July 3 Radio History

➦In 1913...Dorothy Mae Kilgallen born (Died – November 8, 1965). She was a journalist, radio host  and television game show panelist.

She started her career shortly before her 18th birthday as a reporter for the Hearst Corporation's New York Evening Journal. In 1938, she began her newspaper column "The Voice of Broadway", which eventually was syndicated to more than 140 papers. In 1950, she became a regular panelist on the television game show What's My Line?, continuing in the role until her death.

Kilgallen's columns featured mostly show business news and gossip, but ventured into other topics, such as politics and organized crime. She wrote front-page articles on the Sam Sheppard trial and later the John F. Kennedy assassination.

On April 6, 1940, Kilgallen married Richard Kollmar, a musical comedy actor and singer who had starred in the Broadway show Knickerbocker Holiday and was performing, at the time of their wedding, in the Broadway cast of Too Many Girls.

Early in their marriage, Kilgallen and Kollmar both launched careers in network radio. Kilgallen ran her radio program Voice of Broadway, which was broadcast on CBS during World War II,  and Kollmar worked a long stint in the nationally syndicated crime drama in which he played Boston Blackie.

Breakfast with Dorothy & Dick

Beginning in April 1945, Kilgallen and Kollmar co-hosted a WOR-AM radio talk show, Breakfast With Dorothy and Dick, from their 16-room apartment. The radio program, like Kilgallen's newspaper column, mixed entertainment with serious issues. Kilgallen and Kollmar continued doing the show from their home until 1963, long after the terminations of other radio shows on which each had worked without the other.

On November 8, 1965, the 52-year-old Kilgallen was found dead on the third floor of her five-story Manhattan townhouse. Her death was determined to have been caused by a fatal combination of alcohol and barbiturates.

➦In 1931...German boxer Max Schmeling beats American Young Stribling by TKO in 15 in Cleveland in his first heavyweight title defense; first major fight broadcast live on national radio.



➦In 1935...“Hawaii Calls” aired its first radio on the beach at Waikiki. The series lasted more than 60 years.  Hawaii Calls featured live Hawaiian music conducted by Harry Owens for the first two years, the composer of "Sweet Leilani". Ray Andrade was a charter member of the Harry Owens Royal Hawaiian Hotel Orchestra, he also became one of the first vocalists on the “Hawaii Calls” radio show. It was broadcast each week, usually from the courtyard of the Moana Hotel on Waikiki Beach but occasionally from other locations, and hosted by Webley Edwards for almost the entire run. Al Kealoha Perry was musical director for thirty years, 1937–1967.

The first show reached the West Coast of the continental United States through shortwave radio. At its height, it was heard on over 750 stations around the world. However, when it went off the air in 1975, only 10 stations were airing the show. Because of its positive portrayal of Hawaii, the show received a subsidy for many years—first from the government of the Territory of Hawaii, and then from the State of Hawaii. The termination of the subsidy was one of the reasons that the show went off the air.

➦In 1939…Chic Young's comic strip character "Blondie" became a radio sitcom. The radio program had a long run on several networks from 1939 to 1950.

After Penny Singleton was cast in the title role of the feature film Blondie (1938), co-starring with Arthur Lake as Dagwood (the first in a series of 28 produced by Columbia Pictures); she and Lake repeated their roles December 20, 1938, on The Pepsodent Show starring Bob Hope. The appearance with Hope led to their own show, beginning July 3, 1939, on CBS as a summer replacement for The Eddie Cantor Show. However, Cantor did not return in the fall, so the sponsor, R.J. Reynolds' Camel Cigarettes chose to keep Blondie on the air Mondays at 7:30pm. Camel remained the sponsor through the early World War II years until June 26, 1944.

In 1944, Blondie was on the NBC Blue Network, sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive's Super Suds, airing Fridays at 7pm from July 21 to September 1. The final three weeks of that run overlapped with Blondie's return to CBS on Sundays at 8pm from August 13, 1944, to September 26, 1948, still sponsored by Super Suds. Beginning in mid-1945, the 30-minute program was heard Mondays at 7:30pm. Super Suds continued as the sponsor when the show moved to NBC on Wednesdays at 8pm from October 6, 1948, to June 29, 1949.

