Mike Douglas Meets Moshe Eskayo

Note: You will not see this video in our video section since we really don't know where to categorize this pertaining to a specific dance. But, it does involve Israeli dance and it does involve a well known Israeli dance choreographer, Moshe Eskayo, seen here being interviewed by Mike Dougles. How this occurs in Philadelphia on May 21st, 1971 in Philadelphia allows us to discuss one of the most interesting media outlets at least as far as history is concerned.

When we look at electronic communication, the first instance seems to be thre telegraph whose use became widespread during the late 1830's. This technology was so established that Union forces during the Civil war were "wired" in to their commanders and Washington. It is said that the telegraph, complemented by a rapidly expanding railroad network, provided the edge to the Union effort. In fact, both went hand in hand as most telegraph lines across the US were positioned on railroad right of ways. The Telegraph came with its own language, Morse code, which converted operator's dot and dashes into text.

The telegraph was tethered to the wire which ran impulses between the termini. These impulses could be looked at as static caused by electrical discharges down the wire. But, what about situations where laying wire was not feasible such as ships at sea. Several engineers and scientists started to look at the transmission of such static - electromagnetic waves - through the air. One such pioneer, Marconi, patented what we now call Radio in 1896. Creation of this medium was in two parts: creating and receiving. With further experimentation Marconi was able to create a receiver for his transmissions. And we should note that marconi was not alkone in the experimentation of radio transmission and reception although progress was slow by today's standards.

Proof that advances in Radio are slow can be shown in the sinking of the Titanic on April 15th, 1912 - almost 16 years after Marconi's patent. The Titanic did have radio, but the distress signal went out as a Morse code SOS. Apparently there were other ships in the area at the time of the sinking but the vague SOS did not have an impact. We assume this led to an international convention standardizing call letters for seagoing vessels so at least there would be an available listing to attribute thew sender of such signals. Each country at the time was given a prefix and the United States was assigned the letters W and K

Even in great world events, the lack of progress in radio was and is surprising. In World War II, every unit had a radioman easily spotted by the antenna he was carrying. No such thing existed in World War I. Orders and actions were facilitated by runners on all fronts and by all sides. In WWI this was not easy and very dangerous in such combat where the runner would have been one of few open targets in an arena of fixed facilities like trenches. On both sides runners had high mortality because of this lack of communications. Think how much different, considering the most prominent German runner of that war, the world could have been if what we consider as ordinary radio, available to all parties with a slight tweak, had been used.

But change was on the horizon. Engineers began to understand that the power of this new media was not in creating static emissions but in the underlying use of the transmission. Hence, experimental transmissions of voice were started with the ultimate result being the first US radio broadcast on Nov 2, 1920 reporting the election of that day. The location was Westinghouse company headquaters in Pittsburgh. The station was KDKA and it was broadcasting on radio dial 1020 as it does today. To receive this broadcast, listeners had to have a receiver which, no doubt, Westinghouse had been making available to the public to create an audience.

George Westinghouse had already been a success with his Westinghouse Air Brake Company that made braking systems for railroads. In 1886 he expands this and creates the Westinghouse ELectric company. Westinghouse had always been a rival of Thomas Edison and this extended into the companies both formed: Westinghouse Electric and General Electric. In a bold move Westinghouse hired Nikolas Tesla from GE and using his ideas expanded into the creation and transmission of electricity (including Tesla's idea about AC/DC). It was natural therefore for Westinghouse to look at Radio as the creation and transmission of electricity through a different medium and so they led the way into the age of radio.

KDKA would soon start broadcasting on a regular schedule. But, about 400 miles away in Chicago, in late 1921, Westinghouse would again be involved in another special event in US commercial radio broadcasting history using call letters that we in Philadelphia would readily recognize. Allegedly with the initial words of "My God, but it's dark in here!", selections from the opera, Madame Butterfly, would be broadcast live to the Chicago area on KYW. KYW? The local Phialdephia radio and television station? Yep. The same KYW is the second authorized commercial radio broadcaster in the country operating out of Chicago also using the same 1020 frequency as KDKA. Note: The first picture of this montage is from a web site dedicated to the history of media in Chicago, www.richsamuels.com where there is a link to a discussion of the early KYW broadcasts.

