Frank had the necessary police requisites—he was dependable and courageous under fire—but he was also a perpetual worrywart. He fretted over his disputes with his wife Fay; he fussed over his pills an...
For the record, Welles was contrite. Forty years later—removed from the threat of mob assault—he confessed only to amusement, and amazement that people could be so gullible. For three full days the fa...
For anyone with busfare and a harmonica, The Original Amateur Hour was a grab at the brass ring. Some came without busfare, hitching rides across the country. Poor blacks came up from the South; cowbo...
Flash Gordon, though made famous in comics and in the film serials of Larry (Buster) Crabbe, had a limited run on radio. The weekly Hearst serial ended after 26 weeks with Flash and his companions cra...
FU MANCHU, serial melodrama, based on the stories by Sax Rohmer. BROADCAST HISTORY: 1929–31, Blue Network.
Each star was given carte blanche approval over his or her segment or appearance. It might have worked if actors weren’t all children, Carroll wrote. But each week they’d all phone each other and ask,...
Cavalcade productions. The writing was from the best hands in the business, young playwright Arthur Miller becoming (as Barnouw remembers it) a kind of utility man who could be tapped for spur-of-the-...
CRIME CLUB, murder-mystery anthology, based on and featuring some of the stories in the Doubleday Crime Club novel imprint.
By May 16, the role had been filled by Earle Graser, a slender young man who had joined the station in the summer of 1931. Graser’s voice soon became as well known as the president’s, though his name...
But soon the characters underwent a strange metamorphosis, a process that always happens as props become flesh and blood. Chester became more humorous, Dillon more understanding, Doc less bloodthirsty...
Benny’s most famous gag, when a robber demanded, Your money or your life! and the hilarity kept building while Benny thought it over.
Benny toured with her for two years, traveling through Illinois and Wisconsin under the billing Salisbury and Kubelsky: From Grand Opera to Ragtime. When Salisbury retired, Benny continued the act wit...
At 34, Clifton Fadiman had already enjoyed a solid career in letters. Born in Brooklyn in 1904, Fadiman had been an editor at Simon and Schuster and was now, in 1938, book critic for the New Yorker. H...
And the closings were also done to formula. There was always a señorita, and Cisco always collected his kiss. Said Radio Life: For each dark-eyed conquest he has a string of pearls (’they belonged to...
Throughout his life, he was the opposite of all show business clichés. His marriage endured: by all accounts, he dearly loved his wife. Words most often used by those who knew him were decent, genial,...
The leaders, drummer Carleton Coon and pianist Joe Sanders, had met in a music store and formed their group in 1918. They sang duets through megaphones: hot, roaring numbers, and Sanders’s bubbly gree...
The initial guiding principle was simple: Buy the rights to a fine play, hire the biggest names available, and hope the public will listen. But competition for big names was fierce in New York. When f...
The Atwater-Kent Hour set the standard for early concert music. Sponsored by a well-known radio manufacturer, Atwater-Kent featured stars of the Metropolitan Opera, backed by a large symphony orchestr...
Only on Inner Sanctum could a man be haunted for 40 years by the wailing of his dead wife, then learn that the sound was the wind rushing through a hole in the wall where he had sealed her body. Only...
His first play, Burial Services, concerned the burial of a paralyzed girl who was still alive. It caused such a furor (more than 50,000 letters were written to NBC) that Oboler would never again write...