When Penny Singleton left the radio series in the mid-1940s, Patricia Lake, the former Patricia Van Cleeve, replaced her as the voice of Blondie for the remaining five years of the show, opposite her real-life husband Arthur Lake. Ann Rutherford and Alice White were also heard as radio's Blondie. In 1954, Lake also co-starred with her husband in an early television sitcom he created called Meet the Family.

The radio show ended the same year as the Blondie film series (1938–50).

➦In  1940…The comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello debuted their own network radio show on NBC. After two years of wowing the audience of the Kate Smith Show,  the duo replaced Fred Allen for the summer months. In the fall of ’42 they began a seven year run with their own Thursday night show. In 1952 Abbott and Costello produced 52 episodes of one of the most successful and repeated programs in TV history.




➦In 1955...Tom Clay, a Buffalo DJ on WWOL-AM, staged a famous billboard publicity stunt in Shelton Square in Buffalo.

Tom Clay

Clay in the 1950s was a popular radio personality in the Detroit area on WJBK-AM both as a DJ, and for his on-air comic characterizations. In the early 1950s Clay, using the pseudonym "Guy King," worked for WWOL-AM/FM in Buffalo, New York; on July 3, 1955, he conducted the stunt in which he played "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets repeatedly from atop a billboard in Buffalo's Shelton Square, an incident that led to his firing and arrest.  In the mid-1950s he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and was equally popular.

He was caught up in the payola scandal of the late 1950s, and admitted to having accepted thousands of dollars for playing certain records. After being fired from WJBK, Clay worked at the short-lived Detroit Top 40 station WQTE (now WRDT 560 AM) only to be fired again when the station changed format to easy listening music in 1961. After moving to Los Angeles and becoming a popular personality on KDAY and KRLA, Clay returned to the Detroit area and found work at CKLW 800 AM at the time one of the foremost Top 40 stations.

Clay is best remembered for his single on Motown's MoWest label "What the World Needs Now Is Love"/"Abraham, Martin and John", a compilation of clips from the two popular records, interviews, and speeches of Jack and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King emphasizing tolerance and civil rights. It went to #8 on the Billboard Hot 100. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.

Clay died in 1995 of stomach and lung cancer at the age of 66, in Valley Village, Los Angeles.

➦In 1961...Dan Ingram did his first show on WABC 770 AM, New York. He filled in for Chuck Dunaway.

➦In 1972...Bob Crane went back to radio - but only for one week. He was filling in for Dick Wittinghill - his former archrival on KMPC 710 AM in Los Angeles beginning July 5. Wittinghill and Crane battled it out for the morning ratings in Los Angeles from 1956 to 1965, when Crane left to star in “Hogan’s Heroes.”

➦In 1976...The Los Angeles comedy radio team of Hudson and Landry split.



Bob Hudson wanted to keep it together with their KFI 640 AM radio show, nightclub appearances and possibly more comedy records, but Ron Landry wanted to go into television as a writer and producer. Ron Landry says – “Doing this show was a lot of fun. We had five great years and, I think we did some interesting things in broadcasting.”

➦In 1978...Supreme Court ruled 5-4, FCC had a right to reprimand non-com WBAI in NYC for broadcasting George Carlin's "Filthy Words".

➦In 1983...KNX-FM – Soft rock in Los Angeles changes calls and format to KKHR (Hit Radio), direct competition for KIIS-FM.

➦In 1986...Singer and bandleader Rudy Vallée died (Born - July 28, 1901). He was one of the first modern pop stars of the teen idol type.

In 1929, Vallée began hosting The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour, a popular radio show with guests such as Fay Wray and Richard Cromwell in dramatic skits. Vallée continued hosting radio shows such as the Royal Gelatin Hour, Vallee Varieties, and The Rudy Vallee Show through the 1930s and 1940s.

When Vallée took his contractual vacations from his national radio show in 1937, he insisted his sponsor hire Louis Armstrong as his substitute.  This was the first instance of an African-American hosting a national radio program. Vallée wrote the introduction for Armstrong's 1936 book Swing That Music. For his work in radio, he was inducted into the Vermont Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2011.

In 1929, Vallée made his first feature film, The Vagabond Lover for RKO Radio.

➦In 1986...It was announced that Howard Stern, the often controversial New York City DJ/talker, would be syndicated weekly by DIR to other stations.

