Radio America

clickhere Visit the Radio America Store web site.Buy your 50 mp3 for &5.00

In 1934-36, Berle was heard regularly on The Rudy Vallee Hour, and he got much publicity as a regular on The Gillette Original Community Sing, a Sunday night comedy-variety program broadcast on CBS from September 6, 1936 to August 29, 1937. In 1939, he was the host of Stop Me If You've Heard This One with panelists spontaneously finishing jokes sent in by listeners. Three Ring Time, a comedy-variety show sponsored by Ballantine Ale was followed by a 1943 program sponsored by Campbell's Soups. The audience participation show Let Yourself Go (1944-45) could best be described as slapstick radio with studio audience members acting out long suppressed urges (often directed at host Berle). Kiss and Make Up, on CBS in 1946, featured the problems of contestants decided by a jury from the studio audience with Berle as the Judge. He also made guest appearances on many comedy-variety radio programs during the 1930s and 1940s.

Scripted by Hal Block and Martin Ragaway, The Milton Berle Show brought Berle together with Arnold Stang, later a familiar face as Berle's TV sidekick. Others in the cast were Pert Kelton, Mary Schipp, Jack Albertson, Arthur Q. Bryan, Ed Begley, vocalist Dick Forney and announcer Frank Gallop. The Ray Bloch Orchestra provided the music for the series. Sponsored by Philip Morris, it aired on NBC from March 11, 1947, until April 13, 1948.

His last radio series was The Texaco Star Theater, which began September 22, 1948 on ABC and continued until June 15, 1949, with Berle heading the cast of Stang, Kelton and Gallop, along with Charles Irving, Kay Armen and double-talk specialist Al Kelly. It employed top comedy writers (Nat Hiken, brothers Danny and Neil Simon, Aaron Ruben), and Berle later recalled this series as "the best radio show I ever did... a hell of a funny variety show." It served as a springboard for Berle's rise as television's first major star.

clickhere Visit the Radio America Store web site.Buy your 50 mp3 for &5.00

clickhere Visit the Radio America Store web site.Buy your 50 mp3 for &5.00

Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003), born Leslie Townes Hope, was a famous British-born American entertainer who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, on radio and television, in movies, and in performing tours for U.S. Military personnel.

Contents

Hope performed his first United Service Organizations (USO) show on May 6, 1941, at March Field, California. He continued to travel and entertain troops for the rest of World War II and later during the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf War. When overseas he almost always performed in Army fatigues as a show of support for his audience. Hope's USO career lasted half a century, during which he headlined approximately sixty tours.

A 1997 act of Congress signed by President Clinton named Hope an “Honorary Veteran”. He remarked, “I've been given many awards in my lifetime — but to be numbered among the men and women I admire most — is the greatest honor I have ever received."

However, there were also critical voices relating to the entertainer's patriotic activities. In his biography, Bob Hope: The Road Well-Traveled (1999), Lawrence J. Quirk writes that Hope was making sacrifices to entertain U.S. servicemen, whom he called "my boys". But according to the author, the government always paid for Hope's trips, and by Vietnam, his routines had grown thin and become synonymous with the "war machine."

clickhere Visit the Radio America Store web site.Buy your 50 mp3 for &5.00

Jack Benny (February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974), born Benjamin Kubelsky, was an American comedian, vaudeville performer, and radio, television, and film actor. He was one of the biggest stars in classic American radio and was also a major television personality.

Benny may have been the first standup comedian, as the term is known, as well as one of the first to work with what became the situation comedy. He was renowned for his flawless comic timing and (especially) his ability to get laughs with either a pregnant pause or a single expression. In hand with his great "rival" Fred Allen — their long-running "feud" was one of the greatest running gags in comedy history — Benny helped establish a basic palette from which comedy since has rarely deviated, no matter how extreme or experimental it has become in their wake.

Benny had been only a minor vaudeville performer, but he became an enormously successful national figure with The Jack Benny Program, a weekly radio show which ran from 1932 to 1948 on NBC and from 1948 to 1955 on CBS, and was consistently among the most highly rated programs during most of that run.

clickhere Visit the Radio America Store web site.Buy your 50 mp3 for &5.00

George Herman Ruth, better known as Babe Ruth, was the greatest sporting hero of his day. Seventy years later it is difficult to comprehend just what a legend The Babe was. Adventures of Babe Ruth are short fictional tales of the life of the great baseball player. They border on being modern day fables, each one with a simple yet important message to put across to the audience. Despite the simple plots and sugar-sweet story lines they are still most enjoyable to listen to and the sound quality is (on the whole) excellent considering their age.

clickhere Visit the Radio America Store web site.Buy your 50 mp3 for &5.00

he Creaking Door was an old-time radio series of horror and suspense shows originating in South Africa.

