The Railroad Hour
A Show About Everything But Trains
The Railroad Hour had one of the more unusual premises in network radio: a weekly variety program sponsored by the rail industry that had nothing to do with railroads. The stories were adaptations of Broadway musicals and operettas — Show Boat, The Merry Widow, Kiss Me Kate, The Vagabond King — and the sponsor's name existed purely because the Association of American Railroads was paying the bills. The railroad connection was handled in the sponsor copy, which reminded listeners that the railroads brought them "most of the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the fuel you burn, and all the other things you use in your daily life." The commercials also pushed the rail industry's legislative agenda directly, positioning railroads against the growing competition from trucking and airlines. But once Marvin Miller announced "Ladies and gentlemen, The Railroad Hour!" — accompanied by whistles, the hiss of escaping steam, and the orchestra coming up full with "I've Been Working on the Railroad" — all of that fell away and the music took over.
The show premiered on ABC on October 4, 1948, with a 45-minute format unusual for prime-time radio, which was dominated by hour-long and half-hour programs. That first broadcast featured Gordon MacRae singing alongside guest stars Dinah Shore and Jane Powell, with musical director Carmen Dragon providing a thrilling score. The Association of American Railroads represented 132 member lines at launch, and the show was advertised on ABC as presenting the "World's Greatest Musical Comedies." After that first ABC season, the format was trimmed to 30 minutes. In October 1949, the show moved to NBC, where it settled into Monday nights at 8 and ran for nearly five more years, ending June 21, 1954, after 299 broadcasts across six seasons.
Gordon MacRae at the Center
The entire show was built around one voice. Gordon MacRae — born Albert Gordon MacRae on March 12, 1921, in East Orange, New Jersey — played every male lead, handling both the acting and the singing. His background made him well-suited for the work. His father, known as "Wee Willie" MacRae, was a radio baritone; his mother was a concert pianist. MacRae had served as a navigator in the U.S. Army Air Forces before being spotted by Capitol Records at Ray Bolger's 1946 Broadway revue Three to Make Ready. Capitol signed him to a long-term recording contract in 1947, and Warner Bros. locked him into a seven-year film deal in 1948 — the same year The Railroad Hour launched. Warner released him at his request in 1954, the same year the show ended.
His film career ran parallel to the radio series, and the two kept reinforcing each other. MacRae's best-known screen roles came after The Railroad Hour concluded — Curly in Oklahoma! in 1955 and Billy Bigelow in Carousel in 1956, both opposite Shirley Jones. That Carousel role came about on three days' notice after Frank Sinatra walked off the picture over a scheduling dispute with the studio. The programs from The Railroad Hour were later released as studio cast albums, most of which have been reissued on CD. MacRae died January 24, 1986, in Lincoln, Nebraska. His daughter, Meredith MacRae, later starred in the railroad-themed television series Petticoat Junction.
The Leading Ladies and the Production Team
MacRae's rotating cast of leading ladies included some of the finest operatic and Broadway voices working in radio. Lucille Norman, Dorothy Kirsten, and Dorothy Warenskjold appeared most frequently. Warenskjold was a member of the San Francisco Opera Company, and she, Kirsten, Rise Stevens, and others from the cast also appeared regularly on Harvest of Stars during the late 1940s. During summers, Norman and Warenskjold sometimes stepped into the lead when MacRae was unavailable. Beyond the regulars, the show brought in a wide range of guest stars: Nadine Conner, Marion Bell, Ginny Simms, Irra Petina, Mimi Benzell, Margaret Whiting, Gladys Swarthout, Jeanette MacDonald, Adolphe Menjou, Kenny Baker, and Patrice Munsel, among others. Doris Day appeared opposite MacRae in No, No, Nanette; Jane Powell co-starred in Brigadoon. In a 1952 episode titled Sari, Margaret Truman was featured as co-star. Rudy Vallee turned up in a comedic supporting role as the servant Alexander in a November 1949 adaptation of Sigmund Romberg's New Moon.
MGM was unhappy about the early arrangement, at least where its contract players were concerned. The studio complained during the first ABC season that Jane Powell's lines of dialogue in the premiere adaptation of "Good News" had been cut to almost nothing, and it demanded the right to approve any future radio scripts its stars agreed to perform.
Behind the microphone, Carmen Dragon held the musical director's chair. Dragon was born in Antioch, California, on July 28, 1914, the son of Italian immigrant parents. He held a Master of Arts from San Jose College and had already made a name for himself in Hollywood — he shared the Academy Award for Best Original Score with Morris Stoloff for the 1944 musical Cover Girl, which featured songs by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin. Dragon later conducted the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra for ten years and recorded extensively for Capitol Records. He has a star in the Radio section of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, dedicated September 7, 1989. His son Daryl Dragon became the "Captain" of the 1970s pop duo Captain & Tennille.
