Old Radio

"She had blonde hair & was kind of pretty, except you could see somebody had used her badly, like a dictionary in a stupid family." - Pat Novak for Hire (Jack Webb) "Father Lahey, Joe Feldmen" (April 2, 1949)

“Uncle Miltie” was born July 12, 1908. Milton Berle was to become known as America’s first major television star; although his start-up was in radio. In his early years, Milton Berlinger took the name Berle and once he became famous, his mother changed her last name as well to Berle. His beginnings was as a child actor in a number of silent films . By age 12 he would move into stage productions and eventually vaudeville. His radio stint came in 1934 when he guest starred on the Rudy Vallee Program , and on the The Gillette Original Community Sing, Berle became a regular. He did a piece on Three Time Ring, a comedy-variety show. in 1944-45 Berle performed on Let Yourself Go which had active audience participation. In 1948 he began his hosting of Texas Star Theatre which eventually came to be known as the Milton Berle Show in 1953 . This program would lend appearances to big names like Jack Albertson and Ed Begley , and Arnold Stang would later become Berle’s sidekick. Milton B

July 9, 1878 was the entrance of Hans von Kaltenborn , or better known as HV Kaltenborn . his 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. Kaltenborn

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.

July 4, 1951: Jack Webb  did a combined seasonal program,  Pete Kelly's Blues , with Dragnet . Pete Kelly’s Blues on NBC, based on a radio series, was a stand-in for Halls of Ivy , which featured the  husband and wife duo of Ronald Colman and Benita Hume. Pete Kelly’s Blues  starred  Jack Webb   in the lead role, Janet Leigh as a wild child, and Peggy Lee as an alcoholic singer. Once the radio show moved onto television, Jayne Mansfield took on a small role.