704 results for 'Jack Benny: Out and About'

By 1922, entertainer George Burns was a vaudeville “veteran.” He knew enough about show business to understand what would work in a stage act and what wouldn’t, although his own career was disting ...

“Elliott Lewis was the greatest actor of them all,” declared veteran radio scribe E. Jack Neuman in an interview with Leonard Maltin. “He could break your heart with a word; his timing was impecca ...

She possessed one of the most distinctive voices heard over the radio airwaves—but you might be surprised to learn that the woman born Jennie Morgan on this date in 1880 had a rather highbrow show ...

It pains me to have to say this…but I have heard from many an old-time radio devotee that Portland Hoffa—born on this date in 1905—is an acquired taste. Her trademark high-pitched voice as husban ...

Comedian Fred Allen had worked himself up through the vaudeville ranks (he started out as “The World’s Worst Juggler” before realizing his talents lie in comedy) to Broadway productions like The L ...

One of the more charming features of the radio sitcom The Halls of Ivy was college president William Todhunter Hall’s (Ronald Colman) occasional flashbacks to the time of his courtship with music ...

He’s acknowledged by many to have been one of the finest straight men in comedy—if not the finest. This, however, does George Burns a disservice. The man born on this date in 1896 immodestly att ...

In the 1949 film The Life of Riley—based on the successful radio situation comedy created by Irving Brecher (who also directed and wrote the silver screen adaptation)—one of the series’ most popul ...

The legendary Fred Allen had words of high praise in his book Treadmill to Oblivion for long-time Fred Allen Show regular Minerva Pious, who was born on this date in either 1903 (according to most ...

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 ...

Today’s birthday celebrant was once dubbed “the Canadian Orson Welles”…and after leaving The Great White North in 1946, Fletcher Markle—born on this date in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1921—would not on ...

The man born in Boston, Massachusetts on this date in 1910 would soon make a big name for himself as the long-winded stooge for a well-known radio comedian who also had roots in the Boston-Cambrid ...