Blondie

   

Created by Chic Young, comic strip characters Blondie & Dagwood have been published in 2500 newspapers, since September 08, 1930. In 1939, "Blondie," the radio program, was born & had a very long run (1939-1950) on several different radio networks.

George Burns and Gracie Allen began their act as a "Dumb Dora bit", but they did not invent the term. Dumb Dora, meaning a scatter-brained and foolish young woman, often a "flapper", entered the popular lexicon when cartoonist Chic Young created the Dumb Dora comic strip in 1924 (of course, Dora "wasn't as dumb as she looked"). 

After six years drawing the strip, newly married Young asked King Features for more money and ownership of the character. Still reeling from the recent Wall Street Crash, King turned him down. Young then created a new character (again, for King Features, but with a more specific contract) named Blondie Boopadoop, another flapper. Flapper culture arose as a product of the Jazz Age following the Great War. They were brash young women who enjoyed the freedom of Jazz, newly available automobiles, and ready access to bootleg liquor.
When she first appeared in 1930, Miss Boopadoop was even more scatterbrained than Dora had been, which may have helped her to attract several boyfriends. As popular as she was with the young men in her world, Blondie gave her heart to railroad heir Dagwood Bumstead. Dagwood's dad, J. Bolling Bumstead, refused to give his blessing to the match until the heart-struck youth went on a month and a half long hunger strike. The old man finally gave his blessing, but because he would marry "beneath his class", Dagwood was cut off from the Bumstead fortune. Dagwood and Blondie finally tied the knot on February 17, 1933.
When she wed, Blondie became a more no-nonsense housewife and the strip began to focus on Dagwood's misadventures. Although not as zany as the schemes of later Sitcom Dads, the Bumstead's were a highly identifiable couple dealing with a demanding boss, nosey neighbors, bills, and building the perfect sandwich. Hollywood noticed the strip's popularity and beginning with Blondie (1938, Columbia Pictures) a series of 28 low-budget films with Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake playing the couple.

After the first film came out, Singleton and Lake brought their roles to the December 20, 1939 episode of The Pepsodent Show Starring Bob Hope. The radio version of the characters was enough of a hit that they got their own show. Blondie first appeared on CBS Radio as a 1939 summer replacement for sponsored by Camel Cigarettes.

With the release of Beware of Blondie (1950, King Features), the 28th film in the series, everyone involved with the series seemed to agree that enough was enough. Penny Singleton had left the radio series in the spring of 1949, replaced by Ann Rutherford. The series ended in July 1950 after more than 400 episodes. Chic Young remained with the strip until his passing in 1973. Since then, the head writer of the strip has been Chic's son, Dean Young.

Throughout its broadcast years,"Blondie" was sponsored by many companies, including: Colgate-Palmolive Soap, Pepsodent Toothpaste & Camel Cigarettes.

In its final season, the series was on ABC as a sustaining program from October 6, 1949, to July 6, 1950, first airing Thursdays at 8 p.m. and then (from May) 8:30 p.m. The radio show ended the same year as the Blondie film series.

Arthur Lake would later return to the role of Dagwood in the 1957 television series Blondie opposite Pamela Britton as Blondie.

John Lund

One of six children of an immigrant Norwegian glassblower, John Lund had a rather unstable childhood. He left school at the age of 14. For a while, he tried his hand at various part-time jobs, but never stayed long. He then devised several entrepreneurial ways to generate income, including a smoking cessation program (a fairly novel idea at the time) and a mail-order manual on mind reading. Unsurprisingly, none of these ventures were successful. In improvisation, Lund landed a small role in a local Rochester production of Clifford Odets' play "Waiting for Lefty." From there he moved on to work in summer stocks, eventually heading to New York and landing another small theater role while working at the 1939 World's Fair. For the next two years, still restless, Lund alternated jobs in advertising with acting and writing for radio.

Lund's first film had him as star To Each His Own (1946) with Olivia de Havilland for Paramount, in which he played dual roles. It was written and produced by Charles Brackett and was critically and commercially successful.

Paramount cast Lund as Betty Hutton's leading man in The Perils of Pauline (1947). He was one of many Paramount stars who made cameos in Variety Girl (1947). In the Billy Wilder film A Foreign Affair (1948), Lund was a romantic lead for Marlene Dietrich and Jean Arthur.

Lund left Paramount for Universal, where he was Ann Sheridan's leading man in Steel Town (1952), replacing Jeff Chandler.

He co-starred with Chandler in The Battle at Apache Pass (1952) and Scott Brady in Bronco Buster (1952) then was reunited with Sheridan in Just Across the Street (1952).

