Old Radio Shows.org

Mom gets all the credit.

Maybe that’s fair; she had the really tough part for the first nine months of the project. It seems like Dad is there mostly for the fun parts. Learning to ride a bike, going to your first ball game, teaching you how to make “fart noises” with your arm-pit…

The emotional ties that go along with fatherhood are just different from those to Mom. Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, WA, is credited with the idea of the Father’s Day Holiday. She got the idea while listening to a sermon on Mother’s Day, for which neck-tie manufacturers are eternally grateful. But if Father’s get the second holiday, they at least get to make a bit more fun out of it. Mother’s Day is a day for flowers and breakfast in bed. Father’s Day is an excuse to get some really good steaks for the summer’s first serious grilling session. After all, Father Knows Best!

If you don’t believe us, just ask Robert Young. Probably everyone wishes they had a Dad as understanding as Jim Anderson in Father Knows Best. Here again we have a wise and ever patient mother along with a son bordering on the wise-acre phase and two daughters who have Dad wrapped around their little fingers. It is traditional in radio and television sit-coms for the kids to be cleverer than Dad. This convention isn’t as abused in Father Knows Best as it is in other programs, but Jim Anderson does get fed a plate of humility on a few occasions. In the episode featured in our Father’s Day Special he returns to a house full of the ordinary emergencies, but they are unimportant in comparison to how good his golf game is going. And how good it will be when he gets into the championship round. Hopefully his pride won’t get the best of him, which it might. Who knows what could happen when he hurts his back the night before the semi-finals.

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Not all Father’s can be as ideal as the ones we find in the radio sit-coms. And it should be no surprise that Sgt Joe Friday runs across some of the worst. We know that Friday will have no sympathy for someone who is breaking the law, but he seems to come close on this one; after all, the guy is just trying to get a present for his daughter. Friday almost breaks, until the guy complains- how could they declare me an unfit parent. Joe Friday oozes with irony when he points out that the crooks actions had just proved the declaration correct.

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We hope you get a good tie this year. While you are waiting for the charcoal to get hot, turn on the radio and enjoy some of our favorite Father’s Day selections.

The Great Gildersleeve old time radio show was centered on Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve. Gildersleeve (the Great Man himself) came from the Wistful Vista of Fibber McGee and Molly. The Great Gildersleeve receives a lot of notice for being the first successful “Spin-off” program, where a character from one show leaves and a new program is built around them.  When he got his own show it enjoyed almost as much success as its parent program, although it was really a much different type of program.

Here is the debut The Great Gildersleeve episode which was recorded 70 years ago today, starring Harold Peary in his own series:

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Today in 1943, Jimmy Durante and Garry Moore premiered on network radio. The pair replaced the popular Abbott and Costello following Lou Costello’s heart attack. Durante and Moore stayed on the air for four years.

Enjoy this broadcast of “Garry’s 30th Birthday”:

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There is a story told around the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Eastern Washington State. Hanford was the site were much of the plutonium used in America’s Cold War Arsenal, the Fat Man bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, and the first nuclear device tested at the Trinity, New Mexico. After the end of the Second World War, when some of the information about the Manhattan Project became public, a local Benton County Farmer casually drove up to the gate of the Hanford Reservation. The confused Guard walked up to the dirty pickup truck. The farmer asked the young man if they had any extra plutonium lying around. He had cleared some oak trees, and he could use some help to blow up the stumps!

The character that Bob Hope played in the NBC documentary series The Quick and the Dead was an Everyman who was trying to understand the wonders and dangers of the dawning Atomic Age. Producer Fred Friendly had his work cut out to make such a complicated subject understandable.

For the average American, the only things that they could be sure of about Atomic Power was that it was:

1. Very Expensive
2. Full of Complicated Secrets
3. Somehow it had the potential to wipe out all life on the planet, it was in the hands of our enemy as well as our own.

Archie the Bartender at Duffy’s Tavern, in the episode broadcast on Dec 21, 1951, wants to do his part. His good, if disreputable, friend comes to him with a proposition. It is well known that the Atom has been split, but here in the friend’s box are the two halves of that Atom!

Fibber McGee and Molly does their part as well. In the Friday night broadcast, Aug 13, 1954, Fibber spies a Geiger Counter in the store window. After Molly realizes that it isn’t really for counting Geigers, the clerk explains that the Counter is used to locate Uranium Ore, which the Government will pay a big bonus for if any is found, in addition to what the ore is worth. The dollar signs immediately begin to stack up in Fibber’s head, as a plot is hatched to find his fortune in the desert near Moab Utah.

Enjoy this episode from 1954 and laugh with Fibber as the antic ensue when he buys a Geiger counter:

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Primarily known as a Movie Actress and singer, Jane Russell made several appearances on Old Time Radio. She had been a favored pin-up girl with GI’s, but unlike contemporaries like Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe, Ms. Russell‘s personal life remained unstained by scandal.

Russell signed a seven year movie contract with Howard Hughes in 1940. The Hughes publicity machine went into full operation and made her a star before her first picture was completed. Her hourglass figure was well suited to photos featuring low-cut costumes and swimsuits, making her a pin-up favorite. In her first film, The Outlaw, Hughes made every effort to show off her figure. He went as far as having a specialized underwire bra made for her, but she later claimed to have not worn it. Completed in 1941, The Outlaw was held from release until 1943 because of trouble with the censors.

In 1948 she made The Paleface with Bob Hope. She would make several radio appearances with Hope on Command Performance and other USO related projects. Bob Hope once introduced her as “the Two and Only Jane Russell.”

