In the late 1920s, companies sprang up across America for the purpose of recording music and programs which could be sold, or syndicated, to a number of local stations in distant cities. For example, a San Francisco firm called MacGregor & Sollie, Inc., produced the "Cecil and Sally Eps" radio program. It was mailed on large electrical transcription discs (ETs) to many radio stations which could plug Cecil and Sally into their local schedule at a convenient time. WKAV in Laconia, New Hampshire was one such subscriber; in 1931 WKAV was under contract to pay MacGregor & Sollie $17.50 for each episode over a 26 week run.

Johnny Patrick * and Helen Troy *
Parlayed screwball “Cecil & Sally” comedy serial into one of the first nationally-syndicated transcribed (pre-recorded) programs, beginning in 1928 at KYA before moving to KPO and NBC.

John Patrick (May 17, 1905 – November 7, 1995) was an American playwright and screenwriter.

Born John Patrick Goggan in Louisville, Kentucky, his parents soon abandoned him and he spent a delinquent youth in foster homes and boarding schools. At age 19, he secured a job as an announcer at KPO Radio in San Francisco, California, marrying Mildred Legaye in 1925. He wrote over one thousand scripts for the Cecil and Sally Show broadcast by NBC between 1929 and 1933. In 1937, Patrick wrote adaptations for NBC's Streamlined Shakespeare series, guest-starring Helen Hayes.

"Cecil and Sally" were the air names of Johnny Patrick and Helen Troy, who developed the musical comedy routine while working together at KYA in 1928. The serial program debuted on the West Coast connection of the short-lived ABC network, and moved to KPO and NBC after the former network went bankrupt in 1929. Patrick wrote the scripts and sang; Troy sang and played the piano and organ. Her character, "Sally," endeared herself to West Coast listeners with her girlish lisp, referring to her partner as "Theethil."

The program ran on NBC until 1933, and was among the earliest radio shows to be nationally syndicated via electronic transcription — large, long-playing phonograph discs — by MacGregor & Ingram, a pioneering recording company.

Johnny Patrick (born John Patrick Goggan in 1905) wrote more than a thousand scripts for "Cecil and Sally" during its run. A successful playwright and Hollywood screenwriter following his early years in radio, he adapted Vern J. Sneider's novel "The Teahouse of the August Moon" for the stage in 1953, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award. In 1956, he wrote the screenplay for the motion picture version of "Teahouse," which starred Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford.

Patrick also wrote the screenplays for "Three Coins in the Fountain" (1954), "Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing" (1955), "High Society" (1956), "Les Girls" (1957), "Some Came Running" (1958), "The World of Suzie Wong" (1960) and "The Shoes of the Fisherman" (1968). In later life, he retired to St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He died in 1995 at the age of 90.

San Francisco-born Helen Troy appeared in several radio programs after "Cecil and Sally," including the 1937 series "Texaco Town" on the CBS Radio network, in which she played the comical "Saymore Saymore." The fast-talking comedienne had a brief career in motion pictures, making her film debut in George M. Cohan's "Song and Dance Man" (playing a character named "Sally," no less) and playing alongside such stars as Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in "Thoroughbreds Don't Cry" (1937) and Spencer Tracy in "Big City" (1937). She died at the age of 38 in 1942.