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, Van Johnson!(Post)During the 1940s, the man born Charles Van Dell Johnson in Newport, Rhode Island on this date in 1916 was known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s “boy next door.” Van Johnson’s affable charm and golden-bo ...
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, Anton M. Leader!(Post)Although he was born Anton Morris Leader in Boston, Massachusetts on this date in 1913, Mr. Leader was always informally known as “Tony” to his friends and colleagues. This occasionally results in ...
Happy Anniversary, Ronald and Benita Colman!(Post)One of the more charming features of the radio sitcom The Halls of Ivy was college president William Todhunter Hall’s (Ronald Colman) occasional flashbacks to the time of his courtship with music ...
Happy Birthday, Red Skelton!(Post)The town of Vincennes, Indiana welcomed Richard Bernard “Red” Skelton into their midst on this date in 1913…and got the best of the bargain, because their favorite son spent most of his show busin ...
Happy Birthday, Jim Backus!(Post)He was an actor who did it all: stage, television, movies…and for us fans of the aural medium, plenty of old-time radio. James Gilmore Backus arrived in Cleveland, OH on this date in 1913, and fo ...
Happy Birthday, Arthur Conan Doyle!(Post)As a medical student at the University of Edinburgh from 1876 through 1881, Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle—born in Edinburgh on this date in 1859—found himself fascinated by an instructor at that sch ...
Happy Birthday, Mary Lee Robb!(Post)Actress Mary Lee Robb’s first professional radio job in 1947 was a small one. She was hired to play Pearl, the daughter of Abner Peabody (Norris “Tuffy” Goff) on the long-running comedy serial Lu ...
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 ...
Happy Birthday, Boris Karloff!(Post)Born on this date in 1887, William Henry Pratt no doubt had little inkling that he was destined to become a horror film icon and one of the silver screen’s most beloved performers. After being ed ...
Happy Birthday, John Brown!(Post)In the 1949 film The Life of Riley—based on the successful radio situation comedy created by Irving Brecher (who also directed and wrote the silver screen adaptation)—one of the series’ most popul ...