Our Miss Brooks was a radio hit from the start; eight months after its launch as a series regular, the show won several honors, including four for Eve Arden, who topped polls in four individual publications of the time. Arden was actually the third choice to play the title role. Harry Ackerman, at the time CBS's West Coast programming director, wanted Shirley Booth for the role, but as he told historian Gerald Nachman several years later, he realized that Booth was too focused on the underpaid downsides of public school teaching at the time to have any fun with the role.
Lucille Ball was thought to be the next choice, but she was already cast in My Favorite Husband and did not audition. Then CBS president Bill Paley, who was friends with Arden, persuaded her to audition for the role. With a slightly rewritten audition script — Osgood Conklin, for example, was originally written as a school board president, but has now been written as Madison's new principal — Arden agreed to try out for the newly revamped show.
Produced by Larry Berns and written by director Al Lewis, Our Miss Brooks premiered on CBS on July 19, 1948. According to radio critic John Crosby, her lines were very "feline" in the dialogue scenes with Principal Conklin and his future boyfriend Boynton. , with lively and witty feedback. The interaction between the cast – noisy Conklin, accommodating Denton Nebbish, distracted Mrs. Davis, clueless Boynton, scheming Miss Enright — also received positive reviews.
Arden won a poll of radio listeners conducted by Radio Mirror magazine as the top-ranked comedienne of 1948-1949, receiving her award at the end of a broadcast of Our Miss Brooks in March. /"I will certainly try in the coming months to deserve the honor you have bestowed on me, for I understand that if I win this (award) two years in a row, I will be able to keep Mr. Boynton,/" -she joked. But it was also a success with critics; a winter 1949 poll of newspaper and radio magazine editors by Motion Picture Daily named her the best radio actress of the year.
Throughout its radio life, the show was sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive-Peet, promoting Palmolive soap, Luster Creme shampoo and Toni hair care products. The radio series continued until 1957, a year after its television life ended.
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