Early Life and Radio Career
Moore was born Thomas Garrison Morfit on January 31, 1915, in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Mason P. Morfit and Mary L. (née Harris) Morfit. He attended Baltimore City College, but dropped out to pursue a career in radio and writing. Starting in 1937, he worked for Baltimore radio station WBAL as an announcer, writer, and actor/comedian. He used his birth name until 1940, when, while on the air announcing Club Matinee hosted by Ransom Sherman at NBC, Chicago, Sherman held a radio contest to find a more easily pronounceable one. "Garry Moore" was the winning entry, which was submitted by a woman from Pittsburgh who received a prize of $100. It was on Club Matinee where he met his long-time friend and broadcasting partner Durward Kirby. In the years that followed, Moore appeared on numerous network radio shows. He started out as an announcer and then as support for broadcast personalities, one of whom was Jimmy Durante. From 1943–1947, Durante and Moore had a joint show, with Moore as the straight man. Impressed with his ability to interact with audiences, CBS offered him his own show. Starting in 1949, the one-hour daytime variety show The Garry Moore Show aired on CBS. Moore briefly returned to radio as host of NBC's "Monitor" in 1969.
Read more about this topic: Garry Moore
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life, radio and/or career:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“There are in life such confluences of circumstances that render the reproach that we are not Voltaires most inopportune.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Denouement to denouement, he took a personal pride in the
certain, certain way he lived his own, private life,
but nevertheless, they shut off his gas; nevertheless,
the bank foreclosed; nevertheless, the landlord called;
nevertheless, the radio broke,
And twelve o’clock arrived just once too often,”
—Kenneth Fearing (1902–1961)
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)