Charles Calvert (1899–1969): a survey of his career in vaudeville and radio

Variety, 1921-06-17, p. 12

Radio actor Charles Calvert was born Charles Fleming in Brooklyn, New York, on July 13, 1899. He was a dancer, musician and comedian in vaudeville in the 1920s before becoming a radio actor in Chicago in the 1930s, and is best remembered today as Sergeant Tartaglia on Broadway's My Beat (1949–1953).

Calvert's other known surviving radio work includes 38 episodes of The Whistler, which is what sparked my interest in him! The Whistler 1945-03-19 "Murder Will Shout" is the only radio episode I know of in which he plays the main character; and, among other episodes, I'm particularly fond of his performance as the bartender in 1948-03-24 "The Dark Room".

Last year I set out to make a little Facebook post for Charles Calvert's birthday... but it took so much detective work to figure out for sure when his birthday even was, that I just ended up wanting to learn as much as possible about this guy! Read about his career in the PDF embedded below, also accessible on Google Drive here and on Dropbox here; or scroll past the article for some more pictures. For a list of Charles Calvert's radio work as far as I've been able to find out, see this spreadsheet (also linked in the PDF).