Greasy Paint: The Way It Was, 6 August

FEATURED BROADCAST
MY FAVOURITE HUSBAND:
THE PORTRAIT ARTIST
(CBS; AFRS REBROADCAST 1948)

George (Richard Denning) almost doesn't want to know why Liz (Lucille Ball, whose 37th birthday coincides with this airing) is coming to breakfast in a slinky evening gown into which she needs Katie (Ruth Perrot) to paint her . . . appropriately enough, considering she's engaged a portrait artist (possibly Jeff Chandler) to paint them, an engagement she plans rather conveniently to tell him over breakfast, the better to keep up with an upwardly mobile couple.

The Atterburys: Gale Gordon, Bea Benaderet. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Director: Jess Oppenheimer. Writers: Madelyn Pugh, Bob Carroll, Jr.

AIRWAVES . . .

1923: HELLO, WORLD!---We doubt the future mainstay of New York WNEW-AM said precisely his famous sign-on phrase, when the first slap came across the bottom of William Breitbert . . . born today in Babylon, New York but due to become beloved as future Radio Hall of Fame disc jockey William B. Williams.

1945: "MY GOD . . . "---That is said to have been the only journal entry in the co-pilot's log, when the Boeing B-29 Enola Gay drops history's first in-combat atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

CHANNEL SURFING: HIROSHIMA

"SCIENTISTS BRITISH AND AMERICAN . . . " (BBC, 1945)---The BBC reports the bomb drop.

BREAK-INS: APPROACHING THE END (MUTUAL, 1945)---Mutual Broadcasting System delivers several break-ins into a music program to report news from Tokyo via San Francisco that Japan would accept the Potsdam proclamation "soon," in the immediate wake of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

CHANNEL SURFING: THE USUAL . . .

ROMANCE: PAGOSA (CBS, 1951)---Considered a second precursor to what became Gunsmoke (a 1950 installment of Escape, "Wild Jack Rhett," is considered the other), rancher and former peace officer Jeff Spain (future Gunsmoke star William Conrad) rides into Pagosa hoping to file a land claim but finding himself the target of a district attorney's (Will Wright) unwanted offer to become the town's new sheriff . . . and, reluctantly, of the stable's proprietor (future Gunsmoke cast member Georgia Ellis), who blocks his land claim unless he accepts the job. Additional cast: Tony Barrett, Lamont Johnson, Tom Holland, Herb Ellis, Junius Mathews. Narrator: Bill Johnstone. Music: Alexander Courage. Announcer: Roy Rowan. Director: Norman Macdonnell. Writer: John Meston.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1881---Leo Carrillo (actor: Grapevine Rancho; Four Frightened People), Los Angeles; Louella Parsons (as Louella Rose Oettinger; commentator: Hollywood Hotel; Louella Parsons; Texaco Star Theater), Freeport, Illinois.
1886---Billie Burke (as Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke; comedienne: The Billie Burke Show; The Gay Mrs. Featherstone), Washington, D.C.
1892---Victor Rodman (actor: Those We Love), Arkansas.
1894---Jack Kirkwood (actor: Saunders of the Circle X; Hawthorne House), Scotland.
1911---Lucille Ball (comedienne: The Wonder Show with Jack Haley; Pabst Blue Ribbon Town; The Abbott and Costello Show; My Favourite Husband), Jamestown, New York.
1915---Jim Ameche (actor: Jack Armstrong; Silver Eagle), Kenosha, Wisconsin.
1917---Robert Mitchum (actor: Family Theater), Bridgeport, Connecticut.
1921---Ella Raines (actress: Lux Radio Theater), Snoqualmie, Washington.
1922---Jackie Kelk (actor: The Adventures of Superman; The Aldrich Family), Brooklyn.
1925---Barbara Bates (writer: Just Plain Bill; Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons), Denver.