Old Radio

The Rogers of Astaire and Rogers was born July 16, 1911. The lovely Ginger Rogers was a  captivating dancer and actress would perform more than 10 movies with Fred Astaire and be a romantic focus of his as well. Born Virginia Katherine McMath in Independence Missouri, Ginger would grow up with her grandparents in Kansas City. During this time her mother worked in Hollywood writing scripts. Due to the fact one of her cousins could not properly pronounce her first name, she took on the nickname of “Ginga’.” “Ginga’” moved to Texas where where her mother was working as a theatre critic for a Fort Worth newspaper. During this time, Miss Rogers became fascinated with the stage and started to learn to sing and dance. She became involved vaudeville and the stage, performing in a number of productions. One of her most memorable was Girl Crazy, where she met the choreographer, Fred Astaire , for the first time. By 1929 she had moved onto Hollywood and became a film performer. During the ye

July 12, 1946: ABC aired the Adventures of Sam Spade for the first time. In this  summer replacement series , Howard Duff starred as the radio detective from San Francisco. In 1930,  Sam Spade   appeared first time for the Dashiel Hammett novel ‘The Maltese Falcon’ and original film version of ‘The Maltese Falcon’ was featuring by Ricardo Cortez in 1931. In 1941, Humprey Bogart performed as Sam Spade in this movie. Enjoy this 1948  Sam Spade radio broadcast  of "Hot Hundred Grand Caper":

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

July 7, 1943: Flashgun Casey debuted on radio later to be renamed as Casey, Crime Reporter and got an instant fame.  The old time radio series began as stories recounted in Black Mask magazine.