The listener was absorbed by the sounds of Broadway: the car horns, police whistles, the people milling about. Up Broadway to 42nd Street, where an attendant shouted, Have your tickets ready, please!...
The early days of Inner Sanctum gave a generous mix of classics and original stories. Boris Karloff was a regular, appearing in, among others, the Poe classics The Telltale Heart and The Fall of the H...
The dog was named Yukon King, the hero of the series in a real sense. Sgt. Preston had a horse, Rex, which he often rode in the summer months, but it was Yukon King who usually saved the day. He maule...
The Martin and Lewis Show was developed by NBC in the wake of the stinging CBS talent raids that lured Jack Benny and others to the younger network. NBC announced a talent hunt: the network was search...
The Helen Hayes Theater was considered prestige drama, but it was heard sporadically and never built the reputation or the audiences of the great theaters of the air. Appearances with Orson Welles’s M...
The Cabbage Patch of the Alice Hegan Rice novel was taken from a real slum in Louisville, Ky. Mrs. Wiggs was described as a friend of every neighbor; always first to forget herself and lend a helping...
THE HALL OF FANTASY, horror-supernatural dramatic anthology. BROADCAST HISTORY: Aug. 22, 1952–Sept. 28, 1953, Mutual. 30m, Fridays at 9:30 until Sept. 26, 1952; returned Jan. 5, 1953, Mondays at 8:30....
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...
Marlene Dietrich breezed in and, after snubbing the entire cast, announced that there would be no dress rehearsal because she was not in the mood. Woodruff told her calmly that we haven’t got time to...
Kieran was particularly alert when Fadiman asked what political leader was a bastard’s son. Levant thought it might be Adolf Hitler, né Schicklgrüber, an answer challenged by a woman in the audience w...
Irene Rich had been a notable star of the silent screen in the 1920s, playing opposite Will Rogers, Dustin Farnum, and Wallace Beery. But a disagreement with Warner Brothers sent her into a new career...
In the storyline, Judy’s father Melvyn owned the Foster Can Company. Her mother was a typical radio housewife. Her brother Randolph had a large vocabulary and a supreme distaste for girls (Radio Life)...
His son Keenan made that point years later in a taped interview. Wynn was a clown, a vastly different breed of entertainer. A comedian made you laugh: a clown could make you cry. In a way, Keenan Wynn...
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...
Commercial firms turned out Claghorn shirts and compasses (the needles always pointed south, son); Delmar cut two Claghorn records, I Love You, That Is and That’s a Joke, Son, and Warner Brothers pira...
Cassidy had been created by Clarence Mulford, writer of formula western novels and pulpy short stories. In the stories, Cassidy was a snorting, drinking, chewing relic of the Old West. Harry Sherman c...
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 it was Archie, the creation of an eccentric radio writer-director named Ed Gardner, who refined the insult and made it an art form. When the tavern was visited by noted critic Clifton Fadiman (the...