Until KYW relocates, the station becomes a fixture of Chicago media. THis montage shows several stories about KYW personalitiers of the time as written in the Chicago Tribune. But it's not all positive. Westinghouse engineers had decided that 570 on the AM dial was the best position for a commercial station and for a few years KYW had this location. But, the early 20's was a time of very rapid expansion of the radio industry in the US with stations popping up possibly every day. By 1925, the Federal Radio commission had been established and started the practice of allocating W call letters east of the Mississippi and K to those stations that were west. Stations were grandfathered in as was the case of KYW. By 1926 the radio commission started to look at the problems that multiple stations would create snd came up with the following solution. The country was split into five regions with each region having 8 or so clear channel broadcasters (this stations frequency would not be allocated anywhere else in the country) 5 regional clear channels where the frequency would not be allocated anywhere else in the region and 30 or so local frequencies with several channels allocated to the same frequency within a region. For whatever reason, KYW was allocated the 1020 band in the Chicago area and Westinghouse thought that this was not a feasible solution given the poor reception in many areas of the Chicago metropolitan area.

As Westinghouse becomes disenchanted with the Chicago area due to government decrees and intervension, the radio industry is expanding rapidly. One major development is the formation of the National Broadcasting Network (NBC) in 1926. At the time NBC was an amalgamation of ownership by the big three in radio broadcasting: RCA, GE and Westinghouse. RCA was the brainchild of David Sarnoff pictured in this montage. Although sometime in the future ,due to Antitrust considerations, RCA would buy out its partners (and eventually GE would buy out RCA) all the stations owned by this big three would become affiliates of the NBC network. KYW was no exception. NBC became so big that shortly after its creation it itself split into the Red and Blue network. The Westinghouse stations could choose which version of NBC to join and some joined the blue network (we think KDKA was an example of this) and sone like KYW were part of the Red Network. Sometime in the '40s due to Antitrust considerations, NBC Blue was sold and became what we now know to be ABC and therefore Westinghouse, at that time, had stations affiliated with both ABC and NBC and it would stay this way until Westinghouse bought out CBS in 1995 with the effect that all its stations became CBS affiliates but that would be in the future. And, by the way, if this history seems complicated, the early history of radio in this country is byzantine with media swaps, swindles and shady financial dealings which forced the creation of the various governmental regulatory agencies leading up to the FCC.

Sometime in 1934 (the date seems to be around Dec 10, 1934) the powers that be at Westinghouse act on the decision to move KYW east to Philadelphia. Apparently this is a fast decision as nothing is ready for the station on its arrival to our city. Yet the station blends into its new adopted city easily as one of these pictures, a copy of the Inquirer radio listings, shows. The reason for this is that after the move, for several years, the station is administered by WCAU, the CBS affiliate in Philadelphia with personnel moving back and forth between stations. Additionally, sometime late in the '30s, NBC proper becomes a guardian. While this is going on Westinghouse is building a state of the art studio at 1619 Walnut Street in the heart of Philadlephia to house the station and sometime in 1940 the station reverts back to Westinghouse rule. 15 years later (and a reversal 22 years later) a similar situation will occur.

Above we have been tracking KYW radio through its first 20 or so years. In that time there is the creation of NBC and the imposition of more federal regulations. But, a year after the formation of NBC, a patent is filed for a more powerful use of radio. This involves Philo Farnesworth and his ideas formulated while working a tractor on an Iowa farm. While plowing he envisions a device that would paint a screen section by section fast enough to make it seem to the viewer that this was live pictures. In 1927 he is able to prove this and applies for a patent. His is one of at least four viable ideas as to how to create television. There are ideas from England, Germany, RCA (using a Russian Engineer's idea) but Farnesworth's concept will win out in the end. Unfortunately for him, numerous lawsuits against him (and he against them) by RCA and David Sarnoff make moot any real future financial gain (although Farnsworth did win a million dolloar settlement against RCA) but at least Farnesworth gets his due when he appears on "I've Got A Secret" as the inventor of Television as indicated in the rightmost pictures of this montage.

