Golden Age of Radio

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

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. Merryweather, Ronald Colman ’s rich friend on “ Halls Of Ivy ”;

Basic Stats Concept: Situation Comedy, Spin-Off from " Fibber McGee and Molly ". A pompous bachelor takes domestic charge of his young niece and nephew in the fictional town of Summerfield. 30-minute episodes. Aired: On NBC Red Network, Sundays at 6:30 PM, later, Wednesdays 8:30 PM. From 8/31/41 - 6/2/54 Program Sponsor: The Kraft Food Company Main Characters/Players: Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve played by Harold Peary , and later Willard Waterman Marjorie Forrester played by Lurene Tuttle , and later Louise Erickson Leroy Forrester played by Walter Tetley Birdie Lee Coggins played by Lillian Randolph (with sister Amanda Randolph filling in) Judge Horace Hooker played by Earle Ross Richard Peavey played by Richard LeGrand Floyd Munson played by Arthur Q. Bryan Radio Show History Actor Harold Peary was a much appreciated talent on the old Harold Peary radio series, "Fibber McGee and Molly". Over the course of time, he played a number of different characters, like a

Former Fibber McGee and Molly Stooge Promoted His Windy Talk. Laugh into Big Time Radio Comedy By JAY DEE HIS HONOR Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve in a quiet moment Gildy Counts Ten HOLLYWOOD THIS is a big year in the life of that extraordinary figure of the radio world, the Hon.Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve . It’s his tenth anniversary on the air. For it was back in 1939 that he was first introduced to the listeners as a stooge with Fibber McGee. beginning the rise that made him one of broadcasting’s outstanding characters and has established his creator. Harold (Hal) Peary, as a major network star. In this development the late John Barrymore played a little known but important part. But for him according to Peary, there probably would have been no Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve  at all. Peary, who is of Portugese descent and was born July 25, 1908, in San Leandro, near San Francisco, did his first broadcasting as a singer at 17 in the city by the Golden Gate. Five year

Sunday, March 21, 1943 THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL – SCREEN and RADIO              11 The Great Gildersleeve’s Big Break If Stage Hadn’t Been Too Wide, Hal Peary Mighty Not Have Jumped to Stardom By J. D. Spiro *Picture on page 1 THE HON. Throckmorton P.Gildersleeve , water commissioner of the widely known but mythical town of Summerfield, is today a considerable sort of person in the life of this nation. When at the appointed hour each Sunday (5:30 p. m. our time) he steps to the microphone in NBC’s Hollywood studios some 28,000,000 individuals over the country cock their ears toward their radio sets and eagerly wait to learn what the Great Gildersleeve is about to do next. Yet it was only yesterday, as time goes, that the  Great Gildersleeve   was but an unsung stooge for Fibber McGee and Molly . In truth, until one night in radio New Year’s week of 1939, the  Great Gildersleeve   was just a lot of other fellows of diverse nationalities, including the Chi

That Laugh Tells You ‘G’ Day’s Here Again THE Great Gildersleeve , the big man with the basso profundo laugh, is coming back to the air today at 5:30 p. m. over WMAQ-NBC. And his faithful followers will be happy-or will they? – to learn he is fully recovered from the near romance with Window Ransome. Under present plans, she will not even be on the show this year. Gildy’s life, however, will still be very much taken up with the schemes of nephew Leroy and the affairs of nice Marjorie. The break with Window Ransome came shortly before the program went off the air for the summer. When husband Beauregard returned to save Throckmorton P. from the bonds of matrimony. It was two seasons ago that Gildy and his crew took to radio on their own, causing more than a mild furor in one of America’s oldest families, the proud and ancient clan of Gildersleeve. This clan. whose founders built the American fleet that helped defeat the British in 1812 and whose fame has depended on its importa

CANNY JUDGMENT BOOSTED “ THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE ” BY ROSLIND SHAFFER HOLLYWOOD—(AP)—Lush –voiced, fast-talking Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve is the lover every woman dreams of - - if she doesn’t expect too much. After all, maturity has charms which should compensate for a slight shortness of breath. Nonsense aside, The Great Gildersleeve is a terrific Guy named Harold Peary , I believe, is the suppressed  Peary, just as McCarthy is Bergen with the ice cap off. Of course, things as pleasantly amusing as “ The Great Gildersleeve ” radio program just don’t happen. The show is written by Sam Moore and John Whedon, but it has been built by Peary himself with a perspicacity you’d never expect from his air counterpart. A veteran of show business, and of radio, Peary knows his medium, and through his almost uncanny ear for voices, he has assembled characters for the show with voices that exactly express the characters he works with. His own flexible baritone voice, developed