And if the opening wasn’t busy enough, there was Johnny, the Philip Morris bellhop, chanting Callll for Philip Morraiss! over and over.
All the principals are dead now. Arthur Q. Bryan died Nov. 30, 1959. Harlow Wilcox died Sept. 24, 1960. Marian Jordan died April 7, 1961. Bill Thompson died July 15, 1971. Billy Mills died Oct. 20, 19...
Alfred Hitchcock answered a question on a real murder case in such detail that Fadiman asked if he knew how the tide was running at the time. Especially appreciated were questions that stumped the exp...
After these walk-ons, she would banter with announcer Ken Niles and perhaps indulge in more stargazing. In her memoir, radio actress Mary Jane Higby recalls working the show. The underpaid radio actor...
According to Bob Hope, who worked the show in 1932, he also had a bad habit of stealing his guests’ material. Hope was required to submit his routines in advance, and arrived for the broadcast to find...
A Phillips serial (in contrast to the jerky, obvious, and corny melodramas of the Hummerts) usually contained just one main scene in each installment, peopled by only two characters. Her scenes were s...
This series capitalized on the new Red scare of the early 1950s: 78 episodes were recorded, without any assistance from the FBI, which refused to cooperate. It didn’t matter: anti-Communist hysteria w...
The vagabond period lasted 19 weeks: then the McGees arrived in a little town called Wistful Vista, somewhere in America. Fibber bought a raffle ticket and won the prize, a house, whose address at 79...
The initial shows were put together from verbal requests, but soon the mail poured in. For producers Wheaton and Knight, every mailbag was an adventure. One soldier wanted only to hear actress Carole...
The Man Behind the Gun was a major series, highly respected within the industry and by the modest but enthusiastic audience that heard it. It was a three-time winner of Billboard’s top documentary pro...
Newspapers ran the wrong mugshots, and it was the self-fulfilling prophecy: the studios, believing his name had been damaged, canceled his contracts. Only four years later did Hopalong Cassidy ride up...
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 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...
His first script was Hell on Ice, from the book by Edward Ellsberg.
His first New Year’s broadcast aired on WBBM, Chicago, in 1927. His theme song, Auld Lang Syne, was already a traditional year-ender, and soon Lombardo became known as the man who invented New Year’s...
His book has an index of closet jokes: how many were done, who opened the closet door (Fibber did, 83 of 128 times), and what he was seeking there (everything from Mayor LaTrivia’s hat on the show of...
Hedda Hopper had had several careers before moving into radio and becoming one of the two major outlets for Hollywood gossip. She was born Elda Furry, June 2, 1890. She was a chorus girl, a silent-scr...
He fretted over a cigarette case he had bought his brother-in-law for Christmas, then exchanged it, and learned that his brother-in-law had quit smoking.
Hawk Larabee was radio’s first half-hearted attempt at an adult western drama, a concept that was not fully realized until the arrival of Gunsmoke five years later.
Hap Hazard spent most of his time on this series rescuing guests from the hazards of the hotel. Its floors creaked, the doors wouldn’t shut, the water taps dripped, and when the president of the chain...