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

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“Judy Garland and I went on Mr. DeMille’s Lux Radio Theatre six times (Strike Up the Band, Metton of the Movies, Young Tom Edison, Boys Town, Stablemates, and National Velvet.) We did the shows live on network from the old Music Box Theatre in Hollywood, with four or five mikes, and sound man. I think Lever Brothers paid us $ 1,000 apiece for these guest appearances, but Judy and I would have done them for free. Imagine: a live audience of 40 millions people!”

Mickey Rooney
Life is Too Short
(Villard Books, 1991)

“Red Skelton made his radio debut in January of 1938 on The Red Foley Show broadcast locally over station WLW in Cincinnati. It was a weekly half-hour of country-Western music with Foley twanging the guita and singing, and Red supplying the comedy relief. That success led to his own show in Chicago for NBC, sponsored by Raleigh Cigarettes. But this only aired in the midwest. Red first appeared on a coast-to-coast progam on August 12, 1938 as a guest on Rudy Vallee’s variety show.”

Arthur Marx
Red Skelton: An Unauthorized Biography
(E.P. Dutton, 1979)

“From 1935 to 1950, radio was at the height of its wealth, power and public acceptance. It invented practically nothing new. The vast majority of its programs were simply transferred from movies, stage, and fiction, using the same staple materials that had supported popular art for generations, cast into shapes compatible with the new medium. Radio was merely a new way to do old things.”

Russell Nye
The Unembarrassed Muse
(Dial Press, 1970)

“I came to radio during its short golden age, after it had been fully developed technically and before the advertisers and their agencies finally took it over and corrupted it....For The Shadow, in which Orson Welles played the name lead, he would be delivered in a taxi by one of his slaves just in time for dress rehearsal. Having no idea of what the episode was about, he would come up with some pretty strange readings. Often in the middle of a show, he would have to change his whole attitude to meet some basic situation of which he had been unaware when he started.”

John Houseman
Run-Through, 1902-1941
(Simon & Schuster, 1972)

“His 1948 film, The Paleface, grossed over $ 7 million, entrenching Bob Hope’s popularity as one of the world’s most watched and listened-to entertainers.. Lucky for Hope too, since what he was giving his radio audiences was becoming less and less appealing so they became less loyal. His Hooper and Crosley ratings at midseason showed he was trailing Fibber McGee, as well as Bergen, Benny, and Allen. The ratings gap was one reason Bob was anxious to take his radio cast out on yet another whirlwind cross-country tour.”

William Robert Faith
Bob Hope: A Life in Comedy
(Da Capo Press, 1982)

“From the 1920s to the 1950s....Walter Winchell was the most powerful man of the airwaves. He was a former vaudeville performer who brought true drama to his on-air pronouncements.....To his credit, Winchell condemned Nazism long before the others did, literally laughing at Adolph Hitler and his National Socialist flotsam while others thought such criticisms were in poor taste.”

Chaim (Bob) Hersberg
The FBI and the Movies
(McFarland Publ, 2007)