She also performed as the monotone and unsympathetic phone operator driving Agnes Moorehead into hysterics in Lucille Fletcher's "Sorry, Wrong Number." Lewis and Moorehead performed together again on Suspense in "Don't Call Me Mother."Ĭathy Lewis and her husband Elliot Lewis (same surname) worked together frequently on Suspense and other shows. In drama, Cathy Lewis a regular on Suspense, and performed in over 120 episodes including "The House in Cypress Canyon" and "On a Country Road" with Cary Grant. She was the star and narrator of My Friend Irma as Irma's ( Marie Wilson) sensible best gal pal Jane Stacy. In the old time radio comedy genre, Cathy Lewis had as repeating role as School Principle Irene Henshaw in The Great Gildersleeve. Born in Spokane, Washington in 1918, Cathy Lewis got her start as a singer for Kay Kyser. Immensely talented, Cathy Lewis performed in thriller radio shows like Suspense to comedies like My Friend Irma. After time on the road the place for regular work turned out to be Radio Row.Ĭathy Lewis spent 35 years of her mere 50 years on Earth in show business.
She found a few small roles and toured for a year with Alexander Woollcott's "The Man Who Came to Dinner".
She made her way to Hollywood, acting at The Pasadena Playhouse and hoping to break into movies. In the mid-1930's she went to Minneapolis to study with a repertory theater company and became a vocalist for big bands under Herbie Kay, Ray Noble, and Kay Kyser. Most of them followed remarkably similar paths into radio and movies.Ĭathy Lewis grew up in Spokane, Washington, the daughter of Inland Empire pioneer physician and pharmacist David H. NBC was right on the corner, ABC just across Vine, Mutual a few doors down Vine and CBS Columbia Square nearby on Sunset, so everyone in radio frequented the same watering holes and knew each other. In sunny Hollywood, studios for all of the networks were clustered within steps of each other near the intersection of Sunset and Vine. In New York, the networks each had an acting staff who would work on several different shows, but the players tended to stay with their parent network. One of the reasons for this relatively small talent pool had to do with Hollywood's "Radio Row".
#Cathy disk catalog series
To be sure, there were certain names who became big on one program or series of shows, and these actors got so big that it was an event when they were a guest on someone else's show, but many of the most popular series were peopled by a group of professionals that producers knew they could depend upon. Network radio was also a shared experience for millions across the country, from bachelor farmers on the plains of North Dakota, to the hippest teens listening on the stoop in front of their New York City home, to young mothers catching up on their soap operas while doing their ironing, to servicemen whiling away their long hours on remote bases overseas.Īs big and important as the network radio industry was, it is interesting to see that there was actually a fairly small cadre of actors who appeared in a majority of the era's popular dramas. It cannot be argued that radio during the Golden Age was a huge industry that put dinner on the table for thousands of people and their families.
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