Clik here to view.
Old-time radio, 25 December: Merry Christmas to all; and, to all, classic radio
Our annual Christmas Day radio listening merely begins with two jewels from a master satirist:The Linit Bath Club Revue: The Mammoth Department Store (CBS, 1932)Here’s a treat for any old-time radio...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 27 December: A jubilant "Jubilee"
Writing in American Quarterly in 2004, Laura Rebecca Sklaroff wrote of AFRS Jubileethat the staffers of the Armed Forces Radio Service only thought the show could or would present predominantly black...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 28 December: A brief comeback and a memorable "Suspense"
June Duprez is in the middle of what proves a very brief return to high-production-value film making, when she takes the lead in tonight's Suspense, after her move to Hollywood from England nearly...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 30 December: The rivals and their comebacks
It might be difficult for a 21st Century fan to believe, if clinging strictly to the general image of the man, but Jack Benny thinks he’s in radio trouble by the 1945-46 season: his Hooper rating...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 31 December: Auld time tadio
It could have been better . . . it certainly could have been worse . . . but now let’s say goodbye to 2014 the auld-time radio way, beginning (perhaps this will become a tradition in this space, too)...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 13 January: Lucy does "Suspense"
Cornell Woolrich is sometimes thought to have been the fourth-best mystery novelist in America in his time, behind Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Raymond Chandler. Issues involving his...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 14 January: Just Whistler . . .
The Whistler is unique among radio crime dramas for more than the often-underrated point that there was little if any actual violence in a typical episode. And, more than its equally unique...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 21 January: Jane Ace's Greatest Debate
“She’s fine, if you like Jane,” Goodman Ace would enjoy telling those who asked, in the years after the couple behind Easy Aces leave radio behind. And many did. Not quite enough to make...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 29 January: Canned feud
Classic network radio has no better aural running gag than Fibber McGee’s closet, though you could argue that Jack Benny’s subterranean vault alarm might prove a close enough second. For a better...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 15 February: A lost Pearl
Few of old-time radio’s one-trick ponies (actual or alleged) were sadder than Jack Pearl, and fewer than that were half as bitter about his fate. He’d worked the hard way toward his radio stardom...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 23 February: Roosevelt's radio fireside
Comprehending and embracing radio to a greater extent than perhaps any American politician of his era (Calvin Coolidge was merely the first President to appreciate the medium’s potential), Franklin D....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 6 May: Dead zeppelin, living reporting
Even in 2015, two years before its eightieth anniversary, you can find periodic debate as to whether it’s the single greatest legend of old-time radio news reporting in the pre-World War II era. What...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 8 May: V-E Day at Wistful Vista
It was only too appropriate that the timing should hold Fibber McGee & Molly due for their regular Tuesday night radio comedy on the same day the end of World War II in Europe—“the first...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 9 May: The world and inner wars of Howard K. Smith
Edward R. Murrow’s World War II reporting team has earned a reputation for daring, often dangerous reporting. Murrow himself has traipsed the rooftops of London at the height of the Blitz, then...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 27 June: Two finales, two transitions for Jack Benny
A pair of season enders eleven years apart tonight, shows Jack Benny in two different kinds of transition.The 1936-37 season has been a transitional one for Benny as it was. The good news is that he...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 6 August: A harrowing anniversary
The statement from President Harry S. Truman that the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city is heard around the United States and the world. So is Phillips' simple, direct, short...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 17 September: Invading the Netherlands
The Dutch called 5 September Dolle dingstad, or Mad Tuesday—because the Allies had advanced so far toward their borders in the wake of D-Day that the Dutch believed they were thisclose to liberation....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 18 September: A razor-sharp season premiere
“The writing,” John Dunning (in On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio) wrote ofThe Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, “was razor sharp; the scripts by Ray Singer and Dick Chevillat were so raucous...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 19 September: Nibbling the Gilberts . . .
Today in 1943 the Allies have begun pecking away at targets throughout the Gilberts, including Tarawa, in advance of a full-scale operation in the Gilbert and Marshall Islands, almost two years after...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old-time radio, 22 September: Der Fuehrer could not have him
Vichy France signed its 1940 armistice with Hitler’s Reich with stipulations that included, formally, French armed forces in German-occupied territory to be moved to unoccupied territory and...
View Article
