Radio History: July 29

Florence Freeman

➦In 1911...Florence Freeman born (Died  at age 88 – April 25, 2000). She was an actress in old-time radio. She was known as a "soap opera queen" for her work in daytime serial dramas.

Freeman's initial job in radio came in 1933 as the result of a challenge. After a friend dared her "to make good as a radio actress", Freeman applied — and was hired — at WOKO in Albany, NY.  She went on to become a member of the casts of a number of serials in old-time radio, including being "the heroine of not one but two serials that ran more than a decade."

In 1949, Freeman won the "Your Favorite Daytime Serial Actress" award from Radio Mirror magazine.

➦In 1914...Theodore Vail, the president of AT&T, succeeded in transmitting his voice across the continental U.S. in July 1914.  It the first test phone conversation between New York and San Francisco.

Peter Jennings

➦In 1938...Peter Charles Archibald Ewart Jennings born (Died from cancer at age 67 – August 7, 2005). He was a Canadian-American journalist who served as the sole anchor of ABC World News Tonight from 1983 until his death from lung cancer in 2005. Despite dropping out of high school, he transformed himself into one of American television's most prominent journalists.

Jennings started his career early, hosting a Canadian radio show at the age of nine. He began his professional career with CJOH-TV in Ottawa during its early years, anchoring the local newscasts and hosting a teen dance show, Saturday Date, on Saturdays. In 1965, ABC News tapped him to anchor its flagship evening news program. His inexperience was attacked by critics and others in television news, making for a difficult first stint in the anchor chair. Jennings became a foreign correspondent in 1968, reporting from the Middle East.

He returned as one of World News Tonight's three anchors in 1978, and was promoted to sole anchor in 1983. Jennings was also known for his marathon coverage of breaking news stories, staying on the air for 15 or more hours straight to anchor the live broadcast of events such as the Gulf War in 1991, the O.J. Simpson phony phone call and subsequent trial in 1994, the Millennium celebrations in 2000, and the September 11 attacks in 2001. In addition to anchoring, he was the host of many ABC News special reports and moderated several American presidential debates. Jennings was always fascinated with the United States and became a naturalized United States citizen in 2003.

Along with Tom Brokaw of NBC and Dan Rather of CBS, Jennings formed part of the "Big Three" news anchors who dominated American evening network news from the early 1980s until his death in 2005, which closely followed the retirements of Brokaw in 2004 and Rather in 2005.

➦In 1940...the pilot for the radio comedy Duffy’s Tavern aired on CBS. Duffy’s won its own weekly slot the following March, and would continue as a radio staple into 1952.

The program often featured celebrity guest stars but always hooked them around the misadventures, get-rich-quick schemes and romantic missteps of the title establishment's malaprop-prone, metaphor-mixing manager, Archie, portrayed by Ed Gardner, the writer/actor who co-created the series. Gardner had performed the character of Archie, talking about Duffy's Tavern, as early as November 9, 1939, when he appeared on NBC's Good News of 1940

Clint Buehlmann

➦In 1977...Buffalo radio personality Clint Buehlmann aired his final show on WBEN 930 AM. He had been a highly-rated morning personality for about 40 years.

➦In 1995...bandleader Les Elgart died of heart failure at age 76. Elgart’s recording of Bandstand Boogie was adopted by Dick Clark as the theme for American Bandstand. Elgart also had two top-selling albums in the 50’s: The Elgart Touch and For Dancers Also. He often jointly led a band with his brother Larry in the 1950s and 60s.

Tom Snyder

➦In 2007...Talk Show Host and newscaster Tom Snyder died at age 71.

Snyder had loved radio since he was a child and at some point changed his field of study from pre-med to journalism. He once told Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Tim Cuprisin that broadcasting became more important to him than attending classes, and he skipped a lot of them.

Snyder began his career as a radio reporter at WRIT (unrelated to the present-day FM station) in Milwaukee and at WKZO in Kalamazoo (where he was fired by John Fetzer) in the 1950s. For a time he worked at Savannah, Georgia, AM station WSAV (now WBMQ).

