Mr. Wickel and the $1,000

One evening last month, NBC-tuned citizens of Holyoke, Mass, rose abruptly from their radios, rushed to a vacant lot at Prospect and Walnut Streets, and began digging frantically with knives, spoons, shovels or any implements they had. One man brought a bulldozer. Within an hour, two of the diggers unearthed 500 silver dollars apiece, and the lot looked as if it had been bombed.

This stampede made a newspaper sensation--to the immense gratification of Ralph Edwards, publicity-minded M.C. of radio's Truth or Consequences program. There was more to the story--a preface and an epilogue.

A Man in the House. Months before, Edwards had asked his studio audience a pointless query: "Is there a Mr. Wickel in the house?" The M.C. liked his little joke, repeated it, and in time it became a standard gag line. Then, on November 4, there was a Mr. Wickel in the house: listeners heard a meek response from a Verona, N.J. mechanical engineer named Rudolph J. Wickel. Edwards, rising to the occasion, promptly announced that $1,000 awaited Mr. Wickel's shovel in the Holyoke lot. Mr. Wickel joined the gold rush, but failed to find the money.

After the ensuing stampede, and after promising to make a park of the ruined lot and put a bust of Mr. Wickel in it, Edwards presented mild, bespectacled, disappointed Mr. Wickel with a check for $1,000. But there was no bank name on the check. Nevertheless, Mr. Wickel finally cashed it, at his own bank:--and received $1,000 in Confederate money. Asking for something more negotiable, he got a 1,400-lb. safe containing a little less than half of a $1,000 bill.

Pecky Takes Over. Still amiable, Mr. Wickel asked for the rest of the bill, was informed that a white parrot named Pecky could tell, if it would. Stiffened with mike fright fortnight ago, it wouldn't.

Mr. Wickel took Pecky home, wooed it doggedly while phone calls, letters and wandering curiosity-seekers offered suggestions. For four days the parrot croaked over & over: "Nellie," "Lily," "Ken." Less amiable by now, Mr. Wickel shipped the bird back to Edwards.

Last week, one of the longest running gags and one of the most successful promotion stunts in radio history wore itself out. From Chicago, where it had been shipped for Saturday's show, the parrot's "Ken" was enlarged to "Ken I'm No" and this was interpreted (by reading backwards) to mean: "On my neck." In NBC's New York studios, Mr. Wickel smiled grimly when Edwards promised to mail the money between Pages 12 and 13 of a book.

Reading Matter. But Edwards found it impossible to give up without one last cute touch.* He cut New York off the program and took a nation of listeners into his gleeful confidence.

"Now here is where you folks listening come in on the gag," he confided. "Every one of you listening also mail a book to Mr. Wickel. . . . When all the books have arrived, Army trucks will cart them away to the Victory Book Campaign headquarters. . . . Mr. Wickel will be searching for Page 13s until the cows come home. ... I can just see his face. . . ."

* Ex-Announcer Edwards never does. Since he thought up the show in 1940, he has made participants ride camels, wash elephants, woo seals, wiggle into girdles onstage. Only victim to renege on a "consequence" was a rabid Brooklyn fan who couldn't bring himself to make a speech vilifying the Dodgers.

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