With the manpower shortage during World War II, reformed safecracker-jewel thief Horatio “Boston Blackie” Black (Chester Morris) apparently feels that Rosie the Riveter can’t do it alone in this n ...
Happy Birthday, George Fenneman!(Post)Despite his incredible career as a radio/TV announcer and emcee, George Watt Fenneman—born in Peking (now Beijing), China on this date in 1919—was never hesitant about crediting the job that secur ...
Happy Birthday, Jean Vander Pyl!(Post)Universal Pictures brought a live-action version of the classic TV cartoon series The Flintstones to the big screen in 1994 and had the novel idea of casting Jean Vander Pyl (the actress who voice ...
“Always ready with a hand for oppressed men…and an eye for repressed women…”(Post)On this date in 1943, the literary sleuth created by Drexel Drake made his radio debut on the Blue Network with a series that would entertain listeners until November 29, 1954: The Adventures of th ...
Happy Birthday, Sir John Gielgud!(Post)Sir John Gielgud made his cinematic debut in a 1924 silent film, Who is the Man? Yet the celebrated actor, born in South Kensington, London on this date in 1904, really didn’t commit to a movie c ...
Happy Birthday, Alan Reed!(Post)Whether you know him as Teddy Bergman (his birth name) or Alan Reed—an identity he adopted to separate his comedic roles from the dramatic ones (as well as downplay his Jewish heritage)—you certai ...
Review: Confessions of Boston Blackie (1941)(Post)Diane Parrish (Harriet Hilliard) has commissioned art dealer Eric Allison (Walter Soderling) to sell a valuable statue at an auction…but has no inkling that Allison and two of his confederates (Ra ...
Review: Boston Blackie Booked on Suspicion (1945)(Post)Businessman Arthur Manleder (Lloyd Corrigan) has just acquired a rare book store from owner Wilfred Kittredge (George M. Carleton)…but his investment is in jeopardy when Kittredge takes ill, and h ...
Happy Birthday, Raymond Chandler!(Post)For all his success in the literary world, and then later in Hollywood, author Raymond Thornton Chandler was a lonely man. He lived the life of a recluse; he left no surviving wife or children up ...
The Power of the Whistler (1945): “…I know many things, for I walk by night…”(Post)The omnipresent narrator (Otto Forrest) known as The Whistler introduces us to a “strange man” (Richard Dix) identified as “William Everest” as the third film in Columbia’s Whistler series unspool ...
Happy Birthday, Hans Conried!(Post)The man born Hans Georg Conried, Jr. on this date in 1917 in Baltimore, Maryland is described by author Leonard Maltin in his book The Great American Broadcast as “one of the most prolific perform ...
Happy Birthday, Claire Trevor!(Post)On March 24, 1949, actress Claire Trevor—born in Brooklyn, NY on this date in 1910—received one of the highest honors a performer can obtain from their peers in the motion picture industry: an Aca ...
Happy Birthday, Helen Mack!(Post)In 1949, RKO re-released She (1935)—a motion picture based on the series of H. Rider Haggard novels and starring Randolph Scott and Helen Gahagan (as the title character). She, a science fiction-t ...
Happy Birthday, Charles Russell!(Post)Fans of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar are generally in agreement that it was actor Bob Bailey who made “America’s fabulous freelance investigator” the old-time radio icon he is today. (I apologize ...
The Whistler (1944): “I…am the Whistler…”(Post)It would be no small exaggeration to suggest that more old-time radio fans listen to The Whistler today than did audiences during the series’ original CBS network radio run from May 16, 1942 to S ...
Happy Birthday, Olan Soule!(Post)In 1947, when the dramatic anthology The First Nighter Program moved from its long-time Chicago home to Hollywood, leading man Olan Soule—born in La Harpe, Illinois on this date in 1909—relocated ...