If we are discussing Farnsworth, we should spend some equal time discussing his nemesis, David Sarnoff. Sarnoff emigrates from Russia and arrives in New York in the ewarly 1900s. Among his interests is the newspaper business but he eventually becomes an employee of the marconi Radio company. Over the years he is promoted through this company's ranks and is aware that the company during World War I is experimenting with vocal text transmission. But the company mindset is still on what is called point to point that is the basis of the wired telegraph. To Sarnoff's credit, he realizes that Radio's future will be from point to mass population. In a series of deals, GE is able to create the Radio Corporation of America out of the maroni company and Sarnoff continues to rise through these new ranks. He become president of RCA in 1930 and oversees the Red and Blue radio network of RCA but his interest is also on the new technology of television. Given his Russian heritage, he backs a russian engineer's concept for TV. It is said the RCA spends 50 million to perfect TV but it is obvious the the Russian engineer has used Farnesworth's principles resulting in a patent suit. After much legal battle RCA and Sarnoff settle the case for a million although it is clear that RCA stands to gain multiple millions from this new technology.

One company that enthusiastically accepts Farnsworth's ideas in the Philadelphia Storage Battery company which by that time had changed its name to Philco. Philco was already a part of the radio mania that swept the country in the 1920's being a supplier of radio receivers. Philco did much to make Philadelphia at that time a leader in technology development. This montage shows a variety of technologies that Philco was involved in including the aforementioned radio production, televsion cameras and receivers (what we now call TVs) and early computer technologies. And, one of its engineers at the height of the company's success is the aforementioned Philo Farnsworth lending his expertise to Philco's efforts.

Thanks to this company, many of the early advances in Television occur in the Philadlephia area as documented in a script on the Early television web site which you can access by clicking here. Starting as w3xe in 1932 (changed to WPTZ in 1941 when it became the third television station authorized by the FCC) this station was at the forefront of early TV developments. For example, it joins with NBC's TV station in New York to create the first (albeit very small) Broadcasting network pre World War II. As far as we know, the station began to broadcast the Penn football games on a regular schedule. After the war, with the addition of GE's station in Schenectady, NY, these three stations are the first to air NBC's TV lineup as it starts in Nov 1946. It's experience with remote locations such as football games and the annual Jan. 1st Mummers Parade is probably the reason that both the Republican and Democratic conventions were held in Philadelphia in 1948. The station had also originated the first political convention covered in 1940 as it televised the 1940 Republican convention.

We should, in fairness, indicate that in this period, the early 30's, the United States is not the leader in television technologies. Concensus is that the Germans take the lead in this. Germany starts a experimental broadcast in 1929 and by the early 30's Berlin has a consistent Television station. THis culminates in 1936 as the Germans televise the 1936 Berlin Olympics. This is the Olympics of Jesse Owen's fame and we don't douybt that the athletic events had the camera's highest priority but, being German TV and operated by the state, its leaders are are also highly profiled in this 1936 television special. It is highly ironic that the leader of this country, who made his reputation in World War I delivering messages because of the lack of Radio advancements, is the highlight of these telecasts which are in essence advanced usages of radio.

As mentioned, WPTZ is an original menber of the NBC television network. What shows is the network featuring post war. Many of its talent trade radio for Television and NBC radio had talent galore even given the sale of its Blue subnetwork of stations. In addition, shows featuring the pop music of the time - and during that time the pop music standard is the Big Bands - are readily accepted and appreciated by the audience. One such pop music favorite was a big band show starring Kay Kyser and his ensemble called Kay Kyser Kollege Of Musical Knowledge which was scheduled on the network on Saturday night. This show featured a young singer named Mike Douglas who in two decades would be interviewing Moshe Eskayo about Israeli dance as indicated in some of the pictures above.

