Old Time Radio

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The Little Detrola Radio That Brought Magic Into My Home

Detrola CM 429 wooden table tube radio (1941) I remember the Detrola table model radio being on the end of the kitchen counter close to the window. Part of the morning ritual was turning it on to hear the mellow voice of Clint Buehlman giving the weather and traffic reports. If I was real lucky he would be giving the school closings, and maybe, just maybe, he would be closing mine. The radio was magic. I didn't know how it worked. I could figure out the gas stove. Just a pipe to the burner, ... (read more)

2023/03/20

Radio Singer Frank Parker's Secret of Success: 'Be Ready'

Singer Frank Parker, an early Jack Benny regular Frank Parker already is an outstanding tenor, and under the tutelage of that master jester Jack Benny, he is garnering laurels as a comedian. Now they would make of him an oracle -- and Parker doesn't want any part of that. Even if he's the current matinee idol of the air, Parker is so level-headed that he has no idea that his achievements have equipped him to advise those whom fortune has spurned. What's more, he doesn't think people should ask ... (read more)

2023/03/19

Lum and Abner Performed at 1935 Indiana State Fair

Chester Lauck and Norris Goff at the 1935 Indiana State Fair Saturday August 31, 1935, was the beginning of the Indiana State Fair, and was also quite a gala night for two boys from Mena, Arkansas. The Indianapolis Star and the State Board of Agriculture sponsored an amateur contest, to be held in the coliseum of the fairgrounds. And out of the world of headline radio stars, Lum and Abner were the unanimous choice to act as masters of ceremony. There they were, keeping the audience laughing and ... (read more)

2023/03/14

Actor Paul Douglas Got His Big Break By Being Fired

Paul Douglas and Janet Leigh in Angels in the Outfield (1951) The nicest Christmas present Paul Douglas ever received was a neat little typewritten notice informing him that two weeks from date his services would no longer be required. For he walked right out of radio station WCAU in Philadelphia, where Santa Claus brought him the odd gift, into the offices of the Columbia Broadcasting System, and there, in the short space of a year, won his way into the front rank of big league radio. For the ... (read more)

2023/03/10

William Beebe Broadcast Live on NBC 2,640 Feet Under the Sea

William Beebe in the Bathysphere in 1932 Radio has started countless thrills coursing through space but few, if any, have caught hold of the world's imagination in the same way that the broadcast of William Beebe, scientist and student of ocean life, will do when he talks to the anxious world from the ocean bottom on Sunday Sept. 11 over the NBC networks. Hundreds of thousands of radio fans will travel in imagination with Beebe when he enters his frail bell-shaped craft and is lowered -- gently ... (read more)

2023/02/25

How Ed Wynn Spent His $5,000-a-Week Radio Salary

Radio comedian Ed Wynn, star of The Fire Chief It certainly looks easy. All you have to do is walk into a studio, tell a few jokes, or sing a few songs, and walk out with five thousand dollars. Think of it: $5,000 for a half hour's work. Pretty soft! But is it? Is this business of being a radio star as easy as it looks? Is that whopping big weekly fee just so much pure gravy -- or does it take a lot of time and money to get up to the table, and is a lot of the gravy spilled on the way back? ... (read more)

2023/02/23

Les Tremayne Got an Offer to Star in Movies 46 Years Too Late

Les Tremayne, star of The First Nighter radio show Although I had been playing various roles on Grand Hotel since 1933 and The First Nighter since 1934, my first audition to replace Don Ameche in both Grand Hotel and The First Nighter was on August 21, 1935. I was accepted as the lead on Grand Hotel and played it for a couple of years. This meant that I was already working for the same sponsor, the Campana Corp. But since The First Nighter was their bigger show of the two (and one of the ... (read more)

2023/02/20

Hugh O'Brian Became Actor After Winning Blind Date with Virginia Mayo

Hugh O'Brian, television's Sheriff Wyatt Earp Hugh O'Brian took a deep breath as the car pulled up to the little funeral parlor. He knew that the others in the car were watching him out of the corners, of their eyes, to see if he'd begin to break down, begin to cry. But he took a deep breath and clenched his fists and he had a hard time not shouting out, "There aren't going to be any tears or any breaking down, folks -- because Mary isn't dead, Mary couldn't be dead, Mary couldn't really have ... (read more)

2023/02/12

Dennis Morgan Began as a Radio and Sports Announcer

Dennis Morgan and his wife Lillian Vedder Always up to something, that was "Tuff" Morner. The first kid, if he could run fast enough, to smash the glass and blow the siren when somebody yelled "Fire!" First to grab the handles of the hose trailer and help the shouting, sweating men haul it the night the bank burned down. A busy kid, "Tuffy." Youngest trombone player in the city band, the boy tenor star of practically every get together and bang-up event in Southern Price County, Wisconsin. The ... (read more)

2023/02/02

Andrews Sisters Never Took Singing Lessons

The Andrews Sisters: Maxene, Patty and LaVerne Everyone in the United States who doesn't need an ear trumpet has heard the Andrews Sisters. They're almost as inescapable as the ubiquitous Bing. And the effect of their mad chanting harmony is a lot more penetrating. Maxene, Patty and LaVerne (the order in which they invariably line up to have their pictures taken) first dazzled the open-mouthed jive world as jukebox queens, when they bansheed a record of the plaintive Jewish melody, "Bei Mir ... (read more)

2022/12/20

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