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//Source(s): New York Times Obituaries, Tuesday October 29, 1996// "George P. Oslin, 97, Father of Singing Telegram, is Dead" by Eric Pace "George P. Oslin, the Western Union executive who created that durable art form, the singing telegram, in the grim Depression year of 1933, died on Thursday at his home in Delray Beach, Fla. He was 97. "Mr. Oslin is credited with sending history's first singing telegram == sung by a Western Union operator named Lucille Lipps == to the star vocalist Rudy Vallee on July 28, 1933, which was Vallee's birthday. "At that magical moment, Mr. Oslin was the public relations director of Western Union, then based in New York. He held the post for 35 years, retiring in 1964. "In an interview after he died, his wife, Susanna Meigs Oslin, noted that by the time Lucille Lipps sounded her first note, telegrams had come to convey mixed associations. During World War I, Mrs. Oslin noted, 'To a lot of people, the telegram was a scary thing because it meant you were being told you lost a loved one.' "And Mr. Oslin recalled in 1993 that back in 1933 he had thought that he had to convince people 'that messages should be fun.' But he reported in his book *The Story of Telecommunications* (1992, Mercer), that when he invented the singing telegram 'I was angrily informed that I was making a laughingstock of the company.' "Mr. Oslin also liked to accentuate the positive in singing-telegram history. He once said that the message he sent to Vallee == which was chronicled by the newspaper columnist Walter Winchell == 'started America on a zany musical binge.' (...) "Western Union 'made millions' in the years that followed, Mr. Oslin later reported, with messages being sung to numerous well-loved tunes. But it has been said that declining demand and curtailment in the number of telegraph offices led the company to discontinue its singing-telegram services temporarily in 1974. "In 1980, Western Union returned to the singing-telegram business, but nowadays Western Union will only sing a singing telegram, over the telephone, to one tune, 'Happy Birthday' == although the customer, of course, gets to compose the lyrics. The cost begins at $16.95, plus applicable taxes, for a singing telegram of 1 to 15 words sing to a recipient in the United States. "Stagedoor Johnnies may want to know that all Western Union's telegram-singers do their work these days in Bridgeton, Missouri." Paul Di Filippo (ac038@osfn.rhilinet.gov)
 * Dead medium: the Singing Telegram; the death of George P. Oslin**
 * From: ac038@osfn.rhilinet.gov (Paul Di Filippo)**