In his first year at CBS, he announced the crash of the "Hindenburg" when the station cut away from singer Kate Smith's show. He first became a national celebrity when he ad libbed for a half-hour during the rain-delayed Vanderbilt Cup from an airplane. In 1939, he was the announcer for the Warner Brothers &amp; Vitaphone film musical short-subject, "On the Air", with Leith Stevens and the Saturday Night Swing Club.