The final word was her daughter’s, in a frank and touching memoir, Knock Wood. Yes, there were disagreements; there were plenty of generation-gap misunderstandings. At the bottom of it was a girl who...
The dates often lasted till early morning. Chaperones guided the winners home, leaving them only when they went their separate ways and the sponsor’s responsibility ended. But Cupid was not denied: at...
The casting had been more difficult. Macdonnell and Meston both wanted William Conrad for the lead, but CBS objected. Conrad was known as a heavy from his movie roles (Body and Soul; Sorry, Wrong Numb...
The Hallmark Hall of Fame has become the grandfather of all prestige shows, a dignified though increasingly expensive promotion for the slogan that was a standard even in 1948: Remember—a Hallmark Car...
That all these leaders were temperamental and difficult mattered little to the fans who loved them. Goodman was called an ornery SOB by more than one sideman. His icy stare, the Goodman ray, was usual...
THE JACK WEBB SHOW, madcap comedy-variety. BROADCAST HISTORY: Spring 1946, ABC West Coast, from KGO, San Francisco. 30m, Wednesdays at 9:30 Pacific time, premiering March 20. This insane bit of fluff...
She was a generous, loving human being, Ellis said of Kitty. Macdonnell, in a 1953 Time interview, put it bluntly: Kitty is just someone Matt has to visit every once in a while. We never say it, but K...
Sample opening: Yes, this is the Crime Club… I’m the librarian. Silent Witness? Yes, we have that Crime Club story for you. Come right over. Then the reader (listener) would arrive, and the librarian...
Producer Norman Macdonnell saw Fort Laramie as a monument to ordinary men who lived in extraordinary times: their enemies were the rugged, uncharted country, the heat, the cold, disease, boredom, and,...
Orson Welles, 21 years old and unknown, offered Shakespeare: Hamlet (Sept. 19 and Nov. 14, 1936) and Macbeth (Feb. 28, 1937).
On Feb. 5, 1945, an all-star cast spoofed America’s most popular comic strip in an hour-long play, Dick Tracy in B-Flat; or, For Goodness Sake, Isn’t He Ever Going to Marry Tess Trueheart? The stars w...
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...
Moe Berg, Boston Red Sox catcher, had a quick mind and a vast store of general knowledge (and later became a spy, searching out atomic secrets for the OSS in Europe). Harpo Marx appeared without speak...
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...
In the fall of 1950, Waterman became the new Gildersleeve. Peary, meanwhile, jumped to CBS with a new sitcom, Honest Harold. In a dual review (Gildy vs. Gildy, Sept. 29, 1950), Radio Life summed up th...
His Pete Kelly’s Blues (NBC, 1951) was also powerful, but it was as Joe Friday that he was known for the rest of his days. He died Dec. 23, 1982, a heart attack victim. Upon his death, the Los Angeles...
HOSTS: Raymond Edward Johnson until May 22, 1945; Paul McGrath beginning Sept. 28, 1945. Also: House Jameson. CAST: Film stars known for the macabre—Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, etc.—in lead roles, ca....
Goff knew the salesman for Quaker Oats. It happened that Quaker was then sponsoring Gene and Glenn, a series going off for the summer, and the company was looking for a replacement. Lauck and Goff wer...
Escape had opened with dramatized short story classics: Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, and Joseph Conrad’s Typhoon. These tales were natural...
Double or Nothing endured because of the nimble ad-libbing of its hosts and because, over the years, the show gained a reputation for double entendres and unexpected embarrassment. By far the most sen...