237 results for 'Dick Van Dyke and Co.'

One of old-time radio’s most important—and inarguably, most creative—director-producers was born on this date in 1916. A native of Pasadena, CA, Norman Macdonnell would use his experiences during ...

It pains me to have to say this…but I have heard from many an old-time radio devotee that Portland Hoffa—born on this date in 1905—is an acquired taste. Her trademark high-pitched voice as husban ...

On this date in 1941, radio audiences made their first visit to a dingy, dank East Side watering hole affectionately known as Duffy’s Tavern. The half-hour sitcom, created by and starring Ed Gardn ...

It’s not often that we here at the Radio Spirits blog get an opportunity to blow a noisemaker and celebrate the natal anniversary of an old-time radio performer who’s still with us—but that’s what ...

A 1946 issue of Radio Mirror noted that “practically everyone connected with the Boston Blackie show is a former athlete.” Radio Mirror was not publishing “fake news”: the show’s star, Richard Ko ...

Patrick Joseph McGeehan—born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on this date in 1907—enjoyed a long and fruitful association with comedian Red Skelton. He joined Red’s radio program as an announcer in t ...

One night in 1941, child actor Tommy Cook was determined to see the Republic cliffhanger serial Jungle Girl. You see, he had a part in that motion picture as a native boy, Kimbu, so he stealthily ...

The 1968 feature film comedy With Six You Get Eggroll served as actress-singer Doris Day’s cinematic swan song. Dodo would turn her attention to television after Eggroll’s release, with a success ...

Actress Louise Erickson—born in Oakland, California on this date in 1928—becomes a nonagenarian today…and we at Radio Spirits couldn’t be more excited about celebrating the occasion. In the 1940s ...

An item in the September 25, 1939 edition of The Van Nuys News trumpets the motion picture debut of actor Louis Merrill—born in Winnipeg, Canada on this date in 1912. The blurb is a little hyperb ...

On this date in 1947, the program that finally found a way to make good use of the one-of-a-kind comic talent of Julius “Groucho” Marx premiered: You Bet Your Life. A “quiz show” that really serv ...

On this date in 1943, the first of several attempts to introduce radio to one of the most memorable of literary sleuths got underway. Nero Wolfe, the well-upholstered creation of author Rex Stout, ...

Horatio “Boston Blackie” Black (Chester Morris…who later explains to a character in the film that he’s “of the Philadelphia Blackies”) returns to his humble bachelor environs to find a note from h ...

By the beginning of the 1950s, television had started to make major inroads as the preferred home entertainment source for household families…leaving radio to play the unenviable role of middle ch ...

From 1935 to 1939, Kenneth Laurence Baker—born in Monrovia, California on this date in 1912—was welcomed into millions of homes as the popular tenor vocalist on radio’s The Jack Benny Program. Ke ...

Francis Albert Sinatra—Oscar-winning actor, Grammy-winning recording artist, and star of the Emmy Award-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music (1965)—was born on this date i ...