{"id":6548,"date":"2015-01-27T18:00:56","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T00:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robertfeder.com\/?p=6548"},"modified":"2015-01-27T18:07:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-28T00:07:10","slug":"bob-marianne-pay-homage-to-wallys-black-box-at-wgn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/2015\/01\/27\/bob-marianne-pay-homage-to-wallys-black-box-at-wgn\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob & Marianne pay homage to \u2018Wally\u2019s Black Box\u2019 at WGN"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Marianne<\/a>

<\/a> Marianne Murciano and Bob Sirott<\/p><\/div>\n

In a throwback to one of the longest-running and most bizarre contests in Chicago radio history, Bob Sirott and Marianne Murciano are challenging listeners to guess the name they have locked inside a safe on display in their Michigan Avenue studio.<\/p>\n

Whoever calls in to their WGN AM 720<\/a> midday show with the correct answer will win everything the Tribune Media news\/talk station is giving away that day, along with all the DVDs, CDs, books and apparel in Sirott and Murciano\u2019s office \u2014 and even the safe itself.<\/p>\n

Kicking off \u201cBob Sirott & Marianne Murciano\u2019s Mystery Box Contest\u201d<\/a> Tuesday, the husband-and-wife hosts described the hidden name as that of \u201ca person \u2014 living or dead \u2014 who\u2019s known to the public.\u201d That\u2019s the only clue they provided.<\/p>\n

Sound impossible? It pretty much is.<\/p>\n

\"Wally<\/a>

Wally Phillips<\/p><\/div>\n

Acknowledging that it was a \u201cnutball idea,\u201d Sirott said the open-ended contest was paying homage to the late, great Wally Phillips, the Radio Hall of Famer who hosted mornings on WGN for 21 years. In 1975, Phillips wrote the name of \u201ca moderately famous living person\u201d on a piece of paper and locked it away. Day after day after day, he challenged self-proclaimed psychics to identify the name in \u201cWally\u2019s Black Box\u201d and win a fabulous cash prize. No one ever did.<\/p>\n

On February 24, 1982, Phillips finally disclosed the mystery person as Jean Rogers, the actress who played Dale Arden in the \u201cFlash Gordon\u201d serials in the 1930s. Sirott, then a young reporter for CBS-owned WBBM-Channel 2,<\/a> was in the WGN studio that day to witness the long-awaited moment of truth. (Here\u2019s a link to Sirott\u2019s CBS 2 report, courtesy of the Museum of Classic Chicago Television.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the first two guesses called in to Sirott and Murciano\u2019s show were Pat Hughes and Bob Collins. Both had connections to WGN. Both were incorrect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a throwback to one of the longest-running and most bizarre contests in Chicago radio history, Bob Sirott and Marianne Murciano are challenging listeners to guess the name they have locked inside a safe on display in their Michigan Avenue studio. Whoever calls in to their WGN AM 720 midday show with the correct answer... Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6548"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6548"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6553,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6548\/revisions\/6553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}