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 ...
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, Eve Arden!(Post)At the height of her fame as the tart-tongued schoolmarm of radio and TV’s Our Miss Brooks, Eve Arden—born in Mill Valley, CA on this date in 1908—got more than a few offers from school boards acr ...
Happy Birthday, Harry Morgan!(Post)Writer Parke Levy, who became a millionaire with the creation of the TV sitcom December Bride, liked to take credit for giving character great Harry Morgan–-born Henry Bratsberg on this date in 19 ...
“…that footloose and fancy-free young gentleman…”(Post)In hindsight, the low ebb that marked Frank Sinatra’s show business career in the early 1950s should have been interpreted as a mere blip for the entertainer affectionately known as The Chairman o ...
Happy Birthday, Barney Phillips!(Post)Although there was certainly a note of melancholy involved, replacing the departed Barton Yarborough as Jack Webb’s new partner on Dragnet (as Sgt. Ed Jacobs) must have been a dream assignment for ...
Mysterious Intruder (1946) – “…hidden in the hearts of men and women…”(Post)Mysterious Intruder (1946), the fifth entry in Columbia Pictures’ highly successful Whistler franchise, would be the last film of that series directed by William Castle, who had kicked off the fir ...
Happy Birthday, Berry Kroeger!(Post)Berry Kroeger’s initial show business ambition was to become a concert pianist. Kroeger didn’t lack for talent, you understand—but being painfully shy and terrified of performing threatened to si ...
Happy Birthday, Humphrey Bogart!(Post)“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 ...
“Always ready with a hand for oppressed men…and an eye for repressed women…”(Post)On this date in 1943, the literary sleuth created by Drexel Drake made his radio debut on the Blue Network with a series that would entertain listeners until November 29, 1954: The Adventures of th ...
Happy Birthday, Bernard Lenrow!(Post)When the popular radio crime anthology known as The Mollé Mystery Theatre premiered over NBC in the fall of 1943, the host of that series—”annotator” Geoffrey Barnes—was portrayed by an actor name ...
“From Times Square to Columbus Circle…the gaudiest, the most violent—the lonesomest mile in the world…”(Post)By the beginning of the 1950s, radio crime drama began to develop a new breed of program that, in the words of old-time radio historian Jim Cox, “witnessed a forbidding side of law enforcement in ...