Peg Lynch, The Woman Who Invented Sitcom | Astrid King | Behind the Mic

Hello and welcome to Behind the Mic from otrold.com. I'm your host Austin VOC. Thank you for tuning in. A few months ago, I had the pleasure to sit down with Astred King, the only child of Peg Lynch, who created and starred in her own sitcom, Ethel and Albert. Astred created an 11-part series called The Private Life of Peg Lynch, which details her mother's career and shares some incredible stories from the life of this legend of oldtime radio. Much of our conversation makes references to the stories in the series. So, if you haven't already seen it, I recommend you pause this video, click the link in the description, and return here once you finish the series. I was so excited to speak with Astrid that once we got on a call, we dove right in. And I took me a while to collect my thoughts and ask for a proper intro. So, bear with me and I hope you enjoy it. >> Where are you, Austin? >> I'm in Seattle. >> Oh, >> Washington. And I just finished your your podcast series and I found >> Yeah. heard that there's the super fans in Seattle that have some of your mother's ashes. >> Tom and Donna. >> Yeah. >> Tom listened to my mother when he was 14 >> and I believe he attended an otr convention >> somewhere cuz she she did those for about 20 years all over the states picking up different Alberts here and there. >> Mhm. And then like everyone my mother met, she'd say, "Well, come on over to the house and visit." You know, it doesn't matter if it was nowhere near Seattle. And Tom and Donna started making these trips to to Peg's house. I don't know how Donna felt about [laughter] Tom's absolute, you know, utter agilation of Peg. He was I think he was probably about 20 years younger than than she was. Anyhow, to my astonishment, she'd said to me, "Uh, when I die, um, Tom and Donna get some of my ashes, and I said, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." And thought nothing more of it. And then I actually did find a piece of paper in her writing. And so I called Tom and I said, "Is this true?" He said, "Oh, yeah. Peg and I discussed the little urn that it was going to go in." I said, "This is very peculiar, Tom." >> [laughter] >> He said, "Yes, I realize it might sound that way, but you know, we love Peg. We loved her so much and she can stay on our mantle and then the little N will be buried with us." Said, "Okay." So, you know, that's that's what I did. Actually, what you don't know is that I can't remember if I put this in the podcast, but as they got older, we started talking about, you know, what where do you want to what's your final resting place? Do you want to go back to Minnesota? And no, no, no. I don't I don't know. And my father didn't want to go back to Norway. And so we started after a couple glasses of wine, we were starting to get silly about the whole thing. And I said, "Okay, Daddy, here's what you're in a a burning Viking ship and I'll, you know, I'll put you out to sea somewhere." [laughter] Peg, I said, "Peg, I've got this great idea. Westminster Abbey Poet's Corner. She's a confirmed Anglophile. And I'll just, you know, surreptitiously scatter your ashes. And then when people say, "Oh, and where was Peg buried?" I can say, "Westminster happy." [laughter] Perfect. >> Like, wow. >> So, I did I did that about last uh September, something like that. So that was a little I I'd remember it as being rather crowded and when I got there it was pouring rain and there seemed to be only about 11 people in the whole place. So I thought, "Oh my god, I'm going to be on camera here." So I I remember I took a I took a magnifying glass with me. And I kept going up to statues with the ashes in my hand, thinking, you know, like I was trying to get a better look at it. Anyway, that's done. So I can rest easy. I've I've done as Peg asked me to. >> That's a funny story. >> Oh dear. >> Your whole series is filled with interesting stories about your mother which I would like to get into in a second, but I would like to begin with who? >> I am Ching and I am Peg Lynch's daughter. And you may well ask who is Peg Lynch. Um and well besides being my mother important part >> she was practically I I think she was I think we can say she was the first woman ever to create write star in and own that's the important part her own radio and then television uh domestic comedy series um did I say she acted in it too I can't remember but she did and she retained that copyright until her death now I know Some people will say, "Oh, well, I think Gertrude Berg had a show." Then she did all that, but she didn't retain the copyrights. So, I think I can claim that Peg did. And so, she she her great love was radio. And she she was born in 1916. And uh the first uh I think the first time she ever heard of radio was when she was about 5 years old. And her her uncle uh had a would you call it a ham radio? Something set like that. and he he put his headphones on her ears and she could hear this is KDA Pittsburgh. She was in Minnesota and she said that's what I want to do when I grow up. I want to get my words through the air. And she did. And she did. And it was was very much a man's world, but she she accomplished it, you know. She she set out what she wanted to do at any rate. So her great love was radio. She went on to television and then back to radio and then performing her comedy sketches live all around the country until I think she was 95 when she was performing her last one. And you know I saw I saw the one just before that I guess 94. She had not lost her sense of timing at all. It was absolutely incredible. And she'd pick up it was a called Ethel