Lund had the title role in the serial Chaplain Jim on the Blue Network in the early 1940s. Lund also played Johnny Dollar in the radio show Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, taking over from 1952 until 1954.

Lund was married to Marie Charton, who was an actress and a model. Lund retired from acting in 1962 to his home in Coldwater Canyon. He died from a heart attack in 1992.

Edmond O'Brien

Edmond O'Brien (September 10, 1915 – May 9, 1985) was an American actor, winner of an Academy Award in the category of best supporting actor.

Born in New York, he became interested in the world of acting in a very early childhood. He was helped in this by his neighbor, the famous magician Harry Houdini. He abandoned his studies at Fordham University to pursue acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater thanks to a scholarship. At the same time he worked as a bank clerk until embarking on the world of acting in Broadway companies until in 1937 he joined Orson Welles' Mercury Theater and performed regularly on radio programs and in the theater, also in radio shows, among them, YOURS TRULY, JOHNNY DOLLAR.

O'Brien made his film debut in 1938 in supporting roles and gradually made a name for himself in the world of Hollywood. The Hunchback of Our Lady of Paris (1939), by William Dieterle, and The Killers or Outlaws (1946), by Robert Siodmak, are among the best of this first stage as an actor. At that time, he married the actress Nancy Kelly in 1941 (a marriage that only lasted one year) and later with Olga San Juan, with whom he would have a daughter, Maria O'Brien, who would also dedicate herself to the world of acting. 

In the 1950s, he would stand out in numerous works. Above all of them, the interpretation of a dying man who desperately searches for his murderer in his last hours of life in With the Counted Hours (1950), an excellent and powerful thriller by Rudolph Maté. But he would have others like Red Hot (1949), The Man Who Killed Liberty Valance (1962), The Man from Alcatraz (1962), The Longest Day (1962) or The Wild Bunch (1969).

He would win an Oscar for best supporting actor for his role in The Barefoot Contessa (1954) and was nominated a second time for his participation in Seven Days in May (1964).

O'Brien would die in Inglewood, California from Alzheimer's disease and was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City. The actor has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 1725 Vine Street and 6523 Hollywood Boulevard.

Charles Russell

Charles Russell was born on March 31, 1918 and  was a movie and radio actor who appeared in 17 movies between 1943 and 1950. He was also a television producer who worked in Hollywood and Australia.

He played Johnny Dollar on CBS Radio from 1949 to 1950 until Edmond O'Brien replaced him to become the second actor to portray the insurance investigator.

Born in New York City, Russell made his debut as a ball player in Ladies' Day (1943). His last film was Chinatown at Midnight (1949). 

Russell married fellow 20th Century-Fox contract player Nancy Guild in 1947, and they had one child, a daughter, Elizabeth, in 1949. They divorced in 1950.
He moved into television producing working on shows such as The Untouchables and Naked City.

He worked for a number of years in Australia at the ABC. John Cameron, head of drama at the ABC in the 1970s, said Ryssell "was a man of great talents, who had developed a drinking problem to help him cope with the pressures of Network American television. He was winning his battle, but still had bad spells. He gave the ABC a great shot in the arm, and built a degree of professionalism in its drama filming that continued to pay dividends long after he returned to America."Russell died in Beverly Hills, California, on January 18, 1985.

Yours truly, Johnny Dollar

The opening is familiar among fans of Old Time Radio: "the man with the action-packed expense account...America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator." And if we still weren't sure, he always told us himself: "Yours truly, Johnny Dollar."

Opening on a Friday night, February 18, 1949 (The Paricoff Policy Matter), right at the start of television's golden age, this radio show brought us a high-powered insurance investigator who worked chiefly for the Universal Adjustment Bureau, a clearinghouse for the many insurance companies. The series starred Charles Russell as Johnny Dollar, the smart and tough detective, whose trademark it was to toss silver dollars as tips to busboys and bellhops.
Appearing on CBS Radio, Johnny Dollar was heard each week flying off to a different town filled with danger and possibly murder as he tried to get to the bottom of insurance fraud. There were rarely any recurring characters except Dollar; despite sometimes romance and friends, the character was generally a loner. These early episodes, however, tended to be flat and the character of Dollar too dry. So at the start of the 1950 season, Charles Russell was out and veteran film actor Edmund O'Brien stepped in as the second Johnny Dollar. The series during the O'Brien years improved with scripts by expert crime writer such as E. Jack Neumann, John Michael Hayes, Sidney Marshall and Blake Edwards. The character took on the stereotype of the American detective developed by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Dollar was more hardboiled; his softer side rarely appeared. O'Brien left in 1952 and John Lund became Dollar number three. With Lund in the role, the character as developed by O'Brien remained.

