A few hallmarks of the later Benny era began to emerge with the 1933–34 season. Benny argued with his cast: on Nov. 5, 1933, he and announcer Alois Havrilla squabbled about Havrilla’s introduction;
Radio’s Croupier played strongly upon Webster’s definition of the word—an attendant who collects and pays money at a gaming table. The host was omniscient, offering wry commentary on the movements of...
Quinn wrote a script. He took the character Luke Gray out of the store and, in an inspired moment, renamed him Fibber McGee. He called his script Fibber McGee and Molly, but for some reason the agency...
She seemed to take herself less seriously than did Parsons, though she was considered more accurate and more willing to personally check out her tips. On the radio, Miss Hopper cheerfully admits her e...
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...
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...
While stationed in Oklahoma with the Army, he came up with the idea that would make his fortune. He was reading the gripe column in the GI newspaper Yank. It might be interesting, he thought, to recor...
When plans were made to put Dragnet on television, Webb ignored the wisdom of the time and prepared to use radio people, including Yarborough, in key roles. The question of the day, whenever radio peo...
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...
Still they came by the thousand, most without ever considering the odds they were bucking. The Original Amateur Hour was getting 10,000 applications a week: the producers could only hear 500 to 700 am...
They were sometimes closer to truth than the government wanted radio to be. Anticipating an invasion of Sicily, Robson sent writer Allan Sloane to Massachusetts, where engineers were being trained in...
They would talk about the bridge game they had played the night before with two friends. The main topic of conversation had been a Kansas City murder in which a woman had killed her husband over a han...
This best-remembered of all police shows was produced in cooperation with police and federal law enforcement departments throughout the United States. It was billed as the only national program that b...
THE FRONT PAGE, lighthearted crime drama, based loosely on the play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. BROADCAST HISTORY: May 6–Sept. 16, 1948, ABC. 30m, Thursdays at 8. CAST: Dick Powell as reporter...
And like any good newspaper, the show had severe critics. It was damned left and right. Real newsmen condemned it for hamming up the news. Communists called it fascistic. William Randolph Hearst label...
This much is certain. In April 1930, Radio Station WGHP in Detroit was purchased by John King and George W. Trendle, partners who had just liquidated a chain of movie theaters. They planned to make th...
Mr. District Attorney was for many years the nation’s best-liked crime show. It was inspired by the exploits of Thomas E. Dewey, New York’s racket-busting DA of the late ‘30s, whose front-page war aga...
More than 225 of the 1930s Columbia Workshop and its 1946–47 revival are available on tape. That this was not a show for the masses is especially true today. Some of these shows, on first listening, s...
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