If you were to go to a dictionary to look up the meaning of the term “foil” as it relates to comedy—dollars to donuts says it would be accompanied by a picture of Gale Gordon, born on this date in ...
Happy Birthday, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson!(Post)On this date in 1905, one of radio and television’s most prized sidekicks was born in Oakland, CA to a family of show business performers. His father, “Big Ed” Anderson, performed in minstrel show ...
Happy Birthday, Damon Runyon!(Post)The Oxford Dictionary defines the term “Runyonesque” as “of, relating to, or characteristic of Damon Runyon or his style, language, or imagery; especially characterized by plot or language suggest ...
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, Lou Krugman!(Post)It seems odd that an actor who claimed to have emoted on over 10,000 radio broadcasts and provided voiceovers for 700 commercials doesn’t even rate an entry at Wikipedia…it’s a crime against the a ...
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 ...
Review – The Jack Benny Program: The Lost Episodes(Post)The media company known emphatically as Shout! Factory pre-released one of the most highly anticipated DVD sets for old-time radio fans on June 18th of this year—a three-disc collection entitled T ...
Happy Birthday, Ed Begley!(Post)If you were to ask character actor Edward James Begley—born in Hartford, Connecticut on this date in 1901—about the highlight of his professional career, he would probably have responded that it c ...
Happy Birthday, Howard Duff!(Post)Have you ever wondered why a lot of the announcers from the AFRS versions of your radio favorites sound like Howard Duff? The answer to this is devastatingly simple: it is Howard Duff! The actor ...
Happy Birthday, Betty Lou Gerson!(Post)George Allen took over as director of the West Coast radio mystery anthology The Whistler beginning in the mid-40s, and one of the hallmarks of his tenure with the program was building a stock com ...
Happy Birthday, Alan Ladd!(Post)Old-time radio legend Frank Nelson (The Jack Benny Program) shared the following anecdote in Leonard Maltin’s The Great American Broadcast: “I had a friend who did just bits with me in radio shows ...
Happy Birthday, Pat O’Brien!(Post)The man born William Joseph Patrick O'Brien in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on this date in 1899 was frequently referred to in the press as “Hollywood’s Irishman in Residence” during his lengthy motion pi ...
Happy Birthday, Gerald Mohr!(Post)Actor Gerald Mohr—born in New York City on this date in 1914—might have gone through life more formally addressed as “Dr. Gerald Mohr” had it not been for a bout of appendicitis. You see, having gr ...
Happy Birthday, Harry Bartell!(Post)On the radio western Fort Laramie, actor Harry Bartell—born in New Orleans, LA on this date in 1913—played the part of Lieutenant Richard Sieberts, a greenhorn junior officer stationed at the outp ...
Happy Birthday, Burgess Meredith!(Post)Two iconic roles immediately come to mind when discussing the career of the actor born Oliver Burgess Meredith on this date in 1907. One is his deliciously over-the-top portrayal of The Penguin on ...
Andy Griffith (1926-2012)(Post)In 1979, veteran radio producers Fletcher Markle and Elliott Lewis attempted to resurrect the lost art of radio drama with The Sears Radio Theater, a program that followed in the footsteps of such ...