{"id":14546,"date":"2016-03-19T00:01:01","date_gmt":"2016-03-19T06:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/?p=14546"},"modified":"2016-03-31T09:03:38","modified_gmt":"2016-03-31T15:03:38","slug":"golden-age-radios-ten-important-part","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/golden-age-radios-ten-important-part\/","title":{"rendered":"The Golden Age of Radio’s Ten Most Important Women, Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"

10) Martha Wilkerson (aka GI Jill)\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

During World War II, many worked to build the morale of soldiers who found themselves in danger thousands of miles from home and none did more than Wilkerson. When the war launched, many programs were made for soldiers, often featuring celebrity hosts. One such program was G.I. Jive.<\/em>\u00a0Early episodes feature such professionals as Frank Nelson and Donna Reed. However, they would be replaced by an unknown who would quickly become known to forces overseas as G.I. Jill. Recorded in Los Angeles, Jill\u2019s warm and friendly voice was a big slice of home to war-weary soldiers. She was the ultimate girl next door. She made the perfect counter to Japanese efforts to undermine morale in the person of Tokyo Rose. With superior records and a winning personality and her recordings of her fifteen-minutes-daily GI Jive show and her half-hour Jill\u2019s All-Time Jukebox<\/em>,\u00a0the axis didn’t have a chance against WIlkerson. Her recordings continue to be beloved by Old Time Radio fans to this day.<\/p>\n

9) Cathy Lewis<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cathy Lewis was a prolific character actress She had recurring roles on programs like Michael Shayne Private Detective\u00a0<\/em>with Wally Maher, My Friend Irma<\/em>, and The<\/em> Great Gildersleeve<\/em>. Perhaps, her most well-known program was the series On Stage<\/em> in which she starred with her then-husband Elliot where she took on a variety of meaty roles. She was invaluable as a character actress, making numerous appearances on anthology programs like Suspense<\/em>, Romance<\/em>, and\u00a0The Whistler<\/em>. With more than 3000 appearances, Cathy Lewis\u2019s place as one of radio\u2019s most important women is well-earned.<\/p>\n

8) Mercedes McCambridge<\/strong><\/p>\n

Orson Welles called her \u201cthe world\u2019s greatest living radio actress.\u201d McCambridge\u00a0was a rare talent. Her big starring role came as radio was in decline.\u00a0 Starting in 1951, \u00a0she starred as a tough and smart female attorney who solved crimes and got justice for her clients.\u00a0 In 1952, she was recognized as radio\u2019s favorite dramatic actress by Radio TV Mirror Magazine.\u00a0 McCambridge frequently appeared on Lights Out <\/em>and also had many appearances on The <\/em>Mercury Summer Theater, the Great Gildersleeve, <\/em>and Inner Sanctum.<\/em><\/p>\n

For my money, the best showcase of her talent was in Studio One,\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>CBS one hour drama showcase produced by her then-husband Fletcher Markle. She began in November 1947 with the lead in Kitty Foyle<\/em>. McCambridge became a regular on Studio One<\/em> returning each week with a new role from an ambitious opera singer to the bored and disgruntled wife of a broken down businessman, McCambridge took all parts, always proof of the old saying that there are no small parts-only small actors, and she was a talented and dedicated actress through and through. Her voice was like none other in radio, a wonderful instrument that\u2019s been keeping fans entertained for decades.<\/p>\n

7) Jeanette Nolan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Her friend True Boardman said Nolan was a remarkable actress who could play any female role from the Queen to a widow to a seductress. Her first major role was on Tarzan in the 1930s. Nolan was best known for her old lady roles.\u00a0Ironically enough,\u00a0Nolan was in her 20s and 30s\u00a0while playing most of these dowager roles.\u00a0She helped to hold some of radio\u2019s great shows\u00a0together. Producer Norm Macdonnell used her as part of a stock company that appeared\u00a0often on Gunsmoke, Fort Laramie<\/em>,and the\u00a0Adventures of Philip Marlowe<\/em>. She also made frequent appearances on Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, Suspense<\/em>, and the Cavalcade of America<\/em>.<\/p>\n

6) Claudia Morgan. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Morgan was the definitive radio Nora Charles. She played the role from 1941-50. What made this remarkable was that the program had seven different runs over four different networks with four different leads. Through it all, she was the indispensable ingredient in this long-running series, maintaining a unique play on Mrs. Charles that was in many ways stronger and more forceful than Myrna Loy\u2019s screen-presentation.\u00a0 Morgan\u2019s portrayal of Mrs. Charles was so good, when NBC decided to start another husband-wife detective show, she was picked to play Mrs. Abbott on The Adventures of the Abbotts. <\/em>The new series ran only one season. Morgan\u00a0played Jean Abbott the whole season while three actors portrayed her husband and official lead Pat. Beyond her most iconic role, Morgan also had a notable role in several radio soap operas, including\u00a0The O’Neills\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<\/em>The Right to Happiness.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10) Martha Wilkerson (aka GI Jill)\u00a0 During World War II, many worked to build the morale of soldiers who found themselves in danger thousands of miles from home and none did more than Wilkerson. When the war launched, many programs were made for soldiers, often featuring celebrity hosts. One such program was G.I. Jive.\u00a0Early episodes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[123],"tags":[893,890,891,892],"class_list":["post-14546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-golden-age-article","tag-radio-actresses","tag-top-ten-list","tag-women","tag-womens-history"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-3MC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14546"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14636,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14546\/revisions\/14636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}