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, […]

In 1937, Chester Lauck and Norris Goff began to express interest in bringing the characters from their popular radio show, Lum and Abner, to the big screen.  Talent agent Jack William Votion, a Hollywood veteran, also thought “the fellers from the hills” could make an easy transition to motion pictures…but in his conversations with the […]

Though September 30, 1962 is often acknowledged as the date when The Golden Age of Radio came to a close, director-producer-writer William N. Robson had a decidedly different take in an interview with Dick Bertell in 1976.  “The great period of radio was from 1937, ’38 really, through the war,” Robson reminisced.  “It was only […]

The Oxford Dictionary defines the term “Runyonesque” as “of, relating to, or characteristic of Damon Runyon or his style, language, or imagery; especially characterized by plot or language suggestive of gangsters or the New York underworld.”  For those were the denizens of Broadway that Runyon wrote about in his humorous and sentimental tales.  The author […]

In the 1941 movie classic Citizen Kane, Kane’s business manager Mr. Bernstein makes an observation that remains in the memories of movie fans long after Kane’s final reel has unspooled: “One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, […]

The actor best known for making his weekly entrance on Duffy’s Tavern with a cheery “Duhhh…hello, Arch!” was born on this date in Worchester, MA in 1898.  Charles “Charlie” Cantor was radio’s most beloved dunce, Clifton Finnegan—whose name was inspired by Clifton Fadiman, the host of the erudite radio quiz show Information Please.  That, however, […]

With his first credited film appearance in 1935’s Grand Old Girl, it didn’t take long before Frederick Martin MacMurray—born in Kankakee, IL on this date in 1908—became one of the silver screen’s most personable motion picture stars.  Fred MacMurray specialized in romantic leads, notably in such screwball comedies as The Gilded Lily (1935) and Too […]