Old Radio

November 25: Happy Birthday Joe DiMaggio To be a ballplayer for the New York Yankees in the 30's, 40's, and 50's was to be a national sports icon, a celebrity of the highest order. A star among stars was Centerfielder Joe DiMaggio , who hosted a sports-themed radio show , The Joe DiMaggio Show, from Sept. 17, 1949 to Oct. 7, 1950. The show started on CBS, then jumped to NBC. It included the theme song "Joltin' Joe DiMaggio ." The Joe DiMaggio Show was a sort of sports-oriented variety show. It included a sports quiz for both kids and adults from the studio audience; a roundup of recent Major League action; and a dramatization of a sports story from a famous sports writer; and a segment in which DiMaggio answered fan mail. Sports writers who appeared included Lou Effrat, Jim Kahn, and Mel Allen. Mandel Kramer, Everett Sloane, Leon Janney, and Jackson Beck played roles in the re-enactments of stories, which included one on Pancho Segura, tennis cham...

She was Our Miss Brooks ; she played a pickpocket in The Marx Brothers flick At The Circus ; and for an encore, turned in memorable performance s as the wacky high school principal in Grease and its sequel. Eve Arden , born on this day in 1908, was multi-talented and loved by millions for her roles in radio , TV, and film. The lovely strawberry blonde began her show biz career on the stage, as a teenager. But before long she was on the silver screen, finding a niche as the sidekick, witty and wise-cracking. Her prolific late- 30's film output inlcuded Oh, Doctor , Stage Door, Cocoanut Grove , and Having Wonderful Time. In 1948, after nearly two decades fighting in the show business trenches as a comic character actress, Arden landed a starring role, that of high school teacher Connie Brooks in Our Miss Brooks . The literature teacher was likeable--in fact, praised by organizations of actual teachers--a strong female character who stood up to the shenanigans of the ske...

Early American baseball never had quite the voice it did in announcer Bill Stern . Born on July 1, 1907, Bill Stern would lead a life of sportscasting and baseball announcing that very few in his genre ever eclipsed. By 1988, 17 years after his passing in 1971, Bill Stern would be inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame . Stern started doing on-air broadcasting in 1925 for a Rochester, New York radio station. in 1937, Stern went to work for NBC doing boxing commentating on the Colgate Sports Newsreel . As one of the big names in radio sportscasting, Stern developed a theme of making on-air stories that were never authenticated in any form. He would give the acknowledgement that whether the stories were true or not; “might be actual, may be mythical, but definitely interesting.” A car accident in 1935 caused Bill Stern to have one leg amputated; but, it never stopped him from his on-air work. He had opportunity to be the on-air sports commentator for NBC Newsreels....

March 22: Happy Birthday, Chico Marx It's pronounced "Chick-o." Legend has it that in an early press release, the typesetter forgot the "k," and in a spirit of whimsy, the Marx Brothers left it that way. It therefore began to be pronounced the way it was spelled, and the name essentially began going by either pronunciation. In the fall of '32, the mispronounced Marx brother began appearing with just Groucho on a radio program called Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel, the Monday installment of Standard Oil's Five Star Theatre. Chico played Emmanuel Ravelli, the assistant to Groucho's lawyer character. In Spring of '34, the two had a quick stint on a show called Marx of Time which lampooned current events. Chico appeared in a handful of episodes of Pabst Blue Ribbon Town, which Groucho Marx hosted. He also lent his talents to Command Performance , Radio Hall of Fame , and Hollywood Hotel. The piano-playing funny man died in October...

Not quite St. Patty's Day and not the Ides of March, today is still special by way of marking the birth of comic groundbreaker Henny Youngman . There are many examples of people who adore Youngman's work. Take my wife...please. Youngman wrote that seminal one-liner, along with, "I miss my wife's cooking...as often as possible," and "I was so ugly, when I was born, the doctor slapped my mother." Youngman was born Henry Yungman in Liverpool, England, in 1906. He learned the violin, began playing it in a jazz combo in American nightclubs, and then got into comedy. He ground out the brutal nightclub circuit for the rest of his life, though for much of it was an established star. His fame as a comedian took him to old-time radio, with appearances on Radio Hall of Fame and Command Performance . We salute the King of the One-Liner, Henny Youngman.

July 9, 1878 was the entrance of Hans von Kaltenborn , or better known as HV Kaltenborn . This American radio commentator had the intellectual mind and the voice for diction. He was destined to be a top choice for radio news reporting. Growing up in Wisconsin, Kaltenborn planned on a career in news reporting starting out as a newspaper reporter. His ability to retain information and keen understanding for world affairs would profit him greatly in the years to come. CBS radio was keen to bring kaltenborn aboard as a radio reporter covering Europe and the Far East. Besides reporting the news, he would offer commentary and analysis to the situations; making him one of the first in his field. One radio historian said this of Kaltenborn, “Kaltenborn was known as a commentator who never read from a script. His "talks" were extemporaneous created from notes he had previously written.” In 1940, he moved over to NBC and in 1948 had one of his first gaffes in reporting. Kaltenb...

Today we salute an innovative and pioneering writer and producer, Norman Corwin . In 2011, Corwin died at the age of 101. He is known for his production of the broadcast " On a Note of Triumph ," which trumpeted the Allied victory in World War II . In 1938,  Corwin began his noteworthy radio program Words Without Music. One of his next endeavors was Columbia Presents Corwin, which took flight in March of 1944. Corwin wrote the original scripts for the programs, each of which was a documentary-style look at the topic at hand. The inaugural episode was "Movie Primer," which looked at some of the pomposity of the movie business. For his thoughtful, high-quality programs, he tapped into the Rolls Royce of available talent: Charles Laughton , Orson Welles , and Everett Sloane, to name a few. A later work of distinction was American in England, in which Corwin conducted man-on-the-street interviews with British folks during World War II . Corwin would go ...