Unlike her fictitious counterpart, Payne had a college education and finally a master’s degree: at $50,000 a year, she earned more than any other actress in the soaps. Because of her youth, her identi...
Trendle wanted to show that a political system could be riddled with corruption and that one man could successfully combat this white-collar lawlessness. He was entranced with the sound of a bee and w...
Together they were the three musketeers of the airwaves: all for one, one for all. They had met during China’s war with Japan, when all three had enlisted in the Chinese cause. After the war they retu...
This much is certain. In April 1930, Radio Station WGHP in Detroit was purchased by John King and George W. Trendle, partners who had just liquidated a chain of movie theaters. They planned to make th...
This even became a running gag for nightclub comics: the question What does Ozzie Nelson do for a living? was prime trivia. For the record, he was a bandleader; because most of the action of Ozzie and...
They were sometimes closer to truth than the government wanted radio to be. Anticipating an invasion of Sicily, Robson sent writer Allan Sloane to Massachusetts, where engineers were being trained in...
There were adaptations: The Happy Prince, by Oscar Wilde (Dec. 26, 1936), and The Signalman, by Charles Dickens (Jan. 23, 1937). In
There was an uneasiness in doing the Blitzstein play, which had deep anti-capitalist themes. It gave a vivid picture of an industrial tyrant, boss of the fictional Steeltown, and the fight of Labor ag...
There was always risk in putting unknown people in front of a live microphone, and one agency man during the sponsored years confessed that I get twinges in my ulcer everytime I listen to it. But the...
The stories reveal little or no religious dogma: they are virtually indistinguishable from other high-quality anthologies on the air. There were 482 dramas broadcast. Father Peyton himself released al...
The show made national news in June by yanking off the air at the last minute a story detailing the 1937 escape from Alcatraz of convicts Ralph Roe and Theodore Cole. The FBI had always maintained tha...
The opening signature of Frontier Gentleman defined it: Herewith, an Englishman’s account of life and death in the West. As a reporter for the London Times, he writes his colorful and unusual accounts...
The fight spilled out into the press. Allen blasted the censors. They are a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference. Their conferences are meetings of men who...
The beginning of the end came in 1947, when ABC vice president Ed Boroff canceled the quarter-hour format. Boroff had been critical of juvenile cliffhangers for some time, and one particular Armstrong...
The March of Time) CBS chief William S. Paley and Time publisher Henry R. Luce were conspicuously present. Few in the assembled party liked the show, but plans continued for its premiere, which took p...
The Life of Riley in its best-known version evolved from a prospective Groucho Marx vehicle called The Flotsam Family. The Marx series failed at audition when the would-be sponsor wouldn’t accept Grou...
The Gumps is also notable for giving Agnes Moorehead her first radio role.
The Green Hornet was one of radio’s bestknown and most distinctive juvenile adventure shows. With its companion shows, The Lone Ranger and Challenge of the Yukon, it was fed to the network by its orig...
The Easy Aces was billed as radio’s laugh novelty, and Jane Ace was Mrs. Malaprop of the air. Jane had a twangy midwestern voice, slightly softer in natural conversation, that reminded a listener of B...
The Century was a high-speed luxury train, used by the rich and famous traveling between Chicago and New York. Sportscaster Bob Elson set up a microphone in Chicago’s LaSalle Street Station and tried...