Golden Age of Radio

Sunday, December 27, 1942       THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL—SCREEN and RADIO Building a Bob Hope Radio Show Comedy half hour is put together piece by piece, rough edges trimmed By Kate Holliday “THAT was a boff . Leave it in!” Such a cry might barrel through the NBC control room in Hollywood at a preview of Bob Hope’s radio show . A boff, for your information, is a joke so funny it brings a belly laugh. What is a radio show preview? Just that: A show before a show—to which the public is invited and at which Hope and company test the merit of gags they have concocted. It explains, to a large degree, Hope’s continued success. A comedian’s life is usually not a happy one, evidence to the contrary. A guy like Hope, say, doesn’t just amble toward a microphone come Tuesday night and be funny. Instead, he builds his show gag by gag . It all begins on the Thursday or Friday of the week preceding the program. At that point Hope and his seven wri...

Radio’s New Top Gal, A Modern Jenny Lind May 30, 1942 By Dorothy Roe Pretty,- brown – eyed Dinah Shore , the girl soldiers write during their off-duty hours, is having a wonderful time singing for servicemen all over the country and out of it. The little southern girl has been warbling since she was 10years old, but has been recognized as a top flight singer for only a few years. Today Dinah is known as the modern Jenny Lind, and her most recent title—the Elsie Janis of World War II “EXCUSE me, please. It’s the navy.” Dinah Shore rose from the table and followed the head waiter to the door, where an embarrassed young sailor waited with apparent eagerness. We had been talking about life in Tennessee , where she was born, about the war and the songs the soldiers like. I had been asking her questions, because I wanted to know the real girl behind that moody voice on the radio, that voice that forms a link with home for American soldiers and sailors from Iceland to the B...