Donald Shepherd and Robert F. Slatzer wrote a tough biography, The Hollow Man, which depicted Crosby as a cold, calculating dictator who abandoned his first family to start a new one, who turned his b...
Crime Classics grew out of a long-standing and deep interest of actor-director Elliott Lewis in history’s great murder cases. Lewis had compiled an extensive library of true crime cases, often primary...
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...
Ceiling Unlimited began as a series of informative dramas by Orson Welles, who had just returned from a well-publicized air trip to Latin America with film in the can for an ill-fated movie and a yen...
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 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...
The entire run is preserved in fine quality on tape. Huxley gave an ominous opening, warning that if I were writing today, I would date my story not 600 years in the future, but at the most 200. Then...
The cast in 1938–39: Bob Hope, madcap Jerry Colonna, announcer Bill Goodwin, and bandleader Skinnay Ennis. Blanche Stewart and Elvia Allman as high-society crazies Brenda and Cobina. Judy Garland, res...
The advertising firm Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn was charged with creating a positive campaign, and The Cavalcade of America was its answer. In the beginning, in its CBS run, Cavalcade was a...
The Guiding Light is the longest-running serial in broadcast history. Still seen on CBS television, its roots go back almost 60 years, to radio’s pioneering soaps. Though its original characters have...
Technically, however, it was far from simple: its problems were both technical and tactical, and it was a producer’s nightmare. The show would put its listeners right into the fields of battle, using...
THE GREEN LAMA, adventure drama, based on novels by Richard Foster.
Peary was born in 1908, son of a Portuguese immigrant, and christened Harrold José de Faria. He once pinpointed his first radio job as Jan. 21, 1923, at KZM, Oakland. In the late 1920s he worked at NB...
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...
It was decaffeinated jazz he sent to WJZ via Western Union lines from the Hotel Pennsylvania. A distant echo of New Orleans, yet it spoke to listeners. The ’20s style was lively, rich with saxophone a...