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,...
This series grew out of a deep interest in psychology on the part of producer Wilson. It explored the moment when a character stood at the brink of a crime, stepped over the brink, and was brought to...
There was little or no narration, the action being carried largely in dialogue. When a man walked across the street, a listener heard every step. This style would continue in Gunsmoke.
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 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...
So Bowes had a bodyguard, a good strongarm, he told the New Yorker, who hustles them up to the microphone and down again. I always signal him before letting the bell go, and he is always ready to grab...
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...
Many of her sponsors were rich foods, which she loved—and she had the ample frame to prove it. Often she could be heard enjoying a pudding or a frosted cake on the air. Her network career ended in 195...
Later, Col. H. Norman Schwarzkopf (whose son would become a hero half a century later in the Persian Gulf War) was brought in as interviewer. Schwarzkopf had been superintendent of the New Jersey Stat...
Koch visited his family on Monday, his day off. Driving back through New Jersey, he picked up a road map at a gas station. In his New York apartment, he opened the map, closed his eyes, and dropped hi...
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...
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...
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...
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 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...
Finally there was the lingo of the squad room. Dispatcher terminology was terse and correct, with no exposition to help a listener understand it. The faithful came to know that an APB was an all-point...
Durham produced his plays as a freelancer; he was never part of the WMAQ staff during his show’s run. I had spent a lot of time studying Dickens, he said in a 1983 interview, a few years before he die...
Dr. Benjamin Ordway, the hero of Crime Doctor, was one of radio’s classic amnesia cases. Originally a criminal himself, he lost his memory after a blow on the head. With the help of a kind doctor, he...
Dennis Weaver would be given a wooden leg and a greater drawl as Chester. Two things amused Parley Baer in later life: that the new people would find it necessary to change Chester’s surname (from the...