1952/1953 Bowman TV & Radio Stars of NBC

1952 and 1953 Bowman "TV & Radio Stars of NBC" card sets captured the culture of the early television/radio era, featuring NBC's most popular and entertaining names of the day. The cards were a slightly taller 2.5 x 3.75 inches. 1952 card backs were horizontal while the 1953 backs were vertical.

After the success of their 1952 set, Bowman released a much larger 1953 set with including more TV stars like Bob Hope, Groucho Marx, Sid Casear, Dinah Shore and others. The set also included a card for a child actor Ronnie Walken. You may know it better as Christopher Walken's ROOKIE card !!!

Another popular card is chimpanzee J. Fred Muggs ROOKIE card.
The Today Show started in 1952 and when it was under-performing, they brought in J. Fred Muggs as a co-host. Jim Fleming, the newsreader for the show, quit in protest. Muggs the chimp was quite worldly and knew over 500 words and had a wardrobe of 450 outfits. Producer, Richard Pinkham, once estimated Muggs brought his network $100 million. Muggs was also an artist and in 1958 one of his finger paintings became the cover of Mad Magazine #38.