The Radio Planet · not who you’d expect
Not Who You’d Expect
An animator playing a mouse. A film director on a quiz panel. A sprinter in the Olympic Village, four days before Berlin.
Nine people the world remembers for everything except radio — caught on a microphone anyway. Every card below plays from a transfer the archive holds; where a voice does not survive in the public domain, it is not here.
9 figures · 18 surviving transfers
Animation studio founder
Walt Disney
Disney had his own network radio series and performed on it himself. The Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air ran on NBC from 2 January to 15 May 1938, sponsored by Pepsodent and staged in the Disney Little Theater on the RKO lot to promote Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with Disney voicing Mickey. He also turned up as a guest on other people's shows, and Hollywood put a whole broadcast around one of his premieres.
Snow White
Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air · 1938 · 29 min
9 January 1938 — the second broadcast of Disney's own series, with Disney as Mickey.
Cinderella
Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air · 1938 · 28 min
27 February 1938 — Mickey takes Minnie, Donald and Goofy through the Magic Mirror to Cinderella's ball.
Guest - Walt Disney
Edgar Bergen and Charlie Mccarthy · 1947 · 30 min
21 September 1947 — Disney as guest of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy on the Chase and Sanborn Hour.
Vox Pop (11-12-1946) (Location - Premiere of 'Song Of The South' at the Fox Theater, Atlanta, Georgia) (Guests - Joel Chandler Harris Jr., Walt Disney, Pinto Colvig, Clarence Nash, Cliff Edwards, Adriana Caselotti)
Vox Pop · 1935 · 29 min
Vox Pop from the Fox Theater in Atlanta for the premiere of Song of the South, with Disney, Pinto Colvig, Clarence Nash, Cliff Edwards and Adriana Caselotti at the microphone.
03 (173) Ken Carpenter, H Von Zell, Tribute to Walt Disney
Command Performance · 1948 · 1h 2m
Armed Forces Radio devotes a Command Performance to the studio, with Ken Carpenter and Harry Von Zell.
Film director
Alfred Hitchcock
Long before he fronted a television series, Hitchcock sat on radio's hardest quiz panel. Information Please put listeners' questions to a standing panel of experts and dared them to be stumped; Hitchcock came on twice in the early forties and answered live, unscripted, in his own flat London voice.
Alfred Hitchcock
Information Please · 1941 · 28 min
27 June 1941 — Hitchcock on the panel.
Alfred Hitchcock
Information Please · 1943 · 28 min
22 January 1943 — a second turn in the chair.
Aviator
Amelia Earhart
A short talk, recorded before the last flight, in which Earhart argues the case for women in aviation. It is one of the very few surviving broadcasts in which she speaks at any length, and the only one held here.
Amelia Earhart - on the Future of Women in Flying
American History Through the Eyes of Radio · 1937 · 2 min
Earhart on the future of women in flying.
Olympic sprinter
Jesse Owens
Deutscher Rundfunk sent a reporter into the Olympic Village on 28 July 1936 and interviewed the American sprinter in English, with a German announcer translating each answer for listeners at home. Owens calls the village one of the seven wonders of the world and describes the American kitchen laid on for the team. Days later he won four gold medals in Hitler's stadium.
Jesse Owens interviewed in the Olympic Village, Berlin
Jesse Owens Berlin 1936 · 1936 · 2 min
28 July 1936, Berlin — recorded before the games began.
Baseball
Babe Ruth
Ruth's voice survives in three quite different registers: the farewell at Yankee Stadium, a Bill Stern sports story built around him, and a full CBS documentary assembled after his death from the recordings and the people who knew him.
Babe Ruth - Farewell to Baseball
American History Through the Eyes of Radio · 1935 · 3 min
Farewell to baseball — Ruth speaking to the Stadium crowd.
eel - 460322 - Babe Ruth
Bill Sterns Sports Newsreel · 1946 · 13 min
22 March 1946 — Bill Stern's Sports Newsreel on Ruth.
'Biography in Sound' Babe Ruth
Biography in Sound · 1946 · 53 min
16 August 1955 — CBS's Biography in Sound, an hour built from actuality recordings.
Baseball
Joe DiMaggio
DiMaggio worked as a comedy guest in the middle of his playing career: straight man to Eddie Cantor in 1941, and the pretext for a whole Abbott and Costello routine in 1942 in which Lou substitutes for him.
It's Time To Smile (20) Guest - Joe DiMaggio
Eddie Cantor · 1941 · 29 min
12 February 1941 — It's Time to Smile, with DiMaggio as guest.
Abbott Costello420511 Lou Subs For Joe DiMaggio
Abbott and Costello · 1942 · 30 min
11 May 1942 — Lou Costello takes DiMaggio's place.
Baseball, and the colour line
Jackie Robinson
Two seasons after breaking baseball's colour line, Robinson appeared on network variety radio with Bob Hope and Yankees pitcher Joe Page for the broadcast that gave radio its first 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game'.
1st 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game' Jackie Robinson, Joe Page (v)
The Bob Hope Program · 1949 · 29 min
11 October 1949 — Robinson and Joe Page with Bob Hope.
Author and campaigner
Helen Keller
Keller appears on Rudy Vallee's Fleischmann's Yeast Hour in a broadcast shared with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. — a deaf-blind woman speaking to a national audience on the most popular variety hour of its day.
The Artist - Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Helen Keller
Fleischmanns Yeast Hour · undated · 59 min
The Artist — with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Helen Keller.
First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt
Mrs Roosevelt had a sponsored commercial radio slot of her own, paid for by the Pan-American Coffee Bureau. The episode held here went out on 7 December 1941 — hours after Pearl Harbor, and the night before her husband asked Congress for a declaration of war.
NBCB Pan-American Coffee Bureau Series episode 11 Eleanor Roosevelt
Radio News 1941 · 1941 · 14 min
7 December 1941 — broadcast the evening of the attack.
NBCR News Carlton Smith Eleanor Roosevelt
Radio News 1940 · 1940 · 13 min
18 July 1940 — NBC news carries Mrs Roosevelt from the Democratic convention.