on Blue Network. On April 17, 1944, Ethel and Albert was reborn as a five-day-a-week, 15-minute show on national radio. Lynch got asked to play Ethel, which she initially refused to do. But after several actresses getting auditioned and none found suitable, Lynch got signed to play the role. Richard Widmark played the role of Albert for six months. He got replaced by Alan Bunce. Bunce co-starred with Lynch for the next twenty years in both Ethel and Albert, and as their radio counterparts in The Couple Next Door. The partnership lasted until Bunce died in 1965. Ethel and Albert continued as a fifteen-minute show until 1949 when it expanded to a half-hour. The show moved into commercial television in 1950 as a ten-minute segment on The Kate Smith Hour, and in April 1953 became a half-hour program on the NBC network. The show was well-received by both the public and the critics. Margaret Hamilton was a regular on the show, playing Albert's aunt. Kay Gardella of the New York Daily News wrote that Ethel and Albert was "generally regarded as the top domestic comedy on TV. The warm, realistic portrayals and situations of this stanza reflect the personality of its creator. Peg is completely down to earth, and so are her scripts". Jack Gould of The New York Times, has given credit to the show and its creator-writer when he wrote, "the author of Ethel and Albert, of course, is Miss Lynch herself. She has lost none of her uncanny knack for catching the small situation in married life and developing it into a gem of quiet humor. The charm of Ethel and Albert is that they could be man and wife off the screen ." NBC cancelled Ethel and Albert in December 1954. The show found a new life when it got picked up by CBS as the 1955 summer replacement for the Spring Byington vehicle December Bride, and it was so popular that Lynch got offered her half-hour prime-time slot (sponsored by Maxwell House). Ethel and Albert gained a devoted following across America, and in the fall of 1955, the show again switched networks, this time to ABC, sponsored by Ralston Purina. It remained there until May 1956. Lynch owned the rights to her program, and it was not limited to a single network. Ethel and Albert aired for the final time on television on May 25,