There are at present anywhere from 34-37 extant episodes in MP3 circulation, yet no currently available program logs for the series indicate the year of the series' broadcast (though it was likely sometime in the 1950s, given the generally high audio quality of the available shows), or the total number of episodes, and only a handful of them are known by their broadcast order. The stories are thrillers in the Inner Sanctum vein, and generally thought of favorably by most fans of OTR.

Old-Time Radio (OTR) and the Golden Age of Radio are phrases used to refer to radio programs (audio theater) mainly broadcast during the 1920s through the late 1950s.

Vintage radio is remembered for fanfares and show openings, running gags, trademark sounds and newsworthy events, such as the headlines after The War of the Worlds was dramatized on Orson Welles' Mercury Theater on the Air. Others recall the creaking-door sound effect on Inner Sanctum Mysteries, the Dragnet theme music, the "Hi-Yo, Silver!" call of the Lone Ranger or the cackle of The Shadow: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows." In the early 1950s, music radio began to replace the many familiar comedy/drama favorites. The end of the era is often marked by the final CBS broadcasts of Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar on September 30, 1962.

clickhere Visit the Radio America Store web site.Buy your 50 mp3 for &5.00

Dimension X was an old-time radio program broadcast April 1950 to September 1951 on NBC.

Dimension X was the first notable adult science fiction series on radio, preceded only by the short-lived 2000 Plus, scattered episodes of anthology dramas, and juvenile fare, such as Flash Gordon.

The series featured adaptations of stories by respected science fiction writers such as Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein. The first thirteen episodes were broadcast live, the remainder prerecorded.

Dimension X lasted only one year, but the later X Minus One utilized many of the same actors and scripts. All fifty episodes survive and are available from various retailers.

clickhere Visit the Radio America Store web site.Buy your 50 mp3 for &5.00

During the mid-1930's, radio began to displace movies as the most popular entertainment medium. After all, it was free, it didn't require going out, and a much broader array of show formats was available, most of which did not require the time commitment of the audience that movies required. This boom in popularity saw a scramble to secure available talent for radio shows, and big-name Hollywood movie personalities were a prime target. As luck would have it, the Marx Brothers were on the downhill side of their cinematic careers and were looking to branch out into other areas. Groucho especially sought out radio, which gave him opportunity to exercise his natural wit. Chico pursued a career as a band leader, which landed him occasional air time, as the broadcasting of big band music was a popular use of the airwaves. For obvious reasons, Harpo was at a handicap in this medium, but still found an occasional guest spot. I have attempted here to document several radio appearances by each of the three brothers; however, as record keeping was not viewed as a necessity in this field back then, there is no attempt to present this as a complete list. Particularly difficult to trace to a specific date are Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) broadcasts* of Command Performance, G.I. Journal, and Mail Call broadcasts, which were often recorded on disc only for distribution to military bases, and whose broadcast dates and times varied at each locale." (Wayne Boenig)

clickhere Visit the Radio America Store web site.Buy your 50 mp3 for &5.00

The Adventures of Ellery Queen: Famous for his mystery books, Ellery invites listeners to solve his radio mysteries. The show was heard on various networks between 1939 and 1948 (except for the 1941-1942 season, when it was off the air). Most of its sponsors still exist, except for Kolynos toothpaste.

Even on radio Marion Shockley (1911-1981) was the first actress to portray Nikki Porter , Ellery's secretary and low-key love interest. In the "Gum-Chewing Millionaire" she's a blonde professional typist who gets asked to work on Ellery's manuscripts. She then applies for the job of personal secretary.

On radio, The Adventures of Ellery Queen was heard on all three networks from 1939 to 1948. During the 1970s, syndicated radio fillers, Ellery Queen's Minute Mysteries, began with an announcer saying, "This is Ellery Queen..." and would go on to describe a case in one minute. The radio station would then encourage callers to try to solve the mystery and win a sponsor's prize. Once they got a winner, the solution part of the spot would be played as confirmation.

Helene Hanff, best-known for her book 84 Charing Cross Road, was a scripter for the television series version of The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1950-52), which began on the DuMont Television Network but soon moved to ABC. Shortly after the series began, Lee Hart, who played Queen, died and was replaced in the lead role by Lee Bowman. The series returned to DuMont in 1954 with Hugh Marlowe in the title role. George Nader then played Queen in The Further Adventures of Ellery Queen (1958-59), but he was replaced with Lee Philips in the final episodes.

Peter Lawford starred in the television movie Ellery Queen: Don't Look Behind You (1971). The 1975 television movie Ellery Queen led into the 1975-76 television series starring Jim Hutton in the title role (with David Wayne as his widowed father). Each episode would end with Queen breaking the fourth wall to go over the facts of the case and invite the audience to solve the mystery on their own.

The cousins, under their collective pseudonym, were given the Grand Master Award for achievements in the field of the mystery story by the Mystery Writers of America in 1961.

Ellery Queen