Don McNeill's "Breakfast Club"
1944
[From "Twenty
Years of Corn"]
| The first full
scale promotion to enroll new Breakfast Club listeners resulted in over one million
Breakfast Clubbers applying for charter membership cards. The offer had to be
withdrawn after the first week. With the world still engulfed in war, Don introduced Prayer Time as a "silent prayer for a world united in peace." Kay's first book, "Don's Other Life" and Don's "No Cigarettes" were best sellers. Two old friends, Aunt Fanny (Fran Allison) and Jack Owens, returned to the breakfast table. The "cruising crooner" was born when Jack Owens sang a love song to his wife, Helen, as she sat in the audience one morning. By broadcasting direct from his home in Winnetka, surrounded by the cast and their children, Don succeeded in spending his forst Christmas morning in 12 years with Kay and the boys. |
| Right: A song was in order when Fran Allison and Jack Owens rejoined the cast in 1944. |  |
 |
Left: Listeners accepted Don's moment of Silent Prayer as reverently as did his studio audience. |
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