Golden Age of Radio

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.

Man & Moppet The rogue most beloved in the U. S. is a precocious, conceited, impertinent, fast-cracking ventriloquist’s dummy named Charlie McCarthy . On Sunday nights from eight till nine EST, when the U. S. radio audience reaches its peak for the week, almost a third of the nation tunes in on the Chase and Sanborn Hour to hear Charlie make rude and clever remarks to important people. < McCARTHY & BERGEN  A wood-carving barkeep was important> Last week the Chase and Sanborn troupe broadcast from Manhattan’s Radio City—the first time the program had originated from anywhere but Hollywood in nearly two years on the air. When the plan to do this was announced to the press, 60,000 Charlie McCarthy fans besieged NBC and the agency producing the show for admission to Radio City’s I , 3I8-seat Studio 8-H. A crowd of 5,000 was at the station when the troupe arrived, but Charlie was nowhere to be seen. Photographers grouped Master of Ceremonies Don Ameche...

John Stanley Sherlock Holmes : Sundays, 7 P.M. EST, MBS stations. When you hear the clipped, British accent of John Stanley as Sherlock Holmes (Mutual, Sundays, 7 PM, EST) you can almost see the fog swirling and eerie as it blanket Baker Street. It’s a cinch for actor Stanley to sound as though he was born in London, because he was born in London. Not only that, but during his early childhood, John lived only a half-mile from the famed Baker Street, hangout of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s celebrated sleuth. Although Stanley was born in England, he was an American the moment he came into the world. John’s father was Professor Henry W. S. Stanley and John was born while his parent was teaching diction at St. Mark’s College, London. The wife of Professor Stanley was also an American and all of their four children were raised in England. John graduated from Malvern College. “When I was twenty-one years old,” he explains, “the urge to come to my own country suddenly ...

From 1939 to 1947, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes reached millions of listeners every week. When the voices of Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson came to the microphone, America was ready to listen. Rathbone brought a sophisticated tone to the character that was hard to mimic. In fact, through the years whenever portrayed Sherlock Holmes in movies or on the air...it was hard to picture anyone but the irrefutable expertise of Rathbone in the role. Concurrently, Mr Bruce maintaining the base bellow of Dr Watson precluded anyone else from establishing similar credibility. Many tried, but no one had Nigel’s presence of portrayal. When Rathbone decided to leave the role, they brought in Tom Conway to continue the voice characterization. Later John Stanley came in to fill the boots. Although these fine performers extended the life of the program...they could not extend the same rapport Rathbone and Bruce developed. These same gentleman played the parts in many movi...

Some of my favorite listening are detective old radio programs .  This holds true for the more recent series of recordings from the 1970s  Radio Mystery Theater : There was an episode "The Winds of Time" Bryce Bond, a paranormal investigator who actually played himself on some episodes. Another paranormal one which I believe was fictitious was the character Flaxman Low. There was con artist turned investigator Andrew Wolf in several episodes and of course Sherlock Holmes episodes including: Hound of the Baskervilles (The) Sign of Four (The) Study in Scarlet (A) Adventure of the Red-Headed League (The) Boscombe Pool Mystery (The) Adventure of the Speckled Band (The) Scandal in Bohemia (A) Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (The) Adventure of the Beryl Coronet (The) Gloria Scott (The) Nightmare in Gillette Castle Vanishing Herd (The) Murder on the Space Shuttle Musgrave Ritual (The) Naval Treaty (The) Reigate Mystery (The) Sam Dann used the name Mac...