However, Philco was at that point a company having financial problems and a quick source of funding was to sell WPTZ to another concern. In 1953 Westinghouse Broadcasting purchases this TV station to add to their broadcasting properties. Apparently NBC would have liked to purchase this station as Philadelphia was the largest city where NBC did not have a company owned affiliate. Although the Westinghouse stations were NBC affiliates, this apparently did not satisfy the NBC hierarchy. This montage, focused on the year 1953, shows a radio schedule for KYW on a Sunday, a live broadcast of Jean Shepherd originating from KYW before he would move to WOR, New York, and become a radio legend, and a picture of Gary Geers who would remain with Channel 3 in its various call letters for his entire carrer which included being the announcer on the Mike Douglas show when it originated from Philadelphia.

With a set of threats about dropping Westinghouse stations as affiliates, Westinghouse management agrees to sell the transmission rights of KYW AM and WPTZ TV in Philadephia(apparently Westinghouse also had KYW FM in the city but apparently this frequency was donated to WHYY FM, the city's first public radio station) to NBC for NBC's owned stations in Cleveland. So sometime in 1956 KYW is on the move again as the former NBC station in Cleveland become the Westinghouse KYW AM and KYW TV while in Philadelphia NBC brands its new stations in Phiadelphia as WRCV AM and WRCV TV apparently honoring RCA Victor in this designation. Another inheritance was the studios at 1619 Walnut which, after a rehab, still were state of art in terms of broadcasting in spite of the fact that these were completed 15 years before.

It seems that the old KYW/new WRCV easily merges into the city's fabric of life. What about the new KYW stations in Cleveland? How does that city react to a third movement of KYW into a new city. No doubt the call letters seem odd. KYW is only one of 5 stations east of the MIssissippi to start with the letter K and to a population not used to these call letter, this must have been somewhat surprising. But this montage kind of shows that KYW entered into the life of Cleveland very successfully, assuming the reports indicated here of listenership is correct. Notice also that the station schedules hymms at selected times of the day including late at night. Whether this was the practice in Philadlephia before the move would have to be investigated

As both KYWs set up shop in Cleveland, Philadelphia also has to get used to the new call letters that replace KYW. Since the early 50's radio has been on the outs with television on the ascendancy. For all intenets and purposes, the NBC radio network amounts to the weekend programming of "Monitor" - something akin to NPR's morning edition today - and around the clock on the hour news reports. The NBC radio stars of the past decades have either migrated to the NBC television network, or perhaps worse, emigrated to the other non-NBC television networks. It is this second situation that sees Jack Benny move to CBS as does Burns and Allen (although to be fair Burns and Allen had moved to CBS while dojng thier Radio programs. Since both KYW in Cleveland and WRCV in Philadelphia were a part of the NBC television network, really little difference would be seen per network fare if situalted in Cleveland or Philadelphia.

And, after all of this history to this dance, we now resume our narrative as Grant teaches Hayeled Sheli. Notice how intent Grant's students are on this Sunday morning. The dancers are required to pick up the dance sequence and the arm movements. While still prictures do not allow a viewer to see the nuance of the steps, we feel that you, the viewer, should really feel the effect of the arm movements in these pictures. Since the Israeli dance version pertains to "My Boy", one should be able to interpret these "cradling" movements. The last picture in this montage catches Grant getting ready to play the music. Now comes the major test for those attending the session.

And our dancers respond! For some, it is the second time they are seeing the dance (as mentioned previously, Grant had taught this dance the week before) but for many this is their debut in performing this dance. Notice how the dancers follow Grant through the movements which is not surprising. As the dance becomes part of the session repertoire, most will have memorized the dance steps and will be able to perform with or without Grant's presence. If you are interested in this dance, we reproduce the steps at the bottom of this script.

