PARTIES AT PICKFAIR

Broadcast History:

CBS Feb. 11-June 21 30m.

Star: Mary Pickford, America's

sweetheart of the silent screen era.

Eric Snowden as Alvin the butler.

Also: Bret Morrison, Mary Jane Higby,

Lou Merrill, Ted Osbourne.

Music: Al Lyons

Series description: Fictionalized Hollywood chatter.

Each week, the listening audience was "invited" into her home via the airwaves to hear dramatic sketches featuring Pickford and such film actors as Bette Davis, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and William Powell. Actor Eric Snowden both played Pickford's butler Alvin and announced the show. It was a clever illusion, with trumped up dialogue read by radio professionals. There was an initial attempt to do a remote form Pickfair, but the musicians left cigarette burns on the white piano. From then on it was broadcast from the studio.

Reference:

Encyclopedia of American Radio: Ron Lackmann

On The Air: John Dunning