The Easy Ace: A Journal of Classic Radio

Ever Onward and Upward . . .

2009-10-31T11:57:00.001-07:00

As of today, this journal no longer exists in the present form. That's because, as of just over a week ago, your chronicler was named---and has been working as---Examiner.com's national old-time radio examiner. Between that and writing and performing my own weekly radio exercise, not to mention writing about baseball elsewhere, I simply don't have the time or the range to continue.

Aside from getting a little recognition beyond the purview of the blogosphere, why lie? I need the money. And I do stand to earn a little money from the outlet. Probably very little in the beginning. (Probably, the beginning will last a lot longer than I'd like.) But you take your chances wherever they come to you, and I'm more than willing to take the chance that an audience above and beyond the blogosphere is ready to join the journey retracing an invaluable part of our cultural patrimony.

I will leave this journal alive for at least another two months, the better to let those who care hunt down what they might have missed. I plan to archive it myself, preserving the best of the essays and synopses, as part and parcel of a book I plan to write, a kind-of daily listening guide for old-time radio.

My Examiner.com work will be done in much the same way I did this journal for the past two years, especially, with the same kind of listening-guide approach, but adding to it the eye of a critic as well as the enthusiasm of a fan.

For now, I'll say a gentle thank you to everyone who appreciated and sent kind comments along regarding this journal, and to everyone who was kind enough to link to this journal. It all told me that what I was doing was more than worthwhile.

And until we meet again---on Examiner.com; or, between the covers of the book I hope to get out of both this journal's effort and the work to come (and assuming there's a publisher crazy enough to take a chance with a book like that)---I'm quietly yours . . .

The Catch: The Way It Was, 29 September

2009-09-29T15:28:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST

GAME ONE, WORLD SERIES; POLO GROUNDS, NEW YORK:

CLEVELAND INDIANS V. NEW YORK GIANTS---

WILLIE MAYS: "THE CATCH"

(MUTUAL, 1954)

With first and second and nobody out in the top of the eighth, Game One of the World Series tied at two, and New York Giants starter Sal Maglie having walked future Cleveland Indians Hall of Famer Larry Doby and surrendered a single to third baseman Al Rosen, Tribe outfielder Vic Wertz launched New York reliever Don Liddle's 2-1 pitch on a rising line toward the rear end of the Polo Grounds's famous, cavernous straightaway center field, the ball traveling on a slight angle toward the high fence afront the bleachers to the right of the park's famous elevated straight center field clubhouses.

The scrambling Giants center fielder with the number 24 on his back ran down the drive, which threatened to become a two-run triple at least, a possible three-run, inside-the-park homer at worst, before he hauled down the ball, over his shoulders, without leaving his feet, though some photographic angles will come to suggest he went at least partially airborne to get the ball. Then, he wheeled and fired a perfect strike back to the infield, keeping Doby from advancing past third, giving Liddle's reliever, Marv Grissom, a chance to set the Indians down and keep the game set for what proved to be the winning blow---Dusty Rhodes's famous pinch hit bomb in the bottom of the tenth, launching the Giants toward an improbable sweep of the 111-game winning Indians.

Warning: Muddy sound. Announcer: Jimmy Dudley.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

FIBBER McGEE & MOLLY: BACK FROM VACATION (NBC, 1942)---And the first order of business for the freshly-returned McGees (Jim and Marian Jordan) is to retrieve the camera Fibber inadvertently left on the train---assuming they can negotiate the Old-Timer (Bill Thompson), a chatty lost-and-found director, a fuming Mayor LaTrivia (Gale Gordon), a pestiferous Teeny (also Marian Jordan) who's donated her father's car radiator to the wartime scrap drive, and a customarily wife-bedeviled Wimpole (also Bill Thompson). Announcer: Harlow Wilcox. Music: Billy Mills Orchestra. Writer: Don Quinn.

Wrong Note Samba? The Way It Was, 28 September

2009-09-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

THE KALLMANAC:

THE LEBANESE SAMBA CONTROVERSY;

RACHAEL LASER'S SPOTTED OWL A KING;

THE LETTERMAN PLOT

(KLAV-AM, LAS VEGAS, 2009)

In which a small group of Lebanese clerics get theirs for thwarting a harmless-enough Brazilian samba troupe touring the country otherwise to acclaim enough; Rachael Laser whomps up (or should that be blows up) a dish straight from the allegedly endangered species list; and, your host humbly reminds one and all what David Letterman isn't guilty of committing around the office.

And, we serve up an old-time radio treat: the premiere edition of the fifteen-minute, semi-serialisation of beloved comedy. . .

FIBBER McGEE & MOLLY: HANGING AUNT SARAH'S PICTURE (NBC, 1953)---In which the Sage of 79 Wistful Vista (Jim Jordan) can't hang it without first negotiating a small barrage of visitors---namely, Dr. Gamble (Arthur Q. Bryan) and Teeny (Marian Jordan, who also plays Molly)---welcoming the McGees back from vacation. (Announcer: John Wald. Writer: Phil Leslie.)

Partner-in-Crime: Patty Price. Announcer/Rachael Laser: Siri Morgan. Writer-host-producer-director: Your extinguished editor.

Goya, Vey! The Way It Was, 27 September

2009-09-27T09:16:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST

THE HALLS OF IVY

THE LESLIE HOFF PAINTING

(NBC, 1950)

Series star Ronald Colman himself has written this script that launches with a particularly Hall (Colman)-like dilemna: Only Vicki (Benita Hume Colman) can turn a grump about the morning junk mail, which already bothers Hall no end, into a soliloquy on behalf of increasing Ivy College's student enrollment. And only Hall could find amid the junk mail rubble a query from the attorney for a wealthy Ivy graduate's widow, who spent her final years trying to recover her family's lost art treasures . . . including and especially an authenticated Goya.

The question at first: whether to sell the painting and using the proceeds for a new Ivy arts center, or whether to display the painting on campus. Then the attorney (Ken Peters) visits the Halls with a development the Halls may not like hearing---a knowledgeable art critic believes the painting may be a fake, but that the dead widow may have hyped it to avoid paying duty when she brought it home to the United States. And to make things worse: board chairman Wellman (Herbert Butterfield), not exactly a Hall ally, wants it hung in the hall named after him, unaware it may be a fraud.

And there's a sealed letter from the dead widow that's addressed to Hall . . . and can be opened by no one but himself---after the painting's accepted or a monetary compensation is accepted in its place, which raises the question of what Wellman might do if and when he learns the truth about the painting.

Announcer: Ken Carpenter. Music: Henry Russell. Director: Nat Wolff. Writer: Ronald Colman.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

INFORMATION, PLEASE: (NBC BLUE, 1938)---On the day he opens in The Night of the King, Basil Rathbone (better known for playing Sherlock Holmes) joins musicologist Sigmund Spaeth---the author (Read 'Em and Weep; The Common Sense of Music), composer, and scholar whose old-time radio career as a music appreciator and analyst earns him the nickname that also titled one of his radio programs, The Tune Detective---to augment the regular panel of Franklin P. Adams (humourist, New York Post) and John F. Kieran (sports columnist, The New York Times). Moderator: Clifton Fadiman. Announcer: Howard Claney. Music: Joe Kahn. Director: Don Golenpaul.

AVALON TIME: MEETING THE IN-LAWS (NBC, 1939)---Host Red Skelton, in his final months hosting the show, peels through a stream of news jokes and a little give-and-take with some of the musical cast debating whether the show needs more music or more comedy, before launching a sketch in which a newlywed couple (Edna Stillwell, Skelton) is meeting her parents---for the first time. Additonal cast: Dick Todd, Bud Vandover, Marlin Hurt. Announcer: Del King. Music: The Avalon Chorus; Bob Strong Orchestra. Writers: Unknown.

THE GREEN HORNET: VOTES FOR SALE (NBC BLUE, 1940)---With the city's anti-machine mayor facing a dangerous and even violent re-election challenge from his corrupt machine predecessor, the Green Hornet (Al Hodge) wants the city to think he's backing that predecessor---the better to push the critical, machine-breaking ward's votes the mayor's way. Kato: Raymond Toyo. Lowry: Jack Petruzzi. Lenore Case: Lee Allman. Additional cast: Unknown. Director: James Jewell. Writers: Fran Striker, Dan Beattie, Leo Boulette.

MAYOR OF THE TOWN: THE PAPA DEAR CONTEST (NBC, 1942)---A pleasantly crusty evening of checkers with the judge (possibly Irvin Lee) is interrupted by two Hollywood producers who want the skeptical mayor (Lionel Barrymore) to help with a project the town's chamber of commerce is abetting already: finding the ideal father figure in Springdale for their next film, inspiring the mayor to make a surprising choice for the honour. Marilly: Agnes Moorehead. Additional cast: . Announcer: Harlow Wilcox. Music: Gordon Jenkins Orchestra. Director: Jack Van Nostrand. Writer: Jean Holloway. (Final broadcast for NBC; show moves to CBS as of 7 October 1942.)

THE SIX SHOOTER: THE COWARD (NBC, 1953)---Stopping in Temple City on a job to retrieve cattle, Ponset (James Stewart)'s conscience is troubled by a once-rough man who's changed to a gunless, even even-keeled soul, leaving him with an unwarranted image as a coward, a possibly nasty battle with a rancher who's poaching his and his pregnant wife's cattle, a secret Ponset learns unexpectedly from the frightened woman, and an unexpected rifle purchase. Announcer: Hal Gibney. Music: Basil Adlam. Director: Jack Johnstone. Writer: Frank Burt.

The Run 'Em Down Store: The Way It Was, 26 September

2009-09-26T07:59:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST

LUM & ABNER:
THE FIRST HALF-HOUR SHOW---A SURPRISE PARTY FOR LUM & ABNER
(CBS, 1948)

A year earlier, running a CBS workshop that serves as much as a script hospital as a training school for new comedy writers, Goodman Ace fumed over CBS's remake of The Little Show, which he'd already retooled for a rising old-time radio comic named Robert Q. Lewis:

I give them a good, tight fifteen-minute comedy show and what do they do? Expand it to half an hour and throw in an orchestra and an audience. Who the hell said a comedy show had to be half an hour? Marconi? Ida Cantor?

Little did Ace know that CBS would perform a similar assassination upon one of the most landmark "good, tight fifteen-minute comed[ies]" of all old-time radio. Of any such show that ever graced the medium (including Ace's own Easy Aces, which he himself tried to retool as a half-hour exercise---mr. ace and JANE---by which he tried to beat the premise senseless via a self-satire in which his prime target was the very mindset that helped destroy the shorter serial comedy), an argument exists that Lum & Abner doesn't deserve the fate about to befall it.

That longtime master exercise in rural absurdism is about to be reshaped into a half-hour sitcom. Its introduction seems benign enough, a tribute to the solidity and the popularity of the original show and its two masterminds, but it actually telegraphs the worst of what is to become: this is a sap-and-claptrap variety exercise, fashioned as a "surprise party" for the sages of Pine Ridge, complete with showbiz stalwarts (specifically, tonight, Bob Crosby, Bob Hope, Hedda Hopper, the Modernaires, Red Skelton [in Clem Kadiddlehopper guise], and Margaret Whiting), showbiz glitz, and rapid-fire showbiz punch lines, bordering on witlessness, inexplicably subverting the subtlety of the Chester Lauck/Norris Goff serial comedy.

Lauck and Goff themselves make a quick appearance toward the show's finish, suggesting they'll go along cheerfully enough with the transformation (they had already added more writers to the show at the onset of the 1940s), perhaps blissfully unaware that the very premise of this tribute to their creation is what will prove to be fact in due course---that they already had created something durable, something that didn't necessarily have to die with the kind of grave-stomping the sitcom version would prove often enough to imply.

Lum & Abner would be dead as a regularly-scheduled radio program within five years. The belly laughs would hardly be lame, but they'd dissipate almost as soon as the punch line. History will render its judgment in due course, and Lum & Abner will be remembered as they should have been, and not as the coming revamp threatened to render them.

Announcer: Wendell Niles. Music, direction, and writers: Unknown.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

BUNNY BERIGAN AND HIS ORCHESTRA: FROM MANHATTAN CENTER, NEW YORK (NBC, 1939)---The one-time CBS studio orchestra sideman (under the auspices of Freddie Rich) ,who became a jazz star and a jazz tragedy, shines in this remote broadcast performed near the end of his serious career as a bandleader, and three years before his life ended at 33. The only trumpeter known to be equal to Louis Armstrong and Roy Eldridge at the peak of the Swing Era, Berigan delivers a performance that betrays none of the smothering insecurities that have driven him to the bottle and would, in due course, bankrupt and then kill him. Highlights: A bristling "Caravan," in which Berigan rides that Ellington jewel into a display of his equal prowess at lower and upper horn register; and, "Oh, Ya Ya," whose theme and countermelody may have helped prod Ellington sideman Juan Tizol's future standard, "Perdido," and which pumps at least as hard as the best of the Ellington or Count Basie bands of the period. Other selections: "I Poured My Heart Into a Song" (vocal by Danny Richman), "Night Song," "Swingin' and Jumpin'," and "Little Gate Special." Announcer: Unknown.

THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE: LEILA RETURNS (NBC, 1943)---Leila Ransom (Shirley Mitchell)---who jilted Gildersleeve (Harold Peary) at the altar when her husband turned up alive---returns to Summerfield widowed in sad fact . . . after first sending Gildy a note hoping she can "remain eternally your friend," confusing him a little further considering his unexpected interest in school principal Eve Goodwin (Bea Benaderet) and his reluctant determination to keep things platonic with Leila. Hooker: Earle Ross. Leroy: Walter Tetley. Birdie: Lillian Randolph. Marjorie: Lurene Tuttle. Peavey: Richard LeGrand. Announcer: Ken Carpenter. Music: Claude Sweeten Orchestra. Director: Cecil Underwood. Sound: Floyd Caton, Virgil Reimer. Writers: John Whedon, Sam Moore.

Rap Sheets: The Way It Was, 25 September

2009-09-25T02:49:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
OUR MISS BROOKS:
CONKLIN CAUSES A FIGHT
(CBS, 1949)

In which Madison High's blowhard principal (Gale Gordon), whose contempt for daughter Harriet's (Gloria McMillan) beau Walter (Richard Crenna) runs the gamut from pathological to pathetic, is beside himself after Walter takes the rap, to Harriet's adoring gratitude, for Harriet accidentally crashing her father's car . . . in his own garage.

Which is nothing compared to what Conklin might do to Walter if he wises up to Walter's plot to cause Boynton (Jeff Chandler) to gravitate closer to Connie (Eve Arden): a similar accident, or offence, attributable to Boynton, for which she might take the rap the better to endear herself to the reluctant object of her affections---assuming it doesn't backfire.

Mrs. Davis: Jane Morgan. Announcer: Bob LaMond. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Writer/director: Al Lewis.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE WHISTLER: MARRIED TO MURDER (CBS, 1944)---Acquitted of killing his former girl friend when his society fiancee (possibly Betty Lou Gerson) testifies to his alibi, a bohemian painter (possibly Wally Maher) learns too late that his fiancee marries him for the perverse thrill of marrying a murderer. Additional cast: Unknown. The Whistler: Marvin Miller. Announcer: Bill Pennell. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Whistling: Dorothy Roberts. Director: George W. Allen. Writer: Robert Libbott.

THE PHIL HARRIS-ALICE FAYE SHOW: KEEPING REGULAR OFFICE HOURS (NBC, 1949)---That's what sponsor Scott (Gale Gordon) demands after Phil (Harris) barely presented a show last week, and that's what Phil fears will wreck his lifestyle, even if Alice (Faye) is rather enthusiastic about the idea. Little Alice: Jeanine Roos. Phyllis: Anne Whitfield. Remley: Elliott Lewis. Willie: Robert North. Announcer: Bill Forman. Music: Walter Sharp, Phil Harris Orchestra. Writers: Ray Singer, Dick Chevillat.

Another Enchanted Cottage: The Way It Was, 24 September

2009-09-24T07:41:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
GENERAL ELECTRIC THEATER:
THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE
(CBS, 1953)

Disfigured and embittered following a harrowing road accident, Livia Ashley (Joan Fontaine), who owns a coastal honeymoon cottage accepts the friendship of a blind sculptor (Tom Tully), and---crying out in her loneliness---proposes to his plain assistant (William Johnstone), to ward off the entreaties of her sister and brother-in-law to return to their high society life.

But their marriage of mutual self-protection falls unexpectedly under the cottage's reputed, honeymooners'-only spell, a spell of which she was unaware previously, which now carries unnerving ramifications when her sister (Lurene Tuttle) and brother-in-law (Dan O'Herlihy) return to visit the newlyweds . . . provoking a surprising consequence.

This version stays more strictly along the line of the original Arthur Wing Pinero drama than to the popular (and enchanting) 1945 film adaptation starring Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire (which they re-created in a striking installment of Lux Radio Theater)---in which they played a socialite disfigured in war and the cottage's plain, lonely caretaker (with Mildred Natwick as the cottage owner, a widow who masks her grief in brusqueness), but it's still an engaging if too-abreviated listen.

Mrs. Morgan: Gloria Gordon. Announcer: Ken Carpenter. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Director: Jaime del Valle. Writer: Walter Brown Newman, adapting the Arthur Wing Pinero play.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE WHISTLER: BLIND ALLEY (CBS, 1943)---A weak-willed playboy, whose wealthy grandfather has threatened to cut him off until or unless he reforms, learns the hard way where his wastrel life of wine, women, and gambling---patterned after that of his father, who met an early death because of it---might lead if he's foolish enough to think he can't be burned . . . or buried, after a night on the town and a jarring accident with his new girlfriend and her shifty, blackmailing brother. Nella: Possibly Lurene Tuttle. Investigator: Possibly Jeff Chandler. Additional cast: Unknown. The Whistler: Bill Forman. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Director: J. Donald Wilson. Writers: J. Donald Wilson, Harold Swanton.

THE GREEN HORNET: UNDERWATER ADVENTURE (ABC, 1946)---The Hornet (Bob Hall) and Kato (Rollon Parker) target a salvage company they suspect is a front for mass theft, even if they're the only ones who believe it, looking to thwart a crooked salvage scow doing business with an unsuspecting city operation and hot for a sea-buried bank haul. Axford: Gil Shea. Announcer: Possibly Hal Neal. Director: Possibly Charles Livingstone. Sound: Fred Fry, Bill Hengsterbeck, Ken Robertson. Writer: Fran Striker.

THE HAROLD PEARY SHOW: RENAMING BOOMER PARK (CBS, 1950)---Warding off Billy's (Will Wright) suggesting that he offer racing tips on his morning radio show is nothing compared to Harold (Peary) trying to romance an Evie (Mary Jane Croft) who thinks he wastes too much time on "frivolous" local crusades. Stanley: Ken Peters. Gloria: Gloria Holliday. Old Doc Yak-Yak: Joseph Kearns. Additional cast: Frances Robinson, Jerry Marron, Jack Moyles. Announcer: Bob LaMond. Music: Jack Meakin. Director: Norman McDonnell. Writers: Gene Stone, Jack Robinson, Dick Powell, Harold Peary.

Tripwires, Gongs, and Ducks: The Way It Was, 23 September

2009-09-23T06:45:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
FIBBER McGEE & MOLLY:
ANYTHING TO GET OUT OF SCRUBBING THE BACK PORCH
(NBC, 1935)

By now well settled at 79 Wistful Vista, after several years of rambling, and well-settled into their soon-to-be-familiar personalities as the scattered, bighearted but clumsy-minded Fibber and salt-of-the-earth, acid but patiently loving Molly, McGee (Jim Jordan) trips into a mouse trap, crosses the wrong wire, longs for his own gong to ring away amateur handymen, and looks for any and every other excuse to duck the back porch scrubbing for which Molly (Marian Jordan) has hankered long enough.

Includes a special appearance by the then-president of show sponsor Johnson's Wax, Herbert F. Johnson, Jr., about to embark on a South American expedition for his company. Announcer: Harlow Wilcox. Music: Rico Martelli Orchestra; Lynn Martin; the Three Kings. Writer: Don Quinn.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

SUSPENSE: THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (CBS, 1943)---Launching a four-week stand as the show's star, Orson Welles also features in this adaptation of the Richard Connell story (published first in Collier's, 19 January 1924) in which a crack hunter from New York (Keenan Wynn) becomes the hunted---by a Russian aristocrat (Welles)---after swimming to safety in the Carribbean following his fall from a yacht. The Man in Black: Joseph Kearns. Additional cast: Unknown. Announcer: Truman Bradley. Music: Lucien Morawick. Director: William Spier. Writer: Jack Anson Fink.

MY FAVOURITE HUSBAND: THE ATTIC (CBS, 1949)---George's (Richard Denning) longtime habit of newspaper reading at the breakfast table finally drives Liz (Lucille Ball) to a desperate measure; Liz translates for Katie (Ruth Perrott) when an old friend calls George, inviting him to a reunion of his old music group and prompting him to hunt down his old ukulele---hoping Liz's habit of discarding his old belongings pre-emptively is broken at last. Additional cast: Unknown. Director: Jess Oppenheimer. Writers: Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh, Bob Carroll, Jr.

