A People's Intellectual: The Way It Was, 15 May

1904: "YOU SEE MORE IN YOU"---Editor for Simon & Schuster, literary critic and decade-long editor of The New Yorker's book section, accessible by just about anyone thanks to his gentle wit, his lack of pretension, and the manner in which he will display both, as the long-running host of perhaps old-time radio's most genuinely intelligent quiz program, Information Please . . . on which the highbrow and the high laughs were equally at home. (Not for nothing will the show's guest panelists include the like of Fred Allen, Groucho Marx, Jack Haley, and baseball legend/clown Lefty Gomez, to say nothing of regulars John Kieran and Franklin P. Adams.)

Happy 103rd birthday to the man who said . . .

When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before, you see more in you than there was before.

---Clifton Fadiman, whose other radio hosting credits include Conversation and The RCA Magic Key.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

1938: MURDER IN THE LIBRARY---It isn't exactly Col. Mustard with the lead pipe, kiddies---but it's a parodic melodrama, and with this bunch you can just take it from there, happily, on tonight's edition of The Jell-O Program Starring Jack Benny. (NBC.)

Additional cast: Mary Livingstone, Kenny Baker, Don Wilson. Music: Phil Harris and His Orchestra. Writers: George Balzer, Milt Josefsberg, Sam Perrin.

1940: RAH-RAH IN OMAHA---George (Burns) and Gracie (Allen) and her presidential campaign arrive at Omaha's Exarbin Coliseum in advance of the Surprise Party convention
on tonight's edition of The Hinds Honey & Almond Cream Show with George Burns and Gracie Allen. (.)

Additional cast: Truman Bradley, Bubbles Kelly. Music: Ray Noble and the Union Pacific Band, Frank Parker. Writers: George Burns, William Burns, Sid Dorfman, Paul Henning.

1949: FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH---"I don't need any special day to be unlucky," laments Connie (Eve Arden)---whose Friday the Thirteenth made mere "unlucky" resemble a mere spilled drink, on tonight's edition of Our Miss Brooks. (CBS.)

Mrs. Davis: Jane Morgan. Walter: Richard Crenna. Stretch: Leonard Stern. Conklin: Gale Gordon. Boynton: Jeff Chandler. Harriet: Gloria McMillan. Writer: Al Lewis.

1949: THE LITTLE MORNING---Hitchhiking Francis Scott (Ernest Chappell, who also narrates), grateful for a pre-dawn lift, tells his driver about seeing his fiancee again . . . a year to the day after she died in a hill fire that destroyed all adjacent homes, on tonight's edition of Quiet, Please. (ABC.)

Writer/director: Wyllis Cooper.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1890---Menasha Skulnik (actor: The Goldbergs; Abie's Irish Rose), Warsaw.
1905---Joseph Cotten (actor: The Private Files of Matthew Bell; Mercury Theater On the Air), Petersburg, Virginia.
1909---James Mason (actor: The James & Pamela Mason Show; Studio One; The Fred Allen Show), Huddersfield, U.K.
1910---Constance Cummings (actress: Lux Radio Theater), Seattle.
1916---Bill Williams (actor: Eternal Light; Screen Guild Theater; Lux Radio Theater), Brooklyn.
1918---Eddy Arnold (singer, "The Tennessee Plowboy": Checkerboard Square; The Eddy Arnold Show), Henderson, Tennessee; Joseph Wiseman (actor: Crime Does Not Pay), Montreal.
1923---Doris Dowling (actress: Lux Radio Theater), Detroit.
1936---Anna Maria Alberghetti (singer: Here's to Veterans), Pesano, Italy.