Harry Richman

Harry Richman was born on August 10, 1895 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA as Henry Reichman Jr. He was married to Yvonne Day, Hazel Forbes and Melvina Yvonne Stephenson.

Popular singer and occasional actor of the 1920s and 30s.

Dateline 1936: "Famed aviator Henry Tindall "Dick" Merrill [Dick Merrill] was determined to make the first round-trip crossing of the Atlantic Ocean and heard a rumor that entertainer Harry Richman had just bought an ex-TWA single-engine Vultee transport. Richman was appearing in Miami Beach and during a break from his usual NY-Miami run, Dick decided it might be worthwhile to take in Richman's act. Richman spotted the celebrity flyer in the audience and immediately began to brag about his new baby, hangared out at Floyd Bennett Airport. Dick replied that he'd be happy to inspect the plane and made an offhand suggestion that they "take the plane to Europe... then we'll gas her up and fly her back. It's never been done." Out of this sprang the first round-trip trans-Atlantic flight, nicknamed Lady Peace. Co-pilot Richman would eventually dump about $360,000 of his own money, along with Eastern Airlines getting into the act by assisting in modifying Harry's Vultee, equipping it with a 1,000 HP Wright Cyclone G5 engine with a constant speed 2-blade prop on loan along with larger fuel tanks. Another one of Harry's contributions was to stuff some 40,000 ping-pong balls (which occasionally pop up for sale on eBay these days) into the wings and fuselage as flotation insurance. The historic September 1936 flight would nearly go down in disaster when Harry panicked, misinterpreting a statement made by Dick and dumped nearly all of the remaining fuel over the Atlantic on the return flight. The Vultee ended up in a wooded mountain slope in Port Jervis, NY, about 50 miles short of their Newark, NJ, destination. The crash caused relatively little damage, but the impact took out several of Merrill's front teeth. Upon arriving on scene, EAL honcho Eddie Rickenbacker had to literally pull Merrill off Richman at the scene of the crash. Many of the 10 passengers on board praised Merrill's flying skill, commenting they weren't even aware that the place had, in fact, crashed! Richman is little known today but he holds a strange place in aviation history as the co-pilot, principal financier and very nearly the destroyer of the first round-trip trans-Atlantic flight.

He had a shot as host of The Milton Berle Show (1958) in the summer of 1948. Although it is remembered as Milton Berle's show today, NBC chose to test emcees throughout that summer. Other hosts included Morey Amsterdam, Georgie Price, Henny Youngman, Jack Carter and Peter Donald. Berle clicked with audiences and was chosen as the show's permanent star by September, 1948.