On this date in 1943, one of the Mutual Broadcasting System’s longest-lasting and most popular programs premiered in the form of The Mysterious Traveler. It was created and written by the team o ...
Happy Birthday, Jimmy Durante!(Post)From the 1920s and onward, James Francis Durante—born in Manhattan on this date in 1893—was the entertainer who advised audiences that they have to start off each day with a song. Durante’s large ...
Happy Birthday, Bennett Kilpack!(Post)During his long-running stint as the titular sleuth on Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, actor Bennett Kilpack—born William Bennett Kilpack on this date in 1883 in Long Melford, Suffolk in the Uni ...
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 ...
Happy Birthday, Jackie Gleason!(Post)According to legend, it was no less a personage than the legendary Orson Welles who nicknamed the man born Herbert Walton Gleason Jr. in New York City on this date in 1916 “The Great One.” Jackie G ...
“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 ...
“Look out, Jerry—he’s got a gun!”(Post)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 ...
“Somewhere along the line a murderer makes a mistake—it’s my job to find that mistake.”(Post)“Philo Vance/Needs a kick in the pance” Ogden Nash once rhymed in a memorable couplet. Nash’s editorial comment was addressing the one-time popularity of author S.S. Van Dine’s famed sleuth. Afte ...
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 ...
“Good night, folks…”(Post)In his essential reference encyclopedia of old-time radio, On the Air, author John Dunning notes that actor William Gargan’s presence on the detective drama Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator ...
Happy Birthday, Edgar Barrier!(Post)Life in motion pictures was never easy for actor Edgar Barrier. It wasn’t that the work was difficult—it’s that whenever Edgar appeared in a movie, it was even money that he wouldn’t make it to t ...
Happy Birthday, Raymond Chandler!(Post)For all his success in the literary world, and then later in Hollywood, author Raymond Thornton Chandler was a lonely man. He lived the life of a recluse; he left no surviving wife or children up ...