Abandoning a Sinking Boat: The Way It Was, 22 September

2009-09-22T06:16:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
BOB & RAY PRESENT THE CBS RADIO NETWORK:
ONE FELLA'S FAMILY---BY THE SEAWALL
(TAKE AWHILE, THINK ABOUT IT, 1959)

The Trophy Train hits San Diego pausing, for Arthur Shrank's reporting and the duplicates of Bob & Ray's high school diplomas . . . and the latest installment of One Fella's Family shows Mother and Father taking a box lunch to the seawall, where they witness a slightly jarring boating incident.

Otherwise, well, Wally Ballou reports from Las Vegas and a new hotel opening, interviewing its manager who hopes for a big sendoff for the new emporium.

Writers/improvisors: Bob Elliott, Ray Goulding.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

VIC & SADE, SADE TAKES NAMES; A.K.A. WALLFLOWERS (NBC, 1939)---After lunch, and just before Vic (Art Van Harvey) and Rush (Bill Idelson) need to return to office and school, Sade (Bernadine Flynn) on the phone with Ruthie Stenbottom shoos Rush off to school and commits Vic to recording information---and at least half a dozen names---on various wildflowers, for her thimble club. Writer/director: Paul Rhymer.

DUFFY'S TAVERN: FINNEGAN'S INSURANCE POLICY (NBC, 1944)---With guest Gene Tierney ("She's got the face that launched a thousand ships---and the legs that brought 'em right back home") expected to visit, Archie (Ed Gardner) thinks she might appreciate a life of simplicity with him, while Finnegan (Charles Cantor) wants a five dollar loan to take out an accident insurance policy. Eddie: Eddie Green. Miss Duffy: Florence Robinson. Mr. Hancock: Possibly Alan Reed. Music: Marty Malneck Orchestra. Writers: Ed Gardner, Abe Burrows, possibly Larry Marks, Larry Gelbart.

Profiles in Absurdity: The Way It Is, 21 September

2009-09-21T23:50:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE KALLMANAC:
ONLINE DATING PROFILES; THURBER'S RULES, REVISITED
(KLAV-AM LAS VEGAS, 2009)

In which the online dating profile, at least the more typical of the breed, is reflected, inspected, and dissected. And, in which your host takes advantage of one of radio's (old-time or otherwise) salient blessings---namely, the do-over---and re-examines Thurber's sixth rule of humour, before having quickly at rules one through five and finding them a little wanting . . .

Cast: Patty Price, Siri Morgan. Tonight's music: The Butterfield Blues Band, Booker T. & the MGs. Writer/host/director/producer: Jeff Kallman.

Our old-time radio selection for tonight:

LORENZO JONES: LORENZO PLANS A MODEL TOWN (NBC, 1948)---His published letter outlining such a town in draft gets Lorenzo (Karl Swenson) a visit from the mayor, which astonishes and dismays Belle (Lucille Wall) at once . . . at first. Announcer: George Putnam. Music: Ann Leaf. Director: Possibly Stephen Gross. Writers: Theodore and Mathilde Ferro.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LIFE WITH LUIGI: LUIGI DISCOVERS AMERICA (SERIES PREMIERE---CBS, 1948)---Freshly arrived in Chicago, antique-and-curio shopman Luigi Basco (J. Carroll Naish) is at once fascinated by his newly-adopted America ("Some-a country when a Washington a-drive off in a Lincoln!") and repelled by the fellow Italian (Alan Reed) who brought him over with one purpose in mind---to marry his fat, giggly daughter (Jody Gilbert). Jimmy: Gil Stratton. Miss Spaulding: Mary Shipp. Banker: Gale Gordon. Announcer: Bob LaMond. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Director: William N. Robson. Writers: Hy Kraft, Arthur Stander.

Angular and Long-Legged: The Way It Was, 20 September

2009-09-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE SIX SHOOTER:
JENNY
(NBC, 1953)

One supposes this could file under better late than never, but James Stewart---who isn't exactly a stranger to old-time radio---hits it as a leading man at last . . . in a subtly clever Western premiering tonight.

Stewart was never better on the air than in this drama of Britt Ponset, frontier drifter created by Frank Burt. The epigraph set it up nicely: "The man in the saddle is angular and long-legged: his skin is sun dyed brown. The gun in his holster is gray steel and rainbow mother-of-pearl. People call them both The Six Shooter." Ponset was a wanderer, an easy-going gentleman and---when he had to be---a gunfighter.

Stewart was right in character as the slow-talking maverick who usually blundered into other people's troubles and sometimes shot his way out. His experiences were broad, but The Six Shooter leaned more to comedy than other shows of its kind. Ponset took time out to play Hamlet with a crude road company. He ran for mayor and sheriff of the same town at the same time. He became involved in a delighful Western version of Cinderella, complete with grouchy stepmother, ugly sisters, and a shoe that didn't fit. And at Christmas he told a young runaway the story of A Christmas Carol, substituting the original Dickens characters with Western heavies. Britt even had time to fall in love, but it was the age-old story of people from different worlds, and the romance was foredoomed despite their valiant efforts to save it.

So we got a cowboy-into-the-sunset ending for this series, truly one of the bright spots of radio. Unfortunately, it came too late, and lasted only one season.

---The Old-Time Radio Researchers Group.

The Six Shooter came well past radio's best years and was an unusual and at times fetching western . . . Stewart was a superb radio actor, overcoming the drift of some scripts into folksy platitude . . . [but] the series as a whole just lacked the fine edge to be found in radio's two best Westerns, Gunsmoke and Frontier Gentleman . . . Despite Stewart's great prestige, the show was largely sustained. Chesterfield was interested, but Stewart declined, not wanting a cigarette company to counter his largely wholesome screen image.

---John Dunning, in On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.)

Regardless, The Six Shooter will wield an influence. A few years later, network television will find a hit in a show that plays the mature Western theme for laughs and gets them in abundance enough---ABC's Maverick.

Here, young Jenny Garver (possibly Elvia Allman), with a plain if feminine face but a quietly reserved, almost masculine carriage and fashion sense, intrigues Ponset (Stewart), who doesn't quite understand why the townsmen deride her as mercilessly as they do, and who finds himself concerned for her in spite of her air of perhaps too-prounounced self-reliance . . . and her unusual kind of compassion---the kind that allows her to love and hide an outlaw merely because he didn't deride her as other men do.

Additional cast: B.J. Thompson, Jess Kirkpatrick, George Niess, Harry Bartell. Announcer: Hal Gibney. Music: Basil Adlam. Director: Jack Johnstone. Writer: Frank Burt.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

MAYOR OF THE TOWN: AMY LOU GOES TO WAR (NBC, 1942)---Torn between joining the Army nursing corps and staying behind as the wife of her lifelong love (Stan Ferrar), who's edgy enough about marrying a woman who doesn't want to just stay home, one-time tomboy Amy Lou Peters (Veola Vonn) joins the corps . . . only to become seriously wounded---and possibly facing court-martial---when she goes to the front lines to treat wounded who may not survive to reach rear-echelon field marshals. Marilly: Agnes Moorehead. Additional cast: Unknown. Music: Gordon Jenkins. Director: Jack Van Nostrand. Writers: Jean Holloway, Leonard St. Clair.

THE WHISTLER: FOG (CBS, 1942)---During a spell of heavy fog, a merchant shipman rended temporarily amnesiac in a fall at port, on the way to meet a hood who owes him money, wants to escape when the hood turns up dead and he fears he may have killed the man---especially after a friend tries to blackmail him over the crime. Cast: Unknown. The Whistler: Joseph Kearns. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Whistling: Dorothy Roberts. Director: J. Donald Wilson. Writer: Herbert Connor.

SUSPENSE: THE LIBRARY BOOK (CBS, 1945)---It's Myrna Loy's show as a public librarian who drops everything to discover who vandalised her library's copy of Gone With the Wind. Additional cast: Conrad Binyan, Cathy Lewis, Wally Maher. Writer: William Speier, based on the novel, The Book That Squealed by Cornell Woolrich.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1869---George Robey (singer: Music Hall), London.
1896---Si Wills (writer: Joan Davis Time), Pennsylvania.
1899---Elliot Nugent (actor: Best Plays; U.S. Steel Hour; Lux Radio Theater), Dover, Ohio.
1911---Frank DeVol (composer/conductor: The Rudy Vallee Show; Sealtest Village Store; The Dinah Shore Show), Moundsville, West Virginia.
1912---Ron Cochran (newscaster: Sounds of the World; Feature Project), unknown; John W. Loveton (director: The Shadow; Mr. and Mrs. North; The Court of Missing Heirs), unknown.
1915---Joe King (announcer: Songs by Morton Downey; Walk a Mile), Birmingham, Alabama.
1918---Gordon Heath (actor: New World a-Coming; The CBS Radio Mystery Theater), New York City; Peg Phillips (actress: Studio One; The Big Show), Everett, Washington.
1919---Frances Heflin (actress: Aunt Jenny; Big Sister), Oklahoma City.
1924---Michael Hardwick (writer: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes), Leeds, UK.
1925---Joan Barton (actress: Meet Me at Parky's), unknown; Joyce Brothers (psychologist/commentator: NBC Monitor), New York City.
1930---Anne Meara (comedian/actress: The CBS Radio Mystery Theater), New York City.

To Be, or Not to Be: The Way It Was, 19 September

2009-09-19T07:45:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
COLUMBIA WORKSHOP:
HAMLET (PART ONE)
(CBS,1936)

Having hit stride early, the landmark dramatic anthology gets a Shakespearean adrenaline shot from the rising Orson Welles.

The importance of The Columbia Workshop in the history of radio is underscored by the state of the art in mid-1936. Network radio was just a decade old. For much of that time, what was heard was a crude product by its later standards . . . Was radio by its nature simply another vehicle for pop culture, to be absorbed by the least common denominator and immediately forgotten? Among those who had little respect for the new medium was a sizeable percentage of the country's writers, actors, and musicians. If radio was to become a serious art form, clearly that direction had to come from within the industry. Radio had to develop its own artists, writers, actors, musicians.

When The Columbia Workshop opened, "there was no show on the air without many limitations, taboos, and sacred cows," wrote CBS executive Douglas Coulter in Columbia Workshop Plays. "The way was clear for the inauguration of a radio series without precedents, one that would experiment with new ideas, new writers, new techniques; a series that would stand or fall by the impression made on a public of unbiased listeners, with no restriction save the essential and reasonable one of good taste."

---John Dunning, from On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.)

You can argue which observation (Dunning's or Coulter's) is the more presumptuous of the two. There are, after all, certain radio comedies established well enough by 1936 that are stretching certain limitations. Amos 'n' Andy, for almost a decade the most popular radio program in the United States, may need two white men to do so but co-stars/co-writers Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll are shredding the stereotype that black Americans in the Depression era have no business thinking ambitiously or enterpreneurially, even in Amos 'n' Andy's withering way, to say nothing of knitting comedy and drama effectively enough to blur the line between the two. And Easy Aces, six years old as a network entity, has cracked and scrambled the limitations of language and ambience, with mastermind Goodman Ace seeking and getting natural-sounding conversation, atmosphere as opposed to "acting," and displaying a breezy way of language play that doesn't compromise its integrity while subtly overthrowing the idea that comedy needs to be a barrage of punch lines to get the laughs.

But you can argue concurrently that, until Columbia Workshop, radio drama, such as it is, is weighed heavily enough with overacting and underatmospherics, a point not lost on former control engineer Irving Reis, who has pushed for and finally received---thanks to a CBS vice president for programming, William B. Lewis, who gives a small host of new writers and producers a wide berth and, perhaps unusually for the era, credit---an outlet for drama with honest acting and proper atmospherics.

Tonight, no less than Orson Welles, soon enough to become legend but for now another aspiring dramatist, actor, and theoretician, confronts Shakespeare's tragedy of the Danish prince (Welles) whose hesitant revenge on his murderous uncle takes a deadly detour or three, including his apparent love for the daughter of his uncle's chief advisor, through moral confusion and to grave consequences . . . and admits from the outset the dilemna between trying to compress the longest of Shakespeare's plays or cherry-picking selected extracts without compromising its integrity.

Our final decision was this: To present to you the first two acts of the play, containing wherever possible the most notable scenes in their entirety. And giving you, we hope, a clear dramatic statement of the causes of Hamlet's tragedy.

King: Alexander Scourby. Queen: Rosalind Pinchot. Polonius: Edgerdin Paul. Horatio: Sidney Smith. The Ghost: George Gaulle. Bernardo: Harold Sherman. Announcer: John Reed King. Sound supervision: Irving Reis. Music: Bernard Herrmann. Adapted and directed by Orson Welles. (Part Two to follow in one week.)

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE: PREPARING FOR LEILA'S RETURN (NBC, 1943)---Freshly home from an evening with the symphony and Eve Goodwin, and not necessarily in that order, Gildersleeve (Harold Peary) discovers keeping culture into his home has stiff competition from Leroy's (Walter Tetley) sudden obsession with boogie piano playing, Marjorie's (Lurene Tuttle) concurrent obsession with Frank Sinatra and a new boyfriend . . . and his unexpected longing for the woman (Shirley Mitchell) who broke his heart by jilting him at the altar when her late husband turned out to be very much alive. Birdie: Lillian Randolph. Hooker: Earle Ross. Peavey: Richard LeGrand. Announcer: Ken Carpenter. Music: Claude Sweeten. Director: Frank Pittman. Writers: John Whedon, Sam Moore.

OUR MISS BROOKS: WEEKEND AT CRYSTAL LAKE (CBS; AFRS REBROADCAST, 1949)---In a classic installment, Connie (Eve Arden)---relieved to discover Boynton (Jeff Chandler) has chosen her over a society girl with whom he enjoyed a brief flirtation---is surprised and pleased to receive an invitation from Conklin (Gale Gordon) and wife (Paula Winslowe) to spend a weekend at their Crystal Lake retreat---with Boynton in tow, but with nearly everyone else around her thinking he's out to re-create An American Tragedy . . . planning, in Conklin's words, to "bash her over the skull and using her as bass bait." Mrs. Davis: Jane Morgan. Walter: Richard Crenna. Harriet: Gloria McMillan. Announcer: Unknown. Music: Lud Luskin. Writer/director: Al Lewis.

Something Fishy: The Way It Was, 18 September

2009-09-18T06:44:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE PHIL HARRIS-ALICE FAYE SHOW:
PHIL RETURNS FROM VACATION
(NBC, 1949)

Everyone's rounded up for rehearsal for the first show of the new season except for Phil (Harris), who's still up on a Canadian jaunt with some of his band with one day left before showtime.

And the delay in his return has Alice (Faye) just a little bit worried; harrumphing deadbeat Willie (Robert North) just a little bit too eager to think of standing in for his vain brother-in-law; and, Little Alice (Jeanine Roos) and Phyllis (Anne Whitfield) snorting at the very idea . . .

Then Phil returns rather jauntily, with a suitcase full of salmon as proof he went fishing; a snootful of indifference from Remley (Elliott Lewis), who isn't comfortable with emotional reunions even with his best friend; the standard withering contempt from sponsor Scott (Gale Gordon), who thinks (as usual) that one and all need to step up the show preparation, after seeing a too-leisurely magazine spread ("For what I'm paying you people, I expect at least one ulcer"); and, when it proves Phil forgot to re-hire the writers for the new season, an offer to help write the show from . . .

Julius: Walter Tetley. Announcer: Bill Forman. Music: Walter Sharp, conducting the Phil Harris Orchestra. Director: Paul Phillips. Writers: Ray Singer, Dick Chevillat.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE WHISTLER: BLACK MAGIC (CBS, 1944)---Near an American mine in equatorial Africa, mine executive Paul Arnold (possibly Elliott Lewis) hopes enough illness among the natives forces the mine closure he secretly hopes for, at least until the unexpected arrival of his company doctor---who's now married to the girl (possibly Cathy Lewis) from whom he ran in a jealous rage, who now tries to convince him she still loves him . . . but for her own reasons. Additional cast: Possibly Joseph Kearns, Wally Maher, John Brown, Gerald Mohr. The Whistler: Bill Forman. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Whistling: Dorothy Roberts. Director: George Allen. Sound: Berne Surrey. Writer: J. Donald Wilson, Harold Swanson, Joel Malone.

OUR MISS BROOKS: THE FACULTY CHEERLEADER, A.K.A. THE SWEATER (CBS, 1949)---Connie (Eve Arden) is only slightly less aghast at being tapped to become a faculty cheerleader than she is at Conklin's (Gale Gordon) tightened-up anti-faculty fraternisation rules moving her room farther away from Boynton's (Jeff Chandler). Mrs. Davis: Jane Morgan. Harriet: Gloria McMillan. Walter: Richard Crenna. Miss Enright: Mary Jane Croft. Stretch: Leonard Smith. Announcer: Bob LaMond. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Writer/director: Al Lewis.

Aw, What the Hell, Just Listen: The Way It Was, 17 September

2009-09-17T04:25:00.000-07:00

Since your chronicler can't make up his mind as to which deserves the feature highlight, he's going to say to hell with it, he can't make up his mind, so just sit back and enjoy them all. You get the customary cheerful absurdity from the small house halfway up in the next block, the Man of a Thousand Voices, the Sage of Summerfield, Mrs. Cugat (as she was still known), and Miss Brooks, plus a passable if no great shakes Cyrano . . .

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

VIC & SADE: UNCLE FLETCHER CLEANS HOUSE (A.K.A. DON'T HELP DUST, UNCLE FLETCHER; NBC, 1941)---Sade (Bernadine Flynn) has too much work to do to accompany Ruthie Stenbottom on a downtown jaunt, a load Uncle Fletcher (Clarence Hartzell) is only too happy to lighten for her and Sade is only too happy, likewise, to carry herself. Announcer: Vincent Pelletier. Writer/director: Paul Rhymer.

THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE: McGEE'S INVENTION (NBC, 1944)---Ousted as water commissioner by the mayor he once challenged, Gildersleeve (Harold Peary) is surprised to hear from old buddy Fibber McGee with a new proposition he thinks is going to make them both rich---only he has to wait for a letter to learn just what the invention happens to be, while promising elaborate gifts to his family. Marjorie: Louise Erickson. Birdie: Lillian Randolph. Leroy: Walter Tetley. Hooker: Earle Ross. Music: Claude Sweeten. Director: Frank Pittman. Writers: John Whedon, Sam Moore.

THE MEL BLANC SHOW: MEL BAKES A PRIZE-WINNING PUTTY CAKE (CBS, 1946)---Mel (Blanc) and Betty (Mary Jane Croft) both look forward to the county fair, but Betty's plan to enter and win the fair's baking contest runs into an unlikely obstacle, courtesy of Mel's being hired to fix the YWCA's kitchen ovens. Colby: Joseph Kearns. Uncle Rupert: Earle Ross. Miss Stanhope: Bea Benaderet. Announcer: Bob LaMond. Director: Joe Rines. Writers: David Victor, Herb Little, Jr..

MY FAVOURITE HUSBAND: LIZ AND THE GENERAL (CBS; AFRS REBROADCAST, 1948)---He's an eccentric neighbour to Liz (Lucille Ball), a whack job to George (Richard Denning), and a retired Army general over whom Liz frets because he hasn't been out of his house for a week, which she thinks is very unlike him. Katie: Ruth Perrot. Additional cast: Unknown. Director: Jess Oppenheimer. Writers: Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh, Bob Carroll, Jr.

OUR MISS BROOKS: ELOPEMENT WITH WALTER (CBS, 1950)---Frustrated by Boynton's (Jeff Chandler) involvement with the volunteer fire department, which cuts down on her chances to land him, Connie (Eve Arden) thinks a clever togetherness idea might be to become his ladder practise rescue---from Conklin's (Gale Gordon) house, assuming she can trick the principal into leaving the house. Mrs. Davis: Jane Morgan. Walter: Richard Crenna. Harriet: Gloria McMillan. Martha Conklin: Paula Winslowe. Announcer: Bob LaMond. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Writer/director: Al Lewis.

GENERAL ELECTRIC THEATER: CYRANO DE BERGERAC (NBC, 1953)---James and Pamela Mason highlight this passable adaptation of the classic Edward Rostrand play in which a disfigured dramatist provides the poetic depth by which a shallow baron (Dan O'Herlihy) romances a beauty. Additional cast: Ben Wright. Announcer: Ken Carpenter. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Adaptation: James Pohl.

"The Sea Will Bring Me Back": The Way It Was, 16 September

2009-09-16T11:04:00.001-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
LIGHTS OUT:
THE SEA
(NBC, 1936)

"The sea has made me fortune," said the dutiful son, "and the sea will bring me back." Those last seven words especially haunt a woman torn between two sons---one a stalwart, steady fisherman who's carried the family load; the other, a shiftless, fanciful brawler---who confesses an unspeakable terror and a terrible crime to her priest.

