Happy Birthday, Kenny Delmar
Down These Mean Streets (Old Time Radio Detectives) - A podcast by Mean Streets Podcasts
Somebody, I say, somebody get a cake and candles. Kenny Delmar was born September 5, 1910. He was born in Boston, an unlikely birthplace for a man who made a name for himself as Beauregard Claghorn, the blustery senator from south of the Mason-Dixon line and longtime resident of Allen's Alley. Born into a vaudeville family, Delmar made his stage debut before he was ten years old. He pursued a career in radio, and by the late 1930s he was already being heard all over the dial. He voiced Commissioner Weston opposite Bill Johnstone on The Shadow, and he voiced several characters in the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast from Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. Fans of that program will recognize Delmar as the "Secretary of the Interior" who sounds suspiciously like then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Delmar was a skilled impressionist who played world leaders on The March of Time and Cavalcade of America. But his most famous radio role came when he made his first appearance as Senator Claghorn on The Fred Allen Show. Delmar was also the show's announcer even as he portrayed the proud son of the South who only drank out of Dixie Cups and refused to drive through the Lincoln Tunnel. The character proved to be so popular that Delmar reprised the role in commercials and even in a film - It's a Joke Son! from 1947.
