Golden Age of Radio

The Milwaukee Journal – Sep 27, 1942 Hope Gets No Help in Books By Larry Feathers HOLLYWOOD , Calif.—Thousands of town wits and barbershop cutups throughout the land aspire to the thrones of Jack Benny , Bob Hope , Fred Allen and other top comics of screen and radio—and all entertain the same idea how their goal can be achieved. What to do? Simple! Start off by buying a large filing cabinet and cluttering it with old joke books. Then go through the tomes and “modernize” the antique puns. Thus, where a reference is made to horse car in Joe Miller’s classic volume, the fledgling craftily substitutes “trolley,” repeats the gag to himself—and has visions of wowing ‘em. Nothing to it at all, according to youngsters who aspire to profitable laugh provoking careers. In fact, they firmly believe that Jack Benny and company get by today by pursuing exactly such methods. “Just a lotta silly bunk,” says a rather successful young fellow named Lester Townes Hope, co...

  HOW BING CROSBY WILL LIVE ON $ 25,000 A YEAR WHEN the President urged a wartime $25,000 limit on incomes, he sent shudders along many famous Hollywood spines. Pencils squeaked far into the night as name stars tried to squeeze six-figure budgets under the $25,000 ceiling. But Bing Crosby can take the cut without a whimper. His huge income has never turned his head. He’s a regular fellow with a sincere love of things. Bing’s non-working life centers around his family, his home, his horses and his wide range of sports interests. He lives well and owns two comfortable houses. Wife Dixie Lee manages them with very few servants, for home to the Crosbys is not a cross between Grand Hotel and Buckingham Palace. Bing and Dixie are home bodies , and the bright spots see them seldom. Bing wants his four boys to be real kids. He may splurge in such matters as playground equipment for them, but he keeps them in public school. Bing’s strictly an “old hat and slack...

The Milwaukee Journal – Oct 13, 1940    Browse this newspaper>>            Browse all newspapers>> 'Sh! I Can't Tell That One on the Air' By Edgar A. Thompson Of The Journal Staff THE funny little guy in “soup and fish” pointed his funny nose at the buffet luncheon and plowed through the movie and radio stars at the “Knute Rockne” premiere at South Bend, Ind. “Oh! There’s Mrs. Hope!” screamed a woman and she rushed up to him with a friend. “Look, George! Here’s Bob Hope ! Ha, ha, ha, isn’t he funny for us Bob – we enjoy your broadcasts so much but do he funny for us now!” Hope gave her that “I just missed a three inch putt” look and said, “I’m sorry, lady, but I’m only human and right now I’m hungry and interested in my stomach and not my belly to beans, ham, potato salad, bread, olives celery and a fork. I caught him between the bread and olives. We shook hands and I got the buttered, s...

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...

The Milwaukee Journal – Jun 5, 1938 Bob Hope is scheduled to be radio’s next topline comedian. Following successes on “Your Hollywood Parade,” Bob is set to take the place of the “Mickey Mouse” show next fall. He will get one of NBC ’s top Sunday night periods. The Milwaukee Journal – Jun 5, 1938 Bob Hope Is Radio’s Newest Comedy Star BOB HOPE , comedian heard last on Dick Powell ’s “Your Hollywood Parade,” will be back in the fall—with a program of his own, according to west coast reports. Arrangements now are being made for Bob to replace the “Mickey Mouse” program on NBC next October. So—radio gets another new topline comedian. Actually, Bob Hope is no beginner. He is just about the last of the top row vaudeville and musical comedy stars to come over to radio. He has played in shows with Bea Lillie, Jimmie Durante , Ethel Merman, George Murphy, Fannie Brice, Bing Crosby and Eddie Cantor, all of whom preceded him to Hollywood and most of whom ...

The Milwaukee Journal – Jan 14, 1945 The Radio Parade – News and Gossip of Stars By George Lilley NEW YORK, N. Y.—Radio comedians (on the networks) average $2,000 to $5,000 a wekk, the fellows who write their stuff, $200 to $500. Youthful ( mid thirties) collegiate looking Don Prindle, who writes for Abbott and Costello, this year decided to do something about the financial disparity. Getting together with AnnouncerWendell Niles , who announces for Bob Hope , the two will become funnymen themselves with a soft drink sponsor beginning Jan. 24, 9 p. m., on the Blue network. Prindle has written wit into the mouths of the best, including Hope and Jack Benny . Niles, from Twin Valley, Minn., ex-band-leader and flier, was in 1934 one of the 80 government licensed ground school flying instructors in the United States. Out of military zones, he sometimes flies the planes taking the Bob Hope crew around the country. * * * Six foot one Art Linkletter was Southern Calif...

YAS, SUH, FRIENDS_WE’RE BACK ON THE AIR TONIGHT! AMOS ‘N’ ANDY FOR RINSO 9 00 WWJ WELCOME, AMOS ‘N’ ANDY ! HEAVENLY DAYS, McGEE, WHAT NEIGHBORS! FIBBER McGEE and MOLLY FOR JAHNSON’S WAX 9 30 ANOTHER SWELL REASON FOR STAYING HOME TUESDAY NIGHTS! BOB HOPE FOR PEPSODENT 10 00

LEAH RAY As She Appears Under the MIKErocscope By Lee Mortimer LEAH RAY is next Baby Rose Marie, one of the radio ’s young stars. She was born nineteen years ago in Norfolk, Virginia, and has a cute Southern accent to substantiate the fact. Ambition as a kid led her to be a literary critic. She was most enthused about Dickens and Thackeray. But now she’s glad she didn’t pursue the pen, because she makes as much on one radio broadcast as most literary critics make in a year. When seventeen years old she was taken by her mother to Los Angeles, where she was to finish school. She was all prepared to enroll in the Hollywood High School on a Monday, when in the previous Friday her uncle, who is in the music business, introduced her to Phil Harris . This was when Harris played at the Cocoanut Grove . Phil needed a girl singer. Lead used to sing in parties, so she asked for an audition. After hearing her voice Phil hired her. Her first salary was $ 50 a week. So it transpi...

Sunday, January 7, 1940           THE MILWAUKEE OURNAL –SCREEN and RADIO       11                  Radio Gagsters Won’t Laugh By Jack Sher MILTIE BERLINDER, aged 7, stood in front of the mirror in the Berlinger’s Bronx apartment making faces. He knitted his eyebrows furiously. He seriously studied his image in the mirror. He knitted his eyebrows furiously. He decided it was pretty good. Papa Berlinger put down his paper, pointed a long finger at Miltie and addressed Mama Berlinger. “Lookit our boy.” He wagged his head disapprovingly. “All day he’s gonna stand there and make monkeyshines in the mirror?” Mama Berlinger wagged a finger back at papa. “So if Miltie wants to make faces, it hurts you? Leave him alone. Something will come of this.” “From such foolishness comes nothing,” Papa Berlinger replied and went back...