Peg Lynch
Peg Lynch was a writer and performer best known for her work on one of television’s first sitcoms, Ethel and Albert. A pioneer in her field, Lynch wrote nearly 11,000 scripts for radio and television and created many original characters, some of which she performed live.
Ethel and Albert began as a 15-minute, five-day-a-week national radio program in 1944, then known as The Private Lives of Ethel and Albert. Two years later several of the radio scripts were staged for television. Then, in 1950, the program appeared as a sketch segment on the afternoon variety show The Kate Smith Hour.
In 1953 the segment became its own weekly series, moving from NBC to CBS and finally to ABC over a period of three years. Based on “the little things in life,” according to an interview with Lynch in 1950, the show followed the average lives of Ethel and Albert Arbuckle (played by Lynch and actor Alan Bunce).
Lynch began her work in radio as a teenager at a local station, where she lined up sponsors and interviewed celebrities, including baseball star Lou Gehrig and author Ernest Hemingway. She graduated from the University of Minnesota and wrote copy for the Minnesota radio station KATE, where the characters Ethel and Albert first appeared in sketches within other radio programs. Initially conceived as a kind of commercial, the fictional husband and wife duo were continually adapted to sell new products. Lynch brought the characters with her as she moved amongst radio stations, before landing in New York in 1944.
Peg Lynch was a writer and performer best known for her work on one of television’s first sitcoms, Ethel and Albert. A pioneer in her field, Lynch wrote nearly 11,000 scripts for radio and television and created many original characters, some of which she performed live.
Ethel and Albert began as a 15-minute, five-day-a-week national radio program in 1944, then known as The Private Lives of Ethel and Albert. Two years later several of the radio scripts were staged for television. Then, in 1950, the program appeared as a sketch segment on the afternoon variety show The Kate Smith Hour.
In 1953 the segment became its own weekly series, moving from NBC to CBS and finally to ABC over a period of three years. Based on “the little things in life,” according to an interview with Lynch in 1950, the show followed the average lives of Ethel and Albert Arbuckle (played by Lynch and actor Alan Bunce).
Lynch began her work in radio as a teenager at a local station, where she lined up sponsors and interviewed celebrities, including baseball star Lou Gehrig and author Ernest Hemingway. She graduated from the University of Minnesota and wrote copy for the Minnesota radio station KATE, where the characters Ethel and Albert first appeared in sketches within other radio programs. Initially conceived as a kind of commercial, the fictional husband and wife duo were continually adapted to sell new products. Lynch brought the characters with her as she moved amongst radio stations, before landing in New York in 1944.
The characters returned once more in the 1957 radio show The Couple Next Door, which ran for three years.
Lynch died July 25, 2015, in Becket, Massachusetts. She was 98.
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