His wit surfaced early: once, reviewing a vaudeville act, he noted that the performer could not be heard beyond the third row and advised patrons to request seats at least four rows back.
Then, in 1942, a disastrous strike against the record companies disrupted the industry and upset the delicate balance of business. Though it hit directly at record producers, the real target was radio...
Sanborn customers threatened to boycott the product. The Chicago Tribune pronounced the show vomitous, and of course congressmen hemmed and hawed. The result, according to Time, was that a thoroughly...
But Grigsby had encountered stiff competition from RCA, which claimed to hold patents on radio tubes essential to the manufacture of modern radio equipment. Grigsby thus had to pay royalties to its st...
But Dragnet evolved slowly. Webb pondered the idea he had received from Marty Wynn and developed it for more than a year. Realism should be the show’s hallmark: the stories should be authentic to the...
There is a tendency today to dismiss vaudeville comedy as unsophisticated and even simplistic. Burns himself often apologized when he quoted verbatim from old routines: This doesn’t sound like much no...
Burns and Allen household names—Gracie’s search for her lost brother. Whose idea was it? In The Big Broadcast, Frank Buxton and Bill Owen credit Bob Taplinger, head of publicity at CBS. Carroll though...
There was a certain ’30s silliness to cast off: a growth spurt that seemed to come to all timeless radio comedy around 1942–44. Suddenly Gildersleeve was a polished, smooth entity, a joy to hear. Well...
There was always risk in putting unknown people in front of a live microphone, and one agency man during the sponsored years confessed that I get twinges in my ulcer everytime I listen to it. But the...
Just Plain Bill was one of the biggest (and first) successes of daytime radio, enjoying a run of more than two decades. It exploited a favored theme of producers Frank and Anne Hummert: life in a smal...
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...
There were adaptations: The Happy Prince, by Oscar Wilde (Dec. 26, 1936), and The Signalman, by Charles Dickens (Jan. 23, 1937). In
There were no singers, no musical interludes, no quizzes or money to be won. It was wall-to-wall Breneman and his ladies: crazy questions and spontaneous, witty, sometimes devilishly clever answers. W...
THE HALL OF FANTASY, horror-supernatural dramatic anthology. BROADCAST HISTORY: Aug. 22, 1952–Sept. 28, 1953, Mutual. 30m, Fridays at 9:30 until Sept. 26, 1952; returned Jan. 5, 1953, Mondays at 8:30....
There were still exciting groups on the horizon: Ben Pollack, Isham Jones, Red Nichols, and Ted Is Ev-rybody Happy? Lewis provided an early training ground for many of the stars of the swing era, whic...
THE GUIDING LIGHT, soap opera. BROADCAST HISTORY: Jan. 25, 1937–Dec. 26, 1941, NBC. 15m, weekdays at 3:45, then at 11:45 A.M. White Naphtha Soap.
Popular stories and bestselling novel adaptations: Let the Hurricane Roar, by Rose Wilder Lane; Kitty Foyle, by Christopher Morley; etc. Leading
Peary played the role in its best years, he and Waterman shared about equally in real time as Gildy at the NBC microphone. After Gildersleeve, Peary shaved his mustache, lost 50 pounds, and, in 1954,...
Parsons was known for ruthlessness and a long memory. The biggest celebrities in America came when invited, with Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, and Greta Garbo among the few to ignore Parsons’s cal...
With the exception of The Bob Hope Show, Fibber McGee and Molly was the most patriotic show on the air. Whole runs of shows illustrated homefront themes. Fibber bought black market beef, which of cour...
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