Compounding the woman's terror: she sanctioned his going on the fatal operation, which was provoked by the shiftless brother's overheated enthusiasm for the operation and all but insistence that he go on the operation, for a prospective fortune with which to begin his marriage.

Cast: Unknown. Sound: Possibly Ed Joyce. Writer/director: Arch Oboler.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL IN PINE RIDGE (NBC BLUE, 1935)---Now that Lum (Chester Lauck, who also plays Grandpappy) has resolved his side of the mine issue, he has a new problem on his hands---fighting accusations that he's neglecting mine business, specifically getting the stockholders' money back to them after Squire's bilking, to court the returning schoolmarm, while Grandpappy tries to assure wary Abner (Norris Goff) that they're not the only ones who've been hosed in get-rich-quick schemes. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

SUSPENSE: THE KETTLER METHOD (CBS, 1942)---A neurosurgeon (Roger DeKoven) committed to a sanitarium following an unsuccessful surgery is convinced he was sent there because of professional jealousy over his unusual surgical technique---especially since he can't convince them that his patient is still alive and the procedure actually succeeded . . . because, for one thing, he's convinced fellow surgeons spirited the alleged corpse away. Winton: John Gibson. Claire: Gloria Stuart. Additional cast: Guy Repp, Martha Falkner, Winifield Hoeny, Ralph Smiley. Music: Bernard Herman. Writer: Peter Barry. (Recording begins with a network announcement urging war bond support.)

SUSPENSE: THE CROSS-EYED BEAR (CBS, 1943)---Virginia Bruce and John Loder star in a yarn about a young, thrill-seeking woman, who hires on to help find the second son of a wealthy mining enterpreneur whose unusual will---dividing his wealth between the three sons he despised, knowing one, a Nazi sympathiser, would kill the other two---while that second son lives under a false identity in the guise of a European pianist, and unaware that it all portends to a surprising end for her. Additional cast: Unknown. The Man in Black: Ted Osborne. Music: Bernard Herman. Sound: Berne Surrey. Director: Ted Bliss. Writer: Dorothy B. Hughes.

Time Waits For No One: The Way It Was, 15 September

2009-09-15T10:25:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
DUFFY'S TAVERN:
RUDY VALLEE'S SHOW AT THE TAVERN
(SEASON PREMIERE; BLUE NETWORK, 1944)

With the always-unseen Duffy back from his vacation and legendary crooner/bandleader/impresario Rudy Vallee returning to radio, Archie (Ed Gardner) has another one of his brilliant ideas---getting Vallee to do one of his shows live from the dive, even if neither Duffy nor Archie are big fans, necessarily.

"But what's our opinion against that of a million stupid dames?" asks Archie with his customary cultivation.

And what's their idea against the actuality of convincing Vallee to do the show from the dive---an actuality both Eddie (Eddie Green) and Finnegan (Charles Cantor) seem aware of---before Archie gets a clue, as usual, even if Vallee deigns to regale the denizens with a rendition of "Time Waits for No One."

Miss Duffy: Florence Halop. Announcer: John Reed King. Music: Marty Malneck Orchestra. Writers: Ed Gardner, Abe Burrows.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE JUDY CANOVA SHOW: AN EXCLUSIVE PLACE IN BRENTWOOD (NBC, 1945)---Judy (Canova) can't wait to hit a rather exclusive picnic with Benchley (Joseph Kearns) after returning from her summer in Cactus Junction, Aunt Aggie (Verna Felton) can't wait to talk her out of bringing pork chops to a do that would sooner require a more elegant dish, Geranium (Ruby Dandridge) crows over a letter from her boyfriend at war, Pedro (Mel Blanc) frets over a failed elopement attempt, and Judy has to fend off a society rival who thinks she's worthier of Benchley than Judy is. Announcer: Verne Smith. Music: Opie Cates Orchestra, the Sports Men. Writers: Fred Fox, Henry Hoople.

BOB & RAY PRESENT THE CBS RADIO NETWORK: LEONARD BURNSIDE (WAIT, DON'T TELL US! 1959)---The iminent conductor/composer (Bob Elliott) analyses American crooning, before giving way to a brief analysis of current education mysteries with an extinguished professor (Ray Goulding). Writers/improvisors: Bob Elliott, Ray Goulding.

In the Bag: The Way It Was, 14 September

2009-09-14T22:56:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE KALLMANAC:
OBAMA'S VEGAS BOOKING; HELEN & TROY IN THE BAG; EASY ACES: STRIKE THE STAGE
(KLAV-AM LAS VEGAS, 2009)

In which your chronicler muses about a few doings and undoings of God's Only Begotten Grandson . . . unfurls part two of his running sketch about a down-and-out pair of married college professors stumbling into unusual (even for Las Vegas) fortune . . . and another cobbling of a new Easy Aces sketch, from the post old-time radio writings of that jewel's mastermind Goodman Ace, with a few interjections and alterations from yours truly.

Our OTR selection for tonight will be described in this journal's "Channel Surfing" section below . . .

Helen/Jane Ace: Patty Price. Announcer: Siri Morgan. Tonight's music: Wes Montgomery, the Blues Project. Writer/producer/director: Three guesses.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE: LEROY'S PAPER ROUTE (NBC, 1941)---After Leroy (Walter Tetley) can't talk Gildersleeve (Harold Peary) into just fronting him the money for a new model airplane motor, he lands an early-morning paper route---but the household quakes at the early hours, how Hooker (Earle Ross) might react, and how he's going to deliver the papers in an unexpected thunderstorm. Marjorie: Lurene Tuttle. Birdie: Lillian Randolph. Announcer: Jim Bannon. Music: William Randolph. Director: Possibly Cecil Underwood. Writer: Leonard L. Levinson.

VIC & SADE: SADE AND RUTHIE COME OUT EVEN (NBC, 1942)---This time, Sade (Bernadine Flynn) and her shopping partner came out even in their money management, after they decided to quit listening to everyone else's advice and Vic's (Art Van Harvey) gentle needling. Rush: Bill Idelson. Writer/director: Paul Rhymer.

BOB & RAY PRESENT THE CBS RADIO NETWORK: "ONE FELLA'S FAMILY---GOING LIKE SIXTY" (YOUR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS OURS, 1959)---Introducing the Butcher family, in the beginning of the duo's classic soap satire; and, catching up with the unexpectedly recovered Smelly Dave in Nashville. Writers/improvisors: Bob Elliott, Ray Goulding.

The Lady's No Tiger: The Way It Was, 12 September

2009-09-12T06:16:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE GREEN HORNET:
MURDER TRIPS A RAT
(NBC BLUE, 1942)

The Daily Sentinel newsroom bristles when a racketeer is shot to death over suspicion of turning to cooperate with authorities, but Britt (Al Hodge) neutralises Lowry's (Jack Petruzzi) and Casey's (Leonore Allman) excitement when he reveals the killer---a woman---confessed to the crime, a possible crime of passion borne of jealousy. Which prompts the Sentinel staffers to smell a rat, after eager young reporter Gayle Manning (unknown) gets to question the woman in jail . . . and begins to suspect she's taking the fall for another killer.

Her suspicion sends Britt and Kato (Rollon Parker) after the full story, despite Kato's rare reservation, after Manning reveals a possible ploy by the lady suspect---an engagement ring she claims to have worn for longer than she's really worn it. The team rolls out and slips into the apartment in spite of constant police vigil---and rescues a police officer when a fire breaks out in the building, but not before finding evidence that could exonerate the confessor even if it doesn't immediately yield a hint toward the actual killer.

Mike Axford: Gil Shea. Newsboy: Also Rollon Parker. Additional cast: Unknown. Announcer: Possibly Charles Wood. Director: James Jewell. Writer: Fran Striker.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE: WAR BOND DRIVE (NBC, 1943)---Back from vacation, Gildersleeve (Harold Peary) has his hands full keeping Leroy (Walter Tetley) from faltering in school or in hygiene, a newspaper call for him to improve Summerfield's water flavour, and a city department head meeting at which the mayor calls for improved war bond driving . . . under the guidance of the newspaper editor who ripped the city's water quality. Marjorie: Lurene Tuttle. Birdie: Lillian Randolph. Bessie: Pauline Drake. Hooker: Earle Ross. Additional cast: Unknown. Announcer: Ken Carpenter. Music: Claude Sweeten. Director: Prank Pittman. Writers: John Whedon, Sam Moore.

BOX 13: THE ACTOR'S ALIBI (MUTUAL, 1948)---Holiday doesn't understand at first why tickets to a live radio performance turned up in the box, courtesy of fearful leading lady Jean Blake (Betty Lou Gerson), whose ultimately justified fear of her impending murder is stoked by a call Holiday gets at the restaurant where he meets her---and rejects her, at first, after receiving a phone call from a man predicting he won't help her . . . with a gun pointed right at them. Suzy: Sylvia Picker. Kling: Edmund MacDonald. Additional cast: Alan Reed, Luis van Rooten, John Beal. Director: Ted Hennigan. Music: Rudy Schrager. Writer: Frank R. Crawford. (Note: Dragging in spots toward the end of the surviving recording.)

Anything But Quiet on the Set: The Way It Was, 11 September

2009-09-11T11:41:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
CANDY MATSON, YUKON 2-8209:
THE MOVIE COMPANY
(NBC, 1951)

In a mostly effective episode, compromised briefly by a momentary lapse into melodrama toward the finish, the arguable best of old-time radio's very few female private investigators learns the hard way what happens when there's anything but quiet on the set.

There's a full cast and crew shooting on location a block or so from Candy's (Natalie Masters) San Francisco home, bemusing Mallard (Henry Leff) and amusing her when they visit the set, in part out of general curiosity and in part out of Candy's pleasure in catching up to veteran actor Buck Arnold (Curt Martell), whom she dated once when trying in earlier times to make it in Hollywood herself. But when Arnold escorts her on a set tour, it turns up three dummies suspended from a tree for a lynching scene . . . one of which proves no dummy but an unexpected corpse, thought erroneously to be another local film extra.

That launches a probe exposing a series of set accidents; a very dead director (Hal Verdick), whom Candy interviews early in the probe; a very nervous and temperamental actress (Mary Milford), who accuses Candy of trying to steal her role when she happens upon the director's interview by Candy; and, an equally edgy assistant director (John Gober), once Dana's husband, who carries both a brighter torch for his former wife than he likes to let on and a deeper tie to the dead dummy than anyone suspects at first.

Announcer: Dudley Manlove. Music: Eloise Morgan. Sound: Bill Brownell. Writer/director: Monte Masters.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: THE STORY OF ABNER'S RESCUE KEEPS GETTING BIGGER (NBC BLUE, 1935)---Lum's (Chester Lauck) original ruse was nothing compared to Abner's (Norris Goff) turnaround---he lets it be known that Lum was his rescuer, a whopper that threatens to get even bigger than the original kidnap ruse when Lum tries to downplay the rescue on the phone at Cedric's (also Lauck) place. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

OUR MISS BROOKS: THE SCHOOL BOARD (CBS, 1949)---You'd think an out-of-town picnic with Boynton (Jeff Chandler), Walter (Richard Crenna), and Harriet (Gloria McMillan) wouldn't be too much for Connie (Eve Arden) to ask---unless you're Conklin (Gale Gordon), who's re-opening school early, demanding a full faculty and student presence, to impress a visiting state school board official . . . and unaware that he was the victim of one of Walter's practical jokes. Mrs. Davis: Jane Morgan. Stretch: Leonard Smith. Announcer: Bob LaMond. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Writer/director: Al Lewis.

MEET MILLIE: THE PARTY INVITATION (CBS, 1951)---Boone & Sons's most prominent customer (Barton Yarborough) is opening a New York nightclub and invites the entire firm to the club's opening, prompting Millie (Audrey Totter)---of whom said customer is particularly fond---to a shopping spree during which Mama (Bea Benaderet) gets invited to the party as well, and seems to press Millie to think about marrying him and not the apparently reluctant Boone, Jr. (Rye Billsbury). Boone, Sr.: Earle Ross. Morton: Bill Tracy. Operator: Jean Tatum. Announcer: Bob LaMond. Music: Irving Miller. Writers: Frank Galen, Bill Manhoff, Roland McLane.

IN MEMORIAM

Today's offering is dedicated to the memory of those who were murdered in an act of war against the United States of America on 9/11. To the hope that the pursuit of their murderers and the hosts thereof, should never end without justice. And, that it should never destroy our patrimony or, above all, become or remain an excuse by any American leadership, or any American citizen, to compromise or usurp our American birthright.

That those who were murdered, and those who have died on their behalf since, shall not have died in vain, let us never forget what one of old-time radio's most incandescent voices counseled, once upon a time, in a different context but with the appropriate and imperative thrust.

We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom---what's left of it in the world---but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

EDWARD R. MURROW

Affairs of the Fair: The Way It Was, 10 September

2009-09-10T15:09:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
GENERAL ELECTRIC THEATER:
STATE FAIR
(NBC, 1953)

Ann Blyth has center stage in this adaptation of the 1933 film---based on a novel by Philip Strong, and remade into a film musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (and the only musical Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote directly for film)---about a farm family whose discontented daughter (Blyth), her brother, and her father's prize hog each find romance at an Iowa State Fair . . . with each pondering whether the end of the fair means the end of the affairs.

Buy the premise, buy the production, even if it is done with fine enough understatement.

Additional cast: Verna Felton, Sam Edwards, Joseph Kearns, Dick Ryan, Lamont Johnston. Announcer: Ken Carpenter. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Writers: Bill Starr, Kathleen Hite.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: LUM DECIDES TO ADMIT TO THE WHOLE THING (NBC BLUE, 1935)---With his plan to rescue Abner (Norris Goff) from a fictitious kidnapper blowing up in his face slowly but surely, Lum (Chester Lauck) gets ready to confess the whole plot---borne of silver mine stockholders trying to hold him to account for Squire's scheme---when a detective closes in on the "evidence". Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

THE WHISTLER: THE TANGLED WEB (CBS, 1943)---A dying widow, who has taken in her late husband's orphaned nephew and late sister's daughter, wants to force the two to marry in order to keep her considerable estate in the family---except that each has already married the ones they really love, causing them to probe for a way to effect their cantankerous aunt's earlier-than-expected demise . . . even as neither fully trusts the other. The Whistler: Bill Forman. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Writer:

QUIET, PLEASE: HOW ARE YOU, PAL (MUTUAL, 1947)---An old betrayal and a crime involving the girl (Vicki Vola) who ditched one old friend (Ernest Chappell, who narrates) for the other (Pat O'Malley) provokes the former to remember the crime---from the dead, where he was sent with a knife in his back to prevent him from exposing the earlier crime. Mother: Charme Allen. Writer/director: Wyllis Cooper.

OUR MISS BROOKS: RUMOURS (CBS, 1950)---When Connie (Eve Arden) goes to prepare her classroom a week before fall semester began---knowing Boynton (Jeff Chandler) plans to do likewise---she's wrestling as well with rumours ranging from faculty changes to Conklin (Gale Gordon) possibly leaving Madison High. Mrs. Davis: Jane Morgan. Walter: Richard Crenna. Harriet: Gloria McMillan. Announcer: Bob LaMond. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Writer/director: Al Lewis.

"Twenty-Thousand People and a Million Butterflies": The Way It Was, 9 September

2009-09-09T05:25:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
VIN SCULLY:
CHICAGO CUBS V. LOS ANGELES DODGERS, NINTH INNING---
SANDY KOUFAX'S PERFECT GAME
(KNX, LOS ANGELES, 1965)

It probably seems like an annual event by now. Virtuoso pitcher Sandy Koufax, who has thrown a no-hitter in 1962, 1963, and 1964, proves that practise makes perfect when he finished his work against the Chicago Cubs in the ninth inning. With virtuoso broadcaster Vin Scully calling every pitch and nuance until the finish.

It is a record-setting game on several counts, not the least of which is that it is only the ninth perfect game recorded in modern major league baseball history, and it is the second time in four years that the final out of a Koufax no-hitter is Harvey Kuenn, the veteran outfielder now a Cub spare part, who was once an American League batting champion.

On the flip side, had it not been for Dodger outfielder Lou Johnson, Cub pitcher Bob Hendley would have had a no-hitter in his own right: the Dodgers scored the game's only run on a walk, a sacrifice, a stolen base, and a throwing error; Johnson's single elsewhere in the game (he was stranded on base) was the evening's only base hit.

The game even carries a future aesthetic connotation: Koufax's second victim in the three-strikeout ninth inning (Koufax was well en route to shattering Bob Feller's single-season strikeout record), a rookie Cub catcher named Chris Krug, would go on from a brief career as a baseball player to become a landscape architect. And you will know his work even if you will not necessarily remember his name: Krug designed the famous baseball field within a corn field that becomes the fulcrum of the Kevin Costner film, Field of Dreams, based on W.P. Kinsella's classic novel, Shoeless Joe.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

COMMAND PERFORMANCE: QUIZ MANIA (AFRS, 1944)---Groucho Marx hosts a program that spoofs in its way a genre of which he will become, soon enough, a singular avatar in his own right, when he gets You Bet Your Life, and he finishes off himself with "Lydia, the Tattooed Lady." Cast: Georgia Gibbs, Gloria DeHaven, Frank Morgan, Kenny Baker, Announcer: Ken Carpenter. Director: Glenn Wheaton. Writers: Melvin Frank, Norman Panama.

STUDIO ONE: THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET (CBS, 1947)---Rudolf Besier's play chronicling the tumultuous, tyrannised family one of whose daughters stirred one of history's greatest literary love stories receives a tastefully arresting treatment by the landmark CBS series. Elizabeth: Ann Burr. Edward: Horace Graham. Henrietta: Kathleen Cordell. Robert Browning: Fletcher Markle. Arabel: Hester Sondegaard. Additional cast: Otto Francis, Morris Levine, Dennis King, Jr., Miriam Wolf, Dorothy Sands, Gregory Morton, Robert Dryden. Music: Alexander Semler. Director: Fletcher Markle. Writer: Vincent McConnor, adapting the Rudold Besier play.

A Tenth Anti-Versary: The Way It Is, 7 September

2009-09-07T05:00:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE KALLMANAC:
OUR TENTH ANTI-VERSARY PROGRAM
Including THE BATTLE OF JERICHO, ARKANSAS;
THE RETURN OF RACHAEL LASER; THE GROPING DARK
(KLAV-AM, LAS VEGAS; 2009)

We didn't exactly throw the proverbial kitchen sink into this one, ladies and gentlemen, but we did find it rather irresistible to commemorate our tenth broadcast with a little satire of anniversary programs, by way of establishing your host as the fall guy for a round of mock tributes from his station colleagues, who probably still have no idea for what they signed up when they agreed to bring him aboard in July.

From which point he and his crew slice a now-disbanded small-town police department's, ahem, desperation in fund raising . . . dice Rachael Ray in "Rachael Laser Returns" . . . and puree, with affection and respect for the longevity of the thing if perhaps nothing else, The Guiding Light, which will leave the air a week from Friday after an unprecedented 72-year life on old-time radio and longtime television, in a sketch he calls "The Groping Dark."

With Patty Price (also Meaty in "The Groping Dark"). Announcer/Rachael Laser: Siri Morgan. Writer/director: Jeff Kallman.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

DUFFY'S TAVERN: ARCHIE BUYS AN ARMY SURPLUS HELICOPTER (NBC, 1950)---Archie's (Ed Gardner) shifty childhood buddy has gotten into the war surplus business, and naturally Archie's a little too eager to throw him some business. Eddie: Eddie Green. Miss Duffy: Gloria Erlanger. Finnegan: Charles Cantor. Writers: Ed Gardner, Bob Schiller.

The Fortune Seekers: The Way It Was, 5 September

2009-09-05T04:07:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE WHISTLER:
HOUSE OF GREED
(CBS, 1942)

A wealthy businessman, whose wife abandoned him and eluded his fourteen-year pursuit of her and her second husband, remarries to a widow whose freshly-graduated son he takes into his business, unaware that the young man's mother has married him for his fortune alone . . . and bigamously.

And he receives a shock when his remorseful former wife knocks on his library window and asks him to take care of a daughter he never knew he had, born shortly after she first abandoned him, to which he agrees . . . threatening his current wife and stepson's plans for splitting his considerable estate.

Cast: Unknown. The Whistler: Bill Forman. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Writer/director: J. Donald Wilson. (Advisory: Muddy sound quality in several portions.)

