Golden Age of Radio

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 11, 1951              Times-Daily Hollywood News By JACK QUIGG (For Bob Thomas) HOLLYWOOD, (AP), -- Silence is golden, especially if you can keep mum as artfully as Gale Gordon . Mr. Gordon, a handsome, fortyish gentleman with a Clark Gable moustache and the trace of a British accent, earns as much as a lot of movie stars simply by keeping his mouth closed—at the right time. One of Hollywood ’s top radio actors he is known in the trade as “The Master Of The Eloquent Pause.” If you don’t quite place his name, you undoubtedly know him by voice if you’re any kind of radio fan—he appears regularly on seven big network programs. Gordon is: Mayor Latrivia on the “ FibberMcGee and Molly ” show: back president Rudolph Atterbury on “ My Favorite Husband ”; school principal Osgood Conklin on “ Our Miss Brooks ”; Mr. Scott, head of RCA, on the Phil Harris-Alice Faye show ; Mr. Merr...

February 16, 1951 Pitts-Post Radio and Television in Review:  Intelligence, Wit and Charm By JOHN CROSBY “Young people are children callously pulling the wings off butterflies. The chief purpose of education is to impart an understanding of the butterfly’s viewpoint ,” observed Dr. William Todhunter Hall, president of Ivy College. <John Crosby> That fairly well sums up the point of view of “ Halls of Ivy ” a surprisingly sophisticated one, on which RonaldColman impersonates Dr. Hall, and Mr. Colman’s real wife, Benita, engagingly plays his liberal and humanitarian philosophy expressed in “ Halls of Ivy ,” ( NBC -KDKA, 8 p. m. Wednesday) is not anything that would provoke controversy even in the bar of the Union League Club. Just the same, it is a rare and wonderful thing to find such mature and worthy sentiments expressed so repeatedly and so wittly on a radio program. *   *    * “ Halls of Ivy ” has been on the a...

One of my favorite old time radio shows is from the old time radio series, Favorite Story  which uses a theramin! "The Bet" was written by Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), a great playwright often referred to as the Russian Shakespeare . Chekhov was a master of the short story. He was a gentle soul with an unusual understanding of the heart of man and in this story you will find he proves himself  a great searcher after truth. This version has been expertly dramatized and directed by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee. Two friends are debating over which is better, to be executed by the state or to spend a lifetime in prison. Ivanoff says that it is not the right of the state to take away from a man that which he cannot return and that if he were offered a choice between capitol punishment and life imprisonment he would choose imprisonment for it is better than no life at all. His friend, a rich banker who has wealth beyond belief, and without it would feel like ...

  Ronald Colman   and   Myrna Loy   in   The Devil to Pay!   (1930)     Director Jack Conway and Ronald Colman discussing the script for   A Tale of Two Cities       Colman sketching in   The Light that Failed .       Ronald Colman in   Lost Horizon .     Her Sister from Paris (1925)   Constance Talmadge & Ronald Colman     Fredric March & Ronald Colman   Colman chillin’ with the High Lama and Frank Capra .   Ronald Colman in   Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back   Ronald Colman and Rosalind Russell in   Under Two Flags   (1936).  this movie is so funny… It definitely is!   Ronald Colman with Joan Bennett in   The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo   (1935).   Smithy: Some people came to see me at the hospital, ...