Albert the show and it [clears throat] was various other titles as um uh and various permutations in radio and television but it's basically Ethel Albert and she outlived all her Alberts. I think she had 23 of them and you watched them sort of get old and daughtery. Some of the wolves, a lot of them died actually, but she just in the age of 90 when I saw her 94, she was just on top of it. And uh well, I have a wash with admiration for this woman and I came upon it very late. You know, for years she was just mama and you're you know, it's a mother daughter, you know, >> dynamic >> dynamic. And uh you know we would have outrageous arguments and we knew we would explode within about 24 hours of meeting. I moved to England in 1980. So whenever I'd come back or she'd come over, there would be a a good day and a half where we're sort of tiptoeing around each other and anything could set us off and then we'd explode and then get it out of our system. Then we'd have a wonderful time for the next two weeks or month or couple of months, whatever. The men in the family could never get over it. How, you know, Peg and Astred suddenly were at each other's throats and then, "Oh, what do you want for dinner? Should we have the lamb chops or no? No, let's have the steak tonight. Good idea." And everybody else is shaking and the dogs are shaking. We're just fine. But um she she was she was quite quite a woman. Quite a woman. That's interesting hearing that part of your relationship with your mother because my takeaway from your 11-p part series which I'd like you to also speak about briefly is that that relationship was just filled with so much mutual adoration from a very young age. >> There was yes there there definitely was. But I think instinctively when I was little, although I dabbled in acting and writing, I knew that there was no way. I mean, it's very difficult when you have a very accomplished parent and you are uh heading in that same direction and we see it all the time and very few succeed, you know, to get up to the level of their parents or even more. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. And I thought I don't want to do this. So I went the opposite direction. I went into theater and design and television and stage decoration. So to the artsy end of things, which she couldn't do at all. So I mean, she was anything, you know, any prop I made, she was so proud and dragging in the, you know, the UPS man to see what baby made. But it wasn't until I moved into I wrote my first thing for television, I guess about 20 years ago over here in England. and um she couldn't bring herself to watch it for quite some time. I know she made a few excuses, but that really uh that was telling to me. I thought, "Oo, she doesn't want me to be a part of this at all." But on the other hand, she was terribly proud and I was terribly proud, but I just I never quite understood her accomplishments until about 10 years before she died. And I think it was probably a selfish thing. I suddenly looked around the house and I thought, "Oh my [clears throat] god." Because she she owned her show, you see. So, we got over over 10,000 scripts and copies of those 10,000 and she owned the set and the costumes and the, you know, everything from the set and kinoscopes, films, um, tape, cassettes, scrapbooks, ledgers, contracts, boxes and boxes and boxes. And this is by now an eight-bedroom house that they lived in. And I suddenly thought, I'm an only child. I live 3,000 miles away. I ought to get a jump on this. And that's when I really started with Tom and Donna's, these friends from Seattle's help, we started delving into everything and making copies. And uh I finally understood what she was all about. Well, also, I mean, you want to talk about the podcast, but what led to that was one of the things that she left were nine volumes of letters that she had written home to her mother when she first started on radio. It was 1938 in Albert Lee, Minnesota. And the letters carried on, fortunately, typed so I could read them easily. They carried on until for a good 10 years until her mother came to live with her in New York at which point they stopped which is too bad because we were getting to some good stuff there that with her mother there you know it's not written down but because I was in so and I started reading them and because I was so interested in her story then after I got a hold of it because she was still alive I I could ask questions for the next eight years six or eight years, not just about items around the house, but about her life and about stories. I said, "You know, when you were in Cumberland and blah blah blah," and she'd tell me, and she had a great memory. I mean, it went off the, you know, on another planet occasionally. She'd get a few names mixed up, but then so do I. Um, so that it was really these letters that I got a true insight into her life and what it was like, her career and her life. Um, and it's fascinating. >> It is fascinating. What little I got from the series is is fascinating. I'm sure there I'm sure there's so much more that you just weren't able to fit in. >> Absolutely right. I mean, my my the the person I really owe most of this to is a broadcaster writer James Lilacs from the Minneapolis Star Tribune who was a fan of my mother's and um we I got to know him through through that because of that and he said uh we ought to tell the story of her life. I said, "Oh, I don't know how to do it." And he said, "Well, just start. You'll be fine. You'll just start." So he he um he hadn't read any of the so I put the scripts together and he did all that you know technical work. He said I think you