Golden Age of Radio

  PINT SIZE—BUT POWERFUL . . . Unique is the word for Johnny. Johnny is radio’s only vocal trademark. Johnny is the only holder of a life-time contract in the history of radio. Johnny is only 47 inches high and weighs only 59 pounds. Johnny is the only name he goes by—and to millions of Americans. That’s right—Johnny is the lad who three times a week gives his famous call over two of our major networks. For little man, Johnny isn’t doing badly. His job pays him $20,000 a year, plus a good deal of fame. The audition which netted him all this was just unique as his career. Johnny was a bellhop in New York hotel. Eleven years ago, a certain Milton Biow —advertising man and genius of a sort—passed through the hotel and got an idea. He had Johnny page a non-existent Mr. Philip Morris . Of course, Johnny paged Mr. Morris without results, but when he reported his failure to Mr. Biow —he found it turned into phenomenal success . He got the contract for the cigarette account, whi

The Deseret News – Jan 9, 1951 Bogart, Bacall Sign For New Radio Series Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, in private life Mr. and Mrs., have been signed to co-star in a new radio adventure series, “ Bold Venture .” The Bogarts’ contract is for 52 half-hour programs, with options up to five years. Production costs for each half hour show, which in addition to the stars will feature original background music by David Rose and orchestra, will be approximately $ 12,000. The Bogarts who, in addition to their minimum fee, will receive a royalty on sales, are expected to realize $5000 a week from the show during the first year. National release date for the program has been set at March 26. In the show itself, already being taped in Hollywood studios, Bogart and Bacall do not play Mr. and Mrs. roles. He owns an inn and an all-purpose boat named “ Bold Venture ” which she is his ward and love interest. Each half-hour episode is a complete story in itself.

Sunday, December 27, 1942       THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL—SCREEN and RADIO Building a Bob Hope Radio Show Comedy half hour is put together piece by piece, rough edges trimmed By Kate Holliday “THAT was a boff . Leave it in!” Such a cry might barrel through the NBC control room in Hollywood at a preview of Bob Hope’s radio show . A boff, for your information, is a joke so funny it brings a belly laugh. What is a radio show preview? Just that: A show before a show—to which the public is invited and at which Hope and company test the merit of gags they have concocted. It explains, to a large degree, Hope’s continued success. A comedian’s life is usually not a happy one, evidence to the contrary. A guy like Hope, say, doesn’t just amble toward a microphone come Tuesday night and be funny. Instead, he builds his show gag by gag . It all begins on the Thursday or Friday of the week preceding the program. At that point Hope and his seven writers meet and discu

The Milwaukee Journal – Oct 4, 1942 She’s Really Anything but a Dope By Carlton Cheney DOWN through the ages countless millions of words have been uttered or written about the manifold advantages of being smart. But one may look in vain to the advice of sages and pundits for single observation , a friendly tip extolling the manifold virtues of being dumb. This, it appears, is a gross and deplorable omission which we right here and now set about to correct, being moved to the effort by a visit we paid the other day to the home of Gracie Allen , that darling dunce of the air waves , on the eve of her return to radio with husband-partner George Burns . Gracie and George , as you no doubt know, have been taking a summer vacation, but they will be back on the ether Tuesday night, again supported by Paul Whiteman and his orchestra; Jimmy Cash, the Arkansas Singer; Bill Goodwin, announcer and stooge, and Clarence Nash as Herman the Duck. White the show this season w

THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL—SCREEN and RADIO          Sunday, April 4, 1943 In a Forthcoming movie, radio’s Dinah Shore will not only sing, she will dance and she will act. Dinah’s a favorite with the soldiers Oh, Dinah—Is There Anyone Finer? By Janice Gaines KNARAVELLA is Dinah Shore ’s cool. She receives a salary of $28 a week. She gets all day Sunday off, half day Wednesday, half day Friday and occasionally when she wants to do some shopping she gets a few hours here and there. “But Knaravella is worth that to me,” says Dinah Shore , the singing radio beauty, “because I’m strictly a home girl and she’s a good cook, and any sort of cook is hard to get these days.” Knaravella has had two raises in three months. She started at $21, mentioned defense work a month later, was raised to $25, was caught looking through the Lockheed want ads, she was jumped to $28. She does not know it set (and you must not send her this column), but Dinah would raise her again at th

