Radio Career
Before appearing in television, Rayburn was a very successful actor and radio performer. He had a popular morning drive time radio show in New York, first with Jack Lescoulie (Anything Goes) and later with Dee Finch (Rayburn & Finch) on WNEW (now WBBR). Radio history pegs Rayburn's pairings with Lescoulie and Finch as the first two-man teams in morning radio. When Rayburn left WNEW, Dee Finch continued the format with Gene Klavan.
Rayburn later landed the lead in the Broadway musical Bye Bye Birdie when Dick Van Dyke left the production to star in his eponymous classic sitcom.
Read more about this topic: Gene Rayburn
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