should play your mother in these parts because it would be we'll fill in what what she hasn't and he said just just cut to the chase here because they're podcasts and everything else you say for the book which I have. So that's on its second draft now her autobiography [snorts] because of course she has to write it as Peg doesn't she even though she's dead. And I realized that could be a problem, but we have a she was special. So, um um I chip in now and again when she gets anything wrong or um anyway, so that's one of many projects down the line. [snorts] >> Well, I look forward to reading that book for my audience and and those who haven't discovered your podcast yet. I will link to it. The whole podcast series, the visuals that you added are are worth it. So, if anyone's considering it, check it out on YouTube. >> Thanks. >> Again, we'll link to that. >> That was that was James's idea. I don't He's the techno wizard here. We do shows about Peg. We we played in London this last year and in the States and he can run all the audio visual, you know, practically from his watch. And I just sometimes I miss my cues because I'm so fascinated that actually he's put the right picture up and the right audio. And I'm I'm just I thought, how can you do this and still be so witty and glib and know exactly what you're saying? Anyway, that's enough of him. [laughter] >> That's great. Uh, a quick tangent. There's at the end of all the episodes, it says productions by Alex King. And is that uh who is Alex King? >> He's my son. He's our Yeah, he's my son. He's uh 37 >> and he uh he studied um audio engineering. So he did the recording for me. >> Okay. So he I always assumed it was the visuals that he was doing, but as you're saying, James was doing the visuals in the transition. >> Alex simply recorded when he could stay awake. Never [clears throat] mind. [laughter] >> Well, the the three of you >> I looked over at one time and his eyes were closed. I said, and I just stopped talking into the mic. Finally, I said, "Am I boring you?" And he said, "Oh, I'm sorry, Mom. It was a late night. I'm so sorry." Anyway, >> and then my husband, it it's all in the family really because my husband is a composer of Note in England of television and >> I saw that. I We can maybe touch on that in a little bit or >> That's all right. So, so he did the music. So, we just It's easier with copyright to keep it all in the family. [laughter] >> That's right. [snorts] You guys split the royalty checks from YouTube now. >> Oh yeah. >> In in the house >> if I ever see one. Yeah, [laughter] >> that's right. Yes. As I'm well aware, YouTube is a hard hard place. So um before I dive into some some questions about your your early life and your memories of your mother. Um I wanted to ask more about your work. you touched on it and on your mother's Wikipedia page it says you're a writer >> and and some of that came through but then when talking about how you created the books that you interned your parents uh remains in at the very end of the series you say once a prop girl always a prop girl >> well experience okay as I said earlier I didn't want to go in I wasn't a very good actress anyway I wasn't I didn't care and I think you it's such a tough life you really have to have this as a burning ambition to follow through with it and I didn't want that and I got involved in theater I at I went to Vasser and one of the um my fellow students was Merryill Streep she was in the drama department with me older I >> I've heard of her I think >> recent to add maybe you've heard of her >> maybe >> and a few others and uh and the drama teacher there said maybe you'd like to do consider summer theater so I went to this wonderful theater in western mask called the Williamstown Summer Theater and they have an apprenticeship program and you know you paid $600 to work your tail off for four months solid or 3 months but you learned they did a very clever thing and they put everybody all the apprentices in fact Sigourney Weaver was up there I remember my first year too just as an apprentice and they put you in all different departments so that most of them are there for acting I wasn't but the actors have to go on to the prop crew onto the costumes, onto the publicity, onto the tech. So there, as a result, all those actors, there are many good ones who came out of Williamstown, they had they're the nice ones, you know, they have a well-rounded respect for all these people backstage who are making them look good. You know, they got to be good to start with, but you know, a really good actor is really nice to to the backstage people. And that's mostly where I've been is backstage. if they offered me $25 more dollars a week to, you know, appear as an extra. I then moved on to this a very prestigious theater in New Haven that is sadly just closed. I think co did it in the Longworth Theater and I cut my teeth there and I met both my husbands at the Longwarf Theater. So, I was actually a little nervous about going back for a third time. You never know who you're going to meet. [laughter] Um, and uh, yeah, and then I uh, uh, started working. I went to work for CBS in New York on television, the soap operas and things like that. That's when I met my current husband, Dennis King, and he's English. And I ended up here. My mother said, "My god, if I'd known you were going to end up 3,000 miles away from me in England, I never would have brought you here so much when you were little." Because she was a great traveler. She loved England. So, I think in a way she's very happy that I think she missed me, but she was happy that I was here because she got to come to England and we went all over the place and she loved it. She loved it. That's the other thing. When I was little, she she had read so much as a child. Uh, small town Minnesota, there wasn't anything else to do. And she was two years ahead of all her classmates. Smart little thing. and she'd read so much and never had the money or the time or to go to all these places she'd read about. She loved history, archaeology, um specifically Egyptology, anything about Russia. And when she got on the air and was making money, she did have um the wherewithal to visit these places she'd read about. And she'd just take me out of school up to starting at the age of six up until 16 for 2 weeks or 2 months. 