462 results for 'Harry James: Four Classic Albums Plus'

If real life were like an old-time radio comedy program—and my gosh, don’t you think it should be?—I can’t think of any other individual that I would want to handle the announcing chores from week ...

When actor Barry Sullivan—born Patrick Barry Sullivan in 1912 on this date in New York City—was approached to star in Harbourmaster, a television series from the prolific Ziv studios, he had one q ...

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 ...

For Nick and Nora Charles, the famed imbibing couple created by Dashiell Hammett in the 1934 novel The Thin Man, sleuthing was a walk in the park; Nick was a retired gumshoe and knew a little bit ...

If we were to truly recognize the birthday of author Brett Halliday, we’d have to settle in for a series of blog posts. “Brett Halliday,” the author who brought the adventures of detective Micha ...

It would be no small exaggeration to suggest that more old-time radio fans listen to The Whistler today than did audiences during the series’ original CBS network radio run from May 16, 1942 to S ...

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 ...

“Whatta hunk of woman!” That was Desi Arnaz’s initial reaction upon spotting future wife Lucille Ball at R-K-O in 1940, where the two of them would appear in that studio’s adaptation of the Broadw ...

The glamour of the motion picture industry often disguised an uncomfortable truth—that it was an enterprise that rarely had any further use for those movie colony individuals who had fallen on ha ...

Simply put, the actor born in 1914 on this date in Salt Lake City, Utah possessed one of the most distinctive voices in the multiple mediums of radio, TV, and movies. Let me illustrate with a pers ...

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 ...

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 ...

On this date in 1900, the man who enjoyed an association with comedian Jack Benny for over thirty years was born in Lincoln, Nebraska—a man we know as Don Wilson. As Jack’s announcer, Don rhapsodi ...

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 ...

The Detroit, Michigan station known as WXYZ—“the last word in radio”—was already responsible for introducing two dramatic programs over the airwaves that became firm favorites with radio listeners ...

“Philo Vance/Needs a kick in the pance” Ogden Nash once rhymed in a memorable couplet. Nash’s editorial comment was addressing the one-time popularity of author S.S. Van Dine’s famed sleuth. Afte ...