My Friend Irma

About My Friend Irma

188 complete radio episodes (88 hours) from 1946 to 1954, across 2 series:

• OTRR My Friend Irma Singles: 187 episodes, 1946–1954
• My Friend Irma: 1 episode

Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.

My Friend Irma on the radio

CBS Radio, 1947-1954. With Marie Wilson, Cathy Lewis, Hans Conried, Alan Reed, Leif Erickson.

• My Friend Irma premiered on CBS radio on April 11, 1947, and stayed on the network until August 23, 1954.
• Cy Howard did nearly everything on the show: he created it, wrote it, produced it and directed it.
• Cy Howard was born Seymour Horowitz in Milwaukee in 1915 and later won an Emmy for writing The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
• Irma was a CBS in-house creation, part of a new network push to build its own shows and sell them to sponsors rather than airing programs packaged by ad agencies.
• Cy Howard believed casting would make or break the show, and he auditioned actresses for both leads without finding anyone until Cathy Lewis came in to read for Jane.
• Cathy Lewis was one of radio's busiest actresses, and her impatient first line at the audition, demanding just five minutes, told Howard he had found his Jane.
• Howard spotted Marie Wilson in Ken Murray's Blackouts revue, playing a part nothing like Irma but full of exactly the wide-eyed bewilderment he wanted.
• Irma Peterson was a muddled stenographer from Minnesota, and each week her sensible roommate Jane Stacy narrated the latest mess Irma had made.
• Irma's logic was legendary: she believed flypaper was the stationery airlines gave their passengers.
• When Jane mused about becoming Mrs. Richard Rhinelander the third, Irma wondered what good that would do if he already had two other wives.
• A Time critic in October 1947 placed Irma in the tradition of radio's lovable scatterbrains such as Gracie Allen and Jane Ace.
• John Brown played Al, Irma's Brooklyn hustler of a boyfriend, whose weekly greeting "Hi-ya, Chicken" was the cue for trouble.

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