History

Cecil B. DeMille was the host of the series each Monday evening from June 1, 1936, until January 22, 1945. On several occasions,usually when he was out of town, he was temporarily replaced by various celebrities, including Leslie Howard and Edward Arnold.

Lux Radio Theater strove to feature as many of the original stars of the original stage and film productions as possible, usually paying them $5,000 an appearance to do the show. It was when sponsor Lever Brothers (who made Lux soap and detergent) moved the show from New York City to Hollywood in 1936 that it eased back from adapting stage shows and toward adaptations of films. The first Lux film adaptation was The Legionnaire and the Lady, with Marlene Dietrich and Clark Gable, based on the film Morocco. That was followed by a Lux adaptation of The Thin Man, featuring the movie's stars, Myrna Loy and William Powell.

Many of the greatest — or, at least, the most legendary — names in stage and film appeared in the series, most in the roles they made famous on the screen, including Abbott and Costello, Jean Arthur, Lauren Bacall, Lucille Ball, Ethel Barrymore, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Charles Boyer, James Cagney, Claudette Colbert, Ronald Colman, Gary Cooper, Joseph Cotten, Joan Crawford, Bing Crosby, Bette Davis, Dan Duryea, Frances Farmer, Errol Flynn, Ava Gardner, Judy Garland, Greer Garson, Cary Grant, Lillian Gish, Charlton Heston, Bob Hope, Vivien Leigh, Fredric March, Agnes Moorehead, Paul Muni, Vincent Price, Donna Reed, Ginger Rogers, Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, Ann Sothern, Barbara Stanwyck, James Stewart, Shirley Temple, Gene Tierney, Spencer Tracy, Lana Turner, John Wayne, Jane Wyman, Orson Welles, Loretta Young, and Robert Young, among numerous others.

Though the show focused on film and its performers, perhaps inevitably several classic radio regulars appeared in Lux Radio Theater productions. Jim and Marian Jordan, better known as Fibber McGee and Molly, appeared on the show twice and also built an episode of their own radio comedy series around one of those appearances. Their longtime costar, Arthur Q. Bryan (wisecracking Dr. Gamble) made a few Lux appearances as well. Bandleader Phil Harris---a longtime regular on Jack Benny's radio hit---and his singing actress wife, Alice Faye, who had become radio comedy stars with their own show beginning in 1948, appeared in a Lux presentation. Fred Allen, Jack Benny (with and without his wife, Mary Livingstone), George Burns and Gracie Allen were among the other radio stars who were invited to do Lux presentations as well.

At least once Lux Radio Theater presented an adaptation of the film version of a radio series hit: The Life of Riley, featuring William Bendix as the Brooklyn-born, California-transplanted, stumbling but bighearted aircraft worker he already made famous in the long-running radio series (and eventual television hit) of the same name.

But also at least once Lux Radio Theater offered a presentation without any known performers---its 1942 adaptation of This Is the Army included a cast strictly drawn from actual American soldiers.

Mercury Theater on the Air — which eventually made Orson Welles a force to be reckoned with, especially with the commotion his broadcast of The War of the Worlds (30 October 1938) provoked — was initially a summer replacement series for Lux Radio Theater.

DeMille's clash with unions

It was a clash over closed shop union rulings favoured by the old American Federation of Radio Artists that ended DeMille's term as Lux Radio Theater's host. AFRA assessed members a dollar each to help back a campaign to enact closed-shop rulings in California. DeMille, an AFRA member but a stern opponent of closed shops, refused to pay because he believed it would nullify his opposition vote. When AFRA ruled those not paying faced suspension from the union, and thus a ban from appearing on the air, DeMille was finished in radio---because he also refused to let anyone else pay the dollar for him (In his 1959 autobiography, DeMille alleged that a former member of the American Communist Party later confided to him that the party had consciously orchestrated these circumstances of his exclusion from radio, as they considered him to be one of their two foremost enemies in radio). Lux Radio Theater auditioned, on the air, several hosts over the next year, until they settled on William Keighley as the new permanent host, a post he held from late 1945 through mid-1955.

After that, Irving Cummings a producer and director, hosted the program until it ended in the mid 1950s.