In Leonard Maltin’s anecdotal old-time radio page-turner The Great American Broadcast, there’s a photograph of Parley Baer chatting with Academy Award-winning actor James Stewart—and in the captio ...
Happy Birthday, Maurice Tarplin!(Post)A 1946 issue of Radio Mirror noted that “practically everyone connected with the Boston Blackie show is a former athlete.” Radio Mirror was not publishing “fake news”: the show’s star, Richard Ko ...
Happy Birthday, Alfred Hitchcock!(Post)On this date in 1899, Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone—part of Essex at the time of his birth, now part of London. The youngest of three children of greengrocer William Hitchco ...
“…true crime stories from the records and newspapers of every land from every time…”(Post)Even as he continued to convulse audiences weekly in the 1950s as Frankie Remley, sidekick to the male half of The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, actor Elliott Lewis was anxious to branch out into t ...
“Want to get away from it all? We offer you…Escape!(Post)On this date in 1947, the CBS Radio Network decided to complement its celebrated “outstanding theatre of thrills” with an anthology “designed to free you from the four walls of today with a half-h ...
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 ...
The Robin Hood of Modern Crime(Post)His creator described him as “a buccaneer in the suits of Savile Row, amused, cool, debonair, with hell-for-leather blue eyes and a saintly smile.” That creator was author Leslie Charteris, and t ...
Happy Birthday, William Spier!(Post)The man who brought listeners “radio’s outstanding theatre of thrills” (Suspense!) and “the greatest private detective of them all” (The Adventures of Sam Spade) was born in New York City on this ...
Review: Boston Blackie and the Law (1946)(Post)Previously on the Radio Spirits blog, I discussed Alias Boston Blackie (1942), the third entry in the popular Columbia Pictures movie franchise—it’s a holiday-themed picture, with the events takin ...
“From the far horizons of the unknown…”(Post)NBC Radio’s dramatic anthology Dimension X—which was inspired by a renewed interest in science-fiction following the release of Universal-International’s Destination Moon in 1950—was the most suc ...
Happy Birthday, Billy Idelson!(Post)When Vic and Sade writer-creator Paul Rhymer decided to add a third character to his program in July of 1932, he had only one phone call to make. You see, that third addition was going to be for ...
Happy Birthday, Joe DeSantis!(Post)On this date in 1909 in New York City, Maria Paoli and Pasquale DeSantis welcomed Joseph Vito Marcello DeSantis into the world. The shorter version of that name is Joe DeSantis, a man who would be ...