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: KIDNAPPING ABNER (NBC BLUE, 1935)---Desperare to return to his neighbours' good graces, Lum (Chester Lauck) hits on a bizarre idea and rousts Abner (Norris Goff) from a sound sleep to launch his idea. Writer: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

BOX 13: BLACKMAIL IS MURDER (MUTUAL, 1948)---What greets Holiday (Alan Ladd) in the box this time is a query from an elderly woman who's found a very dead man in her hotel room's closet and threatens to tell police he killed the man, unless he obeys her wish and disposes of the body himself. Suzy: Sylvia Picker. Kling: Edmund McDonald. Additional cast: Probably Betty Lou Gerson, John Beal, Alan Reed. Music: Rudy Schrager. Writer/director: Ted Henninger.

Beauty Is Only Skin Deep: The Way It Was, 3 September

2009-09-03T11:35:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
LUX RADIO THEATER:
THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE
(CBS, 1945)

Even the least sentimental listener will likely prove gripped and embraced by this tastefully arresting adaptation of the film hit that paired an unlikely couple in this romantic fantasy about love conquering even disfigurement, plainness, bitter isolation, and lonely impetuosity.

Called to war on the day he was to have been married, battle-disfigured socialite Oliver Bradford (Robert Young, reprising his film role) repairs to the remote cottage where he would have honeymooned but now seeks isolation from even his family and the fiancee who was first repelled by his injuries. There, he is befriended by the cottage's newly-hired caretaker, Laura Pennington (Dorothy McGuire, reprising her film role), a plain girl seeking a place in a shallow hometown to which she's returned after eight long wandering years.

But solace in loneliness turns unexpectedly to marriage, to guilt, and, then, to an unexpected revelation when the legend of the cottage---that it casts a spell upon newlywed couples who honeymoon there---takes an unexpected hold upon the newlywed Bradfords . . . who can't convince anyone else, except a blind pianist who befriends them, that his disfigurement and her plainness have disappeared as a result.

Additional cast: Unknown. Host/guest producer: Hunt Stromberg. Announcer: John Milton Kennedy. Director: Sanford Barnett. Adapted from the screenplay by DeWitt Bodeen and Herman J. Mankiewicz; based on the novel by Sir Arthur Wing Pinero.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE WHISTLER: DESTINY (CBS, 1943)---Former bookkeeper Milton Strong (possibly John Dehner), retired unceremoniously after he finally demanded a raise, forges an elaborate escape from the shrewish, nagging wife (possibly Cathy Lewis) he can't bring himself to kill . . . but finds, in mining country out west, not a new life but new death---a corpse found on a property he hopes to buy, allowing him to make an identity switch that backfires gravely on him. Steve: Possibly Wally Maher. Kate: Possibly Betty Lou Gerson. Additional cast: Unknown. The Whistler: Bill Forman. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Whistling theme: Dorothy Roberts. Director: George Allen. Writer: J. Donald Wilson.

THE CHARLIE McCARTHY SHOW: A STOOGE FOR A STOOGE (NBC, 1945)---During a visit to New York, at which the tuxedoed termite tree can't quite wiggle out of doing his schoolwork, anyway, he has to explain a rather inflated hotel lunch check---and bear the iniquity of possibly being grounded for the entire trip, which prompts McCarthy to advertise for a new on-air partner . . . an ad answered by Fred Allen, in a sketch Allen will reference and expand upon memorably when resuming his own radio show. Also guest star: Portland Hoffa. Announcer: Ben Grauer. Music: Ray Noble Orchestra, Anita Gordon. Writers: Possibly Joe Connelly, Bob Mosher, Joe Bigelow.

THE MEL BLANC SHOW: THE FIX-IT SHOP FOR SALE (SERIES PREMIERE---NBC, 1946)---Betty (Mary Jane Croft) urges Mel (Blanc, who also plays Zookie) either to send Zookie and Uncle Rupert (Earle Ross) packing or sell the Fix-It Shop, the better to ease the drain---and ease their way to the altar after five years' engagement. Mr. Colby: Joseph Kearns. Announcer: Ken Niles. Music: Victor Miller Orchestra. Director: Joe Rines. Writers: David Victor, Herb Little.

MY FAVOURITE HUSBAND: LIZ'S MOTHER HAS SECOND THOUGHTS (CBS; AFRS REBROADCAST, 1948)---Going for a weekend with her mother (possibly Bea Benaderet, who usually plays Iris Atterbury in this series), ahead of George (Richard Denning) who has to attend an important bank board conference first, Liz (Lucille Ball) is surprised to learn her mother plans to marry again, to a rancher who arrives moments after George does. Additional cast: Unknown. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Writers: Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh, Bob Carroll, Jr.

"Here Was This Empty Half Hour Sticking Out": The Way It Was, 2 September

2009-09-02T12:25:00.001-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE HENRY MORGAN SHOW:
GREAT SAYINGS OF UNFAMILIAR MEN
(SERIES PREMIERE---ABC, 1946)

Now, about this show---I'll tell you the truth. The American Broadcasting Company was suddenly stuck with about thirty minutes of dead air. They had all this time, see, there was nothing in it. Now, where this thirty minutes came from is quite a fantastic story. Some say that the guy who comes in here in the morning and opens the station for the day arrived one morning when his watch was a half hour fast. And he started broadcasting a half hour too soon, see, and by evening, here was this empty half hour sticking out. Of course, the executive responsible for this was dealt with. Before they fired him, they made him turn in his ulcer. And, then, they flogged him with a wet Jimmy Fiddler script.

Anyway, they were stuck with this time. One vice president suggested that they get the public library to sponsor thirty minutes of silence. They were going to call it A Program to Read By. Well, the library turned it down because they said they weren't getting a full thirty minutes of silence because at the opening the announcer said, "Ssssshhhh!"

Thus does cantankerous satirist Henry Morgan launch his destined-to-be-brief career as a network radio comedian, after several years of forging locally (on WOR, the Mutual flagship) what may have been the most iconoclastic and barbed quarter-hour schpritz in the history of old-time radio.

Three radio comedians became celebrities by heckling the establishment. Fred Allen and Arthur Godfrey needled their victims. Henry Morgan battered his with a club . . . clobber[ing] his clients with such unprecedented candor that some of them fired him and one threatened to sue. This was delightful to listeners who scorned the radio commercial as an odious interruption of an otherwise enjoyable half-hour. It made Morgan the darling of his generation's rebels and thinkers, the grand guru of a hard core of intellectuals who considered the jousts of Godfrey and Allen too soft.

---John Dunning, from On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.)

From where our hero examines "Great Sayings of Unimportant Men," a substitute for the Ink Spots (who were "too worried" to come out tonight), the final inning of a baseball game between two British teams, and the first installment of a recurring Morgan feature, "The Question Man."

Among other manifestations of madness.

Cast: Susie Dusso, Charles Irving (also announcer). Music: Bernie Green Orchestra. Director: Charles Powers. Writers: Henry Morgan, Carroll Moore, Jr., Aaron Ruben, Joe Stein.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: LUM HIDES IN THE BARN (MISTITLED OFTEN AS "ABNER HIDES IN THE BARN"; NBC BLUE, 1935)---Visiting disheartened Lum (Chester Lauck) hiding in his barn loft, trying to avoid being drawn and quartered by angry silver mine stockholders, Abner (Norris Goff) tells him they're also hunting for Squire---the real silver mine mastermind---and tries assuring him the entire uproar would blow over once they realise Lum didn't realise the silver mine was a scam. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

SUSPENSE: THE HITCHHIKER (CBS, 1942)---Freshly returned from abroad, Orson Welles introduces and presents a well-respected Mercury Theater of the Air story---and drops a wry wisecrack about his most notorious broadcast---in which he plays slightly-fevered Ronald Adams, driving along Route 66 and headed for California, seen off by his nervous mother, on a journey that launches in high spirits but turns to fear after he confronts a hitchhiker he's seen a few times in the early going. (Pre-empted from 26 August; concludes with a Welles plea for payroll savings plan support for the war effort. Additional cast: Unknown. Music: Bernard Herman. Director: John Dietz. Writer: Lucille Fletcher.

STUDIO ONE: THUNDER ROCK (CBS, 1947)---A disillusioned journalist (Robert Dryden), whose early warnings about the advent of fascism went unheeded, escapes to become a lighthouse keeper and becomes inordinately fascinated with the shipwreck to the memory of whose victims the lighthouse was dedicated decades earlier. Captain Joshua Stuart: Clarence Durwins. Dr. Kurtz: Stefan Schnabel. Director/narrator: Fletcher Markle. Adapted from the play by Robert Audrey; script editor: Vincent McConnor.

Courting Disaster: The Way It Was, 1 September

2009-09-01T02:42:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
BOB & RAY PRESENT THE CBS RADIO NETWORK:
COURTROOM OF THE AIR
(IF YOU HAVE TO ASK, WE'RE NOT DOING IT RIGHT, 1959)

In a quietly clever zap at lenient trial judges, it's Superior Court Presser stumbling into a sentence of a flat fifteen years before bawling out . . . the district attorney, then freeing the manslaughterer. Meanwhile, the team examines a fresh cache of oysters, reports on a massive starling invasion in Mount Vernon, New York, and brings in Johnny Braddock to play another warped round of "Sports-a-Phone."

Writers, reputedly: Bob Elliott, Ray Goulding.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE GOLDBERGS: A WOMAN AND A BOY HIDING IN THE BARN (CBS, 1941)---They don't spot them at first, prompting already aggravated Jake (John R. Waters) to urge the family back to the house, where a pot of coffee might seem therapeutic, but there they are . . . conversing in French, and rather flummoxing even the usually bighearted Molly (Gertrude Berg) and empathetic Sammy (Alfred Ryder) and Rosalie (Roslyn Siber). Writer/director: Gertrude Berg.

VIC & SADE: ARRANGING THE HONEYMOON (NBC, 1944)---Sade (Bernadine Flynn) and Russell (David Whitehouse) are anxious not to disturb Uncle Fletcher (Clarence Hartzell) as he arranges his new business affairs, though even he can't resist keeping up with the latest on Vic (Art Van Harvey) and Sade's landlady's honeymoon plans. Writer/director: Paul Rhymer.

THE LES PAUL SHOW: THREE LITTLE WORDS (NBC, 1950)---The master guitarist can't resist bragging about a fresh new suit he bought at a fire sale, before unfurling a gently swinging take of "Three Little Words" and a preview of the next Les Paul and Mary Ford single, "Sugar Sweet." Other music highlights: the charming "Goofus" (the scheduled flip side for "Sugar Sweet"), and a breezy vocal version of "In the Good Old Summertime," a number Paul used to audition for his very early professional stint with the Ben Bernie orchestra.

Cash for the Cabbie: The Way It Is, 31 August

2009-08-31T23:32:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE KALLMANAC:
THE MOTHER-IN-LAWSUIT; CASH FOR THE CABBIE
(KLAV-AM, LAS VEGAS, 2009)

Mothers-in-law have been mother's milk to comedians from time immemorial, practically . . . at least, until the mother-in-law of comedian Sunda Croonquist sued over mother-in-law gags in her stage routines. As if to say Ms. Croonquist has been getting the milk for free for too long, and letting it spoil in the bargain.

But neither could your extinguished editor resist, likewise, a genteel poke at a certain popular television game program . . .

And, on tonight's old-time radio selection, we turn to the man with the action-packed expense account, about which more below . . .

Announcer/"Cash for the Cabbie" contestant: Patty Price. Engineer: Jon Lindquist. Writer/producer/director: Jeff Kallman.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

YOURS TRULY, JOHNNY DOLLAR: THE VIRGINIA BEACH MATTER (CBS, 1950)---In which our hero (Edmond O'Brien) agrees, with just a hint of weariness over women who fall for criminals, to become a protector for a frightened insurance client (Virginia Gregg) (Virginia Gregg) whose hoodlum fiance, imprisoned five years, is due for release and threatened to kill her when she broke their engagement six months earlier. Maid: Jean Bates. Additional cast: Hy Averback, Howard McNear. Announcer: Dan Cubberly. Music: Leith Stevens. Writer: Gil Doud.

Just Whistling Dixie: The Way It Was, 30 August

2009-08-30T16:43:00.001-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
GUNSMOKE:
THE JUNIPER TREE
(CBS, 1952)

Ordinarily harmless, bundle-of-nerves rancher Jim Stanley (John Dehner) is awakened by Dillon (William Conrad) to find himself under arrest, for stealing chips from a roulette table and throwing a bottle at its shady operator Mango (Paul Dubov) when all he did was gesture and fling the bottle out of frustration . . . and try returning the chips he actually saw others at the table steal.

But Dillon's frustrated equally over the operator's comparably shady girl friend, a devious dance hall girl named Dixie (Michael Ann Barrett) whom the operator believes his personal property; the witnesses the operator's lined up to railroad Stanley merely for taking even a passing fancy in Dixie, witnesses against whose technicalities Dillon may have to fight with a few of his own; and, a missing, very nervous Stanley, who seems to have escaped Dillon's jail cell . . . with a little help from Dixie, prompting a potentially deadly race to find the frightened man.

Brandy: Vivi Janiss. Saginaw: Phil Lally. Chester: Parley Baer. Announcer: Roy Rowan. Music: Rex Khoury. Sound: Ray Kemper, Tom Hanley. Director: Norman Macdonnell. Writer: Herb Purdum.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: A LYNCH MOB (NBC BLUE, 1935)---Having learned Worthington's a fraud brought in by Squire to stir stock sales in the silver mine scam, the "stockholders" want a meeting which Lum (Chester Lauck, who also plays Cedric) doesn't know about until Abner (Norris Goff, who also plays Dick Huddleston) tells him . . . though there may have been one very good reason why the "stockholders" wanted to keep Lum mum. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE: THE FISHING TRIP (NBC, 1942)---A medical exam at Hooker's (Earle Ross) urging urges Gildersleeve (Harold Peary) to a little R and R for the sake of his rising blood pressure, not to mention the sake of Marjorie's (Lurene Tuttle) heartbreak over her indecisive boyfriend. Leroy: Walter Tetley. Birdie: Lillian Randolph. Music: Billy Mills. Announcer: Ken Carpenter. Writer: John Whedon.

Spy, Counterspy: The Way It Was, 29 August

2009-08-29T12:06:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE WHISTLER:
THE LETTER
(CBS, 1942)

Amidst a group of seven Austrian scientists girding for the Nazi Anschluss and determined to stop it if possible, mild-mannered Viennese biologist Hans Minkler---hopeful of new grants for significant cell research, known as the gentlest of men "who couldn't harm a fly," and hoping the uncle of his fiancee will finance his coming work---achieves his financing goal.

The trouble begins when Minkler, with a friend and former research associate who also has eyes for his fiancee, attends a second meeting of the scientists at which plans to root out and kill suspected Nazi collaborators are agreed . . . and at which Minkler is chosen to kill the first target on their list---his research benefactor and future uncle-in-law, who is known among Austrian authorities as an active anti-Nazi but among other authorities as an active Nazi spy . . . and whom his future nephew-in-law wants to hustle out of the country rather than carry out the scientists' demand.

Cast: Possibly John Brown, Hans Conreid, Cathy Lewis, John McIntire, Donald Woods. The Whistler: Joseph Kearns. Sound: Berne Surrey. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Writer: J. Donald Wilson.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: SELLING THE MINE---Now that Lum's (Chester Lauck) solved his mine office problem without compromise his part in the rolling store, he and Abner (Norris Goff) ponder building a factory to manufacture silver products . . . and selling the mine, for which there's already a million-dollar offer on the table, to build it. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE: VACATION AT GRASS LAKE (NBC, 1943)---Two months after he's jilted at the altar by not-so-widowed Leila Ransom, and hounded at a lakeside resort retreat by a flock of too-eager women, heartbroken Gildersleeve (Harold Peary) discovers it's as complicated to end a vacation early as it is to avoid the too-eager women trying to land him. Marjorie: Lurene Tuttle. Leroy: Walter Tetley. Hooked: Earle Ross. Birdie: Lillian Randolph. Peavey: Richard LeGrand. Announcer: Ken Carpenter. Music: Billy Mills. Writers: John Whedon, Sam Moore.

BOX 13: INSURANCE FRAUD (MUTUAL, 1948)---A walk in the park in search of an idea turns up less than Holliday (Alan Ladd) could have imagined, especially when a letter to the box launches him into a slightly labyrinthine insurance fraud case in which he's engaged to find a curious corpse. Suzy: Sylvia Picker. Kling: Edmund McDonald. Additional cast: Possibly including John Beal, Frank Lovejoy, Alan Reed, Lurene Tuttle, Luis van Rooten. Music: Rudy Schrager. Writer/director: Ted Henniger.

Beauty is Only Under Their Skin: The Way It Was, 28 August

2009-08-28T00:17:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE GOLDBERGS:
BEAUTY PARLOUR ON WHEELS
(CBS, 1941)

With Seymour (Arnold Stang) and his sister Birdie (possibly Florence Halop) well enough entrenched, spending every day at the Goldberg home,trying to settle their dispute over Seymour's interest in Rosalie (Roslyn Siber), oblivious to the world around them, even within the square footage of the Goldberg home, no wonder Jake (John R. Waters) is just about ready to declare the home a no-trespass area.

The fact that Birdie rather nonchalantly ate Jake's lunch is a mere footnote.

And he may or may not be the only one beginning to feel that way, now that Bertie is dropping another contentious idea upon the Fingerhoods' hosts---buying a trailer in which to set up a rolling beauty parlour (almost as though they'd been listening to reruns of Lum & Abner), in the middle of which Molly (Gertrude Berg) tries persuading Rosalie it's no one else's concern, then fields yet another distressing call from Jake at the office, asking Molly to usher one and all not named Goldberg out of the house before he can sit down to his chosen dinner in peace.

Writer/director: Gertrude Berg.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: LUM DECIDES TO BUY A TRAILER FOR AN OFFICE (NBC BLUE, 1935)---After all, the big cheese (Chester Lauck) of a major silver mine just can't be caught encamped in the rear end of a blacksmith shop or a rolling grocery and general store, can he? Even if his ultimate aim might be to sell the mine? Abner: Norris Goff. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

THE SHADOW: THE TOMB OF TERROR (MUTUAL, 1938)---Having discovered something other than the eyes of the mummy as the likely killer of three who arranged the visit of an Egyptian pharaoh's tomb, Margot (Agnes Moorehead) and Lamont (Orson Welles) can't convince others tied to the tomb that it wasn't a curse but murder. Additional cast: Unknown. Announcer: Arthur Whiteside. Director: Martin Gabel. Writers: Edith Meiser, possibly Harry Engman Charlot, possibly Jerry Devine and Sidney Slon.

Derailing the Rail Robber: The Way It Was, 27 August

2009-08-27T10:03:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
DEATH VALLEY DAYS:
SAM BASS
(NBC BLUE, 1936)

A train robber---who has earned an undeserved reputation as "the Robin Hood of the West," and whose criminal history goes back to a gang into which he fell, that switched to train robberies after a stagecoach holdup yielded nothing---plans and executes a meticulous Union Pacific holdup in which nothing can possibly fail, in one of the only two or three installments known to survive of this legendary old-time radio Western.

Nothing can fail, that is, until one of the gang loses his bandana mask while they make their escape, forcing them to split into pairs and disperse around the West, swearing oaths of silence overheard by a storekeeper who reports the plans, resulting in three of the gang dead when the law catches up to them.

And the key to bringing down the leader becomes a farmer who aids him until the farmer himself is arrested as an accessory, compelling him to offer the Texas Rangers aid in bringing down the leader, from the inside . . . an offer that isn't exactly accepted with confidence.

Cast: Unknown, but likely including Edwin Bruce, Frank Butler, Geoffrey Bryant, Milton Herman. The Old Ranger: Jack MacBryde. Announcer: Dresser Dahlstead. Music: Joseph Bonime. Bugler: Harry Glantz. Writers: Ruth Cornwall Woodman, Ruth Adams Knight.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: LUM BECOMES THE PROUD OWNER OF THE SILVER MINE (NBC BLUE, 1935)---Lum (Chester Lauck) is only too impressed with himself, now that the mine shareholders dumped Squire and gave the majority to him, but he'll learn the hard way what that kind of self-impression doesn't do for your future prospects . . . or your immediate needs. Abner: Norris Goff. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

VIC & SADE: VIC TO WRITE ARTICLES (CBS, 1943)---Happy as he is to be home, and happy thought he was on this particular business jaunt around the midwest, Vic (Art Van Harvey) is at once delighted and wary about suggestions he write newspaper articles about the jaunt. Sade: Bernadine Flynn. Russell: David Whitehouse. Writer/director: Paul Rhymer.

The Sober Side of the Misery Game: The Way It Was, 25 August

2009-08-25T23:59:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
SECOND CHANCE:
MIKE MORGAN, ALICE CARTER
(NBC, 1953)

It probably depends upon whom you ask, if you're of a mind to ask, but one of the most controversial trends of the old-time radio era was the quiz or game show whose theme was (to their producers) uplift or (to their critics, and there were many) exploitation.

These shows, perhaps paceset by Queen for a Day (if you are my age, you probably have at least one memory of the television version and host Jack Bailey, who migrated from the show's radio origin, signing off with his peculiarly trimphant bellow, "I'd like to make every woman queen . . . for every single day!"), have in common contestants---whether they apply themselves, or whether friends or family members apply for them---who seem at times to be competing to present the most heart-wrenching stories of personal horror imaginable.

