"This Is A Moment I Want To Share With Me": The Way It Was, 10 May

1940---It may not be her first, but it will hold up as one of her best old-time radio appearances: film legend Marlene Dietrich ponders some "fatherly" career advice---including how less often she'll get clobbered on the air than on the screen ("Come into radio . . . In radio, there is no violence or rough stuff . . . you can get beaten up and kicked around in radio and not even feel it") from a certain ad-libbing satirist who shoos his boy tenor and his second bananette to one side to savour the interlude alone.

That'll teach him.

Dietrich wrings a laugh at said advisor's expense, when he tries to convince her to play in the radio soap Brave Betty Birnbaum. But she joins seriously enough with said advisor and the Texaco Workshop Players (nee the Mighty Allen Art Players) in a Yukon satire, "The Courting of Nasty and Nell."

Additional highlights include a ribbing of Jack Benny's earlier program; a "March of Trivia" review of sugar rationing; and, Fordham University undergraduate Donald Regan, voted most talented undergraduate by his campus peers in a sponsor's promotion

All of which you'll hear on tonight's edition of Texaco Star Theater Starring Fred Allen. (CBS.)

Cast: Kenny Baker, Portland Hoffa, Minerva Pious, Alan Reed, Jimmy Wallington. Music: Al Goodman and His Orchestra. Writers: Fred Allen, Roland Fibbee, Nat Hiken, possibly Herman Wouk.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

1945: HOLIDAY---A couple (Norman Field, Bea Benaderet) don't want their children to suspect their family cruise is more than just a vacation, despite the father's anxiety over the Chinese production project that's the real impetus behind the journey, on tonight's edition of Arch Oboler's Plays. (Mutual.)

Additional cast: Bill Christy, Rhoda Williams, Lou Merrill, Irene Tedrow, Joseph Granby, Mary Jane Croft, Raymond Severn, Bruce Elliott. Writer/director: Arch Oboler.

1948: THERE ARE SHADOWS HERE---A man (Ernest Chappell, who also narrates) can't remember the name or look of a woman seeking him at his regular bar, and with good enough reason: no one sees her except in shadow, on tonight's edition of Quiet, Please. (Mutual.)

Esther: Aline Sparrow. Paddy: Ed Lattimer. The Unnamed Writer: Sid Cassell. Frankie: Frank Thomas. Writer/director: Wyllis Cooper.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1888---Max Steiner (composer: Lux Radio Theater), Vienna.
1894---Frank Knight (actor/announcer: Arabesque; Literary Digest), St. John's, Newfoundland; Dmitri Tiomkin (composer/conductor: Last Man Out; 1947 March of Dimes Campaign), St. Petersburg, Russia.
1899---Fred Astaire (actor/dancer: The Fred Astaire Show), Omaha, Nebraska; Lois Holmes (actress: The Second Mrs. Burton), Galion, Ohio.
1909---Maybelle Carter (singer/guitarist/autoharpist, with the Carter Family: Grand Ole Opry), Nickelsville, Virginia.
1911---Lee Sullivan (singer: Serenade to America), New York City.
1914---Charles McGraw (actor: A Man Called X; Dragnet; Suspense), New York City.
1917---Margo (as María Marguerita Guadalupe Boldao y Castilla O'Donnell; actress: Suspense; Free Company), Mexico City.
1917---Nancy Walker (actress: Mail Call), Philadelphia.
1922---Mary Small (singer: Little Miss Bab-O's Surprise Party), Baltimore.