Cantor was born to a family of Russian immigrants, Jan. 31, 1892, in New York’s Lower East Side. His mother died soon after his birth; his father died of pneumonia a year later. His given name was eit...
CAST: Gertrude Berg as Bessie Glass, operator of a hotel in the Catskill Mountains. Joseph Greenwald (1935) as Barney Glass, her husband. Josef Buloff as Barney, 1953–54. WRITER: Gertrude Berg. House...
By 1932 he was a vaudeville headliner. He was on Broadway as part of Earl Carroll’s Vanities when newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan invited him to appear on a radio interview and gossip show. At the tim...
But the original concept died with the demise of those quarterhour vignettes in 1945. Seldom thereafter would Berg venture into the ghetto. It’s hard, darling, she told a Newsweek reporter with the ad...
But it was his speaking voice that would be famous, first on The Children’s Hour, later as announcer on the Metropolitan Opera Broadcasts. The show was heavily musical, following Cross’s deep interest...
But Dragnet evolved slowly. Webb pondered the idea he had received from Marty Wynn and developed it for more than a year. Realism should be the show’s hallmark: the stories should be authentic to the...
Benny died at 80 on Dec. 26, 1974. He was followed in death by the others: Eddie Rochester Anderson, Feb. 28, 1977; Don Wilson, April 25, 1982; Mary Livingstone, June 30, 1983; Dennis Day, June 28, 19...
An advocacy group, the Cinnamon Bear Brigade, operates in Portland, Ore., and claims 400 members nationwide. The outstanding cast was identified by Frank Nelson, with additional names supplied by SPER...
Among the prominent continuing characters were Ace’s boss (who had a child for every occasion) and Jane’s brother Paul (who hadn’t worked in twelve years because he’s waiting for the dollar to settle...
Among the guests who appeared on Information, Please were Ben Hecht, George S. Kaufman, Basil Rathbone, Dorothy Thompson, Lillian Gish, Alexander Woollcott, H. V. Kaltenborn, Alice Roosevelt Longworth...
Among other plotlines, these unfolded: Sam falls in love with Janet; Ruth Ann falls in love with Dr. Bob. But Ruth Ann frets over the impropriety of this, and Sam hides his feelings under a cloak of b...
Adams, then in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, could only appear in the premiere program. He died in 1960; Levant in 1972; Golenpaul in 1974; Kieran in 1981. Fadiman became chairman of the Bo...
A company of solid Chicago regulars was established in support: Isabel Randolph, Bill Thompson, and Harold Peary. Jordan would need all this support and more: the show was still building in 1937, when...
You’re a haaaard man, McGee was Harold Peary’s inevitable retort as Gildersleeve. McGee and Gildersleeve lambasted each other throughout Marian’s long absence, the Gildersleeve character coming to ful...
With the exception of The Bob Hope Show, Fibber McGee and Molly was the most patriotic show on the air. Whole runs of shows illustrated homefront themes. Fibber bought black market beef, which of cour...
While stationed in Oklahoma with the Army, he came up with the idea that would make his fortune. He was reading the gripe column in the GI newspaper Yank. It might be interesting, he thought, to recor...
When the series tackled freedom of religion, it wasn’t simply with another show on Roger Williams: instead it told of Dr. Martin Niemoeller, who defied Hitler’s German Christian Church and was impriso...
When Roosevelt was elected, rumors spread that Coughlin was in line for a high administrative post and would quit the church to enter government service. But this failed to materialize, and Coughlin b...
Well-known stories from literature with top Hollywood actors: Cimarron, by Edna Ferber, starring Irene Dunne; Elmer the Great, by Ring Lardner, starring Bob Hope; The Prairie Years, by Carl Sandburg,...
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...