On his opener, he won over the studio audience almost to the point of receiving an ovation at the broadcast’s close. Cast members rooted for him wholeheartedly, Frank Pittman gave deftness to directio...
Occasionally he’d get a letter like the one in 1947 from the silly attorney in Ohio, chastising him for his parsimonious treatment of his Negro valet, Rochester, and threatening to sue on Rochester’s...
Men Against Death followed the one-man campaign of writer Paul De Kruif against disease, hunger, and poverty. De Kruif burst on the scene with Microbe Hunters, which became a worldwide bestseller upon...
Meet Me at Parky’s was largely self-written, featuring Einstein as chief cook and bottle washer of a Greek beanery. At the end of the NBC run, Einstein underwent spinal surgery to relieve chronic back...
Many of the staffers claimed to represent groups, with all their members voting for Edwards. Some of these votes were accepted, some rejected, some taken in part: if the caller claimed to be part of a...
MAJOR HOOPLE, situation comedy, based on the comic strip Our Boarding House, by Gene Ahern.
Inside Studio One at CBS, the drama rolled to its conclusion. Taylor had heard frightening reports of affiliate reactions to the show. Casualties were mounting across the nation, he had been told: the...
In an incredible performance, Virginia Payne played Ma Perkins without missing a show in 27 years. Payne, just 23 when the show premiered, gave a convincing portrayal of a middle-aged battleaxe despit...
House Party dabbled in everything. There were hunts for missing heirs; over the years the show found heirs whose estates totaled more than $1 million. There were contests, one of Linkletter’s favorite...
His shows on tape do not wear well. Topical humor can be hilarious at the time, but it seldom holds up. The moment is lost, the immediacy gone, and a modern listener is left, perhaps, with a sense of...
He could hear Will Rogers talk political humor and D. W. Griffith tell about making epic films. He could hear grand opera and Shakespeare, jazz and minstrels, poetry, adventure, and George Gershwin hi...
Clara, Lu, and Em began as a skit in a sorority house at Northwestern University around 1925. Urged by their classmates to put it on radio, the three creators—Louise Starkey, Isobel Carothers, and Hel...
Charlie Wild was a product of the Red Scare, NBC’s hurry-up attempt to salvage something when congressional finger-pointing resulted in the loss of sponsorship for radio’s most popular detective, Sam...
They would do a show from home, talking about life in New York, their neighbors, the mail, the newspapers: just about anything that might come up over breakfast. Neither Fitzgerald nor WOR could work...
The troupe also made a 20,000–mile trip into the European war. Hope was the first American entertainer to perform in Sicily. He did a show at Messina just after the enemy had fled the town and was sti...
The show ran only in areas where Rio Grande cracked gasoline was sold. The sponsor promoted its close ties with police departments in Arizona and Southern California, urging listeners to buy its produ...
The show always began with a burst of laughter. Eleven seconds before air time, Pittman points a finger at Bill Thompson, wrote Yoder. Thompson hands Fibber a glass of water … Fibber takes a lunge at...
The purpose of The Doctor Fights was twofold: to honor the nation’s 180,000 doctors, 60,000 of whom were in the theaters of battle, and to acquaint the public with the new miracle drug, penicillin. Th...
The final format, with Phil Harris and Alice Faye, was virtually identical to and is covered under THE PHIL HARRIS/ALICE FAYE SHOW. The theme throughout the various format changes was zestily sung to...
The ever-reliable Bill Thompson filled the gap with a new character, Wallace Wimple. Wallace gave new meaning to the word wimp, for this was the nickname pinned on him by Fibber McGee. Wimple was terr...