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By Randy Mason | Special to The Star

Here at “What’s Your KCQ?” we often hear from people who remember something intriguing or remarkable. But only bits and pieces of it. They need us to help fill in the blanks.

Like Robert Griffle. He says that shortly after WWII he’d accompany his mother and sisters to the Country Club Plaza to watch and participate in a radio show called “Luncheon On the Plaza.”

He recalled that the show’s theme song mentioned “having lots of fun,” and that audience members were invited “to wear funny hats.”

Robert wanted to know more. And frankly, so did we!

Our first stop was Bill Ryan, a former journalism professor at Rockhurst University who’s done considerable research on Kansas City broadcast pioneers.

Ryan pointed out that in the days before television, people listened to radio quite differently than they do now, tuning all over the dial to find specific shows they most wanted to hear.

So every station offered dozens of them throughout the day and night. Many were nationally produced, but others like the perennially popular “Brush Creek Follies,” were locally grown.

And though he wasn’t familiar with the program in question, Ryan noted that commercial sponsors — the industry’s driving force — were always searching for shows that “appealed to women and children.”

Sure enough, “Swing,” a promotional publication of WHB Radio, confirmed that the station aired its own “Luncheon On the Plaza” program mid-mornings daily from 1949 until 1951.

But here’s where it gets a little confusing. A small ad in the Kansas City Star on March 7, 1951, states that the “audience participation show is broadcast live from 10:00 to 10:30 daily at the Plaza Sears store.”

Which didn’t sound right to Robert.

Apparently he and his corn cob-hat-wearing mother (“corny as Kansas in August” she told him) must have attended “Luncheon” considerably earlier.

The July/August 1949 issue of “Swing” does, in fact, say that WHB’s “new show” emanated from the “attractive Plaza Cafeteria.” A 1949 City Directory lists the restaurant’s address as 414 Alameda (now Nichols Road).

That same article, titled “The Crazier the Better,” gushes that “there’s something popping every minute.” And that “after a fast half hour of continuous hilarity, the audience is weak with laughter.”

The show’s two emcees were the engines that kept everything moving. One was Lou Kemper, a veteran newsman who steered the show with his rapid-fire patter. The other was a thirty-something bundle of energy named Frank Wiziarde.

If that name sounds slightly familiar, there’s a good reason. Just a few years later, that same manic co-host would hit Kansas City TV screens as Whizzo the Clown!

Even without the makeup and oversize shoes “Wildman Wiziarde“ (as he was referred to in the article) found plenty of opportunities for mirth and mayhem within the game-show format.

He always had a corsage and a kiss for the oldest lady in the house. He presided over soda-chugging contests and cheered on competitors in fun hats as they vied for all kinds of prizes.

You have to wonder how well that worked on radio.

One of the show’s regular listeners was a Kansas City, Kansas, housewife named Jerri Crum. We know this because her son, Steve Crum, writes about movies and media at crumonshowbiz.com.

In a 2014 post, he explained that his mom’s love for the show actually inspired his father, Harold Crum, to invest in a reel-to-reel tape recorder with which to tape the episodes.

But not for pure listening pleasure. Harold hoped to make and sell copies to the people that participated in each day’s show. The ones who blurted out names and addresses he could use to track them down!

His dad, Crum wrote, quickly discovered that making cold calls to women like “Mrs. Curry from Mission” was not really a sound business plan.

Eventually Jerri Crum did get to attend “Luncheon On the Plaza,” and almost certainly wore a silly hat. Steve Crum isn’t sure whether she got to talk with Wiziarde, but he knows she didn’t bring home any prizes.

As for those audio recordings, only three short reels of tape have survived. Roughly five minutes in all — but that’s still more than exists from many shows of that era.

Despite the pops and hisses throughout them, Crum’s tapes do confirm that the gags and goofiness onstage at the Plaza Cafeteria (and later Sears) consistently triggered the audience interaction that it promised.

There’s no record of exactly why WHB canceled “Luncheon On the Plaza.” But as Bill Ryan, the radio historian, explained: television, and the migration of advertising dollars toward it, was just about to change everything anyway.

As they say, “video killed the radio star.”

In 1954, the station was sold to Storz Broadcasting, and soon became one of the country’s first to install a new format — the Top 40. For the next 20 years, the “World’s Happiest Broadcasters” dominated radio here in a way that will likely never be seen again.

But that’s another KCQ for another time.

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