Choral direction was handled by Norman Luboff. The show's chief arranger for all six years was Warren Barker, born April 16, 1923, in Oakland, California, who had studied composition with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and had served as first sergeant of a 28-piece military band in the U.S. Army Air Forces before joining Dragon's staff. After The Railroad Hour, Barker scored more than thirty prime-time television series, including seven years as composer-conductor for Bewitched and original music for My World and Welcome to It, for which he received a National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences honor in 1970. He also served on the arranging staff for the 1969 film Hello, Dolly!. The show's directors included Ken Burton, Fran Van Hartesveldt, and Murray Bolen. Jean Holloway wrote for the series in its earlier period; Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee came on as writers later.
The Music and What It Adapted
The show concentrated on operettas, Broadway musicals, and the popular songbook — composers like George Gershwin, Victor Herbert, Franz Lehár, Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Sigmund Romberg, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin all had their work adapted. Gilbert and Sullivan's catalog was represented as well. One deliberate policy distinguished The Railroad Hour from similar programs: it never adapted opera, leaving that territory to programs like The Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. Everything on the show was an operetta or a musical, despite a common assumption to the contrary.
Titles returned to the well more than once. Show Boat was adapted at least three times during the run; an October 30, 1950, version starred MacRae, Dorothy Kirsten, and Lucille Norman together. Other recurring titles included The Desert Song, Naughty Marietta, and The Student Prince. On March 24, 1952, Patrice Munsel joined MacRae for Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate, which researcher Jim Ramsburg described as the most contemporary musical comedy ever adapted for the show. On January 21, 1952, Mimi Benzell and Francis X. Bushman appeared in the Romberg Desert Song. Original scores were also incorporated into the lineup alongside the adaptations, and each December the show devoted a broadcast to reviewing the old year in music and song.
Each broadcast closed with MacRae and his leading lady chatting briefly about the next week's show, after which Marvin Miller chanted "All aboard!" and the train sound effects and music carried the half-hour out. Radio Life, reviewing the drama side of the show, suggested the play itself sometimes felt like a formless sketch with music — that the storyline came second to the songs. It was a fair observation, and arguably beside the point. The show was designed as part of NBC's Monday night of music block alongside The Voice of Firestone, The Telephone Hour, and The Cities Service Band of America. Listeners who tuned in expecting musical immersion got exactly that.
The Ratings and the Run
On NBC, The Railroad Hour competed directly against CBS's Suspense and The Falcon in the same Monday 8 p.m. timeslot. Despite going up against two high-rated programs, the show held its own. In its first NBC season, 1949–50, it posted a Hooper rating of 7.9 for 70th place in the annual rankings — but it was the only NBC program in Monday's Top Ten. The following season its rating climbed to 8.3, placing it 48th in the annual Top 50 and again in Monday's Top Ten, losing narrowly to Hollywood Star Playhouse on CBS. In 1951–52, it rose to a tie for 31st and remained NBC's most popular Monday night program. In 1952–53, MacRae again finished 31st in the annual rankings, with The Railroad Hour leading five NBC programs into Monday's Top Ten. The show had real support inside NBC: Joseph McConnell, president of the network, and William T. Faricy, president of the Association of American Railroads, were both strong advocates.
Tickets to live NBC broadcasts were free and available by writing to the Association of American Railroads in Washington, D.C., or to NBC in Hollywood. Because of high demand, listeners were publicly advised to request tickets several weeks in advance.
The Writers Who Moved On
Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee came to The Railroad Hour as working radio writers, but the show was a way station on the road to something larger. Lawrence — born Jerome Lawrence Schwartz on July 14, 1915, in Cleveland — and Lee, born October 15, 1918, in Elyria, Ohio, had formed their writing partnership in January 1942 and were co-founders of the Armed Forces Radio Service. They twice won the George Foster Peabody Award for Distinguished Achievement in Broadcasting, in 1949 and 1952. After leaving radio behind, they turned to the stage. Their play Inherit the Wind, which opened in 1955, remains one of the most-produced plays in American theatre. They also wrote Auntie Mame in 1956 and The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail in 1970. In 1986, Ohio State University dedicated the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute in their honor. Robert E. Lee was married to actress Janet Waldo — the voice of Judy Jetson — from 1948 until his death in 1994.
Lawrence and Lee also preserved a significant piece of the show's history. In 1967, they presented a full collection of Railroad Hour recordings to the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound at the New York Public Library. Scripts and recordings are also held in the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Collection at the Billy Rose Theatre Collection at Lincoln Center; those holdings include off-air recordings made at KFI in Los Angeles on 16-inch acetate discs. The full run of 299 episodes was documented by Gerald Wilson and Martin Grams, Jr. in The Railroad Hour, published by BearManor Media in 2007, which includes a complete episode guide.