One of old-time radio’s true blue veterans—not to mention one of the preeminent voice artists of any generation—celebrates her 89th birthday today.  Janet Waldo, whose instantly recognizable voice has been heard since the 1930s on radio, television and movies, is still active in show business today as one of the performers on the weekly radio […]

This past Monday, January 14th, marked the 107th birthday of actor William Bendix…who graced the silver screen during the 1940s/1950s in such movie classics as Wake Island (1942), Lifeboat (1944) and Detective Story (1951).  Tomorrow, January 17th, is the 99th birthday of writer-director-producer Irving Brecher.  Brecher wrote such screenplays as Shadow of the Thin Man […]

Francis Albert Sinatra—Oscar-winning actor, Grammy-winning recording artist, and star of the Emmy Award-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music (1965)—would have celebrated his 97th birthday today.  A retrospective of his amazing career would eat up more than the allotted bandwidth of the Internet…so Radio Spirits thought a focus on Ol’ Blue Eyes’ relationship […]

Sixty-five years ago today, the program that finally found a way to make good use of the one-of-a-kind comic talent of Julius “Groucho” Marx premiered: You Bet Your Life.  A “quiz show” that really served as mere window dressing for Groucho’s rapier wit, its debut over ABC Radio was originally met with a bit of […]

Four years after the celebrated radio “feud” between comedians Jack Benny and Fred Allen got underway, Paramount Pictures decided to cash in on the fun with a film starring Jack and Fred entitled Love Thy Neighbor, which also co-starred Broadway sensation Mary Martin.  The studio had every reason to believe that the movie would do […]

Fans of old-time radio might get a kick out of watching an old Perry Mason rerun, “The Case of the Lover’s Gamble,” which turns up on the classic television cable channel outlet Me-TV every now and then.  At the risk of spoiling the ending, the murderer in this case turns out to be a man […]

  At 7:30am EDT this Saturday morning, July 7th, Turner Classic Movies will show the 1942 WW2 musical comedy Seven Days’ Leave (1942), starring Victor Mature and Lucille Ball   It’s a romantic comedy whose premise seems to have been borrowed from the Buster Keaton classic Seven Chances (1925): Mature is GI Johnny Grey, who stands to inherit $100,000 […]

In 1979, veteran radio producers Fletcher Markle and Elliott Lewis made an attempt to resurrect the lost art of radio drama with The Sears Radio Theater, a program that followed in the footsteps of such 70s offerings as Zero Hour, Earplay and The CBS Radio Mystery Theater.  Five nights a week, offerings of comedy, drama, […]