and I don't know if they're going to accept it." 

Kliph Nesteroff: Yeah.

Peggy Webber: I got busy doing so many radio shows. I was doing like twenty-one a week. It never occurred to me to ask to be on anything that Bob Carroll wrote. He had a partner.

Kliph Nesteroff: Yes, Madelyn Pugh Davis. When you auditioned for CBS, one of your impressions was of Zasu Pitts. Who else did you do impressions of?

Peggy Webber: Oh, I did Martha Raye, Shirley Temple, Stepin Fetchit, Edna Mae Oliver, and a whole bunch of people. Later I got the Ingrid Bergman role in Casablanca on radio. About forty of the top actresses auditioned for it. I was brand new and the fella that cast the show was a director from Chicago and he didn't know who anybody was.

Kliph Nesteroff: Had no idea if they were famous or not.

Peggy Webber: So he hired me to do Ingrid Bergman. I went to see the movie of Casablanca and I watched it over and over and over and over until I had it down pretty solid. Later, I worked with Herbert Marshall and we did Casablanca together. Every Christmas we would do scenes from it together.

Kliph Nesteroff: When you did it on radio - were you playing opposite Bogart?

Peggy Webber: Yes. 

Kliph Nesteroff: You and Bogart.

Peggy Webber: No, it wasn't Bogart. It was that guy, "Go away, boys, you bother me." I can't remember his name right now. Tom Sawyer played the goodfellow in it. That was his name, the actor's name, Tom Sawyer. He was quite known at the time, but he didn't go on to anything. I think he moved to the Midwest and became a farmer or something.

Kliph Nesteroff: So you would walk from the CBS studio at El Centro and Sunset over to the NBC studio at Sunset and Vine. They were almost side by side.

Peggy Webber: Yes, NBC was on the corner.

Kliph Nesteroff: So you'd do one show at CBS and then five minutes later you'd be on NBC...

Peggy Webber: Let me tell you the story. When I got into CBS... it was because I knew you could get in. NBC was all gates and locks and everything and you couldn't get in. I noticed that when I walked down from Hollywood Boulevard to CBS that you couldn't get into NBC. I went back to see Bob Carroll after I won an audition at CBS. I had gone to a radio show the night before. I actually went to see it with my mother. We went to see a radio show at KHJ.

Point Sublime was the name of the show. Frank Graham played about five or six parts and I remember saying to Bob Carroll, "Who is this Frank Graham? He was wonderful. He played practically all the roles." Bob said, "Oh, he's in Studio A right now. When he comes out, I'll call him over." He came out. "Hey, Frank, come on over! I've got someone here who thinks you’re fantastic." I told him, "I saw you last night at KHJ and I couldn't believe how wonderful you were." He said, "Well, thank you very much." 

I left CBS to walk over to NBC and this big, open-air car comes along. A magnificent car. It was Frank Graham. He slows down and says, "You're not going to be able to get into NBC by yourself. Hop in and I'll take you." And he did. 

He took me up to the top floor where all the producers were and introduced me as an actress. That broke the ice for me. Then I could come into NBC again and I got jobs because of that. Anyway, he died within two weeks of that. Frank Graham was found dead in that automobile in his garage. He had asphyxiated himself. 

Kliph Nesteroff: Oh my god.

Peggy Webber: I don't know if it was suicide or not, but I'm glad I told him how wonderful he was.

Kliph Nesteroff: There was no rule about working at both NBC and CBS? There weren't any exclusivity contracts? You were allowed to go back and forth?

Peggy Webber: Yes, well, only people within radio knew you were [on both stations]. I had two soap operas in the morning on NBC and then I had another one that started early in the afternoon at CBS. These were soap operas, but one of them was written by Carlton E. Morse, who [created] One Man’s Family. By the way, is that how you got your name?

Kliph Nesteroff: No.

Peggy Webber: Oh, I thought maybe your mother liked the show. Bart Yarborough played Clifford on One Man’s Family. He became one of my closest friends, but he died the day I came back to work for Jack Webb on Dragnet. Jack was late coming in and I couldn’t believe it because he was always early. He came in and told all of us that Bart had died. He fell through the shower door and bled to death.

