The last time we got together here on the blog we celebrated Sheldon Leonard’s birthday…and I described his career as a “hyphenate”: actor, producer, director (and even writer on shows like the An ...
Happy Birthday, Arthur Q. Bryan!(Post)A doorbell rings at a residence in the Midwest, and the all-too-trusting couple that resides inside welcomes their visitor with an enthusiastic “Come in!” I’ll keep you in suspense no longer: the ...
Happy Birthday, Ben Wright!(Post)“Ben was one of the last of the true English gentlemen in the Edwardian sense of the word, with an accent on the gentle,” remarked Joe Bandille in 1989 on the passing of his good friend, actor Ben ...
Happy Birthday, Hanley Stafford!(Post)The actor who achieved his greatest fame on radio as the best foil Fanny Brice’s Baby Snooks could ever wish for was born on this date in 1899 as Alfred John Austin. His birthplace of Hanley in St ...
Happy Birthday, Van Heflin!(Post)“Louis B. Mayer once looked at me and said, ‘You will never get the girl at the end,’” recalled actor Van Heflin once in an interview. “So I worked on my acting.” The man born Emmett Evan Heflin ...
Happy Birthday, Paul Frees!(Post)“Paul Frees is EVERYWHERE!” A cartoonist of my acquaintance adopted that statement as both a personal mantra and a tribute to the man born Solomon Hersh Frees in Chicago on this date in 1920. Fo ...
Happy Birthday, Olan Soule!(Post)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 ...
Happy Birthday, Wyllis Cooper!(Post)Radio writer and playwright Arch Oboler once had these words of praise for the man he would eventually replace as the mind behind the mayhem that fueled the horror series Lights Out: “Radio drama ...
Happy Birthday, Stacy Harris!(Post)Before embarking on his long career as a much-in-demand actor on radio, TV, and in the movies, Stacy Harris—born in Big Timber, Quebec, Canada on this date in 1918—was the dictionary definition of ...
Happy Birthday, Barton Yarborough!(Post)Despite the fact that radio’s I Love a Mystery had closed up shop over CBS Radio on December 29, 1944, Columbia Pictures wanted to adapt the popular “blood-and-thunder” melodrama for the silver sc ...
Happy Birthday, Parker Fennelly!(Post)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 ...
Happy Birthday, Eleanor Audley!(Post)The epitaph on the headstone adorning the final resting place of actress Eleanor Audley reads: “A Kind Friend to All.” And while it’s undeniably true that Audley—born Eleanor Zellman on this date ...