Rudy Vallee first appeared on radio in 1924, during a musical tour of London. But it was his network show of 1929 that ushered in the era of the big-time radio variety show. The Rudy Vallee Hour was the most important show on the air in the early to mid-1930s, so influential that a young, unknown talent could rightly consider a booking there the break of a lifetime. Vallee's discoveries of people who later joined the front ranks of the entertainment world has never been equaled. _{John Dunning}