Radio stars (May 1933)

RADIO STARS 0 \ r l " mm * Jane of the Jolly Bill and Jane Hour. Jane's real name is Muriel — Muriel Harbater. She gets one hundred dollars every week for her radio work. And she's saving most of it. Baby Renee Brandeis who appears on the Horn and Hardart children's program. She puts over semi-classical and popular songs in a style quite her own. And very cute it is, too. radio one of the best fields for him — or her — to try By M E her school, her dancing, music and dramatic lessons and the rest goes straight to the bank to save for the time when our little radio artist is a radiant debutante. Home sweet home for Winnie is a house in Flatbush where she lives with her mother, her two sisters, and father. Mr. Toomey is a clerk in a Wall Street brokerage house and there are times, plenty of them, Mrs. Toomey told me, when his daughter piles up more of the so-called filthy lucre than her dear old dad ! Her pal in broadcasts and often outside them is Jimmy McCallion, thirteenyear-old radio actor; the smartest, brightest, nicest kid that ever spoke to you from behind the ether curtain. You hear snappy Jimmy as Bobby Hill, in the Columbia "Junior Bugle" program, every Sunday from 9 to 10. Whenever there's a scheduled in the "Death Valley. Days" broadcast, Jimmy portrays him also. And he is proudly boasting that he was the page boy and the telegram boy with Eddie Cantor recently. Jimmy used to go around saying "Leon Errol is my best friend," but now I noticed he's changed his tune to: "Say, Eddie Cantor remembers me!" In the past you've heard him as Sam in the "Penrod" stories, besides many other either roles. Jimmy tells me he has earned as much as $300 a week, and that his average salary is about $150 weekly. Most of this goes, like Winifred's, for his education and in the bank, and this youngster whose yearly earning capacity is often in four figures, says his allowance is about $1.50, from Sunday to Sunday. Not much more than your Jimmy gets. Mc Callion, Senior, is secretary to a local union for carpenters. Mrs. McCallion is the mother of nine children so she deserves as much applause as her actor son ! Six of them are living, and Jimmy and the family reside on Riverside Drive and 135th Street, New York. THE boy who used to play "Penrod" to Jimmy's "Sam," and many other juvenile roles, and whom you may now hear in the "Lady Next Door," and as Mikey when Mikey is in the Goldberg hour, is Howard Merrill. Howard has earned money since he was one year old. He's never made less than $3.00 a day. He's often made $300 a week. He is sixteen years old. Not so bad, what? Besides his radio activities he edits a magazine and numbers among his five hundred subscribers, he told me, Alfred E. Smith, Lowell Thomas, Albert Payson Terhune and Robert Ripley. Howard's father is in the clothing business and his mother is secretary to Mrs. Berg, the Molly of the Goldberg hour. In fact, Mrs. Merrill is everything. I've been out on the Paramount lot and seen her turn up as an extra, I've been in the radio studios and seen her turn up as a writer. There's more energy and ambition in Mrs. Merrill than in ten other people combined and her son will have to mean the time-old gag about owing it all to mother. One of the best known children on the air is our own Jane of the famous "Jolly Bill and Jane Hour," whom you hear five times a week via NBC, and have been hearing for the last five years. Jane's {Continued on page 48) 9 HARRIET N C K E N boy