Automobile magnate Henry Ford was anxious to locate an announcer for his Sunday evening symphony program, known to radio listeners as The Ford Sunday Evening Hour. Ford listened to nearly a dozen ...
Happy Birthday, Joan Crawford!(Post)“Joan Crawford has passed into myth as a demented martinet whose greatest need or belief concerned padded clothes hangers,” observes author-historian David Thomson in his book The New Biographical ...
Happy Birthday, Rex Stout!(Post)He became famous for creating Nero Wolfe—a character memorably described by an author at The Thrilling Detective Website as a “{m}assively overweight, a cranky, agoraphobic and sedentary gourmet ...
Happy Birthday, Richard Denning!(Post)If I stated up front that the man who’s in our birthday spotlight today transcended his meager beginnings as a mere thespian and eventually became the governor of a state…well, you’d probably assu ...
Happy Birthday, Joseph Julian!(Post)At the time I borrowed Joseph Julian’s This Was Radio from my hometown public library as a kid, I wasn’t all that familiar with the distinguished actor born Joseph Shapiro in St. Marys, Pennsylvan ...
Happy Birthday, Virginia Gregg!(Post)In our natal anniversary spotlight today is one of old-time radio’s indisputable veterans. She would get a special nod for proficiency alone, but Virginia Gregg—born in Harrisburg, Illinois on this ...
Happy Birthday, Vincent Price!(Post)If actor Vincent Price—born Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. on this date in St. Louis, Missouri in 1911—had decided to ignore the call of the footlights and pursue honest work, it’s safe to say his fut ...
Happy Birthday, Vic Perrin!(Post)Old-time radio fans remember actor Victor Herbert Perrin—born in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin on this date in 1916—as a member-in-good-standing of the informal “stock company” of performers frequent ...
Happy Birthday, Groucho Marx!(Post)If comedian Groucho Marx—born Julius Henry Marx in New York City on this date in 1890—had achieved his childhood ambition of becoming a doctor…well, the world would know a little less laughter. F ...
“Visualize ace counterspy of them all as David Harding…”(Post)On this date in 1942, the man who brought Gang Busters and Mr. District Attorney to radio consoles “added one more jewel to his Triumvirate of Tension,” according to historian Jim Harmon in The Gre ...
Happy Birthday, Robert Readick!(Post)Actor Frank Readick’s voice is a familiar one to those fans who remember old-time radio--he was one of the busiest thesps in the aural medium, starring on such programs as Smilin’ Jack and Meet Mr ...
“Who knows…what evil…lurks in the hearts of men…”(Post)My introduction to old-time radio came about in the 1970s, when the “nostalgia boom” was well underway. WOUB, Ohio University’s FM radio station, had a feature that aired every Monday night entitled ...
The Fabulous Frank Morgan(Post)On this date in 1890, actor-comedian Frank Morgan came into this world…born Frances Phillip Wupperman in New York City. The youngest of eleven children (six girls, five boys), the Wupperman family w ...
“Better things for better living, through chemistry…”(Post)A dilemma faced E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, a Wilmington, Delaware firm founded in 1802 as a gunpowder mill. It was that whole gunpowder thing, of which DuPont manufactured plenty during ...
“...dedicated to man’s imagination…the theater of the mind…”(Post)From 1936 to 1943—and a brief revival in the 1946-47 season—The Columbia Workshop was the go-to program for experimental radio drama. The series began as an idea by one-time engineer Irving Reis, ...
“Howdee, Straight Shooters! Howdee!”(Post)The man born Thomas Hezikiah Mix in Mix Run, Pennsylvania in 1880 became a Western legend during the 20th century…and he did it using the same good old fashioned skill as Buffalo Bill Cody: salesm ...