357 results for 'jack benny'

During the Golden Age of Radio, it was standard practice for the comedians headlining the most popular programs to work 39 weeks out of the year (which is kind of fitting when you work Jack Benny ...

Dominic Felix Amici was born on this date in Kenosha, WI in 1908. When Dominic changed his name to Don Ameche, however, that’s when any number of doors started opening for one of show business’ fo ...

Old-time radio author-historian Jim Cox describes My Favorite Husband as “a dress rehearsal for the main event” in his indispensable reference book The Great Radio Sitcoms. “My Favorite Husband w ...

There are announcers…and there are personality announcers. The latter were integral to the success of any comedy program during Radio’s Golden Age; not only did they dutifully promote the sponsor’ ...

The man officially known as The Reverend Father Patrick Peyton, C.S.C. was chaplain of the Holy Cross Brothers of the Vincentian Institute in Albany, New York during World War II. Father Peyton es ...

At one time in the 1940s, the man born Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby, Jr. in Tacoma, Washington on this date in 1903 was the top-selling recording star…the number-one box office attraction…and the mo ...

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 ...

Claude Rains—born William Claude Rains in Clapham, London, England on this date in 1889—made his American film debut in one of the classic Universal Pictures horror films of the 1930s: The Invisib ...

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington said it better than anyone possibly could: “If I’m the duke, man, Peggy Lee is the queen.” Sir Duke went on to further note: “I consider her as great a musician as F ...

On this date in 1936, The Royal Gelatin Hour’s Rudy Vallee introduced a very unusual guest:Why—people have been asking me for the last two days—why put a ventriloquist on the air? The answer is, ...

“The young man who embodies the sprig is what is usually and mercifully described as inadequate,” noted legendary critic Alexander Woollcott of an actor’s second appearance on Broadway in 1922 in ...

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 ...