Kliph Nesteroff: Oh my goodness.

Peggy Webber: His wife had gone to work. He was alone.

Kliph Nesteroff: So radio people died in dramatic ways.

Peggy Webber: Every time I get into the shower I think of it (laughs). “Am I going to die in here?”

Kliph Nesteroff: That’s rather morbid, Peggy. You started out doing radio in Arizona. Didn’t Steve Allen do a radio show in Arizona as well?

Peggy Webber: He may have, but I wasn’t connected with him. I did work for him later when I was in my late 30s, but I was never happy on his show. I can’t remember why. I just don’t have a happy feeling about it.

Kliph Nesteroff: Orson Welles. You worked with Orson Welles.

Peggy Webber: Yes, Orson was my main inspiration. When I was a child I was left alone on a Saturday in San Antonio, Texas and I tuned in a New York program. It was a daytime show. Later I found out that Jeanette Nolan had been on that show. She later became my buddy. She and I were very close. Anyway, I found out it was Orson Welles who directed and adapted this script on this show. This was before he had become a star, before he did his man from mars thing. This was early on. I was about 10. I just fell in love with it.

I thought, “That’s what I want to do! That’s what I want to do when I grow up!” And I did. From then on that was my main thing. I listened to everything he did before he became a star. We moved to the Arizona desert. My father had a gold mine and my mother cooked for all the men who worked there. We lived in the middle of the desert and I would egg my father to let me listen for one half-hour, once a week, to hear Orson Welles. We didn’t have radio in the house, but in the car we had a radio. I devoured everything he did. The way he handled the music, the way he cast the shows. It was just everything that I wanted to do.

I never forgot that and when I was 18 he called me. I was doing one of the soap operas on NBC. It was in the afternoon. I was playing a very wicked woman who was married to a Dr. Paul (laughs). And Dr. Paul was all goodness and this wife of his was wicked. The director was George Fogle, who was from Chicago. He coached me to play a middle-aged woman when I was 18. So I was just going on the air and the engineer pressed the talk back button. He said, “Peggy, you’ve got a telephone call.” I said, “I can’t talk to them right now, the red light is about to go on any second!” He said, “But it’s Orson Welles!” I went, “Oh my God!”

So I ran into the booth and said, “Hello!?” He said, “We need you! Get over here!” I said, “I can’t - I have to do this show!” He said, “Well, when you finish, get over here!” He was at CBS. So I got through my show somehow, I don’t know how I did, and I ran and ran, and I went into CBS and everyone was standing there with champagne glasses. They handed me one and I said, “I don’t want champagne, I need a script! Where’s the script?” He came out of the booth and he said, “You’ll need that glass later. Right now you’re playing a Russian who is my love interest. Get on the microphone, we’ll read the scenes.”

So I did and he said, “That’s fine. That’s good.” And then people [the audience] started coming in and he came out as he always did [to address them before the show]. He took his script out of his pocket in front of the audience, right before the start of the show, and he “accidentally” dropped it and pages spilled all over the floor. People were going crazy, “Oh no, what’s he going to do! They’re about to go on-air!” They didn’t realize this was what he does all the time. He goes, “It’s okay, it’s okay, I’ll sort it out,” and walked into the booth where he pulled the actual script out of his pocket. People didn’t realize this was his trick that he always did.

Kliph Nesteroff: This was his shtick to warm-up the audience.

Peggy Webber: Yes, he had the audience on edge.

Kliph Nesteroff: So you became friendly with him.

Peggy Webber: Yes. A few years later he called me to come audition for his movie version of Macbeth. When I got there he was in this loose-fitting shirt and he looked exhausted. Sweating and everything. He told me, “Now, I don’t want you to do the traditional Lady Macduff. I want you to do a glamorous kind of young person. I want her to be maybe 21 or something like that.” I did it with a Scottish accent as he wanted and he said, “That’s it. That’s it.” And I got the part.