Stern, who joined rocker WXRK NYC in '85, had seen his ratings rise from a 1.2 to a 3.4 and up to a 5.2 share in the recent ratings. “The Howard Stern Show” will mix music and talk equally. At WXRK, Stern plays about 6 songs per hour.

➦In 1993…Sports broadcaster Don Drysdale died following a heart attack at age 56.

➦In 2006...Seattle area native Smilin’ Jack Smith, who crooned on his own nightly CBS Radio show from 1945 to 52, then went on to host TV’s You Asked For it over a more-than-30-year span, died of leukemia at age 92.

➦In 2014...the SiriusXM radio team of Opie & Anthony was forever broken up, as the network fired Anthony Cumia for making a series of tweets following an alleged off-air incident with a black woman on the street. Cumia tweeted that he was punched by the woman while attempting to take a picture in Times Square. The tweets were described by Sirius XM as “racially-charged and hate-filled.”

Betty Buckley is 76

🎂HAPPY BIRTHDAYS:

• Actor Michael Cole (“The Mod Squad”) is 83. 
• Actor Kurtwood Smith (“That 70s Show”) is 80. 
• Country singer Johnny Lee is 77. 
• Writer Dave Barry is 76. 
• Actor Betty Buckley is 76. 
• Actor Jan Smithers (“WKRP In Cincinnati”) is 74. 
• Actor Bruce Altman (“Blue Bloods”) is 68. 
• Talk show host Montel Williams is 67. 
• Country singer Aaron Tippin is 65. 
• Synthesizer player Vince Clarke of Erasure is 63. 
• Actor Tom Cruise is 61. 
• Actor Thomas Gibson (“Criminal Minds,” ″Dharma and Greg”) is 61. 
• Actor Hunter Tylo is 61. 
• Actor Connie Nielsen (“Gladiator”) is 59. 
• Actor Yeardley Smith (“The Simpsons”) is 59. 
• TV chef Sandra Lee is 57. 
• Singer Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler of Digable Planets is 54. 
• Keyboardist-guitarist Kevin Hearn of Barenaked Ladies is 54. 
• Actor Shawnee Smith (“Saw,” ″Becker”) is 54. 
• Actor-singer Audra McDonald (“Private Practice”) is 53. Country 
• singer Trent Tomlinson is 48. 
• Actor Andrea Barber (“Full House”) is 47. 
• Comedian Julie Klausner (“Difficult People”) is 45. 
• Singer Tonia Tash of Divine is 44. 
• Actor Olivia Munn (“The Newsroom”) is 43. 
• Actor Shoshannah Stern (“Jericho”) is 43. 
• Singer Elle King is 34. 
• Actor Grant Rosenmeyer (TV’s “Oliver Beene”) is 32. 
• Actor Kelsey Batelaan (“Nip/Tuck”) is 28.

✞DEATH ANNIVERSARIES

• In 1965..Trigger, horse (Roy Rogers), dies at 25
• In 1969..Brian Jones, British blues and rock guitarist, organist and sitar player (Rolling Stones, 1962-69), drowns in his swimming pool at 27
• In 1971..Jim Morrison, American singer-songwriter (The Doors) and poet, dies of heart failure allegedly caused by an accidental heroin overdose at 27
• In 1986..Rudy Vallee, American singer (Vagabond Dreams), dies at 84
• In 1989..James "Jim" Backus, Actor (Mr Magoo, Rebel Without a Cause, Gilligan's Island), dies of pneumonia at 76
• In 1993..Don Drysdale, Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher (World Series 1959, 63, 65; 9 x MLB All Star; Cy Young Award 1962; Brooklyn/LA Dodgers), dies of a heart attack at 56
• In 2001..Johnny Russell, American country songwriter (Act Naturally; Let's Fall To Pieces Together), singer and comedian dies of complications from diabetes at 61
• In 2007..(Homer) "Boots" Randolph, American session saxophonist ("Yakety Sax"), dies of a brain hemorrhage at 80
• In 2008..Larry Harmon, American entertainer and TV producer (Bozo the Clown), dies at 83
• In 2012..Andy Griffith, American actor, comedian, television producer, Southern gospel singer, and writer (Andy Griffith Show, Matlock), dies from a heart attack at 86
• In 2019..Arte Johnson, American comedian (Laugh-in, Don't Call Me Charlie), dies at 90