In the annals of radio broadcasting, Detroit, Michigan’s WXYZ was a truly remarkable station. It would introduce one of the medium’s larger-than-life heroes (and a genuine pop culture icon) in The ...
Happy Birthday, Pat O’Brien!(Post)The man born William Joseph Patrick O'Brien in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on this date in 1899 was frequently referred to in the press as “Hollywood’s Irishman in Residence” during his lengthy motion pi ...
Happy Birthday, Tom Conway!(Post)Thomas Charles Sanders was born on this date in 1904 to English parents in St. Petersburg, Russia. Old-time radio fans, of course, know him as Tom Conway, and know that he played two famous detec ...
“Under the cold, glaring lights pass the innocent…the vagrant…the thief…the murderer…”(Post)The introduction of Jack Webb’s Dragnet to NBC Radio’s schedule in June of 1949 would soon inspire several imitators focused on the meticulous details of police procedure. There was Broadway’s M ...
Happy Birthday, Frances Robinson!(Post)“Danger’s my stock-in-trade,” observed George Valentine weekly on the popular Mutual crime drama Let George Do It. For actress Frances Robinson, who played George’s loyal gal Friday, Claire “Broo ...
“It’s round-up time/On the Double-R Bar…”(Post)“America’s favorite singing cowboy,” Gene Autry, began his long-running radio series Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch in January of 1940. It was fitting that the man who began his lengthy motion picture ...
Happy Birthday, Ozzie Nelson!(Post)In 1930, Oswald George Nelson—born in Jersey City, New Jersey on this date in 1906—graduated with a law degree from Rutgers University and was ready to hang out his shingle for business. Sadly, t ...
Happy Birthday, Santos Ortega!(Post)Radio historian and Radio Spirits contributor Jim Widner once asked humorously of today’s birthday celebrant “Any detective he didn’t play?” in a 2013 article of the Radio Recall newsletter. Jim i ...
Happy Birthday, Doris Day!(Post)After a lengthy career that encompassed radio, motion pictures, and many, many million-selling records as one of the 20th century’s most popular vocalists, the woman born Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff ...
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 ...
“Lights out…everybody!”(Post)In the early years of Radio’s Golden Age, those individuals who worked in radio discovered fairly quickly that the medium was ideal for presenting horror tales—listeners reveled in stories guarant ...
Happy Birthday, Ed Gardner!(Post)It was on a short-lived radio series entitled This is New York that comedian Ed Gardner found his creative muse…playing a pugnacious New Yorker who answered to “Archie.” Gardner was the show’s pr ...
Happy Birthday, Herbert Marshall!(Post)The man born Herbert Brough Falcon Marshall on this date in 1890 is revered by classic movie mavens as one of the premiere leading men in motion pictures in the 1930s and 1940s. Marshall graced s ...
Happy Birthday, Penny Singleton!(Post)She had stiff competition for the film role that would make her a household name: actresses Gloria Blondell and Una Merkel had both been approached to breathe life into Blondie, the titular heroin ...
Happy Birthday, Bill Thompson!(Post)When he was five years old, actor Bill Thompson lost his voice campaigning around the country selling Liberty bonds (America had just entered World War I). Now, if you’ve ever listened to a broad ...
Happy Birthday, Dean Martin!(Post)“His vocal style was something of a cross between Crosby and Como, mixing with a helping of roguish sexuality that no one, not even Sinatra, could claim,” declares author Michael J. Hayde in his fa ...