2 months in the Middle East, um six weeks in Russia. Uh and she was, you know, when you're with somebody in a museum, say, who's passionate about it, you become interested. So all these all these things that I learned from the age of seven uh about well I don't know there there's a show over here called University Challenge you know which is like college bowl I don't know if it's still on in the states and I [laughter] can still answer all these questions my husband say how do you know that I said my mother told me when I was eight when we were in Pompei you know something like that anyway sorry I I digressed a bit there but she was a wonderful teacher >> at what point did you come to understand your mother's fame and that It was not an experience that uh most kids >> I don't I I before I I don't think you quite understand the fame. It's just your life. You know, there would be um you'd think I would be well, you have to be spoiled to a certain extent if you're the only child. You've got your mother and your grandmother and your great aunt and your dad all in the house and the focus is on you. It was but my mother said she always tried to buy me things and I was the first one to say I don't need that. I don't need that dress. I already have one. So she said finally the sales ladies used to say don't bring your daughter with us when you come shopping. I [laughter] don't need it. I don't need it. Um, I think because she came, she was so poor when she was younger, I think she probably instilled the value of things to me, even though we had quite a bit of money. We didn't have the kind of old money that is in Connecticut to this day, >> but we we had enough. We had more than most of my girlfriend's families. And what I understood more than that she was famous, what I what I realized that all my friends wanted her for their mother because she was the fun mother, you know. She was coming up with fun ideas. You couldn't just go by one Christmas tree. You had to get seven, you know, and she was so spontaneous and so childlike. Um that it was fun. It was fun as a child. and and she was still that way at at 98. You know, you couldn't, you know, say, "Mom, we don't don't go and buy let's let's have lobsters. Let's just get in the car and go. Let's do this. Let's do that." So, she really had a zest for life. And um I think I think that I think I picked up on that. I don't remember the famous people that we met. She would tell me about them and she said, "Oh, you knew that's when John Houston came into the house for lunch or Leonard Bernstein played the Steinway or don't remember >> playing the piano in your house. That's pretty >> Yeah, I know. I paid no attention to any of it. I was more cons. I don't know. I don't know. What do you do as a kid?" >> Yeah. >> Interesting. Uh, we got no I don't I don't remember even getting any special lots of people being, you know, interviewed in pictures and cameras and you had to look nice and smile and do all that sort of stuff. And um, she almost had to pay me to smile when I was little. Apparently, I was a very sullen little thing, which wasn't very good for the photographers. So, I I said, "Do you want the 10- cent smile or do you want the 25 cent?" >> Oh, nice. [laughter] >> Yeah. learn how to negotiate from your mother after, you know, hard hard lessons that she had to learn. Jumping in here to mention that what I'm referring to is a story shared by Astrid in episode 8 of her series where she explained how her mother stood up for herself when her own lawyers tried taking advantage of her in an underhanded financial arrangement with her agent. When Peg learned about it, she went over to their offices, called them out on it, and refused to budge until they had earned back the money that they had taken from her. >> They couldn't get rid of her. Finally, they just, you know, try to pay her, pay her. Actually, they didn't pay her. What she did was not pay them until >> until they Yeah. until it Yeah. >> But both Alan Bunts and Walter Hart, her producer, and even her lawyer said, "Don't mess with the Jaffy office. You'll never work in the city again." And she said, "I don't care. I don't care. What they did is not very nice. they took money from me without it was to redecorate an office, you know, or something dumb like that. She just said, "Oh, no." And she did she did there's quite a few instances like that that she um I'm trying to remember the story now. I probably shouldn't start it in case I can't remember it, but there was a man named Herb Gotautle who I think was Betty White's agent. >> His name sounds familiar. I don't know. >> Yeah, I I Googled him. I do remember meeting him, but and uh he also did something probably normal in the agent world, but underhanded as far as Peg was concerned. And they had an not well again an outand-out fight. And she won again on this. years years years later talking 30 maybe 40 years later maybe not even that long uh he she heard that he was sick um and in the hospital