Ruthledge himself was the guiding light, the good Samaritan. He had a daughter, Mary, who grew up without a mother. Helping him raise the child was a kindly housekeeper, Ellen. Then there was Ned Hold...
Radio’s Croupier played strongly upon Webster’s definition of the word—an attendant who collects and pays money at a gaming table. The host was omniscient, offering wry commentary on the movements of...
Quinn wrote a script. He took the character Luke Gray out of the store and, in an inspired moment, renamed him Fibber McGee. He called his script Fibber McGee and Molly, but for some reason the agency...
Popular stories and bestselling novel adaptations: Let the Hurricane Roar, by Rose Wilder Lane; Kitty Foyle, by Christopher Morley; etc. Leading
Peary played the role in its best years, he and Waterman shared about equally in real time as Gildy at the NBC microphone. After Gildersleeve, Peary shaved his mustache, lost 50 pounds, and, in 1954,...
Parsons was known for ruthlessness and a long memory. The biggest celebrities in America came when invited, with Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, and Greta Garbo among the few to ignore Parsons’s cal...
Orson Welles answered almost everything thrown at him, prompting Fadiman to comment dryly, This is your last appearance on this program, Mr. Welles.
Now it was called The Texaco Star Theater; the Mighty Allen Art Players became the Texaco Workshop Players, and the show opened in the traditional Texaco manner, with a siren and a bell. The opening w...
Millions for Defense was one of the first big Treasury Department shows of the war. It predated Pearl Harbor by six months and sounded a warning call for hard times ahead. Fred Allen was opening-night...
It was on Sullivan’s 1932 series that listeners first heard the voices of Jack Benny, Jack Pearl, Irving Berlin, Florenz Ziegfeld, and George M. Cohan. Sullivan’s radio fame was enhanced by his newspa...
In Who Was That Masked Man?, David Rothel gives verbatim, often conflicting, interviews with people in key positions at the time of The Lone Ranger’s creation. And Dick Osgood, who worked 36 years at...
I Can’t Stand Jack Benny Because— He fills the air with boasts and bragsAnd obsolete obnoxious gags.The way he plays the violinIs music’s most obnoxious sin.His cowardice alone, indeedIs matched by hi...
Hilliard Marks, Mary’s brother and longtime Benny producer, then got his script and began lining up supporting talent, which might include Mel Blanc, Frank Nelson, Artie Auerbach, Veola Vonn, Sheldon...
He was used intermittently until June, when Rochester Van Jones was first mentioned, beginning his long-running role as Benny’s valet. His part was usually confined to scenes at home—preparing the fru...
He was still too well known as Freddy James, second-rater, to command more than a second-rate salary, so yet another name change was in order. It came about by mistake: through a mixup with an old age...
He was born May 30, 1908, in San Francisco. He began collecting dialects and characterizations in his youth, first mastering a thick Yiddish borrowed from an old Jewish couple who ran a grocery store...
He began doing trick voices: he would knock on his chair and call from outside, sending his parents to the door when no one was there. When the noted ventriloquist Harry Lester played Chicago, Bergen...
Frank Hummert was a Chicago copywriter in the ’20s. In 1930 he met Anne Ashenhurst, a former newspaperwoman who became his assistant and, five years later, his wife. The Hummerts had a formula that wa...
Favorite Story was a nationally syndicated outgrowth of a local dramatic offering, developed and continued on KFI, Los Angeles. The fare was classic literature, both the novel and short story, with su...
She won an amateur night at Keeney’s Theater in Brooklyn, singing When You Know You’re Not Forgotten by the Girl You Can’t Forget. Her prize was $10, and she gathered $23 in coins from the floor of th...