CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

The Palmolive Hour

radio program

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionOct 12, 2025
Entity authorityQ7755968
Source-derived summary

The Palmolive Hour was an American radio concert-variety program, sponsored by Palmolive Soap and broadcast on NBC from December 1927, to July 29, 1931. The Palmolive Musical Stock Company (a.k.a. the Palmolivers) offered a mix of jazz, show tunes and opera selections.

Format and performers

The program usually opened with a duet by Frank Munn and soprano Virginia Rea. To call attention to the sponsor's product, they did not appear on the program under their own names but instead were introduced each week as Paul Oliver and Olive Palmer. Contralto Elizabeth Lennox was featured in duets with Rea. Gus Haenschen led the orchestra, with Frank Black at the piano. Other regular members of the cast were Wilfred Glenn, Lewis James, James Melton, Elliot Shaw, and the Revelers Quartet.

Guest appearances

Fanny Brice was a guest on the program, and other broadcasts featured such guests as Vaughn De Leath, Gene Tunney, the Duncan Sisters, Cliff Edwards (a.k.a. Ukulele Ike), Cecil Lean, Cleo Mayfield, The Revelers and international operatic sopranos Claudia Muzio, of the Metropolitan Opera Company, and Edith Mason, of the Chicago Civic Opera Company.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Palmolive Hour” is radio program. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Palmolive, Hour and radio, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1927, 1931—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Palmolive, Hour and radio is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “radio program” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 12, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7755968. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1927 and 1931.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Palmolive Hour”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Palmolive Hour primary sources, The Palmolive Hour archive and Palmolive research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Palmolive Hour”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from The Palmolive Hour” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.