Wordsmoker

A Corner of Entertainment History Many Would Prefer to Forget

Tardabell Day! began as a weekly segment on the CBS Radio program Arthur Godfrey Time. A pantomiming clown with marionettes on the radio would seem an unlikely hit, but it did capture the public’s imagination in 1947, then becoming common to refer to Mondays, when the show aired, as “Tardabell Day”. It consisted primarily of light orchestral melodies punctuated by Tardabell’s signature sound of a strip of inner tube rubber slapping against his bare left thigh. Read the rest of this entry →