TEX AND JINX Radio & Television BROADCAST HISTORY:
April 22, 1946- February 27, 1959.
WEAF (WNBC, WRCA), New York weekdays at 8:30 A.M. until 1954; at 1:00pm,1954-1955; then at 6:30 and 10:35pm until July 31, 1958, moving briefly to WOR, broadcasting at 2:15pm.
In addition to the Kollmars (Dorothy Kilgallen and husband Richard Kollmar) and the Fitzgeralds (Pegeen and husband Ed Fitzgerald), another well-recognized New York couple, newlyweds Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg, added their own bread-and-bacon banter to the local airwaves between 1946 and 1959. Their gabfest, initially Hi Jinx but later revised to Tex and Jinx, was beamed over WEAF which was subsequently re-lettered WNBC and later WRCA. In limited doses, the flagship outlet of the National Broadcasting Company transmitted Meet Tex and Jinx to the whole country during 1947 and 1948.
Tex and Jinx devoted most of their airtime to lofty and noble concepts, visitors and sidebars. Tex and Jinx [on WEAF-WNBC-WRCA] were interviewing Bernard Baruch, Margaret Truman, or Ethel Waters…. McCrary built the show on the assumption that the early morning audience was not stupid, as programmers generally assumed; that people in general had fresher minds and were more open to serious topics at the beginning of the day.”
Their joint radio venture began in April 1946 just 10 months following their nuptials (June 10, 1945). Launched as a breakfast feature, the series later shifted to afternoons and finally into the evening hours before departing the ether a dozen years afterward. They were branded by one journalist “Mr. Brains and Mrs. Beauty.”
In early 1947 NBC put them on its television network as a portion of a Sunday evening quarter-hour dubbed Bristol-Myers Tele-Varieties. “The McCrarys were naturals for TV,” wrote a reviewer, “with their combination of friendly chatter, interviews, and features.” That summer the web awarded them an exclusive Sunday night half-hour format under the appellation At Home with Tex and Jinx. A decade later, in the 1957-58 season, the duo hosted a daytime NBC-TV showcase, The Tex and Jinx Show.
When hepatitis sidetracked Falkenburg in 1958 from their broadcast commitments, McCrary carried on solo on their radio show for another couple of years. In the 1980s, however, the couple separated, remaining on genial terms. McCrary died in New York on July 29, 2003 and Falkenburg expired just 29 days later in the same city, on August 27, 2003.
NOTE::
The scores of TEX AND JINK SHOWS archived by Archival Television Audio, Inc. were originally obtained as original 16" Electronic Discs from Barry Farber, producer of the show (1957-1959), in 1960 after he had begun his own career in front of the mike at WINS Radio. These discs were subsequently transferred to 1/4" reel to reel tape, and then disposed. These broadcasts are rare and represent the largest known collection of TEX AND JINX extant broadcasts in the world.
Broadcast on WRCA FM RADIO in New York City.
The rare archived radio broadcast begins with Tex McCrary playing back an interview he did in the past with Elizabeth’s husband, Michael Wilding who describes his wife’s eyes as “violet eyes,” and, possessing a “double row of eyelashes.”
Tex asks Elizabeth if Wilding indeed has ever told her that to which she states she feels her eyes are blue. Again, McCrary plays another segment of his interview of Michael Wilding for Elizabeth Taylor to listen. He states that his wife is pretty without make-up, but when she applies her own make up it takes over two and half hours to do so. Taylor responds that it is true and even longer when she does her hair, fingernails and toe nails. However, Michael takes only five minutes to shave!
Back to the Michael Wilding / Tex McCrary interview. Wilding states that he never saw his wife Elizabeth in a movie before they became engaged. Then, he was taken by Taylor’s parents to Paramount Studios and saw “A Place in the Sun,” which he praises. However, after then seeing “National Velvet” where in real life Taylor was twelve years old, he became ashen as he left the theater and Elizabeth states that if he had seen the film first he may not have ever asked me to marry him (“cradle robbery”).
Taylor similarly confirms that she had never seen a Michael Wilding movie prior to their engagement (1951).
She confirms that Michael watched her two nights ago on television doing a southern accent appearing on What’s My Line?
She demonstrates the accent for Tex.
Elizabeth Taylor reminisces about attending, for six years, The Little Red School House on the MGM movie lot where all the contract children actors would attend from 9am to noon on days they were not filming and attending school three hours a day (private tutor) a day, between scenes when filming. Others to graduate from The Little Red School House were Mickey Rooney, Margaret O’Brien, Jane Powell, Butch Jenkins and Dean Stockwell.