Stroe and Vasilache
Long time personal friends, N. Stroe and Vasile Vasilache were comedians who became famous on the radio.
Christine Leșcu, 15.06.2013, 15:01
In January 1929, several months after the first broadcast aired by Radio Bucharest dated November 1928, an entertainment show called “The Funny Hour” was inaugurated. Initially it lasted 10-15 minutes and was soon to become one of the longest-lived and most popular public radio shows. The success of the show was owing to the pair of comedians made up Stroe and Vasilache who started producing it on October 1st 1932. On that Sunday, at 14:00 hours local time, a tune was first heard – “Hello, hello, this is the radio….” which was composed and performed by the two comedians.
Long time personal friends, N. Stroe and Vasile Vasilache were comedians at the variety theater and before becoming famous on the radio they had already made a name for themselves in the shows produced by the “Carabus” company owned by the famous actor and comedian Constatin Tanase. Oana Georgescu, PR coordinator of the “Constatin Tanase” Variety Theater will next talk about the acting career of comedians Stroe and Vasilache.
Oana Georgescu: “They were actors of the Variety Theater. They made their theatre debut much earlier before the “Funny Hour” show was broadcast on Radio Bucharest and they were already famous. The radio show only added to their widespread celebrity. The “Funny Hour” made history in the Romanian Radio broadcasting and the success of this program has remained indisputable”.
N. Stroe was actually a nickname. His real name was Stroe Nacht, the actor belonging to the Jewish community of Racaciuni, Bacau County, where he was born on May 5th,1905. Oana Georgescu told us more about the early days of the friendship binding comedians Stroe and Vasilache:
Oana Georgescu: “Vasilache was 2 years younger than Stroe. He was born on October 26th,1907 in the town of Husi, in Vaslui county and was killed in the bombings of April 4th,1944. He died very young. They made a good team, which was the key to their huge success. They were both actors and directors. They wrote the scripts together, although N. Stroe seemed to be more talented, a gift he passed on to his son, Eugen Nacht Stroe, who wrote a book about his father called ‘Applauses’.”
In 1940, when the persecution of Jews started in Romania, actors Stroe and Vasilache were banned from appearing on stage together. However, they continued to write and compose music together for the radio show “The Funny Hour”. On stage, N. Stroe performed at the “Baraseum” Jewish theater and Vasile Vasilache continued to appear in shows staged at the “Carabus” and “Alhambra” Variety Theaters in Bucharest. Unfortunately, in April 1944, the comedy duo and friendship broke up with the untimely death of Vasile Vasilache in a bomb raid. N. Stroe continued to perform on stage and to direct variety theater shows. He also featured on his own in the radio show “The Funny Hour”, each time performing the signature tune that made the pair famous. In 1977 he settled with his family in Israel, where he died in Tel Aviv in 1990.
His son, Eugen Stroe, also an actor, has recently published the biography of his father as part of a tribute show staged at the “Constantin Tanase” Variety Theater in Bucharest. The show “The Funny Hour” underwent numerous changes along along the years, aired under different names and featuring different hosts. It was called at various times “Famous Comedians on the Microphone”, “Radio-Magazine”, “Satire and Humor on the Microphone” and “The Funny Wave”, and is as popular today as it was back when Stroe and Vasilache first launched it.
