Rex Marshall (1919-1983) was elected to The Lambs in 1958 as a Professional Member while he was a successful broadcaster. He was active in radio and early television, along with becoming a pioneer advertising pitchman for household products, from coffee to aluminum foil. After four decades in New York, he moved to a tiny town in Vermont, purchased a low wattage AM radio station, and worked until his death.
Marshall Bingeman Shantz, Jr. was born January 10, 1919, in Pemberton, New Jersey, to Marshall Bingeman Shantz, Sr. and Hermione Shantz. Marshall was the oldest of four. He grew up in Hartford, Oneida County, New York. As a young man, he adopted the stage name “Rex Marshall.”
His career started in Boston in his teens; when he was 21 he worked as a radio announcer in Syracuse. Marshall found announcing jobs around New York, from the Catskills to the Finger Lakes.
He enlisted in the U.S. Army in August 1941. Marshall was commissioned an officer, rising to captain. He earned his aviator wings and became a pilot and instructor in the Air Corps. He flew the amphibious “flying boat” OA-10 version of the PBY Catalina in the Pacific Theater. During the war he married Barbara Dykeman in 1942 in Texas. They had four children.
He was not released from his Army service until March 1946. He and his family returned to New York and he continued his broadcasting career.
In 1948, Marshall helped to launch WPIX-TV in New York as its first announcer. Television was growing and he got in on the ground floor as the host of an anthology drama “Suspense” (1949) on CBS-TV, based on the radio program of the same name. The show was sponsored by Auto-Lite, a manufacturer of sparkplugs.
Throughout the 1950s, Marshall did other work in television, principally as an announcer. Marshall was on the game show “Blind Date” (1950), the sports broadcast “The Herman Hickman Show” (1952), and “The Jack Paar Show“ (1957). He alternated TV series with recording advertising promotions.
Marshall bought a tiny AM radio station in 1965 in Hanover, New Hampshire, the location of Dartmouth College. The station was on the other side of the state line in White River Junction, Vermont. He changed the call letters to WNHV and hosted “Breakfast at the Hanover Inn,” with interviews during the morning “coffee time.” Marshall and his family resided in Woodstock, Vermont.
For more than twenty years, Marshall was the spokesperson for the Reynolds Aluminum Company. His other clients were Gleem toothpaste, Maxwell House Coffee, and ESSO gasoline. In 1967, Marshall returned to New York for one year to anchor the evening news for WPIX.
On March 8, 1983, Marshall was sitting at his desk at WNHV when he suffered a heart attack. He was rushed to the Veterans Administration hospital in White River Junction, where he died the next day. He was 64 years old.