Golden Age of Radio

Introducing KEN ROBERTS Wall, Street or radio? Ken made the lucky choice KEN ROBERTS enjoys his job as quizmaster on Quick as a Flash, heard Sundays at 5:30 PM, EST over the Mutual network. But the part of the program that really delights him more than anything else is the spot where he stops mc-ing long enough to say, “And now, announcer Cy Harris has a few words to say . . .” For to Ken, that moment is a complete switch in what has almost always been the Roberts routine. As the announcer on Take It or Leave It , Correction Please, Battle of the Sexes and some other shows, someone else was always saying, “And now Ken Roberts with a few words–” “And now ken Roberts with a few words –” Ken Roberts was born on Washington’s Birthday, 1910, in New York City. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School where, incidentally, one of his closest schoolmates was New Calmer, now one of CBS’s top newscasters. Early 1929 saw Ken in dire straits and badly in need of a job. He had heard th...

HOLLYWOOD. GARRY MOORE is a calm, pleasant, normal acting young man who does the weirdest things. He plays golf in his bare feet because “it’s more comfortable that way.” He has surrounded himself with several hundred dollars’ worth of tropical fish because they’re “fascinating, dreamlike, and soothing.” He also owns two parakeets and two lovebirds which he can’t bear to cage and which are liable to make dive bombing attacks on visitors from the curtain rod. Garry also earns a handsome living—more than $100,000 a year—by working just an hour and a half once a week, on Sunday evening. He’s the new emcee of the quiz show “Take It or Leave It.” Garry confesses, “I feel a little guilty, having such an easy life, and may take on a daily show too.” He’s known as “The Haircut” because he wears his unruly dark thatch in a brushlike stubble—it’s either that or plaster it down with goo. I found Garry in the green walled study of his Brentwood home, where he lives with his wife a...

The Milwaukee Journal – Apr 27, 1941         Bob Hawk Quiz Whiz SOME persons may shine at answering questions on a radio contest of wits—when they are seated by their own firesides. They can make allowances for themselves, conceding this and that, and there is nobody to contradict them. But let these same people step on a stage before a microphone, with one eye on the adlibbing Bob Hawk and the other on a large and enthusiastic audience. Then their knees are wabbly and their brains befogged, as the master of ceremonies of the radio game show “ Take It Or Leave It ” volleys questions at them. However, as Bob says, this broadcast is offered in the spirit of good fun and not as any real test of an individual’s intelligence. A simple question begins each series. Occasionally it baffles a nervous contestant, who is more or less in a daze through the thought of his voice being heard by millions, including his friends and his employer, and also b...