On the left: Elsie Hitz, actress and radio personality of the 1930s, shown here with Thelma Marsh, a young Broadway actress hired to be Hitz's understudy in the popular CBS radio show of 1933, 'The Magic Voice.' Marsh, 'Radio's First Understudy'--according to the photo caption--was selected after many auditions because 'her voice most nearly duplicated that of Miss Hitz.' To judge by the sultry looks being exchanged here, she and Hitz seem to be duplicating in other ways too.
Elsie Hitz was said to have the 'most beautiful speaking voice on the air' in the early 1930s. She also starred in Dangerous Paradise, a radio adventure serial in which she and the actor Nick Dawson played two castaways shipwrecked on a desert island. What happened to Thelma is a mystery.