Golden Age of Radio

Say Hello To- GEORGE PUTNAM—the announcer for Portia Faces Life , on CBS this afternoon. George was born in Deposit, N. Y., but soon went westward with his family, stopping in San Diego, Calif. George studied to be a history teacher, but jilted that profession in favor of a WPA drama group. Later he Toured the coast with a Shakespearian troupe headed by Tyrone Power’s mother. Then came six months of highly unsuccessful searching for gold before he got a job as announcer on a San Diego station. Three years ago he joined the CBS staff in New York. last June he married Ruth Carhart, the popular radio songstress.

Patricia Ryan -began her radio career at eight and a year later joined the Let’s Pretenders, where she still is heard, most often as a Fairy Godmother, a role she also played in real life during war years when she was a Nurse’s Aid and visitor to injured seamen in New York ’s hospitals. Pat has regular featured roles on Theater of Today. Grand CentralStation , Aunt Jenny and Big Sister , all Columbia programs .

Reading Eagle – May 1, 1940 ‘Kidnaping’ Starts Riot at Harvard Rochester, Benny’s Stooge, Center of Fracas Cambridge, Mass.. May 1 (AP)— The first riot of spring occurred in Harvard Square last night and seven Harvard students were arrested for disturbing the peace. The riot, which embodied all the usual features of Harvard Square spring disturbances, apparently developed from a combination of the warm evening air and the fact that a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students put one over on the Harvards by “abducting” Eddie “Rochester” Anderson , Negro comedian on the Jack Benny radio program . Rochester, scheduled to appear at a Harvary smoker, turned up instead at the Delta Kappa Epsilon House at M. I. T., after being persuaded by a group of Dekes to leave his plane at Providence, R. I., and motor to Cambridge. The comedian thought he was at Harvard until two hours later. The riot, which found some 200 students milling around in the s...