The Milwaukee Journal – Apr 4, 1943 There’s Only One Genuine Schnozzle FROM the eminence of a barker’s booth, a frantic voice shouted out over the heads of the passing Coney Island crowd: “Ladies and gentlemen! Ladies and gentlemen, hear the gr-r-reat JimmyDurante . Yes, it’s on a record, madam. Hear him sing his own songs. Yessir, yessir! The great Jimmy Durante !” And the person who thus gloriously advanced the fame of Jimmy Durante was none other than the Schnozzle himself, now heard regularly over NBC -WTMJ on the Garry Moore show (9 P. M., Thursday) For it was his privilege in the pauses between the piano playing and gags to step up on the stand and stimulate the sale of his own records. At Diamond Tony’s of Coney Island fame, where he wore a black turtle neck sweater and played a frenzied “ Wild Cherries Rag,” the exhilarated patrons called for more. Jimmy got $25 a week here, though he couldn’t read music except casually. But who should know anything about that e

The Milwaukee Journal – Jan 14, 1945   Wow! $10,000 Every Week HOLLYWOOD , Calif. (AP) Edgar Bergen his earning 10 grand a week for his radio show Sunday nights at 7. That is pretty nice moola for talking to one’s self for approximately 20 minutes. Pressed for confirmation of this amazing stipend, the shiny domed parent of Charlie McCarthy replied: “Yes, I guess it’s true although I never see the dough. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t seem any different than when I was earning $1,000 a week.” The NBC ventriloquist reflected that he was none too happy about his success, although he admitted a bit of the ham entered into this statement. “I have to be nice to so many people—sponsors, agents, producers, directors, and—”   he added with a grin—“newspapermen. In the old days when I was playing night clubs. I only had to be nice to the manager, and if I didn’t like, I could move on to another date.” “And back in those days, I could take a rest whenever I wanted,

The Milwaukee Journal – Feb 4, 11940 THE Hollywood hills give ArchOboler a lift! “It seems,” he says, “that all these Hollywood people live on top of cliffs and mountains. And when you go calling it’s no cinch. When Mrs. Walter Huston was on the program recently I took the supporting cast and drove all the way up to her home—6,000 feet above sea level on the ‘Rim of the World drive,’ one of the most breath taking, heart fluttering journeys you can imagine. “In half an hour you leave the orange groves and are up in the ice and snow. They’ve got a home like a feudal castle. Just imagine this tremendous redwood house, with a vast living room three stories high, and a stone fireplace large enough to roast an ox. Well, I toted my portable recording outfit all the way up there and we had a really good rehearsal because everyone was rested. “I’m getting so that I can’t produce a play unless I’m sitting on the edge of a cliff.” Several month ago, after a whirlwi

The Milwaukee Journal – Mar 16, 1941 Alice Faye Still Going By Carlton Cheney JUST take a glimpse at Alice Faye if you want to realize how swiftly eight years can spin by. To most of you—and us, too—Alice seems like a mere youngster, who has come along pretty rapidly in the last two or three years. But now let’s look at the record: Back in 1933—a good eight years— Rudy Vallee publicly asserted: “No, I am not going to marry Alice Faye , that beautiful blond singer in my band.” And Rudy kept his word, too. He never married Alice. Jump ahead to 1937 and let’s hear a pronunciamento of Miss Faye herself: “I will never marry Tony Martin . I don’t like young actors. They’re too selfish.” Three days later she eloped with the 22 year old singing actor, Tony Martin. She explained a few days after the ceremony: “I guess it was because of a quarrel or something. Tony insisted that I marry him or else. I’m still up the air. Marriage is a kind of letdown to romance. I

Ready Eagle – May 3, 1954 ‘ Night Watch ,’ Radio Show, Real Thing in Police Work By NON THOMAS Hollywood , May 3 (AP) – The new “ Night Watch ” radio show tops “ Dragnet ” for realism in the cops-and-criminal department. It’s the genuine thing. Listeners to “ Night Watch ” on CBS Monday nights will hear the actual nabbing of a criminal. The recording was made during an arrest by Culver City, Calif., police. Columbia ’s answer to Jack Webb is an enterprising young man named Donn Reed. A radio veteran, he dreamed up “ Night Watch ” in an effort to find something new in radio. “I remember one day I came out of a radio conference feeling very depressed,” he told me. “I said to another fellow that I was tired of rehashing the same old things in radio. If only there was something new. “That day I went over to the place where I play handball. Another person who plays there is Ron Perkins who plays there is Ron Perkins, a sergeant with the Culver City police. H

