The Cuckoo Hour
Encyclopedia
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
radio series created in 1929 by radio comedian Raymond Knight
Raymond Knight (radio)
Raymond Knight was an actor, comedian and comedy writer, best known as a pioneer in satirical humor for network radio....
.
Knight, a pioneer in satirical humor on the radio, studied law at Boston University and passed the Massachusetts bar, but he returned to school to study theater and writing at Harvard's 47 Workshop, followed by more studies at Yale. In 1927, he performed in the Broadway musical revue The Manhatters.
He was writing continuity and commercials for NBC in 1929, when NBC programmer Bertha Brainard
Bertha Brainard
Bertha Brainard , known to her friends as Betty, was a pioneering NBC executive responsible for setting trends in network broadcasting....
asked him to devise "something cuckoo" for the Blue Network. He responded with the zany Cuckoo Hour as a showcase for his comedy, performing as Professor Ambrose J. Weems, who ran a radio station where he would give his views on current events and chat with his sidekick, Mrs. Pennyfeather.
The cast of The Cuckoo Hour included Carl Matthews (1899-1959).