and nobody much liked him but she went to see him in St. Luke's are somewhere in New York. And he said, "You're the only one. You're the only one who's been to see me and you don't even like me." [laughter] She said, "Well, you know, you know, that was her. You know, she had she had the big heart, but she also, you know, stood up for stood up for what she believed in, what was right and what was wrong." So, I suppose that's a good upbringing. She was just very basic like that. She didn't have a head for business particularly. it just what was right and what was wrong. And had she allowed her intuition to prevail in a couple of business deals um regarding her apartment building in New York or acreage in Connecticut where we lived. Um oh she would have been a multi-millionaire by now. But both her mother and husband who were, you know, money under the mattress time, you know, saving string, talked her out of it. Why? We'd have to get a mortgage, they'd say, horrified at the idea of that. Anyway, and then she sadly she said, "Oh, it was a mistake." But, you know, they What do I know about money? So, yes, but we've all probably made some mistakes we wish we >> wish we'd done at the time and didn't. >> I just noticed above your shoulder. Is that a model of your the childhood home that your parents bought? I recognize it from the YouTube video. >> It used to live up there because but because of the flood from next door, I've had to I had to move it to here and so it's in it's in rather icky shape at the moment. But >> now I saw there's one photo from your mother's house where something like that was on the table. Was that the one that a model from your There we go. >> Can you see that? I saw that and then I saw there's a few things that I picked up that she had the encyclopedia of oldtime radio that a lot of my audience might have on their shelf. I'm like oh >> well I made that for her that was a Christmas present. >> Oh so there example prop experience. >> It's an old prop girl. Exactly. Give me some a hot glue gun and I'm away to the races. >> That's incredible. >> Yeah it's she kept it on. She kept it on. I can't remember if I wrote this in the podcast, but when we went to when I went to bury um I needed my father's ashes and we couldn't find them around the house and they're just in a brown plastic thing that comes that comes back about that big. And I finally I was sitting at the dining room table and I looked I thought, "Why is that house so high?" And I looked underneath it. I said, "Peg, what are odds ashes doing on the dining room table?" She said, "Oh, well." I said, "Is that just to boost that house up?" She said, "Well, no. I mean, we have people around and he liked company. I wanted him to feel included." [laughter] >> It's all the time you spent cleaning the pool. She just felt like he wanted to be close to it or something. >> Going back to your early years, there's the story in there how Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch on the Wizard of Oz, >> Yes. >> uh would come to work for for your mother later after that after she was in that film. And uh one Halloween she you and her dressed up as witches and and were somewhere stirring a bubbling cauldron. [laughter] >> Again, my mother's idea because she just, you know, my mother was terribly inventive with ideas. She couldn't always execute them, but I was always saying if you would measure first mother, I think you'd have a better result. But she came up with these great ideas and then we'd have fun putting them together. Now, Margaret Hamilton, who I I guess I'd known since, I don't know, three, was I three? Two or three or something, and she'd come up to her house and she'd entertain at my birthday parties because she was a kindergarten teacher before she became an actress. Wonderful woman. Absolutely adored her and Christmas and birthdays and Thanksgiving and once, as you said, Halloween. So, my mother couldn't just open the door and give kids candy. She had to com, you know, create a whole uh tunnel of horrors or something with boxes that you crawled through and they're all pieces of an old fur coat that were supposed to be rats and peeled grapes for eyes and spaghetti for brains. And at the very end, you got into the dining room after, you know, somebody creaking the door open and Oh, she got the sound guy at CBS to do spooky music on a tape cuz you you can get that stuff now, but then it was sort of hard. >> Mhm. And then we were discovered, Aunt Maggie and I, in witch's outfits with the, you know, the peaked hats, green faces, and stirring a big, actually, it was the thing that the logs were in at the fireplace, but my mother painted it black and put dry ice in it. And if you put water on dry ice, you get sort of, you know, condensation. I don't know what you get. It looks like >> it's the gas. It starts to turn back into a gas. Okay. Right. Um, and we were stirring that and cackling and you know, I think by that time the kid the kids sort of just went past us on into the kitchen for the donuts and the cider and [laughter] everything else. I think we scared the parents more than we did the kids because, you know, the Wizard of Oz was not as what >> popular well known then as >> a classic yet. It hadn't reached. >> No, it hadn't at all. Not at all. Um, but she was just adorable. And she would do things like I mean, how could I how could I not like her? She'd come up with about 60 50 or 60 little presents for a birthday and I or 30, let's say. So, I got to open one every day of the month. Little things, but she was she was fun. And I used to stay in her apartment in New York uh when I got older in college. I go down