Breaking Walls: The Podcast on the History of American Network Radio Broadcasting

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers On the Sunday, December 17th, 1944 episode of The Jack Benny Program, Jack meets Frank Sinatra in a pharmacy. For more information on Jack Benny in 1944, including how and why he changed sponsors, please tune into Breaking Walls Episode 151 which covers Benny’s 1944 in great detail. For more information on the life and career of Fra...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers By 1944 Rudy Vallée was one of the most famous American entertainers in history. Vallée spent much of early 1944 conducting the 11th Naval District Coast Guard Band, known as one of the best military units in the nation. He returned to civilian life, and to radio over NBC, on September 9th, 1944 with the launch of a new show, called...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers On the Sunday, November 26th, 1944 episode of The Jack Benny Program, Jack and the gang discuss how they spent Thanksgiving. For more information on Jack Benny in 1944, including how and why he changed sponsors, please tune into Breaking Walls Episode 151 which covers Benny’s 1944 in great detail

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Although Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are remembered for their movies, they got their start toward national fame in radio. They’d met in 1929, when Costello was booked with a vaudeville act into a neighborhood theater. Abbott worked in the box office and soon found himself playing Costello’s straight man. In 1938 they appeared at Loe...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers In November of 1944 Bing Crosby’s Kraft Music Hall was Thursday night’s highest-rated program. Airing at 9PM eastern time, singing with Bing was heard by more than eighteen million people as they wound down around the fire and radio. That evening’s first song was “Dance with a Dolly” and the guest was thirty-one year old opera sopra...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers This program, originally airing on KPO San Francisco, was in conjunction with the 5th War Loan Drive. Thanksgiving 1944 was also called “War Bond Day.” It featured the likes of Rudy Vallée and others.

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers In November of 1944 Lum and Abner was airing as a weekday, fifteen minute serial. In New York the show aired over WJZ. The show was syndicated out of KECA in Los Angeles. KECA was the flagship station of the newly independent Blue Network, which would soon become ABC. Chester Lauck was Lum Edwards. Norris Goff was Abner Peabody. Set...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Much ink has been spilled on Breaking Walls this year talking about Suspense. For more information on the series in 1944, please tune into Breaking Walls episode 154. The Thanksgiving 1944 episode was called “The Fountain Plays” starring Charles Laughton. It’s a story filled with murder, blackmail, and cover-up. The original tale wa...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Mail Call began airing on August 11th, 1942 over the Armed Forces Radio Service to entertain troops with songs, skits, and questions (via the mail) answered by celebrities in order to boost the morale of soldiers stationed far from their homes In 1944 Lt. Col. Thomas A.H. Lewis, commander of the Armed Forces Radio Service, wrote tha...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Much ink has been spilled on Breaking Walls this year talking about Suspense. For more information on the series in 1944, please tune into Breaking Walls episode 154. On Thursday November 2nd, 1944, Van Johnson made his first appearance on “radio’s outstanding theater of thrills” in “The Singing Walls.” In this Cornell Woolrich stor...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers In the fall of 1944 Fibber McGee and Molly were in the midst of their tenth season on the air. The comedic duo was part of NBC’s blockbuster Tuesday night comedy lineup. Between 1939 and 1949 their show was never ranked lower than third overall in the ratings. On Halloween night their rating was 25.6. More than twenty million people...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers By the fall of 1944, George Burns and Gracie Allen had been married for eighteen years and on radio for twelve. Their program had been officially titled The Burns And Allen Show in the fall of 1936, and they’d spent time at both NBC and CBS. With their ratings slipping in 1942, George Burns transformed their show from vaudeville-sty...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers In October of 1944 Lum and Abner was airing as a weekday, fifteen minute serial. In New York the show aired over WJZ. The show was syndicated out of KECA in Los Angeles. KECA was the flagship station of the newly independent Blue Network, which would soon become ABC. Chester Lauck was Lum Edwards. Norris Goff was Abner Peabody. Set...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Despite its west-coast regional status for most of its days. The Whistler had one of radio’s best-known crime-show formats and one of the longest runs. The signature ranks with radio’s greatest, playing perfectly into the host’s “man of mystery” role. Like the Shadow and the Mysterious Traveler, the Whistler was a voice of fate, bai...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers The Hour of Charm, radio’s “most-celebrated all-girl orchestra” first took to the air on May 18th, 1934 over CBS. In the fall of 1944 it was airing on NBC for General Electric, Sundays at 10PM eastern time. The brainchild of Phil Spitalny, The Spitalnys had a deep musical heritage. Immigrants from Russia, they had settled in Clevela...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Created by Irving Brecher, the best-known incarnation of The Life of Riley came to the air Sunday January 16th, 1944 at 3PM eastern time over The Blue Network. It starred William Bendix as Chester A. Riley and was sponsored by The American Meat Institute. Riley was easily exasperated, but difficult to defeat. The difficulty increase...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Edgar Bergen came to the attention of American audiences on Rudy Vallée’s NBC Royal Gelatin Hour on December 17th, 1936. Five months later NBC gave Bergen his own show Sundays at 8PM. He was an instant smash hit. Don Ameche worked with Bergen in those years. He was emcee on December 12th, 1937 when Mae West was the guest for an innu...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers On the October 29th, 1944 episode of The Jack Benny Program, an Allen's Alley spoof rekindles Benny's love/hate relationship with Fred Allen. This episode had a rating of 19.8. Roughly sixteen million people tuned in.

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Well, we’re back where we started, but we’re not the same. I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that when you run on the treadmill to oblivion, you don’t always go where you want, but you get in shape doing it. When I began Breaking Walls ten years ago I envisioned it as a sit-down interview show. Over time it slowly morphed...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers On Christmas night, 1944, Fred Allen was one of the guests on Information Please when the show aired on NBC at 9:30PM. The Christmas broadcast came from the St. Albans Naval Hospital in Queens. The hospital was commissioned in 1943 on the site of a golf course. At its peak it housed more than forty-five hundred patients. After the w...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers What you’re about to hear is the Sunday, December 24th, 1944 at 3PM WMCA broadcast of New World A’ Coming. It’s a Christmas musical show. For more info on New World A’ Coming, please tune into the previous act on this series within this episode of Breaking Walls.

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Edgar Bergen came to the attention of American audiences on Rudy Vallée’s NBC Royal Gelatin Hour on December 17th, 1936. How could ventriloquism work on radio? Perhaps Rudy Vallée himself put it best the night Bergen debuted. Five months later NBC gave Bergen his own show Sundays at 8PM. He was an instant smash hit. Don Ameche worke...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers Jubilee first took to the air on October 9th, 1942 transcribed by the Special Services Division of the War Department, then by the Armed Forces Radio Service. It featured Jazz and Swing bands and filled an important gap in the musical history of radio, gearing itself towards African American men stationed overseas. Jubilee luminarie...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers In October 1944, in conjunction with the Jewish Theological Seminary, NBC began one of the longest-running religious programs in radio history. It was called The Eternal Light. The dramatized stories from ancient Judaea, along with contemporary works like The Diary of Anne Frank. It was produced by Milton Krents. Many top New York r...

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers The woman you just heard is Gene Tierney. She was born on November 19th, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York. Raised in Connecticut, she excelled in poetry, took up student acting, and eventually spent two years attending school in Switzerland, where she learned to speak French. On a family trip to the West Coast, she visited Warner Bros. st...