The Magic Key of RCA was an American variety radio show that featured an unusually large and broad range of entertainment stars and other noted personalities. It was on the NBC Blue Network

Blue Network

The Blue Network, and its immediate predecessor, the NBC Blue Network, were the on-air names of an American radio production and distribution service from 1927 to 1945...

 from September 29, 1935 until September 18, 1939.

It was hosted by announcers Milton Cross

Milton Cross

Milton John Cross was an American radio announcer famous for his work on the NBC and ABC radio networks.He was best known as the voice of the Metropolitan Opera, hosting its Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts for 43 years, from the time of their inception in 1931 until his death in...

 and Ben Grauer

Ben Grauer

Benjamin Franklin Grauer was an US radio and TV personality, following a career during the 1920s as a child actor in films and on Broadway. He began his career as a child in David Warfield's production of The Return of Peter Grimm. Among his early credits were roles in films directed by D.W....

, with a house orchestra directed by Frank Black

Frank Black

Black Francis is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known as the frontman of the influential alternative rock band Pixies, with whom he performs under the stage name Black Francis. Following the band's breakup in 1993, he embarked on a solo career under the name Frank Black...

 through 1938 and Nathaniel Shilkret

Nathaniel Shilkret

Nathaniel Shilkret was an American composer, conductor, clarinetist, pianist, business executive, and music director born in New York City, New York to an Austrian immigrant family.-Early career:...

 in 1939.

Sies says that, “NBC used this quality program to demonstrate the cultural contribution radio could make,” and notes that performers included Ruth Etting, Fibber McGee and Molly

Fibber McGee and Molly

Fibber McGee and Molly was an American radio comedy series which maintained its popularity over decades. It premiered on NBC in 1935 and continued until its demise in 1959, long after radio had ceased to be the dominant form of entertainment in American popular culture.-Husband and wife in real...

, John B. Kennedy

John B. Kennedy

John Bright Kennedy was an American radio correspondent, journalist, and film narrator.He was born in Quebec, of a French-Canadian mother and an Irish engineer father. His work included a commentator on the program The Magic Key which ran from 1934 to 1939...

, Rudolf Ganz, Casper Beardon, Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson

Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...

, Jane Froman

Jane Froman

Jane Froman was an American singer and actress. During her thirty-year career, Froman performed on stage, radio and television despite chronic injuries that she sustained from a 1943 plane crash...

, Doris Weston, Frank Forrest, Paul Taylor Chorus, Margaret Brill, Rudy Vallée

Rudy Vallée

Rudy Vallée was an American singer, actor, bandleader, and entertainer.-Early life:Born Hubert Prior Vallée in Island Pond, Vermont, the son of Charles Alphonse and Catherine Lynch Vallée...

, Irving Berlin

Irving Berlin

Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history.His first hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", became world famous...

, Darryl Zanuck, Jan Peerce

Jan Peerce

Jan Peerce was an American operatic tenor. Peerce was an accomplished performer on the operatic and Broadway concert stages, in solo recitals, and as a recording artist. He is the father of film director Larry Peerce....

, Tommy Dorsey

Tommy Dorsey

Thomas Francis "Tommy" Dorsey, Jr. was an American jazz trombonist, trumpeter, composer, and bandleader of the Big Band era. He was known as "The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing", due to his smooth-toned trombone playing. He was the younger brother of bandleader Jimmy Dorsey...

, Jack Harris

Jack Harris

Jack Harris may refer to:* Jack Harris , Scottish professional football player and manager* Jack Harris , Canadian MP* Jack Harris , American radio personality based in Tampa, Florida...

, Ann Jameson, Sonja Henie

Sonja Henie

Sonja Henie was a Norwegian figure skater and film star. She was a three-time Olympic Champion in Ladies Singles, a ten-time World Champion and a six-time European Champion . Henie won more Olympic and World titles than any other ladies figure skater...

, Tyrone Power

Tyrone Power

Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. , usually credited as Tyrone Power and known sometimes as Ty Power, was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as in The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan,...

, Walter Abel

Walter Abel

Walter Abel was an American stage and film character actor. His eyes were brown and his height was five foot ten inches....

, Whitney Bern and George Shelley. Dunning writes that there were appearances by Amos 'n' Andy

Amos 'n' Andy

Amos 'n' Andy is a situation comedy set in the African-American community. It was very popular in the United States from the 1920s through the 1950s on both radio and television....

, Lum and Abner

Lum and Abner

Lum and Abner was an American radio comedy network program created by Chester Lauck and Norris Goff that aired from 1931 to 1954. Modeled on life in the small town of Waters, Arkansas, near where Lauck and Goff grew up, the showed proved immensely popular...

, Paul Whiteman

Paul Whiteman

Paul Samuel Whiteman was an American bandleader and orchestral director.Leader of the most popular dance bands in the United States during the 1920s, Whiteman's recordings were immensely successful, and press notices often referred to him as the "King of Jazz"...

, Efrem Zimbalist

Efrem Zimbalist

Efrem Zimbalist, Sr. was one of the world's most prominent concert violinists, as well as a composer, teacher, conductor and a long-time director of the Curtis Institute of Music.-Early life:...

, Ignace Jan Paderewski, Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...

, Vienna Boys' Choir

Vienna Boys' Choir

The Vienna Boys' Choir is a choir of trebles and altos based in Vienna. It is one of the best known boys' choirs in the world. The boys are selected mainly from Austria, but also from many other countries....

, Benny Goodman

Benny Goodman

Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...

, Gladys Swarthout

Gladys Swarthout

Gladys Swarthout was an American mezzo-soprano opera singer.-Career:...

, Ray Noble

Ray Noble

Ray Noble was an English bandleader, composer, arranger and actor. Noble studied music at the Royal Academy of Music and became leader of the HMV Records studio band in 1929. The band, known as the New Mayfair Dance Orchestra, featured members of many of the top hotel orchestras of the day...

, Guy Lombardo

Guy Lombardo

Gaetano Alberto "Guy" Lombardo was a Canadian-American bandleader and violinist.Forming "The Royal Canadians" in 1924 with his brothers Carmen, Lebert, and Victor and other musicians from his hometown, Lombardo led the group to international success, billing themselves as creating "The Sweetest...

, Richard Himber

Richard Himber

Richard Himber was an American bandleader, composer, violinist, magician and practical joker.-Early life:He was born as Herbert Richard Imber in Newark, New Jersey to the owner of a chain of meat stores...

, Eugene Ormandy

Eugene Ormandy

Eugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born conductor and violinist.-Early life:Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music at the age of five...

, Lauritz Melchior

Lauritz Melchior

Lauritz Melchior was a Danish and later American opera singer. He was the pre-eminent Wagnerian tenor of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and has since come to be considered the quintessence of his voice type.-Biography:...

, Fred MacMurray

Fred MacMurray

Frederick Martin "Fred" MacMurray was an American actor who appeared in more than 100 movies and a successful television series during a career that spanned nearly a half-century, from 1930 to the 1970s....

, Walt Disney

Walt Disney

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...

 and the Pickens Sisters. Dunning comments on the wide variety on the show by noting that programming included short dramas, a male quartet from Stockholm, jazz from Chicago, an account of Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

's campaign in Africa and a conversation with a crew of a submerged submarine.

A typical show in 1939 would begin with an opening number by Shilkret, followed by a comedy skit by Stoopnagle and Budd

Stoopnagle and Budd

Stoopnagle and Budd were a popular radio comedy team of the 1930s, who are sometimes cited as forerunners of the Bob and Ray style of radio comedy...

.

The complete set of broadcasts is available for listening at the Library of Congress

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

.