The teaching and pactice of Haleyed Sheli takes about 20 minutes. There is the initial presentation by Grant and then two run throughs of the dance. Later in the session there will be a third try for the dancers. It's about 11:15AM and time for announcements. This generally falls to Tamar who is the administrative leader of the session. We should add that the Germantown model, which has to some extent been copied by the present Beth Sholom session, has the dance floor (either the Marcus auditorium or the Temin canteen) provided for free and a small budget is allocated to the group and controlled by Tamar. In addition, each dancer pays $5 each for the session when attending augmenting this budget. Tamar acts as the liasson between the session and the facility. We mention this because Tamar's annoucements will include both the upcoming schedule for the Sunday morning session and upcoming events of the Centre. And, as mentioned before, this is a very active facility so it's rare that nothing special is happening as far as the facility is concerned.

Tamar will start a roll call that goes around the circle as everyone introduces themselves. Additional events and happenings are sometimes added by the session participants. On this morning, as an example, and appropriate to this script, is an announcement by one of the dancers (something we will cover later in this script), pertaining to a folk singer's efforts to produce a new album of music. So, this and other tidbits of information is passed on to the group as everyone introduces themselves (including our representative)

The dancing is about ready to restart after the announcements but we'd like to mention two other participants in that Sunday's dance session. Visitors to this web site will recognize Wendy and John in these pictures. Both are regulars at the Monday and Thursday night Israeli dance sessions when scheduling makes this possible. Wendy has been a subject (and in one case the only subject) in various scripts on this web site as has John. Below in the next montage we will see them slowly take their normal Sunday morning positions.

So, It's back to dance. Israeli dancers love to dance and they exhibit this at every opportunity and at any location where there is the appropriate dance music. Grant is very lucky that there are several dancers who will help him demonstrate the dances by joining him in the circle effectively creating an inner circle. So as these pictures progress left to right, you will see the Wendy and John move into the center as is the norm. Determined by the dance music, others may also move into the center to help demonstrate the dances as they deem appropriate.

One such dancer (sometimes in the middle) is highlighted in this montage. This is Yael Golton. Besides being a regular at this session, Yael regularly attends the Thursday night session run by Don Schillinger. Apparently Yael gets her ability to dance genetically although not in the normal pattern we would anticipate. Can we call it kind of in reverse? Yarl's daughter Esther is talented artistically. She is an up and coming, successful folk singer and is the folk singer mentioned previously in this script who had released a new album.

Before we talk a bit about Esther's career, we should mention the man most responsible for popularizing folk singing in the Philadlephia area, Gene Shay. Since the early '60's, first on WHAT and for the last few years on WXPN (the radio station of the University Of Pennsylvania) Shay has been a radio host of a show featuring this art form (although he ended his broadcasting career in Feb, 2015). In addition he has been the force, having cofounded it, behind the Philadelphia Folk Festival held yearly near Schwenksville, Pa. This festival of folk singing has inspired multiple artists (and fledging artists) over the years which probably includes the aforementioned Esther. Note: These shots of Shay were taken from the Philadelphia Inquirer internet site as they interviewed Shay on his retirement from active broadcasting.

Esther Golton grows up in the Philadelphia area listening to the aforementioned WXPN (and other Philadelphia stations) offering "alternate" music genres including folk singing. Esther studies various forms of music at Penn State University and while there apparently starts to perform as the first picture in this montage would seem to indicate. In 1997 she moves to Alaska, a state whose entire population is half of Philadelphia's (and 7% of Pennsylvania's in a land mass 13 times the keystone state). As she establishes herself in Alaska, Esther becomes a music performer, first being a background performer and then as a folk singer singing her own songs. You can see Esther's biography by clicking here.

