On the subject of the Golden Age of Radio, one word frequently comes to mind: versatility. Its dramatic shows often presented tales well-calculated to keep you in…Suspense! (If you listened to Bob and Ray, however, you heard “tales well-calculated to keep you in…Anxiety!”) If you were tired of the everyday grind and wanted to get […]

In 1938, aspiring actress Joan Alexander found herself in Vienna after a lengthy tour of major cities in North America, Latin America, and Europe while studying her craft. The former model was under the tutelage of renowned director-acting coach Benno Schneider, which necessitated her frequent flier miles, yet her decision to return to America was heavily influenced […]

“Joan Crawford has passed into myth as a demented martinet whose greatest need or belief concerned padded clothes hangers,” observes author-historian David Thomson in his book The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. You see, a year after Joan’s passing in 1977, her adopted daughter Christina’s controversial child abuse memoir—Mommie Dearest—was published, followed by a big screen adaptation […]

In her 1968 autobiography Tune in Tomorrow: Or, How I Found the Right to Happiness with Our Gal Sunday, Stella Dallas, John’s Other Wife, and Other Sudsy Radio Serials, daytime drama doyenne Mary Jane Higby relates an amusing anecdote about one of her fellow radio thesps—Lawson A. Zerbe, born on this date in 1914. It seems that […]

The dirty little secret about show business is that it is a virtual petri dish for nepotism. As Fred Allen jokes in It’s in the Bag! (1945), after seeing a list of names in the film’s opening credits: “In Hollywood, all a producer produces is relatives.” It was not uncommon in vaudeville, either, where performers often worked their […]

In 1947, when the dramatic anthology The First Nighter Program moved from its long-time Chicago home to Hollywood, leading man Olan Soule—born in La Harpe, Illinois on this date in 1909—relocated to Tinsel Town as well.  Olan went shopping for patio furniture to furnish his new digs and in paying for his purchase handed the salesclerk a […]

In the 1945 Warner Bros. cartoon Ain’t That Ducky, Daffy Duck encounters a most unusual hunter: a sportsman who looks and sounds like veteran comic actor Victor Moore.  As you can probably guess, there is a simple explanation for this—the hunter is Victor Moore, born Victor Frederick Moore in Hammonton, New Jersey on this date […]

In Tinsel Town, she was known as “The Oomph Girl.”  Ann Sheridan—born on this date in 1915—loathed the nickname.  “Just being known by a nickname indicates that you’re not thought of as a true actress,” she reflected in later years.  “If you call an actress by her looks or a reaction, then that’s all she […]