Old Time Radio

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What It's Like to Be in One Man's Family

One Man's Family cast member Page Gilman The radio show One Man's Family seems as old as Methuselah, as time-honored as radio, itself, customary as a Sunday night supper. The show has been coming over the ether weekly for 11 years. Eight of those venerable mileposts have had the same sponsor, who still has seven years to go. The program was first produced by NBC on the west coast as a sustaining in 1932. Two years later it went nationwide, has long since become a radio legend, earned its ... (read more)

2020/06/17

Interview with Bobby Benson Radio Cowboy Ivan Cury

Ivan Cury wanted to be an actor from the word "go." He was born and raised on Manhattan's Upper West Side of parents who immigrated to America. "My dad came from Russia, my mother from either Poland or Austria, depending on which army occupied the land." At the age of 4, he tried to get a box office cashier to let him into a theater. Six more years went by before he had a chance to try out for a show, but during those years he studied music, dancing, acting -- anything he could to prepare ... (read more)

2020/06/16

Dusting Off an Antique Radio from Grandma's Attic

1934 Philco model 84 four-tube radio Anyone old enough to recall the days before television remembers that radios, large or small and usually with gleaming wooden cabinets, were the nerve centers of the country's living rooms. Around them huddled America's families, with only each other to look at, listening intently to Jack Benny's jokes and Benny Goodman's notes, President Franklin Roosevelt's fireside chats and Edward R. Murrow's London reports. After decades of dusty silence in ... (read more)

2020/06/15

Four Radio Shows Hired Les Tremayne to Replace Don Ameche

Les Tremayne, star of The First Nighter radio show For the first six years of my radio career, I was very particular about keeping a daily record of every show I worked -- the date, time, name of show or episode, each character I played (and sometimes there were up to 10 in a single show!), and, later on, pertinent observations and specific comments pertaining to these or made by others, which I felt important enough to record. My career accelerated to such an extend (up to 45 shows a ... (read more)

2020/06/14

The Life of Radio Soap Actress Tess Sheehan

Tess Sheehan performing on Wendy Warren and the News Tess Sheehan has become accustomed to it but when she first turned to radio, she was very much intrigued by the idea of acting in an air-conditioned studio every day. Sheehan, who plays Aunt Dorrie in CBS's Wendy Warren and the News and Nora in NBC's When a Girl Marries, has played to audiences in extremes of heat and cold, in freight sheds and tents, and under American, Canadian, and European skies. Dramatic training, at the time ... (read more)

2020/06/13

The Earliest Radio Shows of the 1920s

The Goldbergs creator Gertrude Berg during its radio years By the middle 1920s, it became obvious that radio manufacturers could no longer support free radio time. Fortunately, advertisers were discovering that radio was one of the most effective means of advertising available. So, it didn't take long after that for radio to become big business. Its popularity continued to grow -- until the biggest programs were heard by more than 40 million people. And advertisers were paying up to ... (read more)

2020/06/12

The Good and Bad of Sears Radio Theater

Sears Radio Theater producer Elliott Lewis I never liked making generalizations, but I just have to in the case of Sears Radio Theater. I'll try to keep them short, and I'll start with the bad ones and build up in a fantastic crescendo to the good ones. Here goes. There are a lot of bad scripts out there. And not even an old pro like Elliott Lewis can save the bad ones. The best way is to not put them on. Even CBS admits that their comedy scripts have not been up to par. Shirley ... (read more)

2020/06/11

Judy Canova: The Queen of Hillbilly Hokum

Judy Canova during her radio years When she was a kid, Judy Canova once wrote that she wasn't a happy child. The only thing that could take her mind off herself and her personal unhappiness was music. Born Julietta, she started singing popular songs on a Jacksonville, Florida, radio station together with her brother Zeke and her sister Anne when she was just 12. When she sang she would forget her troubles. Although her mother took her three children to the Carolina hills for the summer, ... (read more)

2020/06/10

Feet First Into Fame: Red Skelton

Red Skelton mural at 12 S. 3rd St. in Vincennes, Indiana Some people think J. Edgar Hoover ought to nab Red Skelton before he completely sabotages the FBI's crime-doesn't-pay drive. When the average fellow "puts his foot in it," that's his misfortune. But when this human electron puts his foot in it, fame and fortune come his way. Even Lady Luck has to smile. Skelton gets a fourfold chance at blundering around in his current radio program. He's not only the headliner in Red Skelton and ... (read more)

2020/06/09

The Night Orson Welles Thought He Wrecked His Career

Scene from the 2020 graphic novel Orson Welles: Warrior of the Worlds While Orson Welles was broadcasting the Mercury Theater production of The War of the Worlds, he didn't have the slightest notion that he was frightening hundreds of people into conniption fits. It was only when he emerged from the studio, to find the building surrounded by police cars, blue-coats swarming through the corridors and brandishing their nightsticks, and irate CBS officials on the verge of apoplexy, that he ... (read more)

2020/06/08

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