There are those who believe this style of quiz or game is a grotesquely natural offspring of the soap opera. Even in 1998, historian Gerald Nachman, in Raised on Radio, would write, "If soap operas had made homemakers into domestic divas, game shows dragged them onstage to take part in gimmick-laden shows that---in the tear-drenched instances of Queen for a Day and Strike it Rich---tapped into the misery vein where Stella Dallas and Backstage Wife had for so long dwelt."

Needless to say, these shows become easy enough satire targets, perhaps represented best by what Fred Allen and Jack Benny---in a convenient peak to their legendary mock on-the-air feud---did to Queen for a Day on The Fred Allen Show in 1946. In at least one instance, they will become targets of a welfare commissioner, of all people---in New York, where such a commissioner will haul Strike it Rich into court, charged with unlicenced fundraising . . . a charge on which the show ("a weepy hybrid of Stop the Music and Queen for a Day, using the surprise phone call to reward misery via 'The Heart Line' from do-gooder listeners, who donated money or prizes of their own"---Nachman) was in fact convicted.

Perhaps the most sober of these shows---not at all lacking for laughter in the face of disaster, but neither is it angling overtly to exploit so much as to empathise, by way of its calm atmosphere---is this early-to-mid-1950s offering, which almost gives the back of its hand to the shows whose business was the unapologetic wringing of every last drop of suffering from its contestants, and the equally unapologetic wringing of every last drop of ghoulish curiosity from its listeners. (Nachman will describe Queen for a Day's popularity as "People listen[ing] to the show the way motorists gape at five-car pileups.")

Second Chance doesn't use the contestant's story as the end-to-end focus but, rather, allows the contestant to tell his or her story calmly, without once being prodded to wring it out all the way the better to raise the Kleenex index. Once told, he or she sets it aside to play a quick question-and-answer game---the "second chance" here is in three win-or-lose questions, with the contestant allowed two chances to bypass a question---in which the monetary prize (much like those on You Bet Your Life) isn't anywhere near the kind of big-money pots beginning to take hold on radio and television (and soon to reach their glittering---and, in the end, scandalous---apogee with The $64,000 Question and Twenty-One) but the idea is to play for a second chance at least symbolically equal to the second chance the contestant succeeded in seizing in his or her own life.

Today's contestants: A former American soldier, an emigre from India, who spent eighteen months in prison . . . on a somewhat trumped-up bigamy charge, stemming from his first wife's implicitly deliberate neglect in filing for the divorce she wanted after leaving him and taking their children, which ends up putting his second marriage into the deep freeze and himself behind bars; and, in perhaps a slightly daring tale to tell on early-1950s network radio, a Negro woman (no apology necessary for using the vernacular of the era), who is able to and did pass for white, to obtain necessary employment to help her husband raise their daughter, but discovered that her ruse blocked her from forging friendships among both races . . . and nearly ended her marriage, when her husband offered to step aside if it meant easing her pain.

These proceedings, as throughout the entire life of the show, are hosted empathetically but soberly, and with no hint at wringing every last teardrop out of every last listener or studio audience member, by Johnny Olsen---the same Johnny Olsen who will become ubiquitous on television, albeit in voice for the most part, as the announcer for The Price is Right, What's My Line, The Match Game, I've Got a Secret, and numerous other game shows . . . not to mention The Jackie Gleason Show. What will be forgotten too readily is that Olsen has already enjoyed a respectable old-time radio career (Ladies Be Seated, Johnny Olsen's Luncheon Club, and Break the Bank) before hosting this show.

Announcer: Fred Collins.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE GOLDBERGS: SEYMOUR LOVES ROSALIE (CBS, 1941)---Bad enough: Jake (John R. Waters) is uncomfortable with "everyone . . . comfortable in my house except me." Worse: Seymour's (Arnold Stang) mother and sister make him uncomfortable with a visit, and what a surprise: they're hell bent on preventing him from making the kind of mistake they think has rent her family before . . . even if the mistake is falling for Rosalie (Roslyn Siber). Molly: Gertrude Berg. Mrs. Fingerhood: Possibly Florence Halop. Sammy: Alfred Ryder. Additional cast: Unknown. Writer/director: Gertrude Berg.

21st PRECINCT: THE BOOKKEEPER (CBS, 1953)---Following a Lion's Club luncheon at which he spoke of juvenile delinquency, and after visiting a First Avenue movie house currently bedeviled by that very problem, making its owner nervous enough to ask for extra police attention, Kennelly (Everett Sloane) checks into an optical company's payroll holdup, a first for the company . . . and discovers the company's bookkeeper (Elsa Barick) hasn't told police everything about her apparent doings around the time of the holdup. Waters: Harold Stone. King: Ken Lynch. Additional cast: Wendell Hall, Bill Smith. Announcer: Art Hanna. Writer/director: Stanley Niss.

Let's Go To Press: The Way It Is, 24 August

2009-08-24T22:23:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE KALLMANAC:
LET'S GO TO PRESS; A JOB AD
(KLAV-AM, LAS VEGAS, 2009)

In which your extinguished editor channels Walter Winchell for a little mad fun with a little mad news . . . ruminates (if that is the correct word) on a particularly whacky job ad out of Chicago (the ad is real enough, which can be good or bad, depending upon your point of view) . . . and presents otherwise his customary brew of bluesy jazz and straight up blues.

Not to mention presenting, as his evening's old-time radio selection, in his customary manner of sharing it on its original date of airing and staying out of your way otherwise, The CBS Radio Workshop: The Billion-Dollar Failure of Figger Fallup, reviewed earlier today.

Announcer/co-banterer: Patty Price. Engineer: Jon Lindquist. Writer/producer/director: Yours, truly.

What the Hell! The Way It Was, 24 August

2009-08-24T00:17:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE CBS RADIO WORKSHOP:
THE BILLION-DOLLAR FAILURE OF FIGGER FALLUP
(CBS, 1956)

The devil is very much in the details when you live and die by the polls . . . and try applying them to eternal questions of good versus evil.

Pollster Figger Fallup (Joseph Julian)---famous for molding as well as recalling and analysing public opinion and racing results alike, with astonishing accuracy, crystalising trends and futures alike, making new consumption out of old and often entrenched habit and new fortunes for staggering businesses or bettors, and disguising his actual identity from even his closest aides---takes on a new client (Bob Dryden) willing to pay an unfathomable fee.

A client calling himself Mr. Lucifer.

He wants a simple way to plan Hell's future population and, thus, operations. But both pollster and client learn the hard way that human fallibility can't always be narrowed down by contemporary surveying methods---certainly, not without exacting a painful price---after Mr. Lucifer reviews the initial report and finds the prospects' good far enough outweighs their bad.

Miss Shekel: Elaine Ross. Announcer: Bob Hite. Music: Possibly Amerigo Moreno. Director: Paul Roberts. Writer: Henry E. Fritch.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE GENERAL TIRE PROGRAM STARRING JACK BENNY: THE HOUSE OF ROTHCHILD (NBC, 1934; COMMERCIALS AND MUSIC SELECTIONS EDITED OUT)---Freshly returned from Atlantic City, Jack (Benny) and company perform the title sketch . . . or, at least, they would, as soon as they can seat an audience who actually has the right tickets to the right program. Cast: Mary Livingstone, Don Wilson (also announcer), Frank Parker, and Gracie Allen in a brief cameo. Music: Don Bestor. Writers: Harry Conn, Al Boasberg.

SWING SCHOOL: SWEET VERSUS HOT (CBS, 1937)---It's not that the King of Swing is one of the world's great microphone repartee men (as a banterer, Benny Goodman was a virtuoso clarinetist and bandleader), but you'll get to hear Benny Goodman blow a clever solo clarinet kickoff to his longtime theme, "Let's Dance," before launching into his musical "debate" as to whether sweet and hot music can swing equally. The highlight "arguments" include an early Benny Goodman Quartet version of the Goodman band standard "Stompin' at the Savoy," considerably shorter than the near-show stopping version the foursome (Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Teddy Wilson, Gene Krupa) would unsheath at the Goodman band's landmark Carnegie Hall concert two years later. Additional cast: Pat O'Malley. Announcer: Bill Goodwin. Chorus Director: Meyer Alexander.

THE JUDY CANOVA SHOW: A DATE WITH MICKEY ROONEY (CBS, 1943)---That's the reason Judy (Canova) isn't in a big hurry to bolt back home to Rancho Canova, and it's also the reason she's driving everyone just a little nuts after getting an apparent note from the film star to meet her that night. Music selections include "Just Because." Geranium: Ruby Dandridge. Sylvester/Pedro: Mel Blanc. Singing Song Plugger: Eddie Dean. Floorwalker: Possibly Joseph Kearns. Muscular Customer: Gerald Mohr. Announcer: Ken Niles. Music: Opie Cates. Director: Joe Rines. Writers: Fred Fox, Henry Hoople.

The Good Gildersleeve? The Way It Was, 23 August

2009-08-23T00:08:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE HAROLD PEARY SHOW:
HAROLD LOSES HIS JOB (AUDITION PROGRAM)
(CBS, 1950)

In which the now-former Great Gildersleeve strikes on his own, after what historian Gerald Nachman called "outsmarting himself and los[ing] the role of a lifetime" to his soundalike old friend and fellow radio actor, Willard Waterman---who'd once been spurned for roles on Fibber McGee and Molly, from whence Gildersleeve first emerged, because he sounded that much like Harold Peary.

The skinny depends upon which version you care to believe, perhaps. Did he merely hold out for more money? Or, did he want to own the show?

This much is known: Peary, perhaps on the advice of his management at MCA, who also handled Jack Benny and shepherded his jump from NBC to CBS a year earlier, had prodded sponsor Kraft to grant him a piece of ownership in The Great Gildersleeve, and not without reason: it was Peary who defined the role, from its origin as the blowhard next-door nemesis of Fibber McGee to its successful spinoff (the first known such of its kind in American broadcast history) as a long-running radio hit, even if he was becoming bored with a role that didn't seem to allow his versatility (he was a passable singer, and one of the best dialect and impressionistic voice men in the medium) full breadth.

CBS was apparently anxious to have Peary if he was willing to make the move, but Kraft wasn't that anxious to leave the NBC fold with Gildersleeve, which it owned. Nor was it inclined to share in the ownership . . . not even with the man who made the role before the cheese company had even been involved. (Often forgotten: the Gildersleeve audition program had been sponsored by Fibber McGee & Molly's sponsor, presented as The Johnson Wax Program With Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve.)

[Peary's] agent, MCA, was so sure [Kraft] wouldn't continue the show without him that they sold him on the idea he was irreplaceable. Even though he'd worked with him before, Hal forgot Willard Waterman was waiting in the wings.

Paul West, a Gildersleeve (and other radio comedies) writer, cited in Nachman, Raised on Radio. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998.)

With a new CBS contract for himself but no Great Gildersleeve in the package, both Peary and his new network are anxious to get their money's worth, with Peary co-creating this show, about a small-town radio host whose program involved two-thirds homemaking hints and one third music, in Peary's passably mellifluous voice, a host who still lived with his mother and still emerged an often hapless bachelor.

The major problem---no matter the quality of the show, and it often showed a remarkable, high quality---will be that The Harold Peary Show, often called Honest Harold (which is what the fictitious Harold Hemp's show was called), holds too many references to Gildersleeve traits, merely beginning with Peary's too-distinctive speech and famed "dirty laugh," to build an audience. By the time the show begins to show some of its own life and substance---the writing (which will be led by Peary himself) it will be too late to save it, even while Waterman's Gildersleeve has made (at first, anyway) a near-seamless transition from its former star.

The raw promise is in the show's audition, however, in which Harold loses his radio gig when his rejection of a sponsor product he and enough of his listeners find very lacking rankles the obsequious nephew (possibly Olan Soule) of the station's owner . . . who fires him when he refuses to reinstate the product, to his later regret.

Mother Hemp: Jane Morgan. Marvin: Sammy Ogg. Gloria: Gloria Holliday. Doc Yak-Yak: Joseph Kearns. Twins: Anne Whitfield, Norma Jean Nilsson. Additional cast: Sharon Douglas, Lois Corbett. Announcer: Bob LeMond. Music: Jack Meakin. Director: Norman Macdonnell. Writers: Harold Peary, Bill Danch.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE GREEN HORNET: THE UNEXPECTED MEETING (BLUE NETWORK, 1945)---After dodging a warehouse robbery tip that turned out to be a police trap for the Green Hornet, Britt (Bob Hall) and Kato (Rollon Parker) break up an attack . . . and come away with a briefcase holding significant, secret diplomatic papers, a briefcase Britt would be only too glad to turn over---if he could do it without being arrested. Axford: Gil Shea. Lenore Case: Lee Allman. Announcer: Possibly Hal Neal. Director: Charles Livingstone. Writer: Fran Striker.

GUNSMOKE: SHAKESPEARE (CBS, 1952)---Out in the particularly heavy desert heat, Matt (William Conrad), Doc (Howard McNear), and Chester (Parley Baer), riding back to Dodge, revive a slender, well-dressed, traveling Shakespearean actor (Hans Conreid), whose speech is as poetic as is suspicious his lack of knowledge . . . as to why Sam Matchit is found dead in the back of his broken-down travel wagon. Mrs. Cullen: Mary Lansing. Announcer: Roy Rowan. Music: Rex Khoury. Director: Norman Macdonnell. Sound: Tom Hanley, Ray Kemper, Bill James. Writer: Anthony Ellis.

"A Love Story, or An Adventure . . . or Both": The Way It Was, 22 August

2009-08-22T11:53:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
BOX 13:
THE FIRST LETTER (SERIES PREMIERE)
(MUTUAL, 1948)

Well, this is great---rain, rain, rain . . . I bet even the ducks wouldn't come out in weather like this. But me, I'm an idiot. I gotta go and take up a profession like being a writer. I couldn't take up something easy---ooooh, no, not me, I gotta be a writer so I can go out on nice, cold, wet nights, beating my brains out looking for an idea . . . idea . . . deadline . . . oh, sure, mustn't forget that ever-lovin' deadline. Hmph. What a way to make a living. I could have stayed a reporter at the Star-Times and have nights of something . . . like listening to political speeches . . . or covering the opening of a new manhole. Oh, no--not me. I have to write fiction. Do it the hard way . . . Well, I might as well take the usual hands, open the usual doors, to the usual place, hear the usual cons . . .

Thus the first words heard from disillusioned former newspaper reporter Dan Holliday (Alan Ladd), who's surrendered the journalist's life for the life of a novelist, and falls upon a somewhat unique way to find subjects about which to write: a continuous ad---known only to his scatterbrained secretary (Sylvia Picker)---in the newspaper which formerly employed him full time, asking for "adventure" . . . and often as not finding more than even he can handle, sometimes.

And the first letter to fall into Box 13 promises Holliday the adventure he seeks. A promise he almost hopes isn't kept, when he visits his correspondent, Carla Williams (possibly Lurene Tuttle), and receives only a sultry but stern instruction through her apartment building intercom to meet her at a restaurant.

Which he does, hearing her say she's being blackmailed, she's uncertain whether her tormentor's promised end really will be the end, and she's very reluctant to go to the police . . . until they find her alleged blackmailer dead, a gun with a single bullet nearby, and she calls the police after all . . . naming Holliday as an apparent suspect.

Lt. Kling: Edmund MacDonald. Additional cast: Probably Betty Lou Gerson, Alan Reed, Luis Van Rooten, John Beal. Music: Rudy Schrager. Writer/director: Ted Hediger.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: DICK IS LOSING CUSTOMERS TO THE ROLLING STORE (NBC BLUE, 1935)---It took a week but the boys (Chester Lauck, also Grandpappy; and, Norris Goff, also Dick) have their new rolling store on the road and well in business, which worries Dick when his customers begin calling him asking when the rolling store will visit them next. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

THE WHISTLER: DEATH HAS A THIRST (CBS, 1942)---Donna Jackson's (possibly Lurene Tuttle) flip suggestion of an ocean sail to revive her heavily-drinking, verbally abusive, husband (possibly Wally Maher)---who fears hereditary insanity---becomes a fatal actuality when his doctor suggests it might be just what he needs, and they're joined by his old college friend, in whom she's taken to confiding her despair---and with whom her husband fears she's fallen in love. Additional cast: Unknown, but possibly including Wally Maher, John Brown, Cathy Lewis, Frank Lovejoy. The Whistler: Joseph Kearns. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Whistling theme: Dorothy Roberts. Sound: Berne Surrey. Writer: J. Donald Wilson.

Oh, How They Didn't Dance: The Way It Was, 21 August

2009-08-21T00:18:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
OUR MISS BROOKS:
ANOTHER WEEKEND AT CRYSTAL LAKE
(CBS, 1949)

A year after her first eventful weekend with Boynton (Jeff Chandler) at Conklin's (Gale Gordon) lakeside retreat, Connie (Eve Arden) is stunned to receive another invitation to indulge a romantic weekend retreat with her indifferent paramour---from Conklin's wife (Vivi Janiss), who wants the couple to share the romance with herself and her husband on their wedding anniversary.

The problem is, Conklin---who rescinded a similar invitation, when he bumped into Connie at the malt shop across from Madison High, fearing she and Boynton have more than a friendly relationship, contravening his stricture against faculty fraternisation---doesn't know his wife a) is onto his own planned anniversary surprise at Crystal Lake, and b) invited Connie and Boynton to join them as a second surprise.

Mrs. Davis: Jane Morgan. Walter: Richard Crenna. Harriet: Gloria McMillan. Announcer: Bob Lamond. Writer/director: Al Lewis.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE GOLDBERGS: SEYMOUR INVITES ROSALIE TO A MOVIE (CBS, 1941)---The Goldbergs (Gertrude Berg, John R. Waters, Alfred Ryder, Roslyn Siber) and Seymour Fingerhood (Arnold Stang) see the newlywed Allysons off on their honeymoon, leaving Molly (Berg) and Sammy (Ryder) reflecting wistfully over the renewed family togetherness, Jake (Waters), and Seymour looking at Rosalie (Siber) in a new way. Announcer: James Fleming. Writer/director: Gertrude Berg.

BOB & RAY PRESENT THE CBS RADIO NETWORK: VINCENT PRICE (WE'RE STUMPED, 1959)---The droll duo fret over preparations for the fall season, endure haircuts, try to find a nightclub for the bird act the barber's daughter does, preview network radio mysteries, and ponder Vincent Price as a political candidate. Reputed writers: Bob Elliott, Ray Goulding.

So Danco Samba: The Way It Was, 20 August

2009-08-20T15:14:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
MY FAVOURITE HUSBAND:
LIZ TEACHES THE SAMBA
(CBS; REBROADCAST: ARMED FORCES RADIO AND TELEVISION SERVICE, 1948)

Disappointed that Atterbury (Gale Gordon) is bringing over a new bank director (unknown, but sounding rather like Hugh Beaumont), on a night she'd hoped George (Richard Denning) would take her dancing at the Starlight Roof, Liz (Lucille Ball)---who doesn't have much patience for the man's boring stories and overtold jokes---stumbles into a way to get on his good side: teaching his shy son Wally (?!?) to samba . . . which may make his father's stories and jokes seem child's play to her.

Especially when Wally (Richard Crenna) can't keep his eyes off her hips . . . until she suggests the awkward kid try dancing with her ("George, Wally dances the samba like a kangaroo with hot coals in his pouch!") . . . an experience she isn't (and her feet aren't) anxious to repeat for a followup lesson, even it means a possible promotion for George from Wally's grateful father, and especially after the kid asks her for help with a particularly knotty problem of the heart.

Katie: Ruth Perrott. Announcer: Unknown. Music: Marlon Skiles, Wilbur Hatch. Writers: Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh, Bob Carroll, Jr.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

HARRY JAMES AND HIS MUSIC MAKERS: REMOTE FROM CASINO GARDENS (NBC, 1944)---This performance from Ocean Park, California, shows the perhaps too-well expanded James band---complete with a full string section---launching with vocalist Buddy DeVito's somewhat saccharine reading of "Come Out, Whoever You Are," a performance of just the kind of music that has caused critics, and hardcore jazz listeners, to dismiss James as the credible jazzman as which he'd established himself with Benny Goodman and his earlier, pre-1941 band.

That, however, is followed by future solo singing star Kitty Kallen singing "I'll Walk Alone," with a little more swing and a little less sweetener; "The Feet Draggin' Blues," which features a curiously restrained (and effective) trumpet solo by James to open (the ensemble here betrays an influence that becomes more overt in James's music, by the early-to-mid 1950s, after the hits dry up, and his media profile becomes smaller: Count Basie, whom James admired deeply); and, "Moten's Swing," a number James got to play at times in his days with Benny Goodman, this time using the string section much the way Tommy Dorsey had done earlier (on such hits as the impeccable, bristling "Opus One"), as a gliding counterpoint to the fat brass and reed emsemble passages, while it lays back for a few spry piano interjections.

