“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 ...
Happy Birthday, Glenn Langan!(Post)The actor born Thomas Glenn Langan in Denver, Colorado on this date in 1917 spent a large portion of his life in “The Mile High City.” He was educated there and received his theatrical training wo ...
Happy Birthday, Ralph Bell!(Post)It would be no exaggeration to state that the actor born Ralph Scognamiglio in New Jersey (though sources also state his place of birth as New York City) on this date in 1915 had a lifelong love a ...
Happy Birthday, Ed Gardner!(Post)It was on a short-lived radio series entitled This is New York that comedian Ed Gardner found his creative muse…playing a pugnacious New Yorker who answered to “Archie.” Gardner was the show’s pr ...
Happy Birthday, Van Johnson!(Post)During the 1940s, the man born Charles Van Dell Johnson in Newport, Rhode Island on this date in 1916 was known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s “boy next door.” Van Johnson’s affable charm and golden-bo ...
Happy Birthday, Judy Canova!(Post)There’s a reason why Judy Canova was frequently referred to as “The Ozark Nightingale” and “The Jenny Lind of the Ozarks.” Judy was blessed with an incredible singing voice, and at one point in h ...
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 ...
Happy Birthday, Al Hodge!(Post)The Ravenna, Ohio native born on this date in 1912 had no way of knowing he would take on two acting jobs that would make him a hero to millions of kids glued to both radio and early TV screens.
Happy Birthday, Victor Moore!(Post)In the 1945 Warner Bros. cartoon Ain’t That Ducky, Daffy Duck encounters a most unusual hunter: a sportsman who looks and sounds like veteran comic actor Victor Moore. As you can probably guess, t ...
Happy Birthday, Les Damon!(Post)Lester Joseph Damon—born in Providence, RI on this date in 1908—was memorably described by my Radio Spirits colleague Elizabeth McLeod as “the prototype of the radio actor on the go.” From his ea ...
Happy Birthday, George W. Trendle!(Post)“There were many tight-fisted broadcasting officials in the Golden Age of Radio, but probably none more pernicious the George W. Trendle, the owner of WXYZ in Detroit.” So wrote author/Radio Spir ...
Happy Birthday, Benita Hume!(Post)When Jack Benny and his writers concocted the script that would introduce actor Ronald Colman as Jack’s “next door neighbor” on The Jack Benny Program, the writers’ first inclination was to hire a ...