The small town of Tyrone, Pennsylvania added Fredrick Malcolm Waring to its population 103 years ago on this date—of course, Fredrick would shorten his name to the friendlier “Fred,” and during his teenage years he formed a band (with his brother Tom and friend Poley McClintock) which soon achieved local renown as Fred Waring’s Banjo […]

  Family members of all sizes and ages have watched with admiration and fascination at the adventures of the world’s most famous collie dog, Lassie, ever since the first of seven films produced at M-G-M premiered in 1943 with Lassie Come Home.  (This movie, starring Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor, was based on the novel […]

In his reference book The Great American Broadcast, author Leonard Maltin relates an anecdote of how future science-fiction/fantasy author Ray Bradbury talked himself into a “job” on George Burns & Gracie Allen’s radio show.  The brash youngster, fourteen at the time, coaxed straight man Burns into letting him and a friend attend the comedy duo’s […]

Radio actor Jack Webb was fortunate in that he had just landed a small role as a lab technician in a 1948 Eagle-Lion film noir entitled He Walked by Night…and in between takes, he would find himself engaged in conversation with L.A. police Sergeant Marty Wynn, who was serving as a technical adviser on the […]

Sixty-nine years ago on this date, “radio’s outstanding theatre of thrills,” Suspense, first presented the most popular episode in its nearly twenty-year broadcast history (1942-62). Written by Lucille Fletcher (who was inspired by a disagreement she had with an elderly woman at a drugstore), “Sorry, Wrong Number” told the story of an invalid who overhears […]