The only scriptwriter to receive sole credit on two of the Marx Brothers’ classic feature film comedies was Irving Brecher, born in the Bronx on this date in 1914.  An impressive achievement, to be sure…though it should be noted that those two romps—At the Circus (1939) and Go West (1940)—rank toward the bottom of the Brothers’ oeuvre where […]

“The family that prays together stays together.”  It’s a sentiment that we’re all very much familiar with, even if the program that popularized that phrase—Family Theater—may not be as well-known.  Hosted by a rotation of big-name Hollywood stars (notably Loretta Young), the Mutual series was the brainchild of Father Patrick Peyton, C.S.C.—born on this date in […]

Author Carl Rollyson’s 2012 biography of actor Dana Andrews—born Carver Dana Andrews on this date in 1909—is titled Hollywood Enigma.  For many folks in the motion picture industry, including producers Samuel Goldwyn and Darryl F. Zanuck, Andrews was just that.  Rollyson notes that “his heroes seemed conflicted” and that “they were holding back something, as […]

On this date in 1957, listeners who had not completely abandoned radio for television received a nice surprise when the Piper family—better known as The Couple Next Door—put down stakes in the neighborhood for a three-year run over CBS Radio.  Couple was a quarter-hour domestic sitcom—but it didn’t have to resort to gimmicks like opening […]

Have you ever wondered why a lot of the announcers from the AFRS versions of your radio favorites sound like Howard Duff?  The answer to this is devastatingly simple: it is Howard Duff!  The actor entered the U.S. Army Air Corps as World War II got underway and, after a brief stint in the infantry, […]

By the beginning of the 1950s, television had started to make major inroads as the preferred home entertainment source for household families…leaving radio to play the unenviable role of middle child.  The small screen was a most ungrateful sibling when you consider that most of its content originated from the aural medium; comedians like Jack […]

“America’s favorite singing cowboy,” Gene Autry, began his long-running radio series Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch in January of 1940.  It was fitting that the man who began his lengthy motion picture career in 1934 with In Old Santa Fe would launch an on-the-air vehicle for his sagebrush talents; Autry was a solid favorite of any […]

The Golden Age of Radio—and this may be a good or bad thing, depending upon your opinion of the Fourth Estate—was a regular breeding ground for newspaper folk.  Superheroes like The Green Hornet and Superman were journalists when they weren’t out fighting crime (the “Har-nut” was newspaper editor Britt Reid, and Superman’s Clark Kent punched […]