Golden Age of Radio

Monday Night COMES TO LIFE Fibber McGee takes a simple shortcut to change his Monday broadcasting period to 9 o’clock Eastern, 8 o’clock Central Standard Time, NBC . Thus, listeners get a more convenient hour, and he gets what he usually gets—the works. “I’ll tell you a show everybody’s listening to in Hollywood—it’s Fibber McGee and Molly .” Reporters caught this from Jack Benny , star of NBC ’s Sunday night Jell-O program, the other day in Chicago enroute from Hollywood to New York. One hundred weeks ago, sponsored by Johnson’s Wax, this new radio comedy team came strolling down the airlanes. Amazingly soon they became required hearing to millions of Monday night radio listeners. Without benefit of intensive Hollywood fanfare or Broadway ballyhoo, Fibber McGee and Molly have become firmly—and fondly—intrenched in America’s receptive heart. “We’ll have to tell you later” . . . this gay gaballero is, by his own admission, pretty hot stuff with smart quips and witty ...

Harlow Wilcox Your Announcer PITY poor Harlow Wilcox , NBC announcer whose voice is heard on a variety of programs origination in that network’s Chicago studios. Harlow earns an enviable salary-and practically every cent of it goes on the horses. No-Harlow never has bet on a race in his life. The nags which preempt his income are polo ponies. Not that Wilcox courts commiseration. For what else should he spend his money? After all, he’s only 35 and he’s in that state of blessed singleness in which he can fold up his trousers at night with serene assurance that (barring burglars) they will not be rifled by hands that leave telltale finger-nail polish. There was a time when Harlow lavished his excess funds on Persian carpets, but that was before he fell victim to the more rugged diversion of equine croquet. And there is more than mere love of the game in the Wilcox addiction. He is one of a small group of young Chicagoans who are eager to show the world that polo need not...