Twenty-year-old Evelyn McHale boarded a train at 7 in the morning in on May 1, 1947. She was headed back home to Tuckahoe, New York after visiting her fiance in Easton, Pennsylvania to celebrate his 24th birthday. When she arrived at Penn Station, she walked to the Empire State Building and purchased a ticket to …
After some modeling work, 22-year old Nora Lane was cast in the silent Western Jesse James in 1927. She went on to co-star in over 80 films throughout her career, including a recurring role in the Hopalong Cassidy serials. Her popularity led to a spokesperson gig for Lux Soap in the early 1930s. In the …
The child of vaudeville performers, Bill Thompson’s destiny was show business. At 21, he started singing and doing voices on The Breakfast Club, a popular national morning radio show originating in Chicago. He developed a slow-speaking, mush-mouth character he dubbed “Mr. Wimple.” Bill would nurture this voice for the rest of his career. In 1936, …
A chance audition for the role of “Joe Hardy” on a serialized version of The Hardy Boys was Tommy Kirk’s ticket to stardom. The show, broadcast as part of the popular Mickey Mouse Club, was the first installment in Tommy’s long, productive and lucrative association with the Walt Disney Company. 1957 saw Tommy star in …
Minnie and Clara Bagelman began their singing career on a New York radio show called “Uncle Norman,” which was geared towards children. This led to the sisters making some recordings for RCA Records in the early 1930s. Their records, which were recorded in Yiddish, had limited appeal and sold mostly to the fans of New …
I loved listening to the radio when I was a kid. As far as I was concerned, there were only two radio stations to listen to in the Philadelphia area — WFIL and WIBG, the AM home of Top 40. Yeah, I knew there were others, but they didn’t play “the hits.” My mom listened …
Just a few years after her father’s death, Mary Koenig took a job as a housekeeper to help support her family. Taking advantage of her connection to employer, the wealthy and influential Harry Payne Whitney, Mary pursued Broadway. Taking the stage name “Mae Murray,” she landed a place in the chorus line of the famed …
Willard Scott, the avuncular weatherman on NBC’s The Today Show passed away this week at the age of 87. He enjoyed a long and productive career in broadcasting, beginning in the 1950s with a live, improvised radio show originating in Washington, DC. At the same time, he worked with local TV station WRC in children’s …
Charlie Watts, the longtime drummer for the venerable Rolling Stones passed away last week at the age of 80. His death prompted an outpouring on social media of love and condolences in the form of memories, stories and anecdotes from a host of renowned peers, like Paul McCartney, Pete Townshend, Elton John and many, many …
Nancy Frankel graduated in 1952 from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and pursued and received a Masters Degree in art education from Columbia University. She explored a variety of mediums, working in tempera paint and graphite as well as bronze, Plexiglas, cut wood and other materials to create three-dimension sculptures. Her abstract works reflected …
