67 Quotes by John Dunning

  • Author John Dunning
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    It resumed after the war. Corwin opened it Feb. 2, 1946, with Homecoming, a bittersweet slice of life about a GI who comes home to the farm.

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  • Author John Dunning
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    Baker interviewed the elderly from all walks of life. Subjects were all at least 70 years old, and most were happy to tell of life in simpler times. There were veterans of the war with Spain, oldtime reporters from newspapers of the 1880s, people who were young when the century turned.

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  • Author John Dunning
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    Parsons was known for ruthlessness and a long memory. The biggest celebrities in America came when “invited,” with Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, and Greta Garbo among the few to ignore Parsons’s call. In truth, those who worked Hollywood Hotel usually prospered. Their films became box office hits, their personal fame was enhanced, and all for an hour’s work. But many found it demeaning.

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  • Author John Dunning
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    This much is certain. In April 1930, Radio Station WGHP in Detroit was purchased by John King and George W. Trendle, partners who had just liquidated a chain of movie theaters. They planned to make the station “the last word in radio,” and soon changed the call letters to WXYZ, to reflect this motto.

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  • Author John Dunning
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    Irene Rich had been a notable star of the silent screen in the 1920s, playing opposite Will Rogers, Dustin Farnum, and Wallace Beery. But a disagreement with Warner Brothers sent her into a new career – radio! By her own account, it was an inspiration: at “three o’clock in the morning I took a plane for New York, and the next day I presented myself at the National Broadcasting studios.” Irene Rich Dramas, which ran for more than a decade in various forms, was the result.

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  • Author John Dunning
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    Hawk Larabee was radio’s first half-hearted attempt at an adult western drama, a concept that was not fully realized until the arrival of Gunsmoke five years later.

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  • Author John Dunning
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    Sinatra’s final radio days were filled with minor quarter-hours and one full-length series in which he was relegated to the role of a disc jockey. By 1950 people were writing his professional obituary. His public image had taken a beating, his personal life a succession of wives, scrapes, and alleged friendships with gangsters. It would take a 1953 film, From Here to Eternity, and a subsequent acting career to save him.

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  • Author John Dunning
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    The NBC University Theater combined superb drama with college credit. Its productions were fully the equal of any commercial radio series and better than most, though it got stuck with the “education” stigma early in its run and never attained much more than its targeted academically motivated audience.

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  • Author John Dunning
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    After these walk-ons, she would banter with announcer Ken Niles and perhaps indulge in more stargazing. In her memoir, radio actress Mary Jane Higby recalls working the show. The “underpaid radio actors” soon took to calling themselves “the Gay Ad-Libbers.” They “would circle the microphone, trying to simulate people having a marvelous time. ‘What fun to be here!’ they would cry. ‘My, doesn’t Myrna Loy look gorgeous! Whoops, there’s Bette Davis!

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