Golden Age of Radio

Ralph Edward __the Colorado farm boy who had got himself an education at the University of California and was on the air over NBC’s coast-to-coast network with his own Truth or Consequences program by the time he was twenty-six. He does not care what he does if it will make people laugh and plenty of people do. His listening audience is a laughing twenty-five million.

Clifton Fadiman __became m.r. of Information Please in 1927, while in the midst of his active career as editor, book reviewer and critic. He still crack, his verbal whip over the expert, on this program on Wednesday nights at 10:30 EST on the Columbia network, but says that If ever a question of cheese comes up he will switch to the receiving end; fine cheeses and wines are a hobby of his and he might “stump the experts”.

Say Hello To- FRANK FOREST—whose tenor voice is heard tonight at 6, E.S.T., on the Double or Nothing program over MBS. He’s a Minnesota boy who studied in Europe and later won acclaim singing in European opera, making his debut at La Scala in Milan. You’ve seen him in the movies, “Champagne Waltz” and “I’ll Take Romance.” He’s a bachelor, likes blondes, stands 5 feet 11 inches, and has dark hair. 

ARLENE FRANCIS –who is the emcee on What’s My Name?, Saturdays, ABC, and Blind Date, Thursdays, ABC-TV was born in Boston, Mass., educated at the Finch School and made her first stage success in “Street Scene.” She made her air debut in 1933 and since then has been heard on many programs. Her husband is well-known actor and novelist, Martin Gabel; they have a son, Peter.

JANE FROMAN . . . an alluring, blue-eyed brunette, started out to be a newspaper reporter at the University of Missouri School of Journalism located in her home town of Columbia where her father was mayor and her mother a music teacher in a college. She studied first from her mother; then at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music where Powell Crosley, Jr., president of WLW, heard her sing at a party and signed her up. Later NBC and then CBS got her. Despite the fact that she stutters, Jane now sing’s on more commercial programs than any other girl soprano. And she’s making movie-shorts, too. Husband Don Ross, baritone, sings over CBS. 

SAY HELLO TO . . . AL GOODMAN —who is back on the air after too long an absence, directing the music for Fred Allen’s program on CBS tonight. Al used to be the late Flo Ziegfeld’s favorite musical comedy maestro, and broke into radio when Flo brought his shows to the air. Since then he’s led the orchestra for virtually every singing star in opera and concert. Al is short, stocky and genial. He manages to get along with only four or five hours of sleep and does most of his work at night. He was born in Russia, but fled from there when he was a boy, hidden in a load of vegetables in a cart. His family settled in Baltimore. 

Say Hello To- RICHARD GORDON—who plays “The Bishop” in tonight’s serial on NBC-Blue, The Bishop and the Gargoyle. Richard started his career in 1898 as a reporter and cartoonist for a Bridgeport, Conn., paper. In 1900 he switched to the stage, and began a long succession of increasingly important Broadway roles. In 1930 he joined NBC’s staff of actors, and won fame as Sherlock Holmes —but after a while he refused to play the part any longer for fear of being typed. He and his wife (she was his leading lady in 1905) live in Piermont, N.Y., in a home with a big basement where Richard pursues his hobby of carpentry.

Say Hello To- WALTER GROSS—the very busy conductor of a CBS band which provides the music for many of the network’s sustaining features. The piano is Walter’s own instrument, and on it he can perform the classics, popular dance music, hot jazz and boogie-woogie with uniform ease. He first joined CBS eight years ago, playing in a band which included Raymond Scott, Benny Goodman , Artie Shaw, Will Bradley, Bunny Berigan, and Jerry Colonna (who played trombone). That was an all-star group, although no one knew it at the time, and Walter thinks the same is probably true of his present band. When his radio schedule permits it, Walter likes to spend weekends with his wife at their new country home.

SAY HELLO TO- KEN GRIFFIN—the actor you’ve all been wanting to hear about, judging from your letters. Ken plays Larry Noble in Backstage Wife and Dr. Jim Brent in Road of life —two of radio’s drama’s fattest roles. He landed in Chicago a few years ago without any previous dramatic experience and with only one dollar in his pocket, and secured a $15-a-week job as an actor at the Chicago Fair. Later he took an audition that started him on his radio career. Ken’s on extravagance, now that he’s a success, is his sloop, Revenge , one of the finest racing boats on the great Lakes. He’s 29 years old, weighs 180 pounds and is six feet tall.

