Posted on April 1, 2019, 8:00 am, by Ivan G. Shreve, Jr., under
Birthday,
Classic television,
Radio adventure,
Radio crime,
Radio drama,
Radio horror,
Radio mystery,
Radio sci-fi.
A 1946 issue of Radio Mirror noted that “practically everyone connected with the Boston Blackie show is a former athlete.” Radio Mirror was not publishing “fake news”: the show’s star, Richard Kollmar, was a member of the tennis team while attending Tusculum College (Tennessee) and later, at Yale, became an outstanding water polo player. (I’ll spare you the old joke about […]
Posted on March 29, 2019, 8:00 am, by Ivan G. Shreve, Jr., under
Birthday,
Classic movies,
Classic television,
Radio adventure,
Radio comedy,
Radio crime,
Radio drama,
Radio horror,
Radio mystery,
Radio variety,
Radio western.
As a boy, actor Earle Ross had been gifted with a beautiful soprano voice—one that he put to good use singing in the boys’ choir at his local church. (His parents wanted him to become a minister.) One day, Earle reached for a high note…and his voice cracked. For several days, he was unable to speak; when his voice […]
Posted on March 4, 2019, 8:00 am, by Ivan G. Shreve, Jr., under
Birthday,
Classic movies,
Classic television,
Radio adventure,
Radio crime,
Radio drama,
Radio horror,
Radio mystery,
Radio western.
Life in motion pictures was never easy for actor Edgar Barrier. It wasn’t that the work was difficult—it’s that whenever Edgar appeared in a movie, it was even money that he wouldn’t make it to the closing credits. “He has experienced horrible deaths by suicide, stabbing, fire, gunshot wounds,” noted Radio Life in 1945. Radio was a little […]
Posted on February 12, 2019, 8:00 am, by Ivan G. Shreve, Jr., under
Birthday,
Classic movies,
Classic television,
Radio adventure,
Radio comedy,
Radio crime,
Radio drama,
Radio horror,
Radio mystery,
Radio sci-fi,
Radio variety,
Radio western.
In the 1950s, with technological strides being embraced by the dying medium of radio, the Columbia Broadcasting System started using Hammond electric organs for “fill music” on their broadcast programs. The Hammond was smaller and far less expensive, and it would allow CBS to rid itself of a colossal Wurlitzer theatrical organ the network already had on […]
Posted on December 6, 2018, 4:00 pm, by Ivan G. Shreve, Jr., under
Birthday,
Classic movies,
Classic television,
Radio comedy,
Radio drama,
Radio horror,
Radio mystery,
Radio variety.
In my days of higher education—where it was joked that I had spent so much time in college, ivy had started to grow up my leg—I was a member of Armstrong State College’s quiz bowl team. I vividly remember my first tournament, in which we squared off against a most formidable squad from Georgia Tech; […]
Posted on November 28, 2018, 8:00 am, by Ivan G. Shreve, Jr., under
Birthday,
Classic movies,
Classic television,
Radio adventure,
Radio comedy,
Radio crime,
Radio drama,
Radio horror,
Radio mystery,
Radio variety,
Radio western.
“Elliott Lewis was the greatest actor of them all,” declared veteran radio scribe E. Jack Neuman in an interview with Leonard Maltin. “He could break your heart with a word; his timing was impeccable.” Now, we should point out here that Neuman’s praise for the acting talents of the man born in New York City on this […]
Posted on November 6, 2018, 8:00 am, by Ivan G. Shreve, Jr., under
Birthday,
Classic movies,
Radio adventure,
Radio comedy,
Radio crime,
Radio drama,
Radio horror,
Radio mystery.
The actor born Frank Winfield Russell Marion Derwent Readick, Jr. (that’s what he called himself in a 1932 issue of Radio Guide) on this date in Seattle, Washington in 1896 was already a performing veteran at the age of two. Readick traveled with his parents’ covered wagon show, and (in another edition of Radio Guide) he reminisced that the show once trekked through […]
Posted on October 2, 2018, 8:00 am, by Ivan G. Shreve, Jr., under
Birthday,
Classic movies,
Classic television,
Radio adventure,
Radio comedy,
Radio crime,
Radio drama,
Radio horror,
Radio mystery,
Radio western.
Despite the fact that radio’s I Love a Mystery had closed up shop over CBS Radio on December 29, 1944, Columbia Pictures wanted to adapt the popular “blood-and-thunder” melodrama for the silver screen…and did so by paying creator Carlton E. Morse a princely sum for the rights for a three-picture deal in 1945. Since Morse had written the third […]