The Hollywood Theatre of Stars Radio Program

Background

Information on C.P. MacGregor still remains somewhat sketchy, but he's one of the more fascinating and prolific producers of Radio oProgramming of the era of The Golden Age of Radio. In 1924, MacGregor was a Brunswick Records manager for the San Francisco territory. He later founded his own studios--C.P. MacGregor Studios--at 729 S. Western Avenue, Hollywood, CA. He was referred to as "the DeMille of the discs."

This first of his companies--MacGregor and Ingram Company--was incorporated around 1929. Some of their electrical transcriptions of the era bear the call letters of KFRC, 610 AM, San Francisco--one of the 31 stations comprising the West Coast Don Lee-Mutual Network. Given the close association between Don Lee and C.P. MacGregor it's highly likely that MacGregor often used Don Lee's KFRC Studios in San Francisco before later establishing himself in the Melrose District of Los Angeles.

By 1932 the company had changed its name to MacGregor & Sollie, located on Mission Street, in San Francisco and survived until approximately 1937. MacGregor & Sollie promoted their San Francisco transcriptions as "Hollywood-style" dramas. Stations from coast to coast routinely contracted with MacGregor & Sollie for their syndicated transcriptions at $17.50 for each episode.

By 1945 the C.P. Macgregor Studios had migrated to 729 South Western Avenue, Hollywood, CA. Throughout that era C.P.MacGregor had begun to adopt 16" transcription discs exclusively.

MacGregor was a prolific, diverse producer and distributor of syndicated transcription discs, producing The Shadow, Cecil and Sally, AFRS programs, Al Jolson, Jubilee, Lux Radio Theatre, Hollywood Theatre, and Eb and Zeb. He also produced hundreds of commercial recording sessions with the lofty likes of Leadbelly, Charlie Parker, Stan Kenton, Peggy Lee and hundreds of other prominent Jazz and contemporary recording artists. Liberty Records--the predecessor to Capitol Records--recorded in their studios in the mid-1940s.

It goes without saying that MacGregor operated in a highly competitive field, with the likes of Westinghouse's World Broadcasting System and the Radio Networks themselves. That he was able meet his much larger competitors head-on--and dominate them--speaks volumes for C.P. MacGregor's quality and business acumen.

Today the Library of Congress has possession of the entire surviving C. P. MacGregor collection, including the surviving output of the 1931 through 1970 masters and recording ledgers from all three companies: MacGregor and Ingram, MacGregor and Sollie, and C. P. MacGregor.

C. P. MacGregor launches Hollywood Theater of Stars

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

The most helpful provenances were newspaper listings.

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[Date, title, and episode column annotations in red refer to either details we have yet to fully provenance or other unverifiable information as of this writing. Red highlights in the text of the 'Notes' columns refer to information upon which we relied in citing dates, date or time changes, or titles.]