ON THE AIR TONIGHT: Helen Hayes , starring in a different half-hour play each week, on CBS at 8:00, E.S.T., rebroadcast to the West Coast at 7:30, P.S.T, and sponsored by Lipton’s Tea. Unless you’re a fanatical devotee of Charlie McCarthy (or unless you live in the Pacific Time Zone, where Helen and Charlie aren’t on at the same time), you couldn’t do better than to tune Helen Hayes in tonight. Most radio acting is good, but hers is magnificent. You’d never guess than Helen was one of America’s greatest actresses if you watched her rehearsing her radio shows. She loves radio, but is quite willing to admit that other people know more about it than she does. No displays of temperament ever go on at a Hayes rehearsal, and afterwards, when the script has to be cut so it won’t run overtime (it always does have to be cut, too), Helen goes home and lets other people wield the blue pencils. “ I’d only get in their hair,” she explains. Besides acting on the air, Helen is starring ...

Bernard Herrmann __brilliant young symphonic conductor who returned from a recent tour of England to CBS’s Invitation To Music, heard Wednesday nights at 11:30 EST. part of composer-conductor Herrmann’s time in England was spent in the Bronte country, where he made notes for his forthcoming opera based on Emily Bronte’s masterpiece, “Wuthering Heights”.

Hedda Hopper __ wearing the creation by Hattie Carnegie which was inspired by the March of Dimes . But it really all began when a little Quaker girl (Hedda) saw a great Barrymore (Ethel) play in Captain Jinks. For Hedda decided then and there to become an actress. She ran away from hom, went from acting to reporting for CBS. The Quaker bonnet evolved into a series of the gayest, maddest hats in Hollywood.

Say Hello To – BURL IVES —who is heard with his “gittar” frequently over CBS, and regularly Saturday mornings on his own Coffee Club program. He comes to radio after years of touring the United States on foot or by any other handy means of transportation, collecting American folk-songs. He’s been a rover ever since, two months before finishing college, he decided he didn’t want to graduate and be a football coach. Although he loved football he loved singing and wandering around more. So he left, taking all the money he had—fifteen dollars—his guitar, and an extra pair of slacks. Singing in hotels or taverns, he made enough to live on, and that was all he wanted. He has settled down in New York now, but maybe not for long.

Ginger Jones __trained in dramatics at the Goodman Theater, Chicago, and was very active in radio until, in 1944, she gave it up to work for the Stage Door Canteen and to supervise and m.c. variety shows for the American Theater Wing. Now, returned to the air, she is Jane Browning on NBC’s Right to Happiness, 3:45 P.M., weekdays. She’s married to radio actor Les Damon and they have bought a New Jersey Farm.

Peggy Lee __who has been singing lately on The Electric Hour and Rhapsody in Rhythm, is a “musician’s singer.” Johnny Johnston discovered her in Fargo, N.D.; Will Osborne heard her and offered her a job; Buddy Clark persuaded Benny Goodman to audition her. Benny  signed her and she married his guitarist. Dave Barbour. Together they wrote “It’s a Good Day” and “I Don’t Know Enough About You.”

Laura Leslie -born nineteen years ago in Finks-burgh. Mary land, pop. 300, she grew up singing; had a weekly sponsored spot on WBAL while attending high school in Baltimore and got another sponsor on WFBR for a graduation present. She went to Los Angeles for some club bookings; tired of West Coast night life; came home and auditioned for Sammy Kaye when he was appearing at a Baltimore theater. So he signed her.

SAY HELLO TO. . . VINCENT LOPEZ—leader of the orchestra on the Show of the Week, on MBS this evening. Vince has been supplying smart society with dance music since 1919. He has never worked in any other band and has always led his own. Definitely opposed to swing music, he stuck to the sweet variety through thick and thin. He himself is a sophisticated as his music, has made and lost several fortunes. VINCENT LOPEZ . . . was born in Brooklyn, N. Y. His father was a bandmaster in the U. S. Navy and his mother a musician, but the parents wanted Vincent to become a priest. He consented to attend a seminary at Dunkirk, N. Y. The director of the school realized that the boy’s future was not to be that of priest, explained matters at home and once again Vincent was free. Then he was sent to business school. Later worked in a dairy office. Finally he organized his own band. You know the rest. 

The Milwaukee Journal – Oct 20, 1940 The Gooks—Vic, Sade and Rush NINE years ago last June, Paul Rhymer was dozing comfortably in NBC continuity office in Chicago. Everyone had gone and, in the quiet of the Saturday afternoon, he was enjoying his spring fever in an orgy of laziness. Into this placid scene strode C. L Menser, looking for a continuity writer to dish up a script for three actors he wanted to audition the unluckiest guy in the world, simply because he hadn’t gone home, but he pounded out a script and turned it in. The three actors never were hired, but Rhymer’s script was it was “ Vic and Sade ”-now the most popular serial story on the air. Just recently, the women’s national radio committee announced its last survey showed that the whimsical story of the “Gook family, halfway up in the next block,” appeals to women in every block and every farm because it’s “complete in each broadcast” and because it’s “about people like ourselves.” “ Vic and Sade...