In 1955, radio actor Bob Bailey, fresh from his long run as George Valentine in LET GEORGE DO IT, stepped into the role as the fourth Johnny Dollar (there was an audition show with Dick Powell in 1948 that is not counted). It was with Bailey that the series really blossomed. Changing to a 15-minute format five times a week, and under the sharp eye of the new producer/director, Jack Johnstone, the scripts got much deeper into characterization and plot. And Bailey's depiction of Dollar had shades of a gritty street fighter, yet bright and sensitive. With a strong cast (many of the same veteran radio actors appearing in different roles) and excellent directing, the portrayals were much more real. And exciting; listen to such serials as "The Open Town Matter" or "The MacCormack Matter." Even while radio drama was already declining, this was radio acting at its best. The sound effects, some of which were canned, fit into the scripts so well as to produce some very exciting adventure/mystery.

But doing a daily show live was taxing, so by the end of 1956, the series reverted to thirty minute, once-a-week episodes. But the power of the show continued, due a lot to the continued presence of both Bailey and Johnstone. Gradually, however, toward the end of the 1950's, the show began to sound tired - some of the scripts were weak and even Bailey did not always seem excited.

Bailey left the show when it moved to New York production studios and initially Bob Readick filled Johnny Dollar's shows. However, that was only a transistion that lasted six months. In June, 1961, Mandel Kramer came to the role. He was perhaps the second best of the Dollar portrayals. Kramer's Dollar displayed more cynical humor than Bailey's. Johnny Dollar remained sensitive yet tough and with Jack Johnstone continuing as producer, the series remained poignant right up to its demise.

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar has the distinction of being the last dramatic radio series from the golden age of radio. As with the close of Suspense, radio drama sounded its death throes. Among many old time radio fans, Johnny Dollar is usually viewed as the division between original radio drama and the resurgence of nostalgia which began in the seventies.

Lou Costello

Louis Francis Cristillo (Paterson, New Jersey, March 6, 1906 - Los Angeles, California, March 3, 1959), known simply as Lou Costello, was a renowned American comedian. He formed the popular comedy duo Abbott and Costello in the 1940s with Bud Abbott.

Costello moved to Hollywood in the early 1930s and after working in different jobs, he was hired by the Metro Goldwyn Mayer company to work as a stuntman, becoming Tim McCoy's double.

After working as a stuntman in sixty films, Cristillo began to gain weight, which is why he lost his job at Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Deciding to change course, he changed his name to Lou Costello, beginning his career as a comedian at Music Hall until meeting Bud Abbott in 1936.

Together with Bud Abbott he formed the comic duo Abbott and Costello, one of the most famous couples in Hollywood comedy, where he was the soul of said couple, playing a fearful and somewhat ridiculous chubby man who kept being used by his counterpart. It was enormously popular in the United States and also in Latin America. In Spain, even though it enjoyed great success, it never reached the majority of the public's tastes. The peculiar duo that he formed with Bud Abbott gave rise to counterparts such as the duo later starring Jerry Lewis (Joseph Levitch) and Dean Martin.

After her separation from Bud Abbott, he began his solo career, demonstrating dramatic aptitudes, but in this new facet he was only able to shoot one film because death suddenly surprised him on March 3, 1959, dying from a heart attack a few days after filming ended. .
Years later, in 1967, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera produced a series of cartoons based on their characters, in the style of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

Abbott and Costello

The Abbott and Costello Show was an American television comedy starring the comedy duo Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, which premiered on December 1, 1952 in the United States.
Lou Costello was the creator of the show along with Bud Abbott. The show was not a network program when it was first introduced, but was sold in MCA Inc. syndication to about 40 local stations around the country. As a result, it aired on different days and at different times in different cities. In New York, it first appeared on the CBS affiliate, WCBS, on December 5, 1952 but did not go national on that network. (The 1953-54 season was broadcast locally on WNBT, as New York's NBC flagship station was then known). 

However, the episodes of the first season were repeated as part of the CBS program "Saturday Morning" during the 1954-1955 season.

The comedy revolves around the adventures of two likeable unemployed people: the cunning Bud Abbott and the naive Lou Costello, who live in an apartment rented by a grumpy Sidney Fields, since they almost never pay him rent. On the other hand, both Abbott and Costello often get into trouble with beautiful women and, from time to time, they are accompanied by Hillary, their neighbor. In addition, Costello also has problems with Stinky, a very mischievous young man dressed in a sailor suit (played by Joe Besser), and Mike, a police officer who always ends up losing his patience with Costello, and then hits him with his club.