Edith Meiser: Brought Sherlock Holmes to Radio

“She don’t hit you between the eyes with the snappy bits — she hands it to you like a lady”

So saith a vaudeville flack on the topic of Edith Meiser (1898-1993). Thanks to her great-nephew Randy Gill for putting me on to her!

Educated at private schools in Switzerland and Germany before graduating from Vassar, the Detroit ingenue had toured with stock companies and Shakespeare before ascending to Broadway with the Theatre Guild’s production of Fata Morgana (1923), the first of some two dozen Broadway appearances. Throughout the 20s she was in several editions of The Garrick Gaieties and toured the Orpheum Circuit as a headliner.

Meiser’s biggest claim to fame was to come as a writer and producer in radio where she created the shows The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1930-1936) and The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939-1950, Meiser left the show in 1943). In 1953 she co-created a short-lived Sherlock Holmes comic strip. Meiser, also wrote the Helen Hayes radio show The New Penny.

After leaving radio, Meiser returned to Broadway in the smash hit Mexican Hayride (1944) which ran for over a year. She was also in the original 1953 production of Sabina Fair (which became Billy Wilder’s movie Sabrina) and The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1960).

Meiser’s screen footprint was significantly smaller. Her films include Go West, Young Lady (1941) with Penny Singleton,Glamour Boy (1941) with Jackie Cooper, Queen for a Day(1951, based on the radio show), It Grows On Trees (1952), and Middle of the Night (1959). She also guested on tv shows like I Love Lucy and Goodyear Playhouse.

The University of Minnesota Library has an archive of material related to Edith Meiser’s life and career. She was 95 when she passed away in 1993.

For more on vaudeville please see my book No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous. And stay tuned for my next book Vaudeville in Your Living Room: A Century of Radio and TV Variety, coming November 2023.