The man who let audiences know what he liked about the South was born in Linton, Indiana on this date in 1904. Whenever wife Alice Faye would jokingly refer to him as “Wonga” on their popular radi ...
Happy Birthday, Staats Cotsworth!(Post)A newspaper man once referred to actor Staats Cotsworth—born in Oak Park, Illinois on this date in 1908—as “the Clark Gable of radio.” It was one of several nicknames Cotsworth would acquire duri ...
Happy Birthday, Richard Crenna!(Post)The go-to actor for radio’s squeaky-voiced adolescents was born in Los Angeles, California on this date in 1926. Richard “Dick” Crenna established his bona fides in the aural medium with co-starri ...
Happy Birthday, Lamont Johnson!(Post)I’m certainly not the first person to observe that the best directors—whether they work in film, television, theater, or elsewhere—are often those with an extensive background in acting…and today’ ...
A ventriloquist…on the radio?(Post)On this date in 1936, The Royal Gelatin Hour’s Rudy Vallee introduced a very unusual guest:Why—people have been asking me for the last two days—why put a ventriloquist on the air? The answer is, ...
Happy Birthday, Jimmy Durante!(Post)From the 1920s and onward, James Francis Durante—born in Manhattan on this date in 1893—was the entertainer who advised audiences that they have to start off each day with a song. Durante’s large ...
Happy Birthday, John McIntire!(Post)In the mid-1930s, actor-announcer John Herrick McIntire—born in Spokane, Washington on this date in 1907—decided, along with his actress wife Jeanette Nolan, to retreat from show business and take ...
Happy Birthday, Harry Von Zell!(Post)It’s now one of the best-remembered and oft-told anecdotes of radio history. A young CBS announcer born Harry Rudolph Von Zell in Indianapolis, Indiana on this date in 1906 manages to mangle the n ...
Happy Birthday, Margaret O’Brien!(Post)At Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the motion picture studio where she was employed, child star Margaret O’Brien and her fellow MGM stablemate June Allyson were known as “The Town Criers.” “We were always in ...
A birthday valentine to Jack Benny(Post)Today is Valentine’s Day. You’ve been seeing TV commercials for weeks now, and I’ll bet dollars to donuts most of the stores had their Valentine’s Day displays up the day after New Year’s. Every ...
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, Minerva Pious!(Post)The legendary Fred Allen had words of high praise in his book Treadmill to Oblivion for long-time Fred Allen Show regular Minerva Pious, who was born on this date in either 1903 (according to most ...