Announcer: Unknown.

An Unneglected Anniversary: The Way It Was, 19 August

2009-08-19T12:49:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
AMOS 'N' ANDY:
THE 2,395TH DAY OF BROADCASTING FOR NBC
(NBC, 1936)

In one of the few complete surviving broadcasts of the series, the episode title is NBC's own way to refer to the eighth anniversary of the groundbreaking serial comedy-drama's advent on network radio.

And tonight's show only begins with NBC president Bennett R. Lord reading a special commemorative greeting to the duo, before getting to the business at hand; and, Walter Huston offering tribute following the actual episode, a tribute that includes a brief recap of the show's history.

As for the episode: Vacationing Amos and Andy (Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll), who drove their taxi out to the Left Coast, run out of gas near Lake Arrowhead in the southern California mountains, which only compounds Amos's frustration---they're already lost as it is---until a surprise stranger offers them a free can of gas, a sandwich, and an intriguing story.

Announcer: Bill Hay. Music: Gaylord Carter. Writers: Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE GOLDBERGS: ALLYSON HEARS ABOUT LEAH (CBS, 1941)---With Sylvia aboard a train for home, Allyson---who knows nothing of either Sylvia's departure or Leah's stroke---is now married to Esther, but his joy is about to be compromised by the news the Goldbergs (in order of appearance today: Roslyn Siber, Alfred Ryder, Gertrude Berg, John R. Waters) can no longer keep from him, before which Sammy (Ryder) admits to Rosalie (Siber) his own failure in the aborted romance with Sylvia. Announcer: James Fleming. Writer/Director: Gertrude Berg.

FORT LARAMIE: GOODBYE, WILLA (CBS, 1956)---After an exhaustive six-week campaign, with one soldier griping about the frustrations of absentee marriage, and Daggett (Jack Moyles) among the regiment husbands looking forward to returning to domestic bliss, Quince (Raymond Burr) and Daggett lead their exhausted and homesick men back to Laramie, where bachelor Quince's mixed feelings about domesticity may cost a price he's now unwilling to pay, in his way. Miss Willa: Virginia Gregg. Sieberts: Harry Bartell. Gorce: John Dehner. Additional cast: Paul Dubov, Parley Baer. Announcer: Dan Cubberly. Music: Amerigo Marino. Director: Norman Macdonnell. Writer: Kathleen Hite.

New Beginnings for All? The Way It Was, 18 August

2009-08-18T12:22:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE GOLDBERGS:
SYLVIA GOES HOME
(CBS, 1941)

With Molly and Jake escorting Allyson and Esther to the justice of the peace, and her sister Leah in the immediate aftermath of a devastating stroke, Dr. Cater (unknown)---citing the rare opportunity for new beginnings for all her family, and barely having convinced her that she and he can never be a couple---talks wistful Sylvia (Zena Provendie) into going home at last, appealing to her nascent new maturity as he drives her to the railroad station and escorts her onto the train personally, where she gives in to one last, longing, loving thought as the train pulls away.

The psychiatrist has the easy part, however, compared to the Goldbergs continuing to keep Leah's stroke a secret from the about-to-be-newlywed elder Allysons until after they're pronounced husband and wife.

Announcer: James Fleming. Writer/Director: Gertrude Berg.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

VIC & SADE: CLEANING THE ATTIC (NBC, 1942)---Dark and stuffy and miserable and hot and dusty though it might be, Sade (Bernadine Flynn) and Rush (Bill Idelson) tackle the job, anyway, once Rush forces a window open, but only because Sade gets tired of procrastinating on the long-overdue cleaning . . . unless she first tires of Rush's distractions from friends passing by on the street below. Vic: Art Van Harvey.

BOB & RAY PRESENT THE CBS RADIO NETWORK: THE GREAT TIGHTROPE WALKER (YOU DON'T NEED ME TO TELL YOU, 1959)---A brief debate over the actual time of their daily surrealities is punctuated by a cleaning crew member; Biff Burns interviews a midwestern football coach; and, Senor Miguel Honduras, a tightrope walker who plans to give a try on . . . a slackrope. Alleged writers: Bob Elliott, Ray Goulding.

Jail for Yawning: The Way It Is, 17 August

2009-08-17T12:06:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE KALLMANAC:
JAIL FOR YAWNING; HELEN AND TROY
(KLAV-AM LAS VEGAS, 2009)

In which your extinguished editor has anything but a yawn over an Illinois judge who actually sentenced a courtroom spectator to (originally) six months in the freezer for . . . yawning.

He also premieres a new semi-serial, hooked around a couple canned from their jobs as college professors---for marrying each other---and now hitting the Vegas pavement in search of . . . but finding . . .

And, he includes his usual old-time radio selection, the new-time way---on the date it aired originally, back in the year, but canning the nostalgia in favour of letting it breathe as art, a show he'll describe below in his customary manner.

Helen/Announcer: Patty Price. "Helen and Troy" Announcer: Jon Lindquist. Writer/Producer/Director: Yours, truly.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE JACK PAAR PROGRAM: LITTLE-KNOWN PEOPLE WHO MEAN NOTHING (NBC, 1947)---That's the secondary highlight of the evening, compared to Paar's guest---Jack Benny, who was also his benefactor (having discovered him on Guadalcanal in 1945, when Benny was entertaining troops and Paar was attached to a military entertainment unit; and, having mentored him and, in fact, pushed Paar as his 1947 summer replacement), and who appears here in one of his periodic running gags as a guest star---entering a talent competition as a violinist. Additional cast: Trudy Irwin, Elvia Allman, possibly Florence Halop, possibly Lionel Stander. Announcer: Hy Averback. Music: Jerry Fielding Orchestra. Writers: Larry Gelbart, Seaman Jacobs, Larry Marks, Arthur Stander.

Not in His Town: The Way It Was, 16 August

2009-08-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
GUNSMOKE:
THE LYNCHING
(CBS, 1952)

It's too late to stop Billy Saxon from swinging on a lynch rope to cover for another killer.

But with Kitty (Georgia Ellis) implying he's to blame for it happening at all, Dillon (William Conrad)---who was at Fort Dodge and unable to stop the lynching, but arrived back in time to find Saxon dead and hanging and to arrange his burial---hopes it isn't too late to bring two men to trial: the lyncher, Cam Powell (Paul Duval), whose brother was the original murder victim; and, former gunfighter turned cook Hank Ashford (possibly Tom Tully), who's just a little too skilled with guns still . . . especially Saxon's.

Chester: Parley Baer. Stewart: John Dehner. Additional cast: Joan Danton, Ross Moody, Lee Millar. Announcer: Roy Rowan. Director: Norman McDonnell. Music: Rex Khoury. Writer: John Meston.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

QUIET, PLEASE: PRESTO, CHANGE-O, I'M SURE (MUTUAL, 1948)---Making a joke about making an elephant disappear is no laughing matter for a man (Ernest Chappell, who narrates) who actually made an elephant disappear, once upon a time . . . along with a few other creatures and people to whom he may come to regret pulling the trick. Bernard: Ed Latimer. Professor: Edgar Stehli. Genevieve: Peggy Stanley. Dog, gorilla: Brad Barker. Music: Albert Buhrman. Writer/director: Wyllis Cooper.

From M-J to V-J: The Way It Was, 15 August

2009-08-15T09:07:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
GENE KRUPA AND HIS ORCHESTRA:
LIVE FROM THE HOTEL ASTOR
(MUTUAL, 1945)

Imagine what it must be, to be in Gene Krupa's position on V-J Day. (You will hear a brief excerpt from a news report covering V-J Day celebrations in England prior to the broadcast, by the way.)

Two years earlier---having figured out that there didn't need to be a drum solo on every other selection in his band book and tightened his first post-Benny Goodman big band (several members of which had gravitated to the new Krupa outfit, by the way, including saxophone reliable Vido Musso and arranger Fletcher Henderson) into a seamless if not exactly forward-looking organisation---Krupa had been arrested on a trumped-up marijuana-based charge and looked like a badly ruined man.

He pleaded guilty (on his attorney's advice) to contributing to the delinquency of a minor, serving ninety days in jail, but was convicted on a followup federal charge of using a minor to transport marijuana, a conviction thrown out when the minor in question, Krupa's thought-to-be-teenaged drum tech John Pateakos, admitted in 1944 (to a grand jury probing charges that Krupa's legal team had paid him off to keep him out of sight) that he'd never brought Krupa any such thing and was coached heavily by federal narcotics agents.

The case forced the likeable Krupa to break up his band (he'd formed it after leaving Goodman acrimoniously in 1938, not long after the Goodman band's seminal Carnegie Hall concert) and spend his entire life's savings, such as they were; the entire business sank him into a soul-deep depression and a fear that his music career (he would reveal later that jail officials allowed him to continue studying music while he was incarcerated) was over.

But Benny Goodman, with whom he'd reconciled not long after forming his first band in 1938, invited Krupa back to the bandstand and, while the two men may never again have worked together regularly, it helped Krupa out of his depression and sent him toward forming his second big band and a major comeback. It is this band---highlighted by vocal star (and fellow Goodman alumnus) Anita O'Day, tenor saxophonist Charlie Ventura, and passable but forgettable vocalist Buddy Stewart---Krupa leads to Times Square for this hotel appearance and this broadcast.

The selections: O'Day's sultry reading of "I'd Do It All Over Again," Ventura's Coleman Hawkins-influenced but very bebop reading of "These Foolish Things" (Krupa is one of the big band leaders who appreciates the new style and finds ways of integrating it into his own unit without compromising its core); Stewart's vocal on "I'm Gonna Love That Gal"; and, a rather exuberant re-arrangement---don't think you'll miss Krupa's infamous heavy-footed bass pedaling, which never really leaves his style even if he's adapted a little bop to his polyrhythms---of a Goodman perennial, "Stompin' at the Savoy" . . . with a brief but no less characteristic drum solo.

Announcer: Bob Martin.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: INSPECTING THE NEW ROLLING GROCERY STORE (NBC BLUE, 1935)---The boys (Chester Lauck, who also plays Grandpappy; Norris Goff, who also plays Dick) get the good news: their new mobile grocery is finished and ready for their inspection, but the Weehunts who have converted Abner's old car to the new store duck out for dinner before the boys arrive, worrying and annoying Abner. Announcer: Carlton Brickert. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

THE GOLDBERGS: LEAH'S STROKE (CBS, 1941)---Molly's (Gertrude Berg) success in bringing Allyson and Esther (Joan Vitez) together has a good side (the couple are about to be married) and a bad side---the bad side being other daughter, Leah, who wasn't crazy about her father's marriage to begin with . . . and who's suffered a stroke Molly can't bring herself to reveal until after the wedding, while jilted Sylvia (Zena Provendie) presses Sammy (Alfred Ryder) for answers about her sister. Jake: John R. Waters. Rosalie: Roslyn Siber. Sylvia: Zena Provendie. Additional cast: Unknown. Announcer: Clayton (Bud) Collyer. Writer/director: Gertrude Berg.

Depends on Your Definition of Unique: The Way It Was, 14 August

2009-08-14T10:49:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
OUR MISS BROOKS:
THE ENGLISH TEST
(CBS; REBROADCAST: ARMED FORCES RADIO SERVICE, 1949)

In an AFRS rebroadcast first aired in June, finals week for Madison High isn't exactly a snap for Connie (Eve Arden), who's just laboured over preparing her classes' exams and who has a too-early breakfast visitor---Conklin (Gale Gordon), who wants her to consult on picking a student winner for a prize recognising "unique" English ability but won't let her get in a word edgewise or otherwise.

Which may be child's play compared to Walter's (Richard Crenna) concurrent visit, since he wants Connie to make a student barbeque party at which he's arranged for her to get closer to indifferent Boynton (Jeff Chandler) by way of a pair of exotic lovebirds. The kicker: It's Stretch's (Leonard Smith) party, but his father won't sanction it unless his barely literate son wins the English prize.

Mrs. Davis: Jane Morgan. Music: Lud Luskin. Director: Larry Burns. Writers: Arthur Alsberg, Al Lewis.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: SQUIRE WANTS A THIRD INTEREST IN THE MOBILE STORE (NBC Blue, 1935)---That's the bad news, which kind of dampens the good news that---now that Lum (Chester Lauck, who also plays Grandpappy) and Abner (Norris Goff, who also plays Squire) have solidified their new mobile store venture, which has already set them back just a tad getting it built on the chassis of Abner's old car--Snake's willing to sell the Jot 'Em Down Store back to the boys. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

VIC & SADE: BACON SANDWICHES (NBC, 1940)---Sade's (Bernadine Flynn) quiet midday embroidering in Vic's (Art Van Harvey) easy chair is shifted pleasantly when Rush (Bill Idelson) invites her to shift to the porch swing, but the pleasantry isn't destined to last without at least a few quiet wrinkles that only begin with the dulling paint on the swing and continue with news of Rooster Davis's unusual new restaurant idea. Writer/director: Paul Rhymer.

Les Paul, RIP: Shoemaker, Stick To Your Last

2009-08-13T12:25:00.000-07:00

Les Paul, whose penchant for binding music and electric and electronic experimenting, died today of complications from pneumonia. His aural visions revolutionised the way music is recorded and played; he was in his own right a brilliant guitarist with a flair for melodious improvisation and an ability to swing even the unswingable; and, he bequeathed an instrument and a love of the art that was contagious even if all you knew of him was his own recordings or the guitar that bears his name.

He also had an old-time radio presence in his own right, for a brief period in the 1950s, and while you'd love to think that everything he touched turned to breathless illumination, on his radio show it was truest of the music, a point I tried to forge in the following essay, tied to the date of the show's audition installment. I republish it in his memory, hoping my critique of his radio effort does nothing to tarnish the gifts he left us.

As an old-time radio performer, Les Paul was a musical visionary. Leave it there.

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE LES PAUL SHOW:
AUDITION SHOW
(NBC, 1950)

The virtuoso guitarist and recording technologist auditions what proves to be a short-lived---musically memorable, otherwise often-enough lacking---fifteen-minute radio program featuring himself, his then-wife Mary Ford (vocals), and their collaborator Eddie Stapleton (percussion, occasional bass). With a factual correction here and there, what follows is a review of the show I wrote in late 2006:

----------

LES PAUL: Hello, hello everyone, this is Les Paul speaking, and with me I have mawife Mary—--
MARY FORD: Hi!
PAUL: —--and my git-tar. Uhhh . . . for the benefit of any new listeners who may have just tuned in, I’d like to mention that this program comes from our home, and that I have a room here just loaded with electronic gadgets—--amplifiers, echo chambers, transformers, six L-6s—--
FORD: Let me tell ‘em, Les, you’re a genius.
PAUL: Aw, don’t say that—
FORD: Oh, yes, you are—
PAUL: You’re embarrassing me—--a
FORD: Anyone who can take one guitar and make it sound like six is a genius.
PAUL: Any guy can do the same thing.

---The Les Paul Show, 11 July 1950, NBC.

Never mind whether the couple was scripted or winging it, and the chances were pretty good that it was half and half.

FORD: Oh, no one else can even play like you, much less make it sound like six people.
PAUL: Well, I—--all I like to do is get on the floor with a screwdriver and some tools and tinker around.
FORD: Aww, but you’re really a genius.
PAUL: No, I’m just a big tinker.
FORD: O-K, you’re just a big tinker.
PAUL: Oh. (Pause.) I shoulda quit when I was ahead.

Any guy could do the same thing assuming a) he could play a guitar in the first place (for the uninitiated: L-6s refers to the Gibson guitar Paul played and modified in 1950, before he and Gibson developed the model that has since borne his name), and b) he paid close enough attention after Les Paul showed any guy that you could make yourself a guitarchestra in the first place, never mind how to do it in the first place.

In broadcast terms, Les Paul and Mary Ford are probably remembered better for seven years’ worth of television’s Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home than one or two year’s worth of The Les Paul Show. A little prowling reveals the radio show ran two years with a decent share snaking around in mp3 files (and an episode or three included on the Capitol Records box anthology, The Legend and the Legacy). A little listening reveals a lot of gently off-the-wall fun and a passel of music that was futuristic at the time, remains intriguing even today, and often sounds years beyond its time still.

On the show transcribed above, it went from that homey little exchange to a Paulist take of “Sweet Georgia Brown.” Paul had created a system known puckishly as the Les Paulverizer, a recording machine that essentially multiplied what it was fed, enabling Paul to dub himself on the spot if he chose to do so, within reason. “Sweet Georgia Brown” got a multitracking treatment not dissimilar to the treatment through which his earlier version of “Lover” became a futuristic hit record, complete with recording acceleration pressing a pre-cut guitar harmony into a speed-of-light arpeggio flying counterpoint above the chorus, before a deceleration that had the feel of a roller coaster nudging the brakes gently rather than slamming them down from the final drop.

PAUL: Mary, I got a hunch that if I could take one guitar and make it sound like six guitars, I can make your voice—my wife—sound like six people.
FORD: That sounds like my husband—he eats like six people.
PAUL: But I’m your husband.
FORD: Which reminds me—if you don’t get a screwdriver and put that plug back in the electric stove . . . well, no cookin’.
PAUL: Oh, you don’t mean that all I’ve go—
FORD: I can’t give you anything but love.
PAUL: Well, that’s our cue for the next song.

From which point Paul would flip on the Paulverizer and turn Ford—--who bore an unsophisticated but pleasant voice, and could hold her own with any pop singer of the time--—into a harmony group. Here her take of “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” was calmly affecting in front of her husband’s sympatico guitars. (The couple divorced in 1963; the apparent wedge was her wish to back away from work and his need to keep working.)

Paul in the 1940s had a tandem reputation as a clever country picker (he did morningtime country broadcasts as Red Hot Red early in the 1940s) and a fluid, bluesy jazz improvisor (he was brought in, last minute, to the first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert, in 1944, and swapped solos nothin’-to-it-folks with the like of Illinois Jacquet) even before Bing Crosby put him on the air (supporting Crosby’s own show) and on shellac (that was Paul’s distinctive chord-and-run backing Der Bingle’s “It’s Been a Long, Long Time,” among others). His Les Paul Trio recordings of the era (recently remastered/reissued) stood up to any other guitarist’s, including Charlie Christian’s.

Remove his technological toying and all you would have left is a remarkable musician anyway. You can’t dismiss him as merely Mr. Wizard. Not even his most transdimensional experiments obscured Les Paul’s swing, whether he sent himself into outer space or fifty fathoms beneath the waves—--and his treatments often put him into both places at once. “Little Rock Getaway,” whether the version he cut as a Capitol single (with one alternate guitar line treated to resemble a staccato harpsichord) or the version he produced for the 26 May 1950 Les Paul Show (without the staccato-harpsichord treatment), only begins to illustrate the point.

Paul and Ford on the radio presented warmly enough, though their humour today seems of a place between cornpone quaint and clumsy off-guard stiff. But there's a humanness enough to it even when it resembles a kind of obligato in return for getting to deliver their futuristic music their way once a week on the air. (And, for Paul perhaps trying to make a case for "Nola" as one of his favourite songs---he led off the audition show and two regulation installments with the song. Good thing his rendition is so charming, though if I were going to choose a threepeater I'd have gone for his ripsnorting version of "The Carioca.")

Separate the songs from the banter and create a terrific Les Paul and Mary Ford album---you can treat the material into which they made hits as worthy alternate takes. Leave it all alone and have a pair (or trio, whenever percussionist/bassist Stapleton joined up) of guitarchestra-packing, warmhearted houseguests whose only lack is better comedy writers.

PAUL: Hi, folks.
SFX: (workshop sounds--tapping, hammering, etc.)
PAUL: Mary, would you hand me that pipe wrench?
SFX: (ringing clank)
FORD: Here.
PAUL: Uh, that's my wife, Mary.
FORD: Thanks.
PAUL: All right, stand back. I'm gonna turn it on.
SFX: (small whooshing gas jet)
FORD: That letter from the gas company sure started something . . . (SFX: continuing small hissing gas jet) . . . Of all the guitar players in the world, I had to pick someone who isn't satisfied with an electric guitar. He has to build the first gas guitar.
SFX: (continuing small hissing gas jet)
PAUL: Say, would you hand me the screwdriver?
FORD: Here's a screwdriver.
PAUL: Uh---oil rag?
FORD: Oil rag.
PAUL: Monkey wrench?
FORD: Monkey wrench.
PAUL: Match?
FORD: Death certificate.

Assuming they had regular writers, they must have had the night off.

Spare the Child? The Way It Was, 10 August

2009-08-10T15:22:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE CBS RADIO WORKSHOP:
ONLY JOHNNY KNOWS
(CBS, 1956)

Constricted by the limit of the half-hour program but sobering nevertheless, here is an analysis of American child-rearing, in historical but seriocomic form, from colonial to contemporary times. A few strains in the prose and the dialogue but as good as it gets for its time and place.