CHARLES LYON . . .  was born in Detroit in 1905. He’s from NBC, played in movies, was an ordinary seaman on an ocean freighter, juggled dishes at night for a N. Y. café. ‘Tis said he lost 9 pounds announcing the first days of the Democratic Convention last summer. Won fame when he flew to Edmonton, Canada, to announce the arrival of Mattern, who didn’t arrive, and Post, who did.

Marilyn Maxwell __the willowy blonde singer who is teamed with Abbott and Costello on their Thursday night program over NBC. She was once a singer with Ted Weems and wrote songs with him before she was spotted by Hollywood while singing at a bond rally in Cleveland. Her first camera work was with Robert Taylor in “Stand By For Action”—and her first name is “Marvel”!

GRAHAM McNAMEE . . . w a s serving on a jury in New York in May, 1922, when, during an idle lunch hour, he wandered up to WEAF to see what a broadcasting station looked like. Now he’s a fixture at NBC of which WEAF is one of the key stations. A promising baritone before 1922, he’s sung and talked and acted in all kinds of shows at all hours since the days of the Crystal sets. He was born in Washington, D. C., in 1889.

ENGLISH IS A DIALECT Jack Lloyd is one of the busiest actors on the air. The shows he appears in are so numerous it would take too much space to list them except to mention that they’re of the caliber of We the People , Front Page Farrell . The Kate Smith Hour , and Valiant Lady . The parts he plays on these shows are strictly American style juveniles and romantic leads. Yet, in the most realistic sense of the word, playing an American juvenile is, for Jack, playing a dialect part. And he had a good bit of trouble learning this dialect. When Jack Lloyd arrived in the United States from Holland in 1939, he knew exactly two words of English. One of them was “yes” and the other “no,” by no means an extensive vocabulary for an actor. And an actor was what Jack intended to be, since it was the thing for which he was trained. He had already acquired quite a reputation for himself on the stage and in the movies in Holland. Learning English was a slow process, at first. But the...

He’s A Pretty Nice Fellow, Too By Willard Waterman NBS Radio’s ‘ Great Gildersleeve ’ I’m Willard Waterman but most everybody thinks I’m Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve. The character I portray on NBC’s “ The Great Gildersleeve ” radio show. But honest I’m not the blustering Water Commissioner of Summerfield. Really, I’m not pompous and stuffy. Believe me. I don’t argue with neighbors and the Jolly Boys . Assuredly I’m not a predatory bachelor whose romances never seem to bloom into marriage. Actor, Husband, Father I’m just plain Willard Waterman , actor, husband and father. In faot, it occurs to me that maybe you know all about the mythical Gildersleeve , so maybe you’d like to know something about the actual Waterman. Even if you don’t want to know about the actual Waterman, here it is: I was born in Madison, Wisconsin, in August, 1914. I grew at the rate of a year every 12 months and then, when I was in high school. I got my first break in radio. I was singing...

Biography Tony MARTIN Star of CBS’ “ Carnation Contented Hour ” Tony Martin after two years of record-breaking personal appearances at home and abroad, returns to CBS to star on Sunday “ Carnation Contented Hour .” Martin, one of the nation’s most popular vocalists, has devoted his time concluding his last CBS series in 1948 to playing leading theaters, hotels and benefits in the United States and the Palladium in 1948, returned there this year and is now under contract to appear in the British music hall once yearly.  Martin has appeared at the Rosy in New York, the Chicago Theater. Seattle’s Metropolitan Theatre, the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, the Beverly Club in New Orleans, Miami’s Beachcomber and numerous other prominent entertainment spots. The dark-haired, dark-eyed baritone recently concluded an engagement at the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, where he broke attendance records of the past 20 years. During his tours, Martin also has entertai...

75 years ago today, on January 9th, 1949 The Screen Directors' Playhouse debuted. It was a series of classic films of the time, adapted for radio, and created to honor the directors of the movies. The directors of the film would personally bring you their favorite film assignments along with the stars who created the original roles. The very first show of the series was the time-honored film Stagecoach, directed by John Ford , who in his career won five academy awards.  Stagecoach is a fine example to begin the Screen Directors' Playhouse series - a superb thirty-minute radio adaptation by Milton Geiger, a regular writer for the series.  It's the tale of a group of strangers riding on a stagecoach through dangerous Apache territory, where the notorious Chief Geronimo and his braves were on the warpath. The passengers on the coach include the drunken Doc Boone, good-hearted prostitute Dallas, a pregnant woman, a bank manager who has taken off with his client's money, a...