Russell appeared opposite Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 1953. Although the film is considered Monroe’s iconic performance, critics took special notice of Russell’s down-to-earth, sharp-witted performance.

Jane Russell would become a well known spokesperson for the Playtex 18-Hour Bra. She remained active through her later years. Ms Russell passed away on Feb 28, 2011, of a respiratory related illness. She was 89 years old.

Jane Russell’s Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is at 6850 Hollywood Blvd.

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Edgar Bergen is best remembered for his ventriloquism and his diverse cast of comedic wooden dummy co-performers. Bergen was born February 16, 1903 in Decatur, Michigan. Self-taught, Bergen caught the attention of Harry Lester, a master ventriloquist who schooled Bergen in the art. Bergen mastered the art of ventriloquism before he finished high school. Before he graduated, Charlie McCarthy was born. Charlie’s life first began as a drawing made by Bergen, who later had the puppet carved by some accounts by the local butcher and in others the local bartender, who in any case, also happened to be a woodworker. Charlie’s character and physical appearance came from Bergen’s observation of a local newsboy, named Charlie. Bergen later revealed that the Mc in McCarthy came from Mack, the last name of the man who carved Charlie into life.

The Bergen-McCarthy act quickly grew in popularity. Audiences were enthralled with the sassy and snappy Charlie McCarthy. The act made their radio debut in 1936, on the Rudy Vallee’s Royal Gelatin Hour. The following year, the Chase and Sanborn Coffee company offered Bergen the opportunity to star in his own radio show. The Edgar Bergen Charlie McCarthy show was playfully credited with saving the nation from panic and chaos. It was estimated that at least half of the October 30, 1938 nightly listeners were tuned into the Bergen show, while Orson Welles broadcast his famous, War of the Worlds.

Bergen continued to delight and entertain radio audiences for nearly twenty years. Guest on his show included Carole Lombard, W.C. Fields, Sonja Henie, Hoagie Carmichael, Mary Pickford, Bette Davis, Clark Gable and many others. The last broadcast was heard on July 1, 1956. After his radio show ended, Bergen kept busy with a number of television appearances. During his lifetime, he also enjoyed a film career. His film performances include the 1938 production of The Goldwyn Follies and the 1948 film, I Remember Mama. His last film appearance, at the insistence of his actress daughter, Candice Bergen was in the 1979 release of The Muppet Movie. Edgar Bergen died on September 28, 1978. Charlie McCarthy and his companions, Mortimer Snerd and Effie Klinker currently reside at the Museum of Broadcast Communications.

Enjoy this episode of the Edgar Bergen show from Feb 16, 1947:

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The “stuck on 39″ running gag got started the year after Jack Benny celebrated his “first” 39^th birthday on the air. It was so much fun he decided to do the same thing the next year, because “There’s nothing funny about 40.” Jack would celebrate his 39^th birthday 41 times. Headlines just after Christmas, 1974, reported “Jack Benny Dies- At Age 39?”

It seems appropriate that such a well loved entertainer would be born on Valentine’s Day, 1894. Meyer and Emma Kubelsky’s boy was born in Chicago and grew up in nearby Waukegan. He began his lifelong affair with the violin at the age of six. He loved the instrument, but hated to practice. He did get good enough to play with local dance bands and his school orchestra by 14, and by 17 began playing in local Vaudeville theaters. In 1911 he shared billing with the young Marx Brothers. The Marx mother, Minnie, though Jack would be a good fit as permanent accompanist for her boy’s act, but the elder Kubelsky’s wouldn’t allow their 17 year old boy to go on the road. The next year he did go on the road with 45 year old pianist Cora Salisbury. Responding to pressure from another violinist with a similar name, Kubelsky became Ben K. Benny.

Joining the Navy during WWI, he often played to entertain his shipmates. One night his violin playing was booed by the sailors, but he managed to ad-lib his way out of the jam, and thereafter the violin became a prop to his comedy. After the war he started a Single act- “Ben K. Benny: Fiddle Funology,” but ran afoul of another name problem.  He adopted the sailor’s nick name “Jack” (short for Jack Tar) and went on developing his comic talents.

In 1922 Jack was invited to a Passover dinner by Zeppo Marx, where he met cousin Sadye Marks, whom he married in 1927. In Vaudeville tradition Jack Bennyworked his new bride into the act, and she adopted the stage name of Mary Livingstone.

Jack Bennycame to the radio on May 2, 1932, sponsored by Canada Dry. The Jack Benny Program became a staple of family entertainment. Jack Benny was one of William Paley’s main targets in the famous CBS Talent Raids of 1948-49.

On the Radio, Jack was everything that he was not in real life. Benny’s character was cheap, vain, petty, and self congratulatory. Part of Benny’s genius was that he didn’t hog the laughs for himself. His assumed personality drew fire from his supporting cast, and Benny took the role of straight man. By allowing himself to become vulnerable, what could have been a despicable character was well loved.

One long lasting highlight of Benny’s comedy was the long lasting mock feud with Fred Allen, who, along with Benny, was part of NBCs powerful Sunday night line-up. The feud began when Allen made a disparaging remark about Benny’s violin playing in an ad-lib. Though the feud would run for years, Benny and Allen were great friends.

In later years Jack Benny rediscovered his love of classic violin playing. More due to his fame than talent, he played as a guest with several prominent orchestras, which resulted in considerable fund raising for these important institutions.

Further proof that Jack Benny had been born on Valentine’s Day: Arrangements had been made in his will so that after his death, Mary Livingstone received a single long stemmed red rose every day. This went on until Mary’s own death nine years later.