Miss Lonely Hearts 1956
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Whatever happened to Beth Manley? She worked the overnight shift at (formerly) bilingual Montreal radio station CKVL. Here’s a story about her from a local paper. I like the reference to drunks. And what was that traveler up to, hooking up with not one but three female tourists? To all those with a torch (or a highball) to carry, I dedicate this recycled feature story to you.
City Like Montreal Is Lonely Place, Beth Tries to Make It Friendlier
The Herald, Montreal, Wednesday, August 1, 1956
by GEORGE ABBOTT
No loneliness can match that bred on solitary confinement in a big city apartment and Montreal, like all big cities, harbors a huge throng of lonely hearts which couldn’t be more unhappy were they banished to the solitude of a prairie, a desert or an Arctic waste.
Maybe it’s the presence of so many people who remain total strangers. Or maybe it’s the shock of finding yourself friendlss in the place where you least expect to be lonely.
But the lonesome ones — the small town folk who knew only homes filled with voices and laughter, the old and infirm banished away in rooms and basements, the torch carriers and others who are here in their untold hundreds.
Top authority for this is Beth Manley, Montreal disc jockey who caters to the lonely hearts with a program that runs midnight till 4:30 am five mornings a week from Radio Station CKVL.
“This town harbors hundreds of victims of worry, despair and insomnia,” Miss Manley says. “Hundreds more are just plain lonely.
“They phone in night after night, not necessarily because they want something, but frequently just because they need someone to chat with.
“They’ve got to get it off their chest, and I gather some pretty grim tales in consequence,” she says. “But I’ve always maintained a strict rule of forgetting everything they tell me.”
Montreal’s overnight disc jockey has doubled as a personal adviser, an authority on domestic problems and ailments, frequently as a philosopher, sometimes as a diplomat and at least once as a matrimonial counsellor.
Hundreds of Miss Manley’s callers are night shift workers. Hundreds more are the wives sitting up for them to come home. Lonely wives, she reports, donate many of the prizes offered on CKVL’s lonely hearts show.
Then there are the torch carriers, served up with special discs at 4 am nightly — “Torch Time.” They show appreciation by phoning in to say the tunes and sentiments havce brought them solace. Many send small gifts, too.
Most of them Miss Manley has never met and doesn’t ever expect to meet. It’s the same with other lonely folk, the widows and widowers, the lone tourists and the travelers.
There was the lonesome serviceman from St. Petersburg, Fla., who had a memorable vacation in Montreal because he met three lonseome girls from Philadelphia, thanks to an interchange of messages over the torch carrier’s mike.
Miss Manley remembers Gordie and Jo-Anne. Jo-Anne liked Gordie up the street and wanted to date him. It all worked out after CKVL beamed a dedication tune at Gordie. The couple subesquently became engaged, finally married.
Beth Manley says she gets much fun from drunks who phone up in the dim hours calling for some fast music because “they wanna live a little.”
“Usually I tell them to have a drink for me and then I play something sweet and soft,” she says. “That makes them maudlin. But they call me back and tell me amid sobs just how much they liked it.”
A big number of the night session discs are dedication numbers and sometimes they’re directed at a distant loved one on the other side of the country.
But there was one dedication number that didn’t make the grade. An excited fan called up one night and asked Miss Manley to play a disc for Tony.
“By all means, but who is Tony?” she asked.
The breathless one: “She’s my German Shepherd dog. She’s just had four pups!”
Miss Manley doesn’t believe dedications are much consolation for German Shepherds.
But in the human realm, those overnight discs used to enliven lonely heards do an important job.
And she gets stacks of letters, countless messages and expressions of heartfelt thanks to prove it. For a big city can be one of the loneliest spots on earth.
1950s ckvl insomnia intoxication loneliness montreal Montreal history old time radion Philadelphia radio social trends solitude talk radio tourism womens issues1950s ckvl insomnia intoxication loneliness montreal Montreal history old time radion Philadelphia radio social trends solitude talk radio tourism womens issues
She was born rich and endured her share of tragedy — she lost her only two brothers to the Great War. She was courageous enough to drive an ambulance in World War I. Injured, she returned home, never married, and was the last member of the pioneering Allan shipping clan. Today, the home she grew up in — Ravenscrag — is occupied by the Allan Memorial Hospital. Miss Allan lived in the coach house for many years and held lively meetings with theatre types, sinking her energy, money, connections and passion into the task of building a vital theatre industry in Montreal. She was synonymous with the Montreal Repertory Theatre (guys like William Shatner and Christoher Plummer passed through that outfit). She largely laid the groundwork for a great national theatre scene. 
In honour of the local Outgames and the good times (not to mention welcome tourist spending) they promise, here’s a bit of background history. It turns out Montreal’s square holes weren’t always nice to round pegs. 
Frank Sinatra played Montreal many times over the years. (What was going through my head, not catching the last Rat Pack tour in the … was it the … 1980s?) Anyway, the late, legendary bookmaker, Harry Ship, booked Sinatra for the princely advance sum of $15,000. That according to William Weintraub, whose books are required reading for … well for everybody. Here’s an ad that appeared in The Gazette in 1953. Sinatra was still with Ava Gardner at the time. The club, the Chez Paree, is still there. It’s a “strip establishment” now.
Standing on the arms of our plush seats. But in fact, the Undertones absolutely stole the show. Out of spite for our liking Feargal Sharkey and company, I suppose, the Clash kept us waiting. Not long ago, the subject of the Clash came up and I told the arts editor of a major daily newspaper — a big fan of the Clash he — that I had had the pleasure. And he said, “I hate you.”