Golden Age of Radio

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.

Marilyn Maxwell __the willowy blonde singer who is teamed with Abbott and Costello on their Thursday night program over NBC. She was once a singer with Ted Weems and wrote songs with him before she was spotted by Hollywood while singing at a bond rally in Cleveland. Her first camera work was with Robert Taylor in “Stand By For Action”—and her first name is “Marvel”!

GRAHAM McNAMEE . . . w a s serving on a jury in New York in May, 1922, when, during an idle lunch hour, he wandered up to WEAF to see what a broadcasting station looked like. Now he’s a fixture at NBC of which WEAF is one of the key stations. A promising baritone before 1922, he’s sung and talked and acted in all kinds of shows at all hours since the days of the Crystal sets. He was born in Washington, D. C., in 1889.

ENGLISH IS A DIALECT Jack Lloyd is one of the busiest actors on the air. The shows he appears in are so numerous it would take too much space to list them except to mention that they’re of the caliber of We the People , Front Page Farrell . The Kate Smith Hour , and Valiant Lady . The parts he plays on these shows are strictly American style juveniles and romantic leads. Yet, in the most realistic sense of the word, playing an American juvenile is, for Jack, playing a dialect part. And he had a good bit of trouble learning this dialect. When Jack Lloyd arrived in the United States from Holland in 1939, he knew exactly two words of English. One of them was “yes” and the other “no,” by no means an extensive vocabulary for an actor. And an actor was what Jack intended to be, since it was the thing for which he was trained. He had already acquired quite a reputation for himself on the stage and in the movies in Holland. Learning English was a slow process, at first. But the

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

Biography Tony MARTIN Star of CBS’ “ Carnation Contented Hour ” Tony Martin after two years of record-breaking personal appearances at home and abroad, returns to CBS to star on Sunday “ Carnation Contented Hour .” Martin, one of the nation’s most popular vocalists, has devoted his time concluding his last CBS series in 1948 to playing leading theaters, hotels and benefits in the United States and the Palladium in 1948, returned there this year and is now under contract to appear in the British music hall once yearly.  Martin has appeared at the Rosy in New York, the Chicago Theater. Seattle’s Metropolitan Theatre, the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, the Beverly Club in New Orleans, Miami’s Beachcomber and numerous other prominent entertainment spots. The dark-haired, dark-eyed baritone recently concluded an engagement at the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, where he broke attendance records of the past 20 years. During his tours, Martin also has entertained

75 years ago today, on January 9th, 1949 The Screen Directors' Playhouse debuted. It was a series of classic films of the time, adapted for radio, and created to honor the directors of the movies. The directors of the film would personally bring you their favorite film assignments along with the stars who created the original roles. The very first show of the series was the time-honored film Stagecoach, directed by John Ford , who in his career won five academy awards.  Stagecoach is a fine example to begin the Screen Directors' Playhouse series - a superb thirty-minute radio adaptation by Milton Geiger, a regular writer for the series.  It's the tale of a group of strangers riding on a stagecoach through dangerous Apache territory, where the notorious Chief Geronimo and his braves were on the warpath. The passengers on the coach include the drunken Doc Boone, good-hearted prostitute Dallas, a pregnant woman, a bank manager who has taken off with his client's money, a