Old Radio

February 15: Happy Birthday, John Barrymore Drew Barrymore's grandfather, yes, but  John Barrymore  was also a theatre actor lauded for his performance as the title character in Hamlet on Broadway (1922) and for his roles in the films Don Juan, Dinner at Eight, Twentieth Century and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde . His radio life included many appearances on The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour ( The Rudy Vallee Show ), most of them in 1941. His last performance was on the May 5, 1942 episode of the show. It was at a rehearsal for Vallee's show later in the year that he collapsed and went into a coma. A brief life of hard-drinking ended for Barrymore on May 29, 1942. Depending on who one believes, his dying words were either "Die?...No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him," or "you heard me, Mike." The oldtime radio world salutes  John Barrymore  on the day of his birth in 1882.

January 29: Happy Birthday, W.C. Fields Raise your glass to toast a playboy, a consort of the likes of John Barrymore , Anthony Quinn, Cecil B. DeMille, and a hard drinker, comedy icon W.C. Fields . Fields is known for his acerbic, biting persona, which includes sexism and a general misanthropy. He was a vaudeville and Broadway one-man act, a silent film star, a talkie star, and a radio star. In 1937, Fields joined the cast of The Chase and Sanborn Hour , popularly remembered as "The Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy " show. One of Fields' niches was trading insults with the dummy, Charlie. "Is that your nose or are you eating (insert a vegetable here)" was a standard line from Charlie to Fields, whose nose was not small. A shorter-lived stint for Fields was as emcee of Your Hit Parade , briefly known as Your Hit Parade With W.C. Fields . His particular brand of comedy kept him on the show for just a month. If you're looking for a quote for...