The Breakfast Club Menu
Helpings of Corn, Music,
Sentiment
Seasoned with Family
Fun and Prayer
| Right: Don McNeill and Dick Teela, the first Breakfast Club singer, as a candid cameraman caught them during an actual broadcast in 1933. The only other persons in the studio during those early broadcasts were Walter Blaufuss and his 12-piece orchestra, an announcer and an engineer. |  |
| "The general
idea behind Breakfast Club when I took over on June 23, 1933," recalls Don,
"was to try to do something to change the old American custom of not smiling
before breakfast. "This was a real challenge for me, a breakfast grouch. Those first few mornings on Breakfast Club were a nightmare. Several times I was ready to give up the job. Then things began to happen. "I must have sounded cheerful, even though I felt miserable, because letters began to come in from people saying they enjoyed smiling with me at breakfast. The letters made me feel better. I began to enjoy myself and, in doing so, I encouraged more people to join me around the breakfast tavle." Breakfast Club continues to follow the policy of being cheerfully corny and helpful with complete disregard for routine broadcasting practices. The result has been a completely informal, relaxed program sprinkled with McNeill's personality. The breakfast menu has changed little in 20 years. To the four musical calls, songs, chatter, March Time and Memory Time which McNeill introduced on the first show, he has added comedy and singing acts, studio interviews, his famous Prayer Time and the Sunshine Shower. Now it takes 47 persons to get the show on the air, compared to 17 in 1933. But it still is, as Don originally announced... "The Breakfast Club of the Air---a get together time for all of us who smile before breakfast and then can't break the habit all day long---the place to come when a feller needs a friend." |
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