George Ansbro
| George Ansbro | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 14, 1915 Brooklyn, New York |
| Died | November 5, 2011 (aged 96) Bloomfield, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Occupation | Radio announcer |
George Ansbro (January 14, 1915 – November 5, 2011) was a radio announcer for NBC and ABC for six decades, working with soap operas, big bands, quiz shows and other programs.
Ansbro was born January 14, 1915, in Brooklyn, New York. His first experience of the radio “showbiz” came on a family trip to Springfield, Massachusetts. His family went to the B.F. Keith Theater and saw Singer’s Midgets. The group sang “A Kiss in the Dark”.
Ansbro’s mom signed him up for singing lessons with a man named Thomas Hannom. The lessons didn’t last long, but the one thing that Hannom left him was a connection with someone at the station WNYC. The station decided one day to open their microphones to newcomers to show off their singing ability. Hannom took George the station where he introduced him to Tommy Cowan.
He began at NBC in 1928 as a boy soprano on Milton Cross' Sunday show, Children's Hour (also known as Coast to Coast on a Bus). Three years later, he was hired as an NBC page in 1931, but he was soon employed as an announcer at NBC. On Friday, May 18, 1934, radio columns in New York newspapers noted that Bert Parks of CBS would be “relinquishing his status as New York’s youngest network staff announcer to the newly appointed George Ansbro on the NBC announcing staff.”
Ansbro’s radio career included announcing for The Avenger,FBI Washington,Chaplain Jim, Ethel and Albert, When a Girl Marries,Treasury Salute, Wake Up, America, Young Widder Brown, and the popular Dr. I.Q. quiz show. He also announced for Across the Board and other television shows. During these years, he lived in Manhattan at 50 East 10th Street and thus could be at an NBC microphone in a matter of minutes.
By 1948, with NBC Radio's Blue Network subsidiary having led to the formation of the ABC Television Network, Ansbro had moved into television announcing as well. He would ultimately become one of ABC's longest-lasting and principal live voice-overs, in most of the network's weekday and weekend dayparts, along with the rotating staff of announcers.
In the early 1950s, Ansbro had a Monday-Friday 4:30-5 p.m. (Eastern Time) disc jockey program in New York. A Billboard review noted an unusual aspect of the program: "Manhattan Maharajah features a tongue-in-cheek East Indian poet spinning pop platter favorites of the new West." The reviewer cited "the maharajah's (George Ansbro) deliberate, sonorous-voiced reading of mystic couplets, complete with college humor-type punch lines."
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