Maxwell House on Radio

December 8 was the birthday of a Southern coffee broker by the name of Joel Owsley Cheek (1852-1935). Cheek’s chief claim to lasting fame is that in 1892 he convinced Nashville’s Maxwell House Hotel to carry his product and bless it with its name.

We digress briefly to talk about the hotel, which for nearly a century was Nashville’s largest and proudest hospitality establishment, for there are some seasonal stories to tell about it. The Maxwell House dated to the Civil War Era ; its celebrity guests included General Tom Thumb, Buffalo Bill Cody, Annie Oakley, Enrico Caruso, O. Henry, Sarah Bernhardt, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford. The legend (and it sounds like just that, just a legend) that one time Teddy Roosevelt came to town to visit Andrew Jackson’s place The Hermitage, stayed at the hotel and declared that the coffee was “good to the last drop”, thus the product’s slogan.

For Christmas feasts the hotel was famous for serving Tennessee delicacies such as calf’s head, black bear, and possum. It was also on a Christmas Day in 1961 that the Maxwell House hotel finally burned down. There’s a symbolism there that some film-maker ought to use. Construction (using slave labor) had begun in 1859. It was wiped off the face of the earth during the Civil Rights Era. Good to the last spark!

But our main agenda today is in discussing Maxwell House Coffee’s sponsorship of old time radio shows.

The first was Maxwell House Show Boat (1933-35), inspired by Edna Ferber’s classic book and musical. Show Boat‘s romanticization of the old South was undoubtedly the reason for the pairing of the sponsor and a radio show with this theme. Charles Winninger, who’d played Cap’n Andy in the musical hosted the show, which purported to take place on a riverboat, as “Captain Henry”. Singers Lanny Ross and Annette Hanshaw were among the regulars.

The longer lasting radio presence for the sponsor was Maxwell House Coffee Time (1937-49). originally known as Good News, it was rebranded in 1940. The many stars of this variety show included Frank Morgan, Charles Ruggles, Fanny Brice (as Baby Snooks) and probably most famously the comedy teams of Burns and Allen, whom Maxwell House would continue to sponsor into their television years.

Maxwell House also sponsored The Goldbergs (the company was one of the first to actively court a Jewish demographic), Father Knows Best, and Mama, the TV version of I Remember Mama. In the ’70s, Margaret Hamilton starred in their commercials as a kindly storekeeper. And here I thought witches were into tea leaves, not coffee beans!

For more on show business history,please see my book No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous; and keep an eye out for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.