Modern Mother: Katherine Anderson. Observer: Jackson Beck. Additional cast: Mary Patton, Ian Martin, Sarah Fussell, Joe Helgeson, Ed Prentiss, Lawson Serby, Nell Harrison, Ethel Owen, Ruth Tobin. Announcer: Gaylord Avery. Narrator: Joseph Julian. Music: Charles Paul. Director: Paul Roberts. Writer: Johanna Johnston.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

CITIES SERVICE HIGHWAYS IN MELODY: DOROTHY KIRSTEN, GUEST SOLOIST (NBC, 1945)---The spinto soprano's charming performance of "I'll Follow My Secret Heart" highlights a typical lush half-hour for this version of the long-running Friday night music interlude. Musical director/conductor: Paul Lavalle. Announcer: Ford Bond.

LORENZO JONES: LORENZO IS ACCUSED OF ROBBERY (NBC, 1945)---While gullible Lorenzo hits New York trying to learn something of amnesiac Alice---who may actually be half of a husband-and-wife scam team---he's being held for questioning in the Big Apple . . . while Belle (Beth Johnson, standing in for Lucille Wall), trying to answer questions from the sheriff, learns the hard way that standing by her man isn't always a guarantee of security. Additional cast: Unknown. Announcer: George Putnam. Writers: Theodore and Mathilde Ferro.

QUIET, PLEASE: BRING ME TO LIFE (MUTUAL, 1947)---A scriptwriter (Ernest Chappell, who narrates) in search of a prime character, with his deadline only a short way away, gets a lot more than he asked when he sees a line on the sheet in his typewriter . . . a line he didn't write. Ruth: Helen Marcy. Attacker: Walter Black. Man on Telephone: Warren Bryan. Music: Gene Perrazo. Writer/director: Wyllis Cooper.

Here, Kitty? The Way It Was, 9 August

2009-08-09T00:41:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
QUIET, PLEASE:
THE THING ON THE FOURBLE BOARD
(MUTUAL, 1948)

An oil-drilling crew chief (Ernest Chappell, who also narrates) is fascinated, then horrified, and finally slightly numbed by a peculiarly feline--and beguiling--creature that comes to the surface after the crew drills one of the deepest wells it's ever drilled and unearths it after turning up ancient rock.

Billy: Dan Sutter. Ted: J. Pat O'Malley. Additional cast: Cecil Roy. Music: Albert Buhrmann. Sound: Albert April. Writer/director: Wyllis Cooper.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

ED WYNN, THE FIRE CHIEF: TRIAL BY JURY (NBC, 1932)---Ed wants the Agriculture Department to help with his geraniums; then, the breezy clown and his sideckick take a poke at the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

With Graham McNamee. Announcer: Louis Witten. Music: Don Voorhees. Writers: Unknown.

LUM & ABNER: SNAKE WON'T SELL THE JOT 'EM DOWN STORE (MUTUAL, 1935)---Lum (Chester Lauck) talks to Dick (Norris Goff, who also plays Abner) about trying to re-purchase the store, after Abner has lost everything but his old car, but Snake won't take anything less than $1,500 in a slightly usurious deal, Lum hasn't got a lot to pitch in beyond his few commissions from shares in the silver mine, neither Lum nor Dick are confident of what Abner can get by selling the car, and Lum isn't anxious to try selling more stock without learning more of Squire's little property. Announcer: Carlton Brickert. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

GUNSMOKE: THE KENTUCKY TOLMANS (CBS, 1952)---Company at the back door spells unease for Matt (William Conrad) and Chester (Parley Baer)---a feisty woman (Virginia Gregg), with no lack of confidence otherwise ("I may be a girl but I was barkin' squirrels while you was still tryin' to dent a tin can!"), who's in from Kentucky with her family, who wants to talk to Matt privately . . . and wants him to arrest her father for protection, after he survived an ambush on the way to Dodge. Additional cast: Joseph Kearns, Junius Mathews, Harry Bartell, Lou Krugman, Peter Leeds. Announcer: Roy Rowan. Music: Rex Koury. Director: Norman Macdonnel. Writer: Herb Burnham.

Dog Bites Cop: The Way It Was, 8 August

2009-08-08T00:36:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR:
BROWNIE BITES POLICEMAN
(CBS, 1959)

So much for man biting dog; or, even man (Alan Bunce) biting wife (Peg Lynch) over soft boiled eggs that are anything but---that's nothing compared to the family pooch taking a bite out of crimefighting.

Aunt Effie: Margaret Hamilton. Police officer: Frank N. Tuttle. Additional cast: Francie Myers, Madeline Pierce, Edith Hatwater. Writer: Peg Lynch.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: THE BOYS ARE TIRED OF HIGH SOCIETY (MUTUAL, 1935)---So much for once-skeptical Abner (Norris Goff) taking to the socialite way since selling the store, while Cedric wants Lum (Chester Lauck, in both roles) to tell him more about the silver mining business. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

VIC & SADE: THE HONEYMOON COUPLE (MUTUAL, 1946)---Rush (Bill Idelson) suffering bruises in a baseball game is nothing compared to the couple in question coming for a brief visit, though just how brief is anybody's guess, considering Sade's (Bernadine Flynn) lack of overt anxiety and Vic's (Art Van Harvey) lack of overt enthusiasm. Additional cast: Unknown. Announcer: Jack Fuller. Music: June Lyons. Writer: Paul Rhymer.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1885---Gene Buck (president, American Society of Composers and Publishers: World's Fair Concert), Detroit.
1887---Malcolm Keen (actor: Cavalcade of America), Bristol, U.K.
1889---J. Andrew White (sports broadcast executive/pioneer), unknown.
1895---Nat Pendleton (actor: Dr. Kildare), Davenport, Iowa.
1896---Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (novelist: Stars in the Air), Washington, D.C.
1900---James Pierce (actor: Tarzan), Freedom, Indiana; Victor Young (composer/conductor: Shell Chateau; The Old Gold Don Ameche Show), Chicago.
1904---Ray Buffum (writer/director: A Man Named Jordan; Rogue's Gallery), unknown.
1905---Ross Graham (baritone/bass: Cities Service Concert; Show Boat), Benton, Arkansas; Nino Martini (singer: Seven Star Revue), Verona, Italy.
1906---Richard Cunliffe (arranger, with Ted Weems and His Orchestra: numerous radio remotes), McKeesport, Pennsylvania; Joe DuVal (actor: Cinnamon Bear; Old Town), Wisconsin.
1907---Benny Carter (saxophonist/composer: The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street), New York City.
1909---Bob Davis (singer: Spotlight Bands; One Night Stand), Charleston, Mississippi.
1910---Sylvia Sidney (actress: Lux Radio Theater; Columbia Presents Corwin; Philip Morris Playhouse), Bronx, New York.
1912---Gail Henshaw (actress: Kitty Keene; The Woman in White), New York City.
1913---Axel Stordahl (arranger/conductor: Songs By Sinatra; The Frank Sinatra Show; Your Hit Parade; Coke Time), Staten Island.
1914---Pete King (conductor, with the Pete King Chorale: The Bing Crosby Show; The Doris Day Show), Greenville, Ohio.
1917---Ann Francine (singer: Hour of Charm), Philadelphia; Malvin Wald (writer: Suspense), Brooklyn.
1921---Webb Pierce (singer: Grand Ole Opry; Louisiana Hayride), West Monroe, Louisiana.
1922---Rory Calhoun (actor: Lux Radio Theater), Los Angeles; Esther Williams (actress: Lux Radio Theater; Tex and Jinx), Los Angeles.
1923---Jimmy Witherspoon (blues singer: Jubilee), Gurdon, Arkansas.
1926---Richard Anderson (actor: Suspense), Long Branch, New Jersey.
1927---Basil Kirchin (drummer, with the Harry Roy Orchestra: numerous radio remotes), Blackpool.
1930---Terry Nation (writer: The Goon Show), Cardiff, South Wales.
1937---Dustin Hoffman (actor: Soundstage), Los Angeles.
1945---Percy Granger (actor: The CBS Radio Mystery Theater), Norman, Oklahoma.

A Slight Change of Dinner Plans: The Way It Was, 7 August

2009-08-07T00:43:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
VIC & SADE:
NO DINNER TONIGHT
(NBC, 1944)

"I was beginning to say there's something radically wrong about here," Russell (David Whitehouse) says, and he isn't kidding: Vic (Art Van Harvey) and Russell are stuck fixing their own dinner (which is what they refer to as lunch, folks), which they'll probably think is broken, because Sade (Bernadine Flynn) giddily got lost in the details of a new dress pattern and forgot to prepare it, and she can only hope her men can survive her lapse until she can make it up to them for the evening meal.

"Soup and sardines don't sound like such a hot meal," warbles Vic fatalistically . . .

Writer/director: Paul Rhymer.

AIRWAVES . . .

1886---One of radio's most important inventions---the neutrodyne circuit, neutralising the noise rattling most radio receivers of the time, and proving an imperative step toward broadcast radio as we would come to know it---is introduced by Louis Alan Hazeltine.

Thirty-eight years later, Hazeltine will form the corporation bearing his name, selling it his neutrodyne patent for stock and cash, and by 1927 it will be believed that ten million radio receivers using the Hazeltine neutrodyne circuit are operating.

1942: IT MAY BE A QUIET DAY IN LAKE WOBEGON . . . when future Prairie Home Companion mastermind/humourist Garrison Keillor---whose program will evoke the spirit and, in many cases, the style of old-time radio, over the better portion of three decades---is born in Anoka, Minnesota.

1969: SORRY, CHARLIE---Charlie Greer performs his final show for WABC-AM, New York.

1974: KICKIN' COUSIN---Fed up at last with the station's notorious seven-song playlist (actual or alleged, and so much for the Top 40, right?), Bruce Morrow (that's Cousin Brucie to his listeners) performs his last show on WABC, before jumping to then-rival WNBC.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

BOB & RAY PRESENT THE CBS RADIO NETWORK: WALLY BALLOU AND FAMILY (I CAN'T IMAGINE, 1959)---An empty Friday with no picnic equals that intrepid reporter bringing his family aboard. Writers: Alleged to be Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1883---Reinald Werrenrath (baritone: Old Company Program), New York City.
1884---Billie Burke (comedienne: The Billie Burke Show; Gay Mrs. Featherstone), Washington, D.C.
1902---Charles Cornell (composer: Boston Blackie; A Date with Judy), Budapest.
1903---Hilda Hopkins Burke (soprano: WBAL, Baltimore), unknown.
1904---Ralph Bunche (political scientist/diplomat/Nobel laureate: The Big Show), Detroit; Herbert Colin Rice (creator/producer/writer: Bobby Benson), Guilford, U.K.
1906---Ernestine Wade (actress: Amos 'n' Andy), Mississippi.
1907---Alexander Turner (writer: Coat of Arms), London.
1908---Dave Bacal (organist: staff, CBS), New York City.
1909---Sheldon Stark (writer: Columbia Workshop; Straight Arrow), New York City.
1910---Freddie Slack (pianist/conductor: Kraft Music Hall), Westby, Wisconsin.
1913---George Van Eps (jazz guitarist, with the Freddy Martin, Benny Goodman, and Ray Noble orchestras, among others, and inventor of the seven-string guitar: numerous radio remotes), Plainfield, New Jersey.
1914---Clifford Thorsness (sound, including and especially The Closet: Fibber McGee and Molly; The Charlie McCarthy Show), unknown; June Travis (actress: Girl Alone; Arnold Grimm's Daughter), Chicago.
1920---Mel Diamond (writer: Kate Smith Sings; The Milton Berle Show; The Bob Hope Show), New York City.
1921---Poni Adams (as Jane Adams; co-hostess: Darts for Dough), San Antonio; Warren Covington (trombonist/conductor: CBS staff; numerous remotes as a member of the Les Brown and Tommy Dorsey orchestras), Philadelphia.
1926---Stan Freberg (comedian: That's Rich; The Stan Freberg Show), Los Angeles.
1927---Carl Switzer (Alfalfa; actor: Thirty Minutes in Hollywood), Paris, Illinois.

Shadowing St. Jude's

2009-08-06T22:05:00.000-07:00

A live re-creation of a lost episode of old-time radio classic The Shadow will benefit St. Jude's Children's Hospital---itself the creation of an old-time radio presence (Danny Thomas, whose credits include brother Amos in The Bickersons)---when it's performed as part of the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention 27-29 August, in Aberdeen, Maryland.

"The Case of the Avenging Brain" aired originally 30 January 1944 but is considered a lost episode of the legendary crime drama, because o recording of the original episode is known to survive.

The synopsis: A series of thefts---and a bizarre attempt on Lamont's life by Margot herself---lead Lamont to a scientist keeping alive the brain of an executed criminal via an artificial heart . . . which enabled the brain to mastermind the actual and attempted crimes, to finance surgeries that would transplant it to a younger body, and to lure Lamont into a trap---the brain knows the Shadow's true identity---but allow him to perform a turnabout, tricking the brain into destroying its host . . . and, its new master.

Written by Robert Arthur and David Kogan (The Mysterious Traveler), the episode is considered a lost episode because no known recording of the original broadcast is known to exist, but the script has been bought, copied, and cleared for copyright to deliver the performance.

Participants are expected to include several with old-time radio credits, including Celeste Holm (Lux Radio Theater), Patty McCormack (Suspense), Bob Hastings (The Shadow, as it happens), and Rosemary Rice (Suspense, X Minus One, Archie Andrews); and, television veterans John Whitaker (Family Affair), Lee Meriwether (Barnaby Jones), and James Best (The Dukes of Hazzard).

Special thanks to Martin Grams, Jr., who provided much of the foregoing information, and whose books about classic radio include Inner Sanctum Mysteries: Behind the Creaking Door; Suspense: Twenty Years of Thrills and Chills; Information, Please; and, The I Love a Mystery Companion.)

Greasy Paint: The Way It Was, 6 August

2009-08-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
MY FAVOURITE HUSBAND:
THE PORTRAIT ARTIST
(CBS; AFRS REBROADCAST 1948)

George (Richard Denning) almost doesn't want to know why Liz (Lucille Ball, whose 37th birthday coincides with this airing) is coming to breakfast in a slinky evening gown into which she needs Katie (Ruth Perrot) to paint her . . . appropriately enough, considering she's engaged a portrait artist (possibly Jeff Chandler) to paint them, an engagement she plans rather conveniently to tell him over breakfast, the better to keep up with an upwardly mobile couple.

The Atterburys: Gale Gordon, Bea Benaderet. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Director: Jess Oppenheimer. Writers: Madelyn Pugh, Bob Carroll, Jr.

AIRWAVES . . .

1923: HELLO, WORLD!---We doubt the future mainstay of New York WNEW-AM said precisely his famous sign-on phrase, when the first slap came across the bottom of William Breitbert . . . born today in Babylon, New York but due to become beloved as future Radio Hall of Fame disc jockey William B. Williams.

1945: "MY GOD . . . "---That is said to have been the only journal entry in the co-pilot's log, when the Boeing B-29 Enola Gay drops history's first in-combat atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

CHANNEL SURFING: HIROSHIMA

"SCIENTISTS BRITISH AND AMERICAN . . . " (BBC, 1945)---The BBC reports the bomb drop.

BREAK-INS: APPROACHING THE END (MUTUAL, 1945)---Mutual Broadcasting System delivers several break-ins into a music program to report news from Tokyo via San Francisco that Japan would accept the Potsdam proclamation "soon," in the immediate wake of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

CHANNEL SURFING: THE USUAL . . .

ROMANCE: PAGOSA (CBS, 1951)---Considered a second precursor to what became Gunsmoke (a 1950 installment of Escape, "Wild Jack Rhett," is considered the other), rancher and former peace officer Jeff Spain (future Gunsmoke star William Conrad) rides into Pagosa hoping to file a land claim but finding himself the target of a district attorney's (Will Wright) unwanted offer to become the town's new sheriff . . . and, reluctantly, of the stable's proprietor (future Gunsmoke cast member Georgia Ellis), who blocks his land claim unless he accepts the job. Additional cast: Tony Barrett, Lamont Johnson, Tom Holland, Herb Ellis, Junius Mathews. Narrator: Bill Johnstone. Music: Alexander Courage. Announcer: Roy Rowan. Director: Norman Macdonnell. Writer: John Meston.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1881---Leo Carrillo (actor: Grapevine Rancho; Four Frightened People), Los Angeles; Louella Parsons (as Louella Rose Oettinger; commentator: Hollywood Hotel; Louella Parsons; Texaco Star Theater), Freeport, Illinois.
1886---Billie Burke (as Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke; comedienne: The Billie Burke Show; The Gay Mrs. Featherstone), Washington, D.C.
1892---Victor Rodman (actor: Those We Love), Arkansas.
1894---Jack Kirkwood (actor: Saunders of the Circle X; Hawthorne House), Scotland.
1911---Lucille Ball (comedienne: The Wonder Show with Jack Haley; Pabst Blue Ribbon Town; The Abbott and Costello Show; My Favourite Husband), Jamestown, New York.
1915---Jim Ameche (actor: Jack Armstrong; Silver Eagle), Kenosha, Wisconsin.
1917---Robert Mitchum (actor: Family Theater), Bridgeport, Connecticut.
1921---Ella Raines (actress: Lux Radio Theater), Snoqualmie, Washington.
1922---Jackie Kelk (actor: The Adventures of Superman; The Aldrich Family), Brooklyn.
1925---Barbara Bates (writer: Just Plain Bill; Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons), Denver.

Fear and Loathing: The Way It Was, 5 August

2009-08-05T01:54:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
FORT LARAMIE:
THE MASSSACRE
(CBS, 1956)

Finding a Shoshone encampment surprisingly quiet and unsuspicious, for a tribe preparing to move home unsanctioned, Quince (Raymond Burr) promises their chief (John Dehner), with whom he's personally friendly, a safe escort home to Wind River, a promise the chief fears will be broken when a nighttime coyote howl---that the chief takes as a warning---triggers him to make the move alone.

It's a decision Quince accepts reluctantly, a reluctance justified soon and gravely enough, after he and his men see another cavalry company on the horizon as they travel ahead of the tribe---a half-frenzied company, led by a firebrand major (possibly Lawrence Dobkin) who fires them up with brimstone preaching . . . and "half a dozen scalps" on his belt.

Harrison: Vic Perrin. Sieberts: Harry Bartell. Daggett: Jack Moyle. Music: Amerigo Marino. Sound: Bill James, Tom Henley. Director: Norman Macdonnell. Writer: Kathleen Hite.

AIRWAVES . . . A TALE OF TWO DIAMONDS

1920: IT'S A LONG WAY TO NIGHT COURT---The baby girl born in Montreal, but raised in Brooklyn, will grow up to make her comedic bones as a published humourist in The New Yorker and, then, an old-time radio comedy writing protege of titans Ed Gardner and Goodman Ace, for whom she will work, respectively, on Duffy's Tavern and The Big Show . . . before becoming a television writer (and, it will be believed, the partial inspiration for man-hungry comedy writer Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show) and the author of the cheerfully tart Nose Jobs for Peace.

But Selma Diamond will probably be remembered best, alas, as the first lady bailiff on television's Night Court---where she will come to share a grave Duffy's Tavern connection decades after that radio classic leaves the air: she and her Night Court successor, Florence Halop (the second Miss Duffy, and also a member of Henry Morgan's and numerous other old-time radio casts), will die within a year of each other. Both of cancer.

1921: PLAY BALL!---The first known broadcast of a major league baseball game goes on the air over KDKA-AM, Pittsburgh, featuring the Pittsburgh Pirates versus the Philadelphia Phillies and Harold W. Arlin doing the play-by-play of the game.

The Phillies win, 8-0, as heard over the station that becomes in due course the flagship station for the Pirates' radio network.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: ABNER BECOMES THE BIGGEST SOCIETY MAN (NBC BLUE, 1935)---Once-reluctant Abner (Norris Goff) has a discomfiting change of heart regarding the wave of high society style and mannerism sweeping Pine Ridge. Lum/Snake/Grandpappy: Chester Lauck. Dick/Squire: Also Norris Goff. Announcer: Carlton Brickert. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

THE GOLDBERGS: CATER FINDS A REAL CLUE (CBS, 1942)---The family bustles while psychiatrist Cater (unknown) thinks he has a breakthrough in trying to help Ann (also unknown), which is the reason Molly (Gertrude Berg) enlisted him in the first place. Rosalie: Roslyn Siber. Jake: John R. Waters. Sammy: Alfred Ryder. Writer/director: Gertrude Berg.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1887---Reginald Owen (actor: Lux Radio Theater), Wheathampton, U.K.
1890---Al Goodman (pianist/bandleader: Town Hall Tonight; The Sal Hepatica Revue/Hour of Smiles; Texaco Star Theater; The Fred Allen Show), Nikopol, Russia.
1906---John Huston (actor: Lux Radio Theater), Nevada, Missouri.
1908---Wilbur Evans (singer: Vicks Open House; Stars from the Blue), Philadelphia.
1911---Robert Taylor (actor: Good News of 1938; Lux Radio Theater; Plays for Americans), Filley, Nebraska.
1912---Lew Valentine (host: Mennen Jury Trials; Dr. IQ, the Mental Banker)
1914---David Brian (actor: Mr. District Attorney), New York City; Parley Baer (actor: Gunsmoke; Rogers of the Gazette), Salt Lake City; Anita Colby (actress: Radio Hall of Fame), Washington, D.C.
1915---Peter Lisagor (journalist: Meet the Press), Keystone, West Virginia.
1917---Don Stanley (announcer: Adventures of Nero Wolfe; Out of the Deep; The Saint), Stoughton, Wisconsin.
1918---Tom Drake (actor: Old Gold Comedy Theater; Lux Radio Theater; So Proudly We Hail), Brooklyn.

