Russell Davies - 29/11/2009

Almost the whole of this week's show is made up of artists and/or songwriters who made their way to The United States via the famous New York entry-point, Ellis Island, which closed 55 years ago today. Russell Davies traces the stories of these families and, thanks to the newly-available web-record of entrants up to 1924, discovers some ambiguities: He notes that Bob Hope and his family (1908) were registered as HAPE; Al Jolson was not, as oft-reported, Asa Yoelson but Eiser Ivelsohn and so on.