Golden Age of Radio

FUN AT FIBBER McGEE’S On the air! This jolly little group comprises Jim Goss, who was playing a gangster role on this particular broadcast; Silly Watson, played by Hugh Studebaker; and Fibber McGee himself, the star and king-pin of the program. Fibber, the favorite son of Peoria, Illinois, did his first acting when he was just ten! LIGHT-HEARTED gaiety is the key-note of the Fibber McGee broadcasts , and it is hard for most observers to tell whether the audience or the cast has the most fun during a Fibber McGee program. Some airwaves comedians are in dead earnest as they go about the business of making other people laugh. To them, comedy is a science, and should be treated as such. But to The Fibber, life is a pretty good joke in itself. And the members of the cast share his opinion-enthusiastically! Photos by Gene Lester Betty Winkler, versatile Chicago actress who is star of “Girl Alone,” is a member of the world-famous “McGee Stock Co.” Pictured here in a bit of ...

 The Milwaukee Journal – Apr 25, 1943 Let’s Look at Junior ALTHOUGH all of the various characters Richard (Red) Skelton plays in his Tuesday night comedy show (WTMJ, 9:30 o’clock) have a following, there is no doubt that Junior is Mr. Big. Youngsters large and small never miss the doings of this pernicious moppet. Maybe Junior comes by it all naturally. Skelton himself is nothing but a great big (6 foot 3) boy. Even after he had achieved some success in the show business one of his outstanding and most endearing characteristics was the way he’d do something impulsive and then look at the injured party like a sorry little lad with a very poor alibi. He wanted to do the child characterization long before his writers would allow it. “You’ll sound like a sissy, Red,” they said. But Red insisted and finally when he had coined the “I dood it” phrase and made it his own, they agreed. Now all three of them, Jack Douglas, Dick McKnight and Ben Freedman, sit around talking ...

" She had blonde hair & was kind of pretty, except you could see somebody had used her badly, like a dictionary in a stupid family."         -   Pat Novak Radio Show ; April 2, 1949 "Father Lahey"  

The Milwaukee Journal – Jun 27, 1943 Going Home PERT, redheaded Dale Evans is going home. For only two weeks mind you, but where she’s going is Texas, stranger, and that means the whole state will be clapping hands. Dale, you see, is another local girl—like Ginger Rogers , Mary Martin and Ann Sheridan —who has made good. First it was as a soloist with Anson Weeks and his band, then coast to coast billing as the singer on radio's CharlieMcCarthy’s and Edgar Bergen’s NBC half hour , and now a promising career in the movies, in addition to the new contract as Charlie’s singer next season. Dale’s taking advantage of the show’s summer vacation to do a concentrated job of entertaining Uncle Sam’s boys in and around Texas, and at the same time visiting the home folks near Dallas. Dale was born in Italy, Tex. Outside of a few years spent in Memphis, Tenn. (where she graduated from Central high school), she spent the first 20 years of her life there. Dale was all se...

GI Jill was Martha Wilkerson , co-producer and wife of producer Robert M. Warner Mort Werner, who played the part of Jack. The series began in San Francisco  and was called "Hi Neighbour". SSD took over production in May 1943 for  56 shows. It was revamped a few months later. It appears to have lasted  until at least Nov 1949. This according to McKenzie, and that's how he  spelled "Neighbour". With G.I.s overseas, the biggest attraction on radio is a pretty, breezy  blonde with a high-school-fresh voice named Martha Wilkerson . Most U.S.  civilians never heard of her-but from Kodiak to Canberra, Martha is a top  G.I. favorite. Last week, with her 870th broadcast, Martha Wilkerson could  boast of receiving one-fourth of all the fan mail  inspired by the Armed  Forces Radio Service's 122 air shows. Her husband, Mort Wener began his career in the mid-1930s as an  entertainer, singing and accompanying himself on the piano on Radi...

February 17, 1976 SHORT TAKES The CBSRMT has a treat for those who miss “ Gunsmoke ” and the other radio Westerns that once were a prime staple of network television on Monday nights when it presents a rousing story of the Old West, Monday, March 1. As explained by MYSTERY THEATER host E.G. Marshall : “A surprising number of listener letters have asked us for a Western . So here it is, back to the frontier life of the 1860s when, west of Mississippi, the horse was still man’s best means of locomotion. A noble animal, the horse, and particularly in those days, a good deal better than many a man who them.” *     *     * Morgan Fairchild , who stars as Jennifer Phillips in the daytime serial, “Search for Tomorrow,” on the CBS Television Network, will make her radio acting debut on the CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER , Friday, March 5. On the broadcast, titled “The Infernal Triangle,” Ms. Fairchild plays the leading role, a bride-to-...