there and spend the night. She's lovely. really really lovely. >> That's a great story. I want to be respectful of your time. I just have a couple more questions that can more about your life and then um I'll >> I finally taught my husband finally taught my husband how to work the oven. So, we're we're we're fine. >> There we go. It's not microwave pizza tonight or something. Just put it in the >> No, it's it's soup and and sandwiches, but you know, we've it's fine. It's just about what he's capable of. So, his talents lie elsewhere. >> And boy, do they ever. Her husband, Dennis King, began his musical career at the age of six, performing in children's matineese, and by the age of 13 had formed the King Brothers with his two older brothers, which would become one of the most successful pop groups of the 1950s and60s. Considered to be Britain's first boy band, they performed the classic hit Wake Up Little Suzie. >> He's got a website. If you go to Dennis King Music, you can have a have a plow through that. That was some of his his early work, but sounds like he's now he's done compositions for >> over 200 television themes, 25 stage musicals. He started as a King brother when he was well nine or something like that. And it was pre- Beatles and they were three fresh kids who >> the first boy band of Britain. [clears throat] >> Yeah. Yeah. In fact, just just before I spoke to you, I've had a chat with our producer. We're turning he's got a memoir out that I I ghosted, but it actually it is his voice called Key Changes and we've just turned them into podcasts. So, I'll link you to those because that he's done a really good job on them. We're just putting music to it using all his music and well, not all of it, but um yeah, it's it's that's worked out well. He's 85 now. I'd have to give him something to do, you know, besides besides turn on the soup now and again. He goes swimming in the North Sea every single morning of the year all year round. So, he's got to be, you know, I don't go in, although I lean over and kiss him goodbye just in case. I would feel so guilty [laughter] if the tide took him and I hadn't said goodbye. >> Okay, last interjection from me, but at this point, the topic turned to her efforts to preserve her mother's legacy and the steps she's taken to ensure people have access to highquality recordings of her mother's work. Enjoy the rest of the video. when the when we all we all older types became aware of the internet and somebody was saying oh do you know they're playing your mother's show oh you know this and Peg was getting very upset >> uh that she just didn't understand that >> and without her knowledge >> exactly so I mean every day I used to be in touch with about 10 different places And every now and again something crops up and I think I've given uh Radio Spirits. >> Mhm. [clears throat] >> Uh I have a contract with them that I worked out with Peg when she was alive and uh easier than when she was dead. And um so I've given them a rights to do her series The Couple Next Door. And they're they're doing a great job because they took them from the original real to reals which I sent them. And then when they finish they do 25 at a time and then that goes on out to University of Oregon where her archives uh archive is and they're doing a wonderful job out there. We're going very exciting news on her half hours by the way um which have sat in her >> cover television program or back to radio. >> Yeah. >> Okay. No, live television. Sorry. Um because they were never shown again. And they were 16 millimeter film. Not great shape, but not falling apart. And I'm I was stunned that when University of Oregon first put them through their lab, they said they're actually in very good shape considering, you know, my mother keeps the house at 300 degrees and, you know, they've been thrown around and moved 600 times. Um, so they're in a climate controlled uh lab there, why Oregon is because they asked and I happened when I was going through her her files with Tom and Donna from Seattle and I said, "What's all this University of Oregon?" And uh she said, "Oh yeah, they sent them some stuff in 1972." I said, "What stuff?" So I I got the list. So I called them and I said by that time we'd approached the University of Minnesota which was not at all interested >> weird >> in >> crazy >> well it wasn't they were interested they never replied never emails phone calls nothing and I thought well you know too bad so I gave uh I called Oregon back and I said would you like the rest of our archive we would love it so they made three trips to Massachusetts and helped catalog and things, but I wouldn't let anything out of the house until I'd had a digital copy. So, that took some time, as you can imagine, with over at that point, I think she had about six or 8,000 scripts in the house. And we scanned and we photographed and we did this and we did that. And anyway, I'm glad I did. and I made DVDs of all the 16 ms. But a fan got in touch and he said uh I think I was selling some glassware or something of pegs after she died and he said I'd like he bought something and so when he approached me oh maybe about 3 years ago I knew the name. We'd had a sort of email correspondence and he said I'm coming to England. Could we have lunch? just said, "Yes, of course. That would be lovely." >> Going back to your mom, I will entertain anyone. >> Yes, exactly. And you know, my husband said, "Who's this guy?" I said, "I don't know, but you know, he's loves Peg Show." And anyway, he came up here where we live in Suffach and we went out to lunch. Delightful. And about a month later, he called me. He's a pilot for a private