For those of you disappointed in the Academy Award nominations announced this past Thursday, here’s a little something to chew on: one of the most beloved motion picture stars of all time (he was named by the American Film Institute as the second Greatest Male Star of all Time, right behind Humphrey Bogart)…never won a […]

If you were given a name like “Ira Grossel” at birth…chances are you’d have a long career as a certified public accountant or a dentist waiting in the wings once you reached adulthood. But one particular Ira Grossel would overcome the name handicap by becoming a well-known actor—a rewarding gig that spanned both radio, TV […]

The star of radio’s The Aldrich Family, Ezra Stone, may have portrayed an endearingly awkward teenager over the airwaves…but in real life, his co-star Jackie Kelk (as best buddy Homer Brown) confessed that Stone bore not the slightest resemblance to “Henry Aldrich” in person. As Kelk reminisced in Gerald Nachman’s Raised on Radio, “It was […]

The go-to actor for radio’s squeaky-voiced adolescents was born in Los Angeles, California on this date in 1926. Richard “Dick” Crenna established his bona fides in the aural medium with co-starring roles on such sitcom favorites as A Date with Judy, The Great Gildersleeve…and the series that cemented his stardom, Our Miss Brooks. Crenna would […]

At the height of her popularity in the 1940s, Judy Canova—born in Starke, Florida on this date in 1913—started a pigtails-and-calico fad among female students on college campuses. Juliette Canova, whose mother Henrietta Perry was also a singer, had serious aspirations in the field of music…and in my opinion, had the pipes to pull it […]

One of old-time radio’s most important—and inarguably, most creative—director-producers was born ninety-eight years ago on this date. A native of Pasadena, CA, Norman Macdonnell would use his experiences during World War II—he was among the many who stormed the beaches at France’s Normandy Beach on D-Day—throughout his distinguished radio and television career. He was hired […]

One thing you can say about Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve (Harold Peary): his political ambitions are boundless, and in the 1944 film comedy Gildersleeve’s Ghost he’s determined to advance from his present position as Summerfield’s water commissioner to Summerfield’s police commissioner. It’s not proving to be an easy task; the current man in the job, Commissioner […]

If you’ve seen this popular character actor’s mug in any movie on Turner Classic Movies I guarantee you it’s a most familiar one. He’s the sneering, Brylcreemed thug from a countless number of film noirs, notably The Enforcer (1951)—where he plays a member of a murder-for-hire operation who’s agreed to turn states’ evidence on behalf […]