The 1940s Radio Hour

On a snowy night in December 1942, members of “The Mutual Manhattan Variety Cavalcade” have gathered for the weekly live radio broadcast from the Algonquin Room at the Hotel Astor in New York City. They are people who have jobs by day but come into the WOV studio at night and have a chance at stardom. Complete with an eleven-piece orchestra, The 1940s Radio Hour is a slice of the 1940s — the whole panoply of radio, complete with studio characters, commercials fondly remembered, the sound effects man, crises, and “applause” signs lighting up at key moments. It is, in sum, a musical variety show, like hundreds that flourished during radio’s golden age, an hour-long network show beamed by short wave to the boys across the seas. And of course there is entertainment, including tap dance and jitterbug and such period songs as “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” “Blues in the Night,” “Tuxedo Junction,” “Blue Moon,” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “Top Hat,” and “You’re Driving Me Crazy.”