entrepreneur. And he called me. He said, "You know, I've been thinking I'm about to come into quite a bit of money from a company I'm about to sell, and I want to do something worthwhile with the money, and I would be, would you let me pay for the restoration of Peg's kinoscopes?" I said, "Oh, let me think." Um, I said, "My god, seriously?" He said, "Yeah." So, we've got him on board. In the meantime, a producer I a guy I went to Vasser with who's now a film producer, he called me having heard a podcast and said, "What are we doing with you doing with the Kunoscopes?" And he said, "I've got to put you in touch with my film production guy from Mexico." And so through these now and then I've got Oregon on board. Then we found a lab in LA and we did a test. We took one of her kinoscopes, the Christmas angel, which is on her YouTube at the moment, and the lab in California did the digital version, and then Carlos fiddled around down in Mexico to enhance the first 5 minutes of it as a test this far to certain degree, and then to this degree for more money. And you could also colorize it, which we've opted out of. and they sent the tests and they're so good. They still have got the vintage quality, but they've, you know, they've lost the sound is beautiful. They've uh lost discoloration or this, it's just gorgeous. So, that's where we are uh right now. I'm trying to get everybody together and get them all done. And then, of course, I need to find a platform on which to place them. be nice to do a deal with something some occasionally occasionally get paid for something would be nice. >> When can fans of your mother expect to be able to purchase? >> Well, well, I hope it's um it's all the all these people that are involved um seem to be on the go all the time and traveling all over. So, it's hard to get, you know, a definite and I'm I'm clearly the one in the middle instigating and stirring it up saying, "I haven't heard from you now. What's happening? What's happening? We need to do this." I'll just push and push until everybody's so annoyed with me they don't want to. They'll delete my number, but I will get it done. I will get it done. I am my mother's daughter. >> My final question for you, one of the versions of Ethel and Albert later is called The Little Things in Life. In that version of the show, they have a teenage daughter and a lot of those stories were inspired by you or your and your mother's interaction. >> I am huge, hugely embarrassed to say I've only listened to about three of them. >> I wasn't around or paying attention when they were on. In fact, I had I hadn't I hadn't listened to the couple next door either because that played at 2:15. and I wasn't home from school and nobody was recording things then, >> you know, so you couldn't listen to it again at the time. Although we'd had the tapes, but it was a big mission to put on the real to reals and all that stuff. >> Of the few that you've listened to, are there any that you feel were like ripped from your life like word for word conversations that you have? I I am going to run them on on her her YouTube channel and I will I'm sure I will hear myself in all of them. Yeah, I suppose so because she she often used um not often always used names, a neighbor's name or something of people she knew either grew up with back in Minnesota or in Fairfield where I grew up or even in Massachusetts when she was writing these. And I just came across the radio monitor series NBC. They were very short little three minute ones that were just starting to run now on her podcast series cuz they're short. And she talks about Susan Gowolski in it who was a little girl I played with growing up. And I'd only been back in touch with her about within the last 6 months after all those years. And I sent it to her. I said, "Name check. Look, look, there you are." But it and she often said, I think there's a couple next door where she says, "Oh, yes. Betsy going over to play at Lisa Roning's house tonight. And Lisa is my first name, right? So anyway, uh yeah, she well she took most everything from life. She didn't make anything up. That was the that was her great epiphany back in was it Cumberland or Charlottesville, I guess, where she had was desperate for an idea because she had oh she was writing she had a woman's show. She was writing monologues. She was writing plays. She was writing um uh copy for commercials and and being paid something like $60 a month to do all these things all day, all week. And she had she was on her way to the studio and couldn't think of an idea for a monologue and in desperation wrote about something dumb that had just happened that day. That um like you can't find a shoe and you know you just had it there and it turns out you scooped it up with the dirty sheets to go in the laundry. You know, just something or something that plausible that could happen and did happen. And she got bags and bags and bags of fan mail over this one saying, "Oh my goodness, I just heard that show and I laughed and laughed and laughed because the same thing happened to me." And that's what her draw was. you could hear it and he's saying, "I say that to my husband or yes, that happened to me." And the fan mail that I had to go through in her attic and she'd only saved, you know, a minus 1% of it. And it was I didn't know what to do with it. And I I gave up scanning after a while. I've done little snippets here and there and then I just sent it all off to Oregon because you know and occasionally I come across something fun. But they all just you love when she discovered that people love which is true reading something that they can identify with and it makes it all