Esther released her latest album Stay Warm in 2013. Just before embarking on a promotional concert tour, she was stalled by a rare autoimmune illness. Fortunately Esther recovered completely, and has once again focused on the publication, advertising and sale of her CDs and you can buy them off her web site (or possibly even through her mother). Yael has been kind enough to provide this web site with one of Esther previous CDs and, with Esther's permission, you can click here to listen to a selection, Sugar, from Esther's 2007 CD, Unfinished Houses. Esther's web site is www.esthergolton.com and click the store tab if you are interested in purchasing any music while on her site.

As we return to the Germantown dance session, it's about 11:30 and the music (and dancing) is becoming harder and, in most cases, faster. One will start to see dancers leaving: some have afternoon engagements while others lack the expertise to deal with these harder dance choreographies. Knowledge of Israeli dance correlates to the amount of time spent dealing with these dances. Since they are already choreographed, the dancer is required to remember the type and order of the steps as the selection of music progresses. In essence, the dancer needs to develop what athletes call muscle memory.

As opposed to the Marcus auditorium, the Temin fills up pretty fast. The pictures above show a very crowded dance floor. How many dancers do you think made it that morning? We're pretty sure there is one individual who could tell us exactly how many dancers there were. So we asked him. His answer: more than 24 dancers had appeared that morning because at the height of attendance 24 dancers were on the dance floor simultaneously. These number counts come from the next dancer we are spotlighting, Marc Rauer. We are told it is not unusual to see Marc counting the number of participants at many dance venues including Germantown.

Marc has on many occasions taken pictures for this site. He, apparently, is the instigator of the Homage to Scorpios events which are documented somewhere on this web site and the last picture here, found on a search of the internet, may give you a hint as to who is the anonymous source of articles pertaining to a specific author and fictional hero that also have occasionally appeared on this web site.

These pictures are taken about 12PM. The session has been running since 10AM so we are at the two hour mark. Half an hour to go. The crowd has shrunk and perhaps ten to twelve dancers remain. This allowed our photographer on concentrate on some smaller groups. These dancers are for the most part the more advanced and the music and selection of dances reflect this. And, to be fair, Grant tells everyone that the period between 12 and 12:30 will feature a more advanced repertoire.

However, we still have one dancer to highlight and you can see her in two of these pictures in a pinkish blouse.

This is Deborah Kaplan. Now, what we know of Deborah makes her appearance here a surprise. Not by attendance but by appearance. Normally Deborah wears variations of purple, her favorite color. Where's the purple here? Nevertheless, it's always nice to see Deborah as no one has a more good natured view of things than she. Deborah used to dance more and at one time was a regular at Don's Thuresday night sessions. But in recent years it seems as if Germantown has become the basis, perhaps focus, of her Israeli dance activities.

Other weekly activities center around her artistic ability, honed from the time she went to Temple and the Philadelphia College Of Art, and this includes her classes in caligraphy that she teaches for the Main Line night school association that uses various schools in Lower and Upper Merion to provide additional educational opportunities to those communities.

Deborah also has her own business centered around aspects of caligraphy. Of special interest is the ketubot, the traditional Jewish marriage contract, an example of which is far left in this montage. Deborah brings her own special skills and creativity (and love of people and their personalities) in putting to words and art the collective hopes of a couple. Deborah is also available to create the lettering of the envelops announcing the union, and once the marriage is successful, Deborah is available to document the family tree. You can see more of Deborah's art work on her website at www.deborahkaplancalligraphy.com

It's 12:30 or thereabouts. Time has flown by! This happens when dancing with a friendly group and when you are enjoying youself. Grant is playing 'Overet Orach' which over recent months he has been using to close out these sessions. You are already aware that dancing has been going on for two and a half hours, one newish dance has been taught and 36 pieces of music have been selected this morning including Hayeled Sheli played three times during the session. At the height there were 24 dancers simultaneously on the dance floor but others had gone (or were to come) by that time. We'd like to thank all those who participated in this analysis of the class. This web site hopes that you, the reader, have been entertained as we have documented the morning dancing of Feb 7th. Below are some links to videos of the dancing of Hayeled Sheli and two other videos featuring the Germantown dancers.