Pictured here, on the cover of What’s On The Air, September 1930, is one of the radio stars of 85 years ago, Julia Sanderson, who then appeared on CBS radio with her husband and vaudeville partner Frank Crumit.  They starred in the “Blackstone Plantation” program on CBS, which aired Tuesday evenings at 8:00, sponsored by Blackstone Cigars.  In 1930, the program moved to NBC in the same time slot, as well as on the NBC Blue Network on Thursdays at 9:00.  The program last aired in 1934.  In addition to music, the program consisted of light humor, mostly a vaudevillian give and take between Crumit and Sanderson.  A brief snippet of the program is available online at OldTimeRadioDownloads.com.  (The Crumit and Sanderson segment begins at 07:13.)  In addition, a number of Crumit and Sanderson’s recordings have been released on CD and are available on Amazon.

Crumit was an accomplished ukulele player.  It seems incomprehensible today, but over the course of his career, he had thousands of ukulele recordings.  Crumit, born in 1888, was trained as an engineer, but started in vaudeville at the age of 25.   In this 1925 recording, he performs “I’m Sitting On Top Of the World”:

Julia Sanderson was the stage name of Julia Ellen Sackett, Sanderson being her mother’s maiden name.  She had been a child actor who switched to vaudeville as a teen.  Starting in 1904, she also starred in Broadway productions.  She married Crumit, four years her junior, in 1922, but the two didn’t appear together as the act Crumit and Sanderson until 1928, moving to radio in 1929.

After Blackstone Plantation left the air, Crumit and Sanderson appeared in other programs, including the Bond Bread broadcasts, 1934-36 on CBS, the Norge Musical Kitchen and It’s Florida’s Treat, 1936, The Battle of the Sexes, 1938-42 on NBC, the Crumit and Sanderson Quiz, 1942 on CBS, and Singing Sweethearts, 1943 on CBS.

Crumit died of a heart attack in 1943, and Sanderson continued briefly with Let’s Be Charming, a Thursday afternoon program aimed at women.  Sanderson died in 1975 at the age of 87.

References

• On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio
• Crumit and Sanderson
• Julia Sanderson at OTRRpedia
• Julia Sanderson at vipfaq.com
• Julia Sanderson at Wikipedia

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