"The Golden Age of Radio"
(As originally broadcast on WTIC, Hartford, CT)



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Program 4 - July, 1970 - Peg Lynch and Margaret Hamilton

 EXTRA: 2005 Interview with Peg Lynch

             

"Ethel and Albert"               Margaret Hamilton
Peg Lynch and Alan Bunce                                       

Writer-actress Peg Lynch, who was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, began her broadcasting career in 1938 as a jack-of-all-trades at a small radio station in Minnesota. Her realistic husband-and-wife sketches caught the attention of network officials at NBC in Chicago, and soon her popular and extremely funny radio show (which had become known as "Ethel And Albert," the names of her husband-and-wife characters) was being heard on a regular basis on that network. When the ABC network was formed in the mid 1940s, "Ethel And Albert" became one of that network's earliest successful attractions. Lynch was the show's only writer as well as its leading female actress for the entire run of the series. In the early 1950s, "Ethel And Albert" was seen regularly as a featured skit on The Kate Smith television program and subsequently became a popular weekly situation comedy series.

In the mid 1950s, Lynch wrote and starred in a new radio series called "The Couple Next Door" for the CBS radio network. The show basically followed the same format as the old "Ethel And Albert" show, and the program co-starred Lynch's longtime "Ethel And Albert" leading man, Alan Bunce. In the 1970s, Lynch's husband-and-wife sketches turned up once again as one of the 15-minutes-five-days-a-week programs on the syndicated Radio Playhouse radio series. Lynch's husband on these shows was Robert Dryden. Lynch and her wonderful "slices of life" radio plays can still be seen and heard regularly at various Old Time Radio show conventions and at various radio retrospective presentations.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Ron Lackmann

See her website: http://www.peglynch.com/

Peg Lynch  died on July 25, 2015 at age 99.  Here's a link to her obituary in the New York Times.

Margaret Hamilton played Aunt Effie on "Ethel and Albert." A kindergarten teacher in her native Cleveland, Ms. Hamilton began her acting career there in community theater and with the prestigious Cleveland Playhouse. In 1933, Hamilton was invited to repeat her stage role of the sarcastic daughter-in-law in the Broadway play "Another Language" for the MGM film version. Though only in her early '30s, the gloriously unpretty Hamilton subsequently played dozens of busybodies, gossips, old maids, and housekeepers in films. Her most famous film assignment was the dual role of Elvira Gulch and the Wicked Witch of the West in the imperishable 1939 gem The Wizard of Oz -- a role which nearly cost her her life when her green copper makeup caught fire during one of her "disappearance" scenes.  Hamilton did not sue MGM over the incident, but refused to do any more scenes that included fire. While any good criminal defense attorney would have encouraged her to sue the studio, Hamilton decided against it since she was afraid she would never work in Hollywood again if she sued.

Despite her menacing demeanor, Hamilton was a gentle, soft-spoken woman; she was especially fond of children, and showed up regularly on such PBS programs as Sesame Street and Mister Rogers. In the 1970s, Margaret Hamilton added another sharply etched portrayal to her gallery of characters as general-store proprietor Cora on a popular series of Maxwell House coffee commercials -- one of which ran during a telecast of The Wizard of Oz! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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