473 results for 'Classic Surf: The Absolutely Essential Collection'

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, ...

It never fails…every time I tune into an episode of The Jack Benny Program (be it on radio or TV) and Jack needs help from someone in customer service, the clerk is played by the same actor—who g ...

A collaboration between author Graham Greene (his only original screenplay), producer David O. Selznick, and movie director Carol Reed resulted in a true cinematic masterpiece: 1949’s The Third Ma ...

A surviving excerpt of radio’s The Fitch Bandwagon from April 23, 1944 features Broadway sensation Celeste Holm singing (complete with Brooklyn accent) the song written by Duffy’s Tavern’s Ed Gar ...

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 ...

Radio Spirits has just released a brand-new CD collection of broadcasts featuring Boston Blackie, a lighthearted detective drama based on the famed reformed safecracker-jewel thief introduced by a ...

Berry Kroeger’s initial show business ambition was to become a concert pianist. Kroeger didn’t lack for talent, you understand—but being painfully shy and terrified of performing threatened to si ...

Businessman Arthur Manleder (Lloyd Corrigan) has just acquired a rare book store from owner Wilfred Kittredge (George M. Carleton)…but his investment is in jeopardy when Kittredge takes ill, and h ...

“I’ve been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of.” So declared the man born Samuel Dashiell Hammett on this date in 1894, a confession he made to his daughter Joseph ...

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 ...

If the man born Walter Michael O’Keefe in Hartford, Connecticut on this date in 1900 had pursued his ambition to join the priesthood…well, the Church’s gain would surely have been our loss. We wou ...

At the turn of the twentieth century, a career as an actor or actress was frowned upon in “proper” society.” Aspirations to trod amongst the footlights were held in low regard, particularly among ...

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 ...

In 1947, when the dramatic anthology The First Nighter Program moved from its long-time Chicago home to Hollywood, leading man Olan Soule—born in La Harpe, Illinois on this date in 1909—relocated ...

It would become one of radio’s most beloved weekly rituals in the late 1940s: comedian Fred Allen would venture into “Allen’s Alley” to ask its inhabitants a topical question about a recent event ...

On this date in 1942, the man who brought Gang Busters and Mr. District Attorney to radio consoles “added one more jewel to his Triumvirate of Tension,” according to historian Jim Harmon in The Gre ...