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, Mandel Kramer!(Post)“I’m a product of radio,” actor Mandel Kramer confessed to an interviewer for a 1953 article in the March edition of Radio-TV Mirror. Mandel, who was born in Cleveland ninety-nine years ago on th ...
Happy Birthday, Leslie Charteris!(Post)Before becoming the creator of one of the literary world’s most famous sleuths, Leslie Charteris—born in Singapore (at the time, a British colony) on this date in 1907—jokingly “couldn’t hold down ...
Happy Centennial Birthday, John Dehner!(Post)For an actor who once set out purposely not to be typecast in Western roles, John Dehner—born John Forkum one hundred years ago in 1915 in Staten Island, NY—appeared in a lot of oaters across the ...
“…the stars’ own theatre…”(Post)The glamour of the motion picture industry often disguised an uncomfortable truth—that it was an enterprise that rarely had any further use for those movie colony individuals who had fallen on ha ...
Happy Birthday, Irene Tedrow!(Post)I’d never be able to prove it in a court of law…but I’d be willing to gamble that when the need arose for an actress to play the part of a spinster or neighborhood busybody, Irene Tedrow was on ev ...
Happy birthday, Arch Oboler!(Post)My introduction to the man born on this date in 1909 goes all the way back to 1982. In listening to a local public radio station while attending college at Huntington, West Virginia’s Marshall Un ...
Happy Birthday, Don Quinn!(Post)The most fortuitous event that occurred in the life of writer-cartoonist Don Quinn—born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on this date in 1900—was meeting Jim Jordan at the studios of Chicago’s WENR. Jor ...
Voice of the Whistler (1945): “I know many strange tales…”(Post)Voice of the Whistler (1945), the fourth entry in Columbia’s popular B-movie series based on the CBS West Coast radio show, marked the return of future schlock director William Castle to the franc ...
Happy Birthday, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson!(Post)On this date in 1905, one of radio and television’s most prized sidekicks was born in Oakland, CA to a family of show business performers. His father, “Big Ed” Anderson, performed in minstrel show ...
“When man hunts man!”(Post)The Golden Age of Radio featured many programsthat, despite their excellence, failed to attract a large listening audience. There are any number of reasons to explain their lukewarm receptions—th ...
“I get ten a day and expenses…they call me the Lyon’s Eye.”(Post)During his stint at San Francisco’s KGO in the mid-1940s, John Randolph “Jack” Webb earned his initial radio bona fides as the star of Pat Novak for Hire, a West Coast crime drama whose adherence ...