"ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT?": GENDERED ADDRESS IN THE LONESOME GAL AND THE CONTINENTAL.

The article examines representations of two broadcast media performers of the post-World War II era whose openly gendered direct address was considered blatantly suggestive but also complementary to each other. The Lonesome Gal was a radio show begun in Dayton, Ohio, in 1947 and transported to Los Angeles in 1949. It featured disc jockey of unknown identity who adopted the persona of a woman-in-waiting, patiently longing for her desire listener. Renzo Cesana premiered on local Los Angeles television as The Continental, a suave European date for his viewer, whom he flattered and embarrassed into a position as a sexual fetish. These shows are representative of certain tensions and contradictions in postwar American culture, especially when related to the social and gendered status of the private sphere, the rapidly changing postwar broadcast industries, and the relationship of these media to the construction of that private sphere. The relative failure of the Continental to achieve lasting popularity, as opposed to the approximately decade-long run of The Lonesome Gal, is less due to media specificity than to differences in the way the two shows sustained and serialized the gendered desires they evoke.