Turner Classic Movies occasionally schedules a 1956 film noir directed by Fritz Lang entitled While the City Sleeps. In the film, a troubled young man (John Drew Barrymore) has embarked on a killi ...
Happy Birthday, Jeff Chandler!(Post)If you were given a name like “Ira Grossel” at birth…chances are you’d have a long career as a certified public accountant or a dentist waiting in the wings once you reached adulthood. But one par ...
Happy Birthday, Marvin Miller!(Post)Though his show business career of nearly half-a-century extended to radio, TV, and motion pictures, the actor-announcer born Marvin Elliott Mueller in St. Louis, Missouri on this date in 1913 is ...
Happy Birthday, Betty Lou Gerson!(Post)George Allen took over as director of the West Coast radio mystery anthology The Whistler beginning in the mid-40s, and one of the hallmarks of his tenure with the program was building a stock com ...
Review: Radio City Revels (1938)(Post)Aspiring songwriter Harry Miller (Jack Oakie) is long on ambition…and short on talent. With his piano-playing partner Teddy Jordan (Milton Berle), Harry is barely making the rent on the apartment ...
Doris Singleton (1919-2012)(Post)The recurring character of Caroline Appleby, rival/nemesis of housewife Lucy Ricardo on the classic television sitcom I Love Lucy, was first introduced in the episode “The Club Election”—though th ...
Review: The Phantom Thief (1946)(Post)Horatio “Boston Blackie” Black (Chester Morris…who later explains to a character in the film that he’s “of the Philadelphia Blackies”) returns to his humble bachelor environs to find a note from h ...
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 ...
Happy Birthday, Alan Ladd!(Post)Old-time radio legend Frank Nelson (The Jack Benny Program) shared the following anecdote in Leonard Maltin’s The Great American Broadcast: “I had a friend who did just bits with me in radio shows ...
“…the bulkiest, balkiest, smartest, most unpredictable detective in the world…”(Post)On this date in 1943, the first of several attempts to introduce radio to one of the most memorable of literary sleuths got underway. Nero Wolfe, the well-upholstered creation of author Rex Stout, ...
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, William Bendix!(Post)In movies, television—and especially on radio—actor William Bendix frequently played a typical blue-collar working stiff. Take his most famous role, Chester A. Riley, of the successful radio/TV s ...
Happy Birthday, Verna Felton!(Post)It’s a bit of a stretch but try to imagine Verna Felton—the actress who appeared on Jack Benny’s radio/TV show as Dennis Day’s mother and later as “Hilda Crocker” on December Bride—as “Baby Felton ...
Happy Birthday, Vincent Price!(Post)If actor Vincent Price—born Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. on this date in St. Louis, Missouri in 1911—had decided to ignore the call of the footlights and pursue honest work, it’s safe to say his fut ...
“You’re durn tootin’, Hoppy!”(Post)The August 11, 1941 broadcast of CBS’ Forecast marked the first time the character of Hopalong Cassidy was offered up to radio audiences as a potential series, much in the same manner as fellow B- ...
Happy Birthday, Bea Benaderet!(Post)On this date in New York City in 1906, Samuel and Margaret Benaderet welcomed one of radio and TV’s finest supporting comedic talents into the world. Their daughter Beatrice—or Bea, as she was bet ...