Programs
Columbia Square became home to some of the best-known comedies of radio's golden age. Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, Edgar Bergen, Red Skelton, Eve Arden "(Our Miss Brooks)," "Blondie," Jack Oakie and Steve Allen sparked to the airways from the Square.
Dramas included "Suspense," "Gunsmoke," "Dr. Christian," "The Whistler," "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar," "The CBS Radio Workshop" (author Aldous Huxley introduced a production of "Brave New World") and "Columbia Presents Corwin" (dramas produced by Norman Corwin.)
Musical acts performing at Columbia Square included Eddie Cantor, Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby and Gene Autry. Composer Bernard Hermann frequently scored and conducted Columbia Square broadcasts. Through the facilities of KNX, the Columbia network broadcast big band music from nearby ballrooms including the Hollywood Palladium and the Earl Caroll Theater.
In the late 1940's and early 1950's Columbia Square also served as a CBS television facility. In 1948 the first West Coast based variety program, The Ed Wynn Show, was produced on Stage A. Lucille Ball's first national TV appearance took place on The Ed Wynn Show in December of 1949 (aired on the East Coast just after New Year's). Within the year Stage A would be the location of the shooting of the pilot episode of I Love Lucy.
In the 2005 KNX broadcast, "A Salute to Columbia Square," announcer George Walsh recalled crowds jamming the Square's forecourt for tickets to live broadcasts. (Ushers would sometimes walk down Sunset Blvd. to NBC's studios at Vine Street to urge audience members to watch a Columbia Square broadcast instead.) After their on-air appearances, actors would dash to the Radio Actors Telephone Exchange in the Square's lobby to check with their agents about their next bookings.
Bob Crane was a top-rated KNX deejay at Columbia Square in the 1960s. James Dean was an usher. Some of the Square's once-luxurious radio theaters were converted to recording studios for Columbia Records where Bob Dylan and Barbra Streisand, among many top stars, recorded albums.
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Famous quotes containing the word programs:
“We attempt to remember our collective American childhood, the way it was, but what we often remember is a combination of real past, pieces reshaped by bitterness and love, and, of course, the video past—the portrayals of family life on such television programs as “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” and all the rest.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)
“[The Republicans] offer ... a detailed agenda for national renewal.... [On] reducing illegitimacy ... the state will use ... funds for programs to reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies, to promote adoption, to establish and operate children’s group homes, to establish and operate residential group homes for unwed mothers, or for any purpose the state deems appropriate. None of the taxpayer funds may be used for abortion services or abortion counseling.”
—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)