So important did the sound effects become that Ken Darby immortalized the craft in a musical selection, The Sound Effects Man, which was heard periodically.
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...
Self-issued in a severely limited edition (100 copies), his Fibber McGee’s Closet is a 1,193 page
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...
More than 225 of the 1930s Columbia Workshop and its 1946–47 revival are available on tape. That this was not a show for the masses is especially true today. Some of these shows, on first listening, s...
JOHNNY FLETCHER, comedy-detective drama. BROADCAST HISTORY: May 30–Nov. 27, 1948, ABC. 30m, Sundays at 7:30 until mid-Sept., then Saturdays at 8. CAST: Bill Goodwin as Johnny Fletcher, the opposite of...
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...
Hoover was not happy, and what little help Lord was getting from the FBI continued to diminish. As the initial G-Men ran its course, the concept was revised as Gang Busters. This series would cut a br...
His first script was Hell on Ice, from the book by Edward Ellsberg.
He helped start the March of Dimes, did numerous benefits, worked for Jewish refugees in World War II, and established a $5,000 college scholarship fund for young essayists and orators. The fund, begu...
He could be heard pounding his pulpit in anger, denouncing the black bread of Roosevelt’s programs. His magazine, Social Justice, amplified his political views, and by 1939 he was buying his time in 6...
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...