The Tuscaloosa News – Feb 8, 1952 Dennis Day Predicts Sex Out For TV By BOB THOMAS HOLLYWOOD —(AP)— Dennis, Day , whose television show makes its debut tonight, predicts home viewers will be getting less plunging necklines and racy stories in the future. “Sex has got to go, as far as TV in concerned,” he remarked as he paused between strenuous rehearsals. “Sex was exploited during the early days, when TV was trying to gain attention. You still see quite a bit of it; I hear some comedians telling stories that make me blush. “But I think the industry is growing up. It doesn’t need sex any more. Furthermore, if the shows aren’t cleaned up, TV will be inviting censorship from outside sources, which would be bad. “So far, the only censoring has been done by the individual performers and packagers of shows. I think they and the networks now realize that they will have to avoid any criticism about program material.” Day has stuck by these theories in his selecti

SAY HELLO TO . . . VIRGINIA SALE – who is Martha, the cook, on tonight’s serial, Those We Love, on NBC -Red at 8:30. She’s the youngest sister of the late Chic Sale, comedian, and is herself one of Hollywood ’s busiest character actresses. On stage she has appeared in her own one-woman show of sketches she wrote. The characters she plays are usually elderly, but Virginia is young, slender, and pretty. She was born in Urbana, Illinois, is Mrs. Sam Wren in private life, and has a son and a daughter, twins, who were born on Washington’s Birthday, 1936. Besides acting, she does solo dancing and has a lovely soprano voice

St. Joseph News-Press – Nov 2, 1947 -Associated Press JACK BENNY ’S RADIO GANG . . . Jack Benny , one of radio’s top performers has just signed a three-year contract, after 15 consecutive years before the microphone. During that time Jack and his program co-workers, Mary Livingston (his wife, Sadye Marks) , Dennis Day , PhilHarris and Rochester have become households words. In above sketch, AP News-feature Artist Milt Morris pictures the radio comedian and his aids looking over a script. They are (left to right), back row, Don Wilson, Rochester and DennisDay . Front row (left to right), Mary Livingston, Phil Harris and Jack Benny . Jack Benny at Times Becomes Fed Up With Roles He Has Created By RALPH DIGHTON HOLLYWOOD, Nov. 1 (AP)— Jack Benny as not bald. Jack Benny is not stingy. Jack Benny does not make Dennis Day mow his lawn. That is, Jack is not completely bald, he is not as stingy as he pretends on his radio program, and he doesn’t e

Elliott Lewis Among some actors—always the less successful ones—to regards directors as frustrated performers who, because they, themselves, have no talent, take delight in lousing up the performances of those more gifted. Not even the most disgruntled thespian in Hollywood , however, would think of muttering such a charge against Elliot Lewis, the new producer-direcer of Auto-Lite’s award-winning “ Suspense ” series, heard Thursday evening on CBS . Lewis can play the leading role, write the script or handle the direction with facility—and if an engineer or sound effects man were turn up missing, he could handle their jobs, too. The 34-year-old producer-actor-writer is unquestionably the most formidable triple-threat man to emerge in radio since Orson Welles —and he has the same zeal, imagination, and boundless energy. As an actor, his range is staggering. This is the Elliot Lewis who won a following of sophisticates throughout the nation with his smooth, romantic narrati

LEAH RAY As She Appears Under the MIKErocscope By Lee Mortimer LEAH RAY is next Baby Rose Marie, one of the radio ’s young stars. She was born nineteen years ago in Norfolk, Virginia, and has a cute Southern accent to substantiate the fact. Ambition as a kid led her to be a literary critic. She was most enthused about Dickens and Thackeray. But now she’s glad she didn’t pursue the pen, because she makes as much on one radio broadcast as most literary critics make in a year. When seventeen years old she was taken by her mother to Los Angeles, where she was to finish school. She was all prepared to enroll in the Hollywood High School on a Monday, when in the previous Friday her uncle, who is in the music business, introduced her to Phil Harris . This was when Harris played at the Cocoanut Grove . Phil needed a girl singer. Lead used to sing in parties, so she asked for an audition. After hearing her voice Phil hired her. Her first salary was $ 50 a week. So it transpi