Golden Age of Radio

Say Hello To – BURL IVES —who is heard with his “gittar” frequently over CBS, and regularly Saturday mornings on his own Coffee Club program. He comes to radio after years of touring the United States on foot or by any other handy means of transportation, collecting American folk-songs. He’s been a rover ever since, two months before finishing college, he decided he didn’t want to graduate and be a football coach. Although he loved football he loved singing and wandering around more. So he left, taking all the money he had—fifteen dollars—his guitar, and an extra pair of slacks. Singing in hotels or taverns, he made enough to live on, and that was all he wanted. He has settled down in New York now, but maybe not for long.

Ginger Jones __trained in dramatics at the Goodman Theater, Chicago, and was very active in radio until, in 1944, she gave it up to work for the Stage Door Canteen and to supervise and m.c. variety shows for the American Theater Wing. Now, returned to the air, she is Jane Browning on NBC’s Right to Happiness, 3:45 P.M., weekdays. She’s married to radio actor Les Damon and they have bought a New Jersey Farm.

Peggy Lee __who has been singing lately on The Electric Hour and Rhapsody in Rhythm, is a “musician’s singer.” Johnny Johnston discovered her in Fargo, N.D.; Will Osborne heard her and offered her a job; Buddy Clark persuaded Benny Goodman to audition her. Benny  signed her and she married his guitarist. Dave Barbour. Together they wrote “It’s a Good Day” and “I Don’t Know Enough About You.”

Laura Leslie -born nineteen years ago in Finks-burgh. Mary land, pop. 300, she grew up singing; had a weekly sponsored spot on WBAL while attending high school in Baltimore and got another sponsor on WFBR for a graduation present. She went to Los Angeles for some club bookings; tired of West Coast night life; came home and auditioned for Sammy Kaye when he was appearing at a Baltimore theater. So he signed her.

SAY HELLO TO. . . VINCENT LOPEZ—leader of the orchestra on the Show of the Week, on MBS this evening. Vince has been supplying smart society with dance music since 1919. He has never worked in any other band and has always led his own. Definitely opposed to swing music, he stuck to the sweet variety through thick and thin. He himself is a sophisticated as his music, has made and lost several fortunes. VINCENT LOPEZ . . . was born in Brooklyn, N. Y. His father was a bandmaster in the U. S. Navy and his mother a musician, but the parents wanted Vincent to become a priest. He consented to attend a seminary at Dunkirk, N. Y. The director of the school realized that the boy’s future was not to be that of priest, explained matters at home and once again Vincent was free. Then he was sent to business school. Later worked in a dairy office. Finally he organized his own band. You know the rest. 

The Milwaukee Journal – Oct 20, 1940 The Gooks—Vic, Sade and Rush NINE years ago last June, Paul Rhymer was dozing comfortably in NBC continuity office in Chicago. Everyone had gone and, in the quiet of the Saturday afternoon, he was enjoying his spring fever in an orgy of laziness. Into this placid scene strode C. L Menser, looking for a continuity writer to dish up a script for three actors he wanted to audition the unluckiest guy in the world, simply because he hadn’t gone home, but he pounded out a script and turned it in. The three actors never were hired, but Rhymer’s script was it was “ Vic and Sade ”-now the most popular serial story on the air. Just recently, the women’s national radio committee announced its last survey showed that the whimsical story of the “Gook family, halfway up in the next block,” appeals to women in every block and every farm because it’s “complete in each broadcast” and because it’s “about people like ourselves.” “ Vic and Sade...

CHARLES LYON . . .  was born in Detroit in 1905. He’s from NBC, played in movies, was an ordinary seaman on an ocean freighter, juggled dishes at night for a N. Y. café. ‘Tis said he lost 9 pounds announcing the first days of the Democratic Convention last summer. Won fame when he flew to Edmonton, Canada, to announce the arrival of Mattern, who didn’t arrive, and Post, who did.