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This story was published in Radio Recall, the journal of the Metropolitan Washington Old-Time Radio Club, published six times per year.

Click here to return to the index of selected articles.

SHORT TAKES
(From Radio Recall, October 2008)

“(On radio) Burns’ dyslexia made him worry that he wouldn’t be able to read the scripts on the air accurately. He therefore memorized all his lines for his show....Gracie feared a live radio audience. She hid behind a very large microphone standing at an angle so she didn’t have to look directly at the people (in the radio studio audience.)”

From Mixed Nuts by Lawrence J. Epstein (Public Affairs Books, 2004)


“Radio’s teen-agers don’t sound quite bright or quite virile. Archie and Henry and Homer and Oogie don’t belong in the company of Huck Finn, but they’re the nearest thing we have to Huck. There aren’t any Huck Finns in radio, the influence probably of mothers craving responsibility. I’m against it. A couple of Huck Finns would be a lot better for kids than Captain Midnight, Superman or Tom Mix.”

John Crosby, radio critic, in his Nov 19, 1948 newspaper column


“Norman Corwin can do anything with words. He once wrote a superb radio play about chemistry. And he wrote it all in verse. But if he walked into one of the network offices today and said: ‘I have a play here, in verse, about chemistry, they’d call a guard to assist him out to the street.”

Charles Kuralt in the book 13 for Corwin (Barricade Books, 1985)


“Besides my singing spot on the Abbott & Costello radio show, speaking parts were written into the script for me.....The public never knew that Lou was the businessman, handling all the financial details of their partnership. Bud was the quiet one, Lou was the leader although you would have thought it would be the reverse.”

Connie Haines in her book Snootie Little Cutie written by Richard Grudens (Celebrity Profiles Publishing, 2000)


“John Daly was the host and moderator on What’s My Line for the 17 years it was on the air. He was a tall man with an imposing voice, an authoritative manner, and perpetual indigestion. John thought of himself, first and foremost, as a newsman and it was true he had behind him a distinguished career as a journalist. The fact that the public thought of him, first and foremost, as the moderator of TV’s most successful game show did not make him happy. I think the greatest disappointment in John’s life was that somebody beat him to being Edward R. Murrow. But there could be only one Murrow in a generation so John had to settle for fame and money.”

Gil Fates, in his book, What’s My Line (Prentice-Hall, 1978)


“Radio still exists, and sends us now and then, an admirable drama, if only to taunt us with what things used to be like when we could hear them weekly, sometimes nightly. For most of us, radio has long decades ago ceased to be the medium of choice. The needle got stuck somewhere in the 1960s on the top forty, giving much of contemporary radio a status somewhat below wallpaper in most people’s lives.”

Peter Davis in the book 13 for Corwin (Barricade Books, 1985)