Blondie

Blondie is a radio situation comedy adapted from the long-run Blondie comic strip by Chic Young. The radio program had a long run on several networks from 1939 to 1950.


After Penny Singleton was cast in the title role of the feature film Blondie (1938), co-starring with Arthur Lake as Dagwood (the first in a series of 28 produced by Columbia Pictures); she and Lake repeated their roles December 20, 1938, on The Pepsodent Show starring Bob Hope. The appearance with Hope led to their own show, beginning July 3, 1939, on CBS as a summer replacement for The Eddie Cantor Show. However, Cantor did not return in the fall, so the sponsor, R.J. Reynolds' Camel Cigarettes chose to keep Blondie on the air Mondays at 7:30pm. Camel remained the sponsor through the early WWII years until June 26, 1944.

In 1944, Blondie was on the NBC Blue Network, sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive's Super Suds, airing Fridays at 7pm from July 21 to September 1. The final three weeks of that run overlapped with Blondie's return to CBS on Sundays at 8pm from August 13, 1944, to September 26, 1948, still sponsored by Super Suds. Beginning in mid-1945, the 30-minute program was heard Mondays at 7:30pm. Super Suds continued as the sponsor when the show moved to NBC on Wednesdays at 8pm from October 6, 1948, to June 29, 1949.


When Penny Singleton left the radio series in the mid-1940s, Patricia Lake, the former Patricia Van Cleeve, replaced her as the voice of Blondie for the remaining five years of the show, opposite her real-life husband Arthur Lake. Ann Rutherford and Alice White were also heard as radio's Blondie. In 1954,  Lake also co-starred with her husband in an early television sitcom he created called Meet the Family.

Others in the cast: Leone Ledoux (Alexander and Cookie Bumstead), Tommy Cook (Alexander as of May 1943), Larry Sims (Alexander as of Summer 1946), Jeffrey Silver (Alexander by 1949), Marlene Aames (Cookie by 1946), Norma Jean Nilsson (Cookie in 1947), Joan Rae (Cookie after 1947), Hanley Stafford (J.C. Dithers), Elvia Allman (Mrs. Dithers), Frank Nelson and Harold Peary (Herb Woodley), Arthur Q. Bryan and Harry Lang (Mr. Fuddle), Dix Davis (Alvin Fuddle), Mary Jane Croft (Harriet), Veola Vonn and Lurene Tuttle (Dimples Wilson). Harry Lubin, Billy Artz and Lou Kosloff supplied the music.