Himan Brown
| Himan Brown | |
|---|---|
Brown directing Betty Winkler and Frank Lovejoy in The Right To Live, May 18, 1947
|
|
| Born |
Himan Brown July 21, 1910 |
| Died | June 4, 2010 (aged 99) New York, New York |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | Hi Brown |
| Occupation | Radio producer |
| Known for | Producing for major networks and syndication |
Himan Brown (July 21, 1910 – June 4, 2010), also known as Hi Brown, was an American producer of radio programs. Producing for the major radio networks and also for syndication, Brown worked with such actors as Helen Hayes, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra and Orson Welles while creating thousands of radio programs. He produced more than 30,000 radio shows over seven decades.
The son of a tailor from a shtetl near the Ukrainian seaport of Odessa, Brown first learned about radio from a shop teacher at Brooklyn's Boys High School. At the age of 18, he began broadcasting on New York's WEAF, reading newspapers with a Yiddish dialect. One of his listeners was Gertrude Berg who wanted him to play Jake, her husband on The Goldbergs, which he did for six months. He continued as a radio actor but soon began to pitch shows directly to advertising agencies.
While at Brooklyn College, he recruited fellow student Irwin Shaw to write scripts, giving the author his first paid writing job. Shaw later based a character on Brown in his 1951 novel about the radio industry, The Troubled Air. He earned a law degree from Brooklyn Law School, where he was valedictorian, in 1931.
During a span of 65 years Brown produced more than 30,000 radio programs, including The Adventures of the Thin Man, The Affairs of Peter Salem, Bulldog Drummond, CBS Radio Mystery Theater, City Desk, Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon, The General Mills Radio Adventure Theater, Grand Central Station, Green Valley, USA, The Gumps, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, Joyce Jordan, M.D., Marie, the Little French Princess, The NBC Radio Theater, The Private Files of Rex Saunders, Terry and the Pirates and numerous daytime soap operas. During World War II he worked with the Writers' War Board and producing patriotic serials to aid the war effort.
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