The Barrelman Radio Program Papers COLL-028
This collection contains the papers of The Barrelman radio program, the scripts of which were generated by Joseph R. Smallwood and Michael F. Harrington, the two announcers who served as the Barrelman in St. John's. The St. John's scripts were recycled for the Corner Brook series, which was entitled O'Leary Newfoundland Program and hosted by Stan O'Leary, brother of the program's sponsor, F.M.O'Leary. These vary somewhat from the St. John's scripts and are also included inthe collection. In his essay, "The Barrelman: Making Newfoundland Better Known to Newfoundlanders," Leo Moakler, who served as the Barrelman's assistant throughout the lifetime of the program, describes how Smallwood produced his scripts:"Every workday he punched out 3,000 words of copy on anything and everything pertaining to Newfoundland: history, anecdotes, tall tales, listener mail,and so on.... It never ceased to amaze me how he would get at that portable, and in his two-fingered system, without stopping apparently to think, punch out his five-page double-spaced script. And when finished, with never an erasure or cross-out, fold the manuscript,slip it in his inside pocket and that evening read it over the air just as it came out of the typewriter....He gathered material for his program from everywhere: intensive reading of the back files of newspapers; colonial records and other publications and documents in the Gosling Memorial Library; listener mail,which at times was quite heavy; stories told him by people on his rounds of the town; visitors to the office and other sources. While he was out, I would take the stories of visitors which Joe would lick into shape for broadcast."
CAUTION:
Due to the poor quality of the 80 year old typed manuscripts the automatic optical character recognition (OCR) of the scanned
documents are of equaily poor quality. Text searching results of these pages will be suspect. Be aware, if you search
a word and it isn't found that certainly does not mean it isn't there. It simply means the OCR did not pick up the
word in the scanned document.
Browse by year: (Years will be added as they are scanned)
1937,
1938,
1939,
1940,
1941,
1942
Restrictions:
Material in this collection may not be used in any publication without the written permission
of F.J.O'Leary. All patrons should be aware that copyright regulations state that any copy of
archival material isto be used solely for the purpose of research and private study. Any use of
the copy for any other purpose may require the authorization of the copyright owner. It is the patron's
responsibility to obtain such authorization.
Biography or History:
The Barrelman was a one-man show dedicated to "making Newfoundland better known to Newfoundlanders" through
the presentation of personal stories, geographic and economic facts, historical information and folklore. It
aired for 15 minutes six nights a week (five starting Saturday, August 30,1952), eleven months a year, from
October 18, 1937 to December 30, 1955. (8) At first it was broad-cast from 6:45 to 7:00 p.m. by government-owned
radio station VONF of the Dominion Broadcasting Company from studios on the third floor of the Newfoundland Hotel
in St. John's. On June 27, 1949 VOCM began broadcasting the program and the time changed to 7:00 to 7:15 p.m.
Joseph R. Smallwoodwas the original Barrelman from its beginning until November 27, 1943. Michael Harrington
succeeded Smallwood and continued with the program until 1955. When he left to pursue other interests, the program
went off the air. A similar broadcast, the O'Leary Newfoundland Program, also sponsored by F.M. O'Leary Ltd., was
aired on radio station VOWN in Corner Brook from February 19, 1945 to April 16,1949. The announcer, Stan O'Leary,
who was a brother of Frank O'Leary, presented himself as "Newfie." At the end of each week, the scripts of the
St. John's program were sent to O'Leary in Corner Brook, who would then read them for the west coast audience.
In 1937, Smallwood had just brought out the first two volumes of the Book of Newfoundland and, needing a job to
support his young family, he procured a position with the St. John's newspaper, The Daily News, at $20 a week,
writing a column entitled, "From the Masthead." His by-line was "The Barrelman." He explained why he chose this name:
The barrelman is the member of a ship's crew who climbs to the masthead and, from the protection of a barrel-shaped
enclosure, peers about to sight whales or seals or ice packs.
For more information regarding this collection please visit the finding aid here