As one of my favorite heart-throb actors, I should probably know more about him. Alas, maybe it's my way to ensuring a long-distance heart-throb won't become an even greater obsession than mere collectorism...



Ronald Colman



His film credits start in 1917, before that voice was even delivered to the audiences, a scant 26-year old.



I found his early '50s American radio series (HALLS OF IVY) where he plays a headmaster of a private school. With wife Benita at the microphone, he did this series in an effort to throw off the yoke of the Studio System. The series is light-hearted, occasionally moralistic ("if you do something wrong, there are consequences") and always filled with That Voice.



The early '50s was an interesting time in Hollywood. A lot of top-drawer actors were fed up with their treatment by studio execs and took a year or two off and maintained their popularity thru radio series instead of movie appearance.



Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall had their sailing adventure series BOLD VENTURE. Frank Sinatra worked on his tough-guy character in ROCKY FORTUNE. Alan Ladd played a burned-out journalist turned wisecracking private eye in BOX 13. Jimmy Stewart was tired of being told he couldn't do Westerns, so he did SIX SHOOTER, and then got Westerns from Hollywood (few of which were nearly as good as his 30-minute SIX SHOOTER episodes).



Colman's radio success of HALLS OF IVY tempted him to try out the newest medium, TV, for a pilot episode of IVY, but apparently it wasn't picked up.



I love most of Colman's films (probably just because of him), however, my some of my favorite Ronald Colman 'work' is his 7 or 8 appearances on The Jack Benny Radio Show. In real life, the Bennys and the Colmans were next-door neighbors in Hollywood. In these radio episodes, they continue that relationship but play up strained neighbor relations, where Colman is perpetually tired of Jack's sucking-up to the famous Oscar-winning Hollywood actor. These gives Colman a chance to play an all-too-rare comedic and wise-cracking role. Too bad Hollywood didn't feature this persona on-screen far more often - it's our loss.



(By the way, all of these radio series ARE in true public domain, are MP3'd and available to all. No steenkin' copyrights bury these works of art from public appreciation.)