sort of funnier in a way because if you thought it was funny somebody else did. She didn't make anything up that I'm aware of it. It was always a story. the eye to find the comedy in the everyday. >> Well, and you did. And she always said to me, "Honey, if you can't find, you know, what's funny? Everything has a funny side. And if you can't keep a sense of humor about life, you don't have a chance in this world. Just just just keep at it, you know, just keep finding the funny side of things." >> Can I re relate that story about the award that sort of sums her up? Do you remember it? >> Is it the Well, go ahead and share it. Anything you want to share. I just don't want to spoil any any of the notice that you put in. >> No, no, no. It's just it's just a little bit all but it sort of sums up her take on life which is at one point she and Alan Bunts who played Albert to her Ethel they received a war an award for America's favorite radio couple. I can't remember who put out the award but it was sort of a big deal. And she was invited to the presentation. Allan was working so he couldn't go. So she went and she was presenting. It was a lunch or something. All these things they take all day. And when she got back to her apartment in New York, there were two little gold discs in a boxes, one for her, one for Allan. And she took a look at it, put her glasses on, and it said in gold letters engraved on those discs, America's favorite radio couple, Peg Lunch and Ellen [laughter] Duts. and she just howled with laughter, of course. She called them up immediately. Um, and they were, of course, mortified. And they said, "Oh my god, we'll send replacements. I'm so sorry, Miss Lynch." And she thought she didn't dare tell Allan, who would not have seen the humor in it at all. So they did send new ones over, but she kept the old one because she kept it next to her desk her whole life just to remind her to never take herself too seriously. And as she said, I think it worked. And I think it did work. >> The entirety of your mother's archive is now at University of Oregon. Are they uh you have digital copies, but are they digitizing it? Can people view the the material that they have? they have done I don't know how what stage they're at but they are working their way through this enormous collection and the reason I did give them the whole art archive is because I'd seen what they had already documented online so if you went to the Peg papers it's called >> um you could see what they've got online so far but they've done an absolutely wonderful wonderful job anyway we're we're finally getting it all together and there's a big sort of major Peg fan club behind the scenes all working towards getting her name out there again where it should be. It should never have left. Isn't it interesting that because she did what no other woman did, which was to own her show. No network ever got it. It went into her cupboards. So, it didn't have a life like I don't know, Leave it to Beaver or I Love Lucy or whatever. Of course, it's not on film either, so the quality at the moment is not as good as a film thing, but it will be. It will. >> Yeah. The end of her story hasn't been written yet. You're keeping it alive and and uh it's ongoing. >> I sure am. I am doing my level best to do that. I have a friend in the village here. She says, "My god, what you you're you're busy. You're always doing something." I said, "What else am I going to do? sit around, you know, with a magazine all day long. You got to keep going. You got to have projects. And I don't know where I'd be without projects. I think it's an only child thing. >> Somebody once said, "What what what bores you?" I said, "Nothing. Nothing. I can always find something to do." >> That's great, >> you know. Yeah. >> Keeps life interesting. >> I've started writing. I've taken a platform on Substack. I think it's Astred R. King. I'm going to talk to BBC broadcasting house. They've got maybe it's World Service B I can't remember. Um they have a program called Memory Box where it's an item in your life that is of interest and it has a story and I pitched something to them last week and it was a story about um something Peg gave me. And so you see, she keeps she keeps coming into my life from all sorts of angles and stuff, but there's so much material. You know, sometimes it's so completely overwhelming. I just walk down to the beach and stare out stare out at the sea and think, "Okay, come on. We can we'll just compartmentalize here a bit." But anyway, I'll keep you posted on all of those. But in the meantime, James Llac and I do our a show called A Funny Woman about Peg. So, if anybody wants to book us anywhere, we'll consider it. But it's, you know, it can be 45 minutes, it could be 2 hours. We show video, we show video. It's never been seen. He's funny. He's really He's funny. The script is good, she says modestly. And it's uh it's a a glimpse into a what it it's the story of a woman, a funny woman is what it is. And she was and um we need to hear more from her. So, I'm doing my best. >> Well, thank you very much. You both you and your mother are incredible people. It's been [laughter] hard getting to know you. >> I'll tell [clears throat] my husband and son you say that they need to be nice to me. >> That's right. That's right. [laughter] >> Okay. Lovely. Thank you. Anytime. And thank you so much for this. Thanks a lot. >> No problem. My pleasure. If you like that episode, please support the channel by liking, subscribing, and sharing that video with someone else who might enjoy it. And if you have a suggestion for a future guest of this podcast, please leave a comment down below.