After moving to TV in the 1960s, he was a news anchor for KYW-TV in Cleveland (now WKYC-TV) and, after a 1965 station switch, Philadelphia, and WNBC-TV and WABC-TV in New York City.

Snyder WRIT

He talked about driving cross country in an early Corvair from Atlanta to Los Angeles around 1963, where he landed a news job at KTLA, then on to KNBC-TV, also in Los Angeles, where from 1970 to 1974 he was an anchor for the 6 p.m. newscast working with KNBC broadcaster Kelly Lange, who was then a weather reporter before serving as a long-time KNBC news anchor.

Lange later became Snyder's regular substitute guest host on the Tomorrow program, prior to the hiring of co-host Rona Barrett in the program's last year. Even after attaining fame as host of Tomorrow, Snyder kept his hand in news anchoring with the Sunday broadcasts of NBC Nightly News during 1975 and 1976.

Ken Burns is 71

🎂HAPPY BIRTHDAYS:

• Actor Robert Fuller (“Laramie,” ″Emergency!”) is 91. 
• Actor Roz Kelly (“Happy Days”) is 82. 
• Keyboardist Neal Doughty of REO Speedwagon is 78. 
• Actor Mike Starr (“Ed,” ″Goodfellas”) is 74. 
• Documentary maker Ken Burns is 71. 
• TV personality Tim Gunn (“Project Runway”) is 71. 
• Singer-bassist Geddy Lee of Rush is 71. 
• Singer Patti Scialfa of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band is 71. 
• Actor Alexandra Paul (“Baywatch”) is 61. 
• Actor Dean Haglund (“The X Files”) is 59. 
• Country singer Martina McBride is 58. 
• Drummer Chris Gorman of Belly is 57. 
• Actor Tim Omundson (“Psych”) is 55. 
• Actor Ato Essandoh (film’s “Django Unchained,” TV’s “Elementary”) is 52. 
• Actor Wil Wheaton (“Star Trek: The Next Generation,” “Stand By Me”) is 52. 
• Actor Stephen Dorff is 51. 
• Singer Wanya Morris of Boyz II Men is 51. 
• Country singer James Otto is 51. 
• Actor Josh Radnor (“How I Met Your Mother”) is 50. 
• Musician Danger Mouse is 47. 
• Actor Rachel Miner (“Supernatural”) is 44. 
• Actor Allison Mack (“Smallville”) is 42. 
• Actor Kaitlyn Black (“Hart of Dixie”) is 41. 
• Actor Cait Fairbanks (“The Young and the Restless”) is 31.

✞REMEMBBRANCES

• In 1890..Vincent van Gogh, Dutch artist, painter and pioneer of Expressionism (The Potato Eaters, Irises, Sunflowers), dies 2 days after shooting himself at 37
• In 1974.."Mama" Cass Elliot, American rock vocalist (Mamas & The Papas - "California Dreaming"), dies from a heart attack in London at 32
• In 1983..David Niven, British actor (Around the World in 80 Days, Rugues), dies in Switzerland of Lou Gehrig's disease at 73
• In 1983..Raymond Massey, Canadian actor (Abe Lincoln In Illinois; Dr; Kildare (TV series)), dies of pneumonia at 86
• In 1984..Fred Waring, American bandleader, conductor, and Waring Blender namesake, dies at 84
• In 1986..Gordon Mills, British songwriter (Tom Jones - "It's Not Unusual"), dies of cancer at 51
• In 1988..Pete Drake, American pedal steel guitarist and producer, dies at 55
• In 2005...Hildegarde [Sell], American cabaret vocalist (“Leave It To The Girls"; "Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup"), dies at 99
• In 2005..Pat McCormick, American comedy writer (Red Skeleton; Get Smart; The Tonight Show; Don Rickles Show), and actor (Smokey and the Bandit), dies at 78
• In 2007..Tom Snyder, American television and radio interviewer (Tomorrow, 1973-82; The Late Late Show, 1995-99), and news anchor (NBC Weekend News; WABC), dies of complications from leukemia at 71