Cliff Thorsness
Radio Sound Effects Great
(1914-2002)
Here is an appreciation of my sound effects mentor, Cliff Thorsness. I
delivered this as a speech at Cliff's wake in August 2002. --Tony Palermo
Cliff Thorsness, an accomplished radio sound effects artist, who worked
for CBS from
1938 to 1962, died June 14 2002, of natural causes at his home in Los
Angeles. He was 87. The funeral was private, but a public tribute was
held
on the afternoon of August 7 at the Horace Heidt Estates, where Cliff
lived.
Cliff was part of the talented CBS sound effects crew
assembled
at station KNX in the late 1930s when the network opened its West Coast radio
drama studios to make use of Hollywood movie stars. He co-organized the KNX sound effects department and,
during his 24 year tenure, Cliff worked with
all
the greats--Orson Welles, Norman Corwin, Vincent Price,
Edward
G. Robinson, William Conrad, Jack Webb, Elliot Lewis, Janet Waldo,
Gerald
Mohr, Paul Frees, Harry Bartell, and many more. His credits included
stints
on programs such as The Jack Benny Program, The Adventures of
Philip
Marlowe, Big Town, The Eddie Cantor Show, Fanny
Brice,
and the Escape thriller-anthology series.
Cliff had an illustrious and suitably "noisy" career. He was at CBS on the
night that the famous October 31, 1938 War of the
Worlds broadcast from New York panicked the nation. He recalled "quite
a commotion at even the Hollywood studio switchboard" —but was kept in
the dark about the hoax, as was the rest of the staff. When Orson
Welles
later moved to Hollywood, Cliff created sound effects for him. Orson
later complimented Cliff, writing archly, "I owe you more than you'll
ever
know." Think about that...
Amazingly, in the days of old-time radio, Cliff even received on-air
credit for his sound effects work. In 1949 he, along with Gus Bayz and
Jack Sixsmith, were awarded the "Best of the Year" prize by Radio
and
Television Life magazine for their work on a famous Escape
episode, "Three Skeleton Key," for which they created the sounds of
thousands
of rats attacking a lighthouse. There's a wonderful photo in Robert Turnbull's book,
Radio and
Television
Sound Effects showing Cliff and his crew gnawing on berry baskets to
create
the sound of the hungry rats eating their way through doors and walls.
This program is available on the Radio
Spirits collection, The 60 Greatest Old-Time Radio Shows of the
20th
Century. Cliff's work is heard on more than a few of the legendary
programs included in this collection. (Here's
a link to a page all about
"Three
Skeleton Key.")
Cliff also provided the hoofbeats for Champ, radio star Gene Autry's
famous horse, and his trusty coconuts are on display today at the
Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. In 1997 Cliff donated
his personal collection of battleship-gray CBS sound effects to the
Museum
of Television & Radio (MT&R), where they are still causing a racket in the weekly
Re-creating
Radio family workshops that have introduced radio drama to
thousands
of young people.
Cliff always encouraged others who sought to take up his art, and I'm
proud to have had him as my mentor. Here's one story of how he helped
me
turn ideas into a sonic tapestry.
A few years ago, I wrote a horror radio show--in tribute to
Cliff--about
corrupt Crusaders in Turkey in 1204 A.D. The story was an
allegory
about the McCarthy-era blacklist, which destroyed the careers of many
of
Cliff's friends and colleagues.
In the show, a deranged nobleman, Cliff of Thorsness, mounts
massive
battles (a sound effects free-for-all) and resorts to torture (with
excruciatingly
wonderful thumbscrew sounds) in his quest for revenge and plunder. In
the
end, he falls prey to demons from the 70,000 hells of the Arabian
Nights--complete
with a monstrous black wave of five million rats. The fictional Cliff of Thorsness is done in by the real Cliff's rodents from
"Three
Skeleton Key." And just as Cliff had done, we rubbed dozens of
wet
wine corks against glass to create the effect of millions of rat
squeals.
But while rehearsing the show at the MT&R, I ran into a problem.
I'd written a scene that called for Crusaders venturing through
volcanic
tunnels. At one point, they had to wade through "an ocean of
bones"--some
of the bones not "fully" human! It was a powerful image that would create
just the sense of dread required by horror. Unfortunately, I couldn't
mechanically
produce the sound I had in my head.
I tried stirring a cooking spoon in my gravel box, but it wasn't
evocative
enough. Luckily, Cliff was at the MT&R for this tribute
workshop/performance.
I described the scene and the feeling I was after and pleaded for his
help.
Cliff came into the studio, surveyed my sound effects kit and went
to
work. First, he grabbed some highlighter pens and shuffled them around
in
his hand. No good. "Too small," he said. "That sounds more like a
BAG
of bones--not an ocean."
Then he went to the gravel box and started manipulating the
grave. Specifically,
he hung his palms on the edges of the junk-drawer-sized box and grabbed
bits of gravel and stone and pulled them up--to rub against the wooden
sides. With the right sashaying rhythm, he nailed it--wading through an
ocean of bones! I had the right gear but the wrong technique. Cliff
demonstrated
that in sound effects, it's the technique that matters. It's all in the
wrists! For this horror show, he also cooked up a convincing beheading of a
snake-haired Ifrit using a pancake flipper, a board, and a half-deflated
punching bag.
He taught me how to unleash my imagination and how to make sounds sing—and I
will be forever grateful.
When performing sound effects, Cliff was like a jazz musician. He
could
improvise on the spot--and do variations, too. He played those sound
effects
devices like musical instruments. He wrung nuances out of bits of
leather
and wood and metal. He shaded the sound to accompany specific
actors
and actions. Cliff was a wizard of sound. He conjured "a world before
your
very ears."
He was my sound effects hero. On radio, Cliff was ten feet tall with
four sets of hands. In person, he was a slim man with just two
hands
but a quick and imaginative mind.
When CBS ceased radio drama production in 1962, Cliff became a radio
engineer. When he retired, he still kept active in the Pacific Pioneer
Broadcasters and as a mentor for radio sound effects aspirants like
myself.
But Cliff would bristle when somebody referred to his art as "Foley."
"Don't
call it 'foley,' he'd tell me. "Foley's for movies. We're SOUND men.
Sound
effects ARTISTS!"
You can actually see Cliff at work in the 1980 movie musical Annie,
where, at about 80 minutes in, he creates the sounds of a fake tap
dancing
radio star. He knocks off this easy sound effect with a bit of comic
flair
and tosses his script page down.
And now Cliff is gone. Also, the fine and funny Los Angeles sound
effects artist David L. Krebs, another of Cliff's students, passed
away in January 2002 at age 57.
There's something terrible about the very idea of a sound
man
being... silenced. These artists injected action and setting into radio
plays. They provided the motion that made e-motion possible.
They
brought mere stories to life. And as such, they shouldn't go
out
with a bang... OR a whimper. Instead, you want it to be some
extraordinary
montage of sound patterns, an avalanche of milk bottles... or the
Pacific
Ocean evaporating...
Or the sound of a heart... being broken.
It's a sound I, thankfully, don't hear too often. But for those of
us
who knew Cliff, it is his final sound effect. It's a sad sound and it's
true, and it touches us.
Cliff Thorsness could work that kind of magic.
I'll miss him.
| 
