Old Time Radio

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Major Bowes: The King of Radio's Amateur Hour

Major Bowes and Amateur Hour performer Frank Sinatra in 1943 It's a bit puzzling, on first meeting Major Edward Bowes, to decide whether you are looking at a churchman or the head of a prosperous money-lending agency. His manner is faintly pious; his eyes are as cold as a polar bear's paws. Still, it's his nose that really gets you. It is a great, engulfing over-riding thing which makes Jimmy Durante's look like a wemple. The man behind it is about 66. He has hair which is thin and ... (read more)

2020/07/18

H. W. Arlin: Broadcasting Radio in the 1920s

KDKA announcer H. W. Arlin on the radio in 1921 Announcing radio programs might be called the world's most recent profession, because announcers for broadcasting stations were introduced first about four years ago when KDKA, the world's pioneer station of the Westinghouse Company at East Pittsburgh, Pa., was started. H. W. Arlin, the world's pioneer radio announcer, made his debut early in 1921 and has been continuously "on the air" since. Thus his long service entitles him to the honors ... (read more)

2020/07/17

Harry Ackerman Produced Our Miss Brooks, Gunsmoke on Radio

Harry Ackerman Harry Ackerman, long-time executive at CBS radio died Feb. 3, 1991. He worked on many of network radio's successful shows, including Our Miss Brooks and Gunsmoke. After graduating from college in 1935, Ackerman became an assistant to Raymond Knight and appeared as part-time announcer and comic poet on Knight's Cuck Coo Hour at NBC. Later he became the assistant director of the Phil Baker Show. From New York he moved to Detroit, where he was hired as agency producer for ... (read more)

2020/07/16

For Police Detective Danny Clover, Broadway is My Beat

Larry Thor as Danny Clover in Broadway is My Beat With the musical refrain of "I'll Take Manhattan," and the sound of impatient car horns in the background, another episode of Broadway is My Beat begins. New York police detective Danny Clover informs us that "Broadway is my beat. From Times Square to Columbus Circle -- the gaudiest, the most violent, the lonesomest mile in the world." Homicide detective Clover, played by Larry Thor, narrates the introduction to each program's plot. In ... (read more)

2020/07/15

World's First Scheduled Radio Broadcast Came from Pittsburgh

Logo used by KDKA in the 1920s The National Broadcasting Company's Silver Jubilee celebration on November 15, 1951, brings to mind another, even earlier, November day when the world's first scheduled broadcast was heard over KDKA, Pittsburgh, pioneer radio station. Presentation of this inaugural broadcast on November 2, 1920, came about as the result of several strange and seemingly unrelated circumstances. It all began in 1915 with a Westinghouse engineer, Frank Conrad. Westinghouse had ... (read more)

2020/07/14

Catching Up with the Cast of Straight Arrow

Howard Culver, star of the Straight Arrow radio show My former agent just forwarded to me the letter you wrote inquiring as to my present whereabouts. As this letter will attest, I'm alive and well, continuing to ply my craft in southern California. You must have a great ear for voices to have remembered mine over a span of some 25 years. Since the demise of Straight Arrow I continued to work in television, theatrical movies and radio, until drama disappeared from the audio waves. ... (read more)

2020/07/13

Algiers Was Hedy Lamarr's First Performance on Radio

Hedy Lamarr and Joseph Calleia in the movie Algiers (1938) Since Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's picture Come Live With Me with Jimmy Stewart, little has been heard from Hedy Lamarr, one of Hollywood's most glamorous ladies who broke into screen fame with her rather unclad part in Ecstasy, a European picture. It was therefore with interest that the editors of Movie-Radio Guide observed that Hedy (she likes it pronounced Hay'-dee) was booked by the DeMille Radio Theater to co-star with Charles Boyer ... (read more)

2020/07/12

Amanda Snow: From a Nightclub to Gospel Radio

Gospel singer Amanda Snow Hymns have always been joyous and inspirational music to Amanda Snow, NBC's newest singing personality. Perhaps that is why she is now a radio star. To begin with, Snow sang in the Rockford, Illinois, Mission Tabernacle and its Bethesda Church. She later sang in the First Swedish Baptist Church of Minneapolis before coming to New York. And when she finally came to the Big City, she didn't forget her hymns. When Snow came to New York for an audition, she was ... (read more)

2020/07/11

How Fred Allen and Portland Hoffa Fell in Love

Fred Allen and Portland Hoffa on the February 1935 Radio Stars magazine The day of which I write was approximately five years ago. It was behind the scenes of The Passing Show, a fleshy, flashy piece of rhinestone entertainment on pre-Depression Broadway. It was one of those days on which stars have headaches, hoofers get runs in their stockings, and comedians look as full of joie de vivre as Egyptian mummies. It was a day on which a tall young man called Fred Allen, despondently leaning ... (read more)

2020/07/10

Some of the Unsung Heroes of Radio

Martha Wentworth's characters from 101 Dalmatians (1961) and The Sword and the Stone (1963) A salute to the unsung heroes of radio: the men and women whose voices were much more famous than their names. Those who specialized in dialects and impersonating children, ancients and even animals! Radio was a most magical medium -- one could never really be sure to whom any particular voice belonged. The crying baby was usually some shapely young actress, the little boy just might be some plump ... (read more)

2020/07/09

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