Of Little Rocks and Style Put-On: The Way It Was, 4 August

2009-08-04T00:22:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE LES PAUL SHOW:
LITTLE ROCK GETAWAY
(NBC, 1950)

That charming little masterwork of overdubbing, tape speeding, and sheer virtuosity---which also opened a late May program---gets a slight re-arrangement to kick off this installment of the guitar pioneer's short-enough-lived radio exercise, which also includes a charming performance of "Until I Hold You Again" by then-wife Mary Ford; and, a pungent Paulist take of a country chestnut, "Puttin' On the Style," among the music highlights that are the real treat, since the couple's on-air banter (none of it scripted) isn't exactly going to make you think you've discovered two of the great lost American comedians.

AIRWAVES . . .

1901: A HORN IS BORN---In terms of hard old-time radio history, this isn't exactly a hot date . . . unless, of course, you could predict that the infant born today in a poor New Orleans neighbourhood will grow up to learn his first music in reform school, after he fires a gun for a New Year's celebration at age eleven, never mind to revolutionise jazz and charm radio listeners (on The Pursuit of Happiness; Sealtest Village Store; The Story of Swing; The Frank Sinatra Show; and The Big Show, among others) as well as ballroom goers and record buyers.

Louis Armstrong was the first important soloist to emerge in jazz, and he became the most influential musician in the music's history. As a trumpet virtuoso, his playing, beginning with the 1920s studio recordings made with his Hot Five and Hot Seven ensembles, charted a future for jazz in highly imaginative, emotionally charged improvisation. For this, he is revered by jazz fans. But Armstrong also became an enduring figure in popular music, due to his distinctively phrased bass singing and engaging personality, which were on display in a series of vocal recordings and film roles.

---From All Music Guide.

I talked with Louis Armstrong one night in Basin Street and mentioned his record of "When You're Smilin'" which I had early loved and too soon lost: "I was working in the house band at the Paramount when I was young," Armstrong said. "And the lead trumpet stood up and played that song, and I just copied what he did note for note. I never found out his name but there was kicks in him. There's kicks everywhere."

---Murray Kempton, introducing his anthology, Rebellions, Perversities, and Main Events. (New York: Times Books/Random House, 1994.)

CHANNEL SURFING: SATCHMO ON THE AIR

REMOTE: NEW YEAR'S RADIO DANCING PARTY (ARMED FORCES RADIO SERVICE, 31 DECEMBER 1945)---Leading a big band of his own, Armstrong delivers both an exuberant trumpet and vocal performance playing "Ac-cen-tu-ate The Positive." ("Well, flock!" "Yeah, leader!" "Have you hoid what Brother Moicer said?") That's one of the highlights of a New Year's Eve radio multi-remote---hookups from hotel to hotel---that also includes Harry James ("Sad Sack"), Count Basie ("One O'Clock Jump"), Jimmy Dorsey ("I Got Rhythm"), Artie Shaw with Roy Eldridge ("Little Jazz"), Stan Kenton ("Tampico," with vocalist June Christy), Tommy Dorsey ("Song of India"), Duke Ellington ("Let the Zoomers Zoom"), and, perhaps needless to say, Guy Lombardo ("Auld Lang Syne").

THE BIG SHOW: AIN'T MISBEHAVIN' (NBC, 17 DECEMBER 1950)---Satchmo makes a swinger out of Meredith Willson, when the grandfather of the swing slips up from the Willson orchestra pit, banters with Bob Hope and hostess Tallulah Bankhead, then growls and blows a marvelous "Ain't Misbehavin'." Additional cast: Phil Harris, Deborah Kerr, Frankie Lane, Martin & Lewis. Announcer: Ed Herlihy. Writers: Goodman Ace, Selma Diamond, Frank Wilson.

CHANNEL SURFING: THE USUAL . . .

WORLD NEWS TODAY: THE EUROPEAN BATTLES CONTINUE (CBS, 1944)---Including the continuing battle in and for Normandy, as future Radio Hall of Famer Douglas Edwards anchors.

BOB & RAY PRESENT THE CBS RADIO NETWORK: WHO WANTS TO KNOW? (WHO CAN GUESS, 1959)---Maybe you do, if you listen to today's edition. Writers: Bob Elliot, Ray Goulding.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1889---William Keighley (host: Lux Radio Theater), Philadelphia.
1890---Carson Robison (singer: The Eveready Hour; The Dutch Masters Minstrels), Chetona, Kansas.
1897---Abe Lyman (bandleader: The Jack Pearl Show; Lavender and New Lace; Waltz Time), Chicago.
1903---Helen Kane (The Boop Boop-a-Doop Girl; actress: Today's Children), The Bronx.
1904---Theodore Newton (actor: Joyce Jordan, M.D.), Lawrenceville, New Jersey.
1905---Frank Luther (singer: The Frank Luther Show; The Happy Wonder Bakers Trio), Lakin, Kansas.
1908---Wally Maher (actor: One Man's Family; The Adventures of Nero Wolfe), Montreal.
1914---Dick Todd (singer: Avalon Time; Your Hit Parade; The Rinso-Spry Vaudeville Theater), Montreal.
1915---William Keene (actor: Land of the Lost), Pennsylvania.

This Isn't Exactly Classic Radio, But---The Way It Was, 3 August

2009-08-03T22:30:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE KALLMANAC:
LAS VEGAS DRIVE-THRU WEDDINGS;
RACHAEL LASER'S FIFTEEN-MINUTE RECIPES;
THE CBS RADIO WORKSHOP: SUBWAYS ARE FOR SLEEPING (1956)
(KLAV, LAS VEGAS, 3 AUGUST 2009)

. . . It is the Monday night mirth mash as created and presented by your servant live at 9 PM PDT.

And, tonight, we threw a little of Uncle Ben's perverted rice into Las Vegas's notorious swift wedding chapels . . . sliced and diced Rachael Ray (affectionately, we hope) . . . and presented one of the best installments of one of old-time radio's best dramatic anthologies from the final years.

It's based on a staggering Harper's article by Edmund G. Love, written in the wake of a kind of scandal in which New York's subways and streets in the early but prosperous 1950s turned out to have a kind of class of homeless . . . and focusing on one such denizen, Henry Shelby (Byron Kane), who chooses to live by his wits (and, as it happens, his wit), working when he feels like it or his modest monies run out, and essentially soaking in a kind of active education he gives the impression of having to miss had he elected to remain in his former lifestyle.

Additional cast: Sarah Selby, Helaine Burke, Edwin Bruce, Frank Erstel, Cort Falkenburg, Tony Barrett, Ted Bliss, Alan Reed. Narrator: William Kanelly. Announcer: William Conrad. Director: William Robeson. Music: Fred Steiner. Writer: Fran Van Hardesvelt, adapted from the article by Edmund G. Love.

THE KALLMANAC---Additional cast: Patty Price (as the bride); Siri Morgan (announcer; as Rachael Laser). Writer/director: Jeff Kallman.

AIRWAVES . . .

1984: THE WILD I-TRALIAN COMES HOME---Radio Hall of Famer Dick Biondi---who moved to Chicago WLS in 1960 and brought rock and roll to millions over that station's powerful signal for three years until his move to Los Angeles KRLA---returns to Chicago for a third time, on WJMK-FM, an oldies station.

Biondi will stay until June 2005, when WJMK switches to the "jack" formula; he will move to another Chicago station, WZZN, in November 2006.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

EARL (FATHA) HINES AND HIS ORCHESTRA: REMOTE FROM THE GRAND TERRACE, CHICAGO (NBC, 1938)---The master of the "trumpet style" of jazz piano leads a brisk big band through a vibrant half-hour set that includes "The Lionheart Zoo," "Teacher's Pet" (with a vocal by Roy Harris), "So Help Me," and other selections, a few of which feature the impeccable Hines piano and some brisk section playing. Announcer: Unknown.

THEATER FIVE: HIT AND RUN (ABC, 1964)---Leaving town for awhile and asking his attorney to oversee his shiftless younger brother in the meantime, a gangster meets a girl and causes a fatal accident while trying to impress her, on the series premiere of one of the post old-time radio era's periodic attempts to revive its spirit and aesthetic. Cast and writers: Unknown. Announcer: Fred Foy.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1885---Arthur Sinclair (actor: The Jumbo Fire Chief Program), Dublin.
1896---Wendell Hall (The Red-Headed Music Maker; singer: The Eveready Hour), St. George, Kansas.
1900---Ernie Pyle (journalist: Words at War; Cavalcade of America), Dana, Indiana.
1903---John S. Young (journalist: NBC News), Springfield, Massachussetts.
1905---Gaylord Carter (organist: Amos 'n' Andy; Breakfast in Hollywood), Wiesbaden, Germany; Dolores del Rio (actress: Hollywood On the Air), Durango, Mexico.
1907---Irene Tedrow (actress: Meet Corliss Archer; Chandu, the Magician), Denver.
1916---Horace Logan (creator: Louisiana Hayride, and the man who first told a hysterical audience that "Elvis has left the building"), unknown.
1917---Larry Haines (actor: Young Doctor Malone; This is Nora Drake), Mount Vernon, New York; Charlie Shavers (trumpeter: Jump Time; The Mildred Bailey Show; The Tommy Dorsey Show), New York City.
1918---Les Elgart (bandleader: Let's Go to Town; Manhattan Melodies), New Haven.
1920---Marilyn Maxwell (singer/actress: Kraft Music Hall; The Abbott & Costello Show; The Bob Hope Show), Clarinda, Iowa.
1923---Jean Hagen (actress: Lux Radio Theater; Stars in the Air), Chicago.
1925---Billy James Hargis (radio evangelist), Texarkana, Texas.
1926---Tony Bennett (as Anthony Dominick Benedetto; singer: The F.W. Woolworth Hour; Songs for Sale), Astoria, New York.

It Was Later Than He Thought: The Way It Was, 2 August

2009-08-02T12:30:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
QUIET, PLEASE:
IT'S LATER THAN YOU THINK
(MUTUAL, 1948))

Fans of this clever psychological thriller series don't need your servant to remind them the irony in this episode's title---it was the tagline for the earlier Wyllis Cooper creation, Lights Out, which he turned over to Arch Oboler while moving onward to film writing, further radio production (The Army Hour) and, in due course, creating this series . . . which would be compared only too often to Lights Out by, as John Dunning (in On the Air) would phrase it, "people who remembered only that Arch Oboler had written it."

Tonight, however, Cooper gets a kind of psychic revenge with a spellbinder Oboler himself might have been hard pressed to fashion: Lindsay Bradley (Ernest Chappell, who narrates), drafted to World War II, discovers to his astonishment and eventual terror that the gold watch his employers presented him for good luck is only too malleable---he can control time within a twelve-hour timeframe if he sets it forward or backward, but struggles between using this unusual power judiciously and fearing the end of time should the watch become damaged . . . which may be nothing compared to what he faces with the watch when he returns home from the war.

Verna: Abby Lewis. Sergeant: Don Griggs. Additional Cast: Ed Latimer. Music: Albert Berman. Writer/director: Wyllis Cooper.

AIRWAVES . . .

2004: THE UNHAPPIEST RECAP---Bob Murphy, one third of the original broadcast team of the New York Mets---whose first regular-season broadcast with the new team occurred in the final days of the old-time radio era, and whose "Back with the happy recap" following a Mets win became his trademark---dies at age 79, almost a full year after retiring as a Mets broadcaster.

I’ll say goodbye now to everybody. Stay well out there, wherever you may be. I've enjoyed the relationship with you.

---Bob Murphy, saying farewell to his listeners to conclude his final Mets broadcast, 25 September 2003.

Murphy was inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame as the Frick Award Winner in 1994.

The Mets and the Milwaukee Brewers will pause in Miller Park, the Brewers' home field, for a moment of silence in Murphy's memory, before the game in which the Mets thrashed the Brewers, 12-3.

It's a constant reminder that from dust we come and to dust we shall return, not to be morbid about it. I'm going to miss Bob, but hopefully we'll do a game together in the wild blue yonder somewhere.

---Vin Scully, Radio Hall of Famer and baseball Hall of Famer, remembering Murphy upon the news of his death.

Murphy's death leaves Ralph Kiner---the Hall of Fame outfielder/slugger---as the last living member of the original Mets broadcast team.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

GUNSMOKE: RENEGADE WHITE (CBS, 1952)---Matt (William Conrad) and Chester (Parley Baer) aren't that anxious to learn what cynical Orrin Spicer (Harry Bartell) was doing through town when he shot a saloon patron who drew on him---and what a surprise: Spicer's on the payroll of an equally cynical Cheyenne leader (possibly Larry Dobkin) to run guns to the tribe. Additional cast: Herbert Vigran, Jack Kruschen. Music: Rex Koury. Sound: Tom Hanley, Ray Kemper. Writer: John Meston.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1892---John Kieran (panelist: Information, Please), The Bronx.
1900---Helen Morgan (singer: Helen Morgan, Songs; Broadway Melodies; The Fred Allen Show), Danville, Illinois.
1902---Guy Repp (actor: County Seat; Our Secret Weapon), unknown.
1905---Myrna Loy (as Myrna Adele Williams; actress: Lux Radio Theater), Raidersburg, Montana; Ruth Nelson (actress: Arch Oboler's Plays; Columbia Workshop), Saginaw, Michigan.
1912---Ann Dvorak (as Anna McKim; actress: Movietone Radio Theater), New York City.
1915---Gary Merrill (actor: Adventures of Superman); Hartford, Connecticut.
1916---Johnny Coons (actor: Captain Midnight; Sky King; Vic & Sade), Lebanon, Indiana.
1918---Beatrice Straight (actress: Great Scenes From Great Plays; The CBS Radio Mystery Theater), Old Westbury, New York.

Swinging and Lamenting: The Way It Was, 31 July

2009-07-31T12:31:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCASTS
CLARA, LU, & EM:
THE NEW GRANDBABY
(CBS, 1942)

---You may call it sad, that old-time radio's first known successful soap, and a comic soap at that, has become a relic that seems too much of its past to contain a relevance to 1942.

But you may not know the story of how Clara, Lu, & Em, the brainchild of three Northwestern University sorority sisters who developed the show from skits they liked to perform around the sorority house, prompting classmates to prod them toward radio, comes to this point: The original comic soap's momentum was destroyed when Isobel Crothers, the original Lu, died unexpectedly in 1936.

The same thing, almost, would happen to Myrt & Marge a few years later---Donna Damerel Fick (Marge) would die after giving birth to her third son; Myrtle Vail (Myrt, and the brains behind the soap), citing her daughter's wish that the show continue regardless, recast the role a short time later and soldiered on, though without the momentum of the original.

For Clara, Lu, & Em there was less choice, as things happened: Louise Starkey (Clara) and Helen King (Em) refused to carry on without Carothers, and the show disappeared for six years. Come 1942, however, the two survivors decided to give the show another try, enlisting another college classmate, Harriet Allyn, to step in in as Lu; and, Pillsbury to step in as the sponsor. (Allyn would be the only one of the three to stay with the show in an ill-fated, 1945 syndication version, though she switched roles this time, playing Em.)

They probably should have let it be.

But here, the trio hears from Loretta Doolittle, who tells them Elizabeth Anne Willis has just delivered a baby girl, prompting a round of gossip and rumination that ends up, somehow, covering the "women's Army." Announcer: Bret Morrison. Writers: Louise Starkey, Harriet Allyn, Helen King.

FOR THE RECORD:
BENNY GOODMAN AND HIS ALL-STAR BAND
VOCAL GUESTS: MILDRED BAILEY, PERRY COMO
(NBC, 1944)

From the kickoff of "After You've Gone," the King of Swing---as World War II begins its long, winding, but certain finish---kicks into a brisk set with an all-star band including Roy Eldridge, Arthur Levy, Goodman veteran Teddy Wilson, and vocal legends Mildred Bailey and Perry Como, being recorded for radio for the famous V-Discs sold exclusively to American military personnel.

The set includes a pleasing reading of "Jubilee" by its hitmaker, Bailey; Como, showing an unusual feeling for pure jazz (Como had earned his spurs with the anything-but-jazz Ted Weems aggregation, before launching a solo career that wouldn't take off in earnest for another year following this performance), with "Goodbye, Sue"; and, Goodman himself leading "These Foolish Things" with phrasing eerily comparable to Frank Sinatra's when the latter cut a version of the song in the same period.

Host: Deems Taylor. Announcer: John Gary.

AIRWAVES . . .

1938: CLUBBING---What was known: Jake Powell, a New York Yankees outfielder, instigated one of old-time radio's most embarrassing hours, when he was foolish enough to tell WGN sportscasting legend Bob Elson, on the air, that he kept in shape during the offseason as a Dayton, Ohio police officer "beat[ing] niggers over the head with my blackjack while on my beat."

Elson was compelled to apologise when an uproar erupted almost at once, saying Powell had offended him as deeply as he'd offended some of his friends. The Yankees planned to send Powell down to the minors (they were finally disgusted, it was said, with Powell's penchant for foul play and lack of sportsmanship), but then-Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis---perhaps duplicitously, considering his none-too-benign assent to baseball's colour line of the time---suspended him ten days.

What may not have been known, at least by many enough, until Powell's suicide in November 1948: Powell actually sought to make a kind of atonement for his blunt racism. And one of America's most virtuoso sportswriters happened to know about it.

A GUY WHO MADE MISTAKES

There are probably a lot of stories that could be told about Jake Powell by people who knew him better. Here there is only one, which may help explain a couple of things. That is, it may furnish a little insight into the nature of a guy who never knew fear and never knew what was good for him, a guy who always acted on impulse and was wrong more often than not.

In the end, he was tragically wrong, of course. He killed himself. Jake Powell, who used to play the outfield for the Yankees and the Senators and any number of minor league clubs, got himself messed up the other day and gave up and shot himself. He didn't slip off and lock himself in a room and turn on the gas. He shot himself twice, once in the chest and then in the head, in a police station in Washington, D.C., with the cops looking on.

Now, as to that story. When Jake was playing ball in the American League a radio broadcaster grabbed him for one of those offhand, unrehearsed dugout interviews just before a game in Comiskey Park in Chicago. Answering questions without thinking, Powell made a thoughtless remark that offended thousands of Negroes.

A storm ensued. The American League office was flooded with protests. There was talk of a boycott against any park where Powell might be playing. Jake had been wrong as wrong could be.

Well, the next time Powell got to New York he went up to the top end of Harlem. He went alone, after dark. He worked down from north to south, stopping in every saloon he came across.

In each he introduced himself. He said he was Jake Powell and he said that he had made a foolish mistake and that he was sorry. Then he ordered drinks for the crowd and moved on to the next joint.

He did that by himself, on his own initiative, after dark, in a section where he had reason to believe feelings ran high against him.

That's one story about Jake Powell. The only one here.

---Red Smith, New York Herald-Tribune, 7 November 1948; republished in To Absent Friends from Red Smith. (New York: Atheneum, 1982.)

And, perhaps, the only story that needed to be told. Then, and now.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: ABNER SELLS THE STORE TO SNAKE HOGAN (NBC Blue, 1935)---And Snake (Chester Lauck, who also plays Lum) could buy it thanks to shifty Squire (Norris Goff, who also plays Abner) putting up the money for the deal, hoping Abner would invest it in Squire's silver mine---which Abner did anything but, leaving Lum (who still has an interest in the mine) and Dick Huddleston (Goff) to marvel at Abner's double-cross, even as Lum reminds Dick Squire's bent on jamming that mine interest down Abner's unwilling throat. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

THE GOLDBERGS: SYLVIA'S TANTRUM (CBS, 1941)---While Molly (Gertrude Berg) jauntily prepares a feast for one and all, including Esther Miller (Joan Vitez), Jake (John R. Waters) tries to brace Allyson (unknown) with Esther's discomfiting presence, but Sylvia (Zina Provendie) isn't exactly in the mood to accommodate. Sammy: Alfred Ryder. Rosalie: Roslyn Siber. Announcer: Clayton (Bud) Collyer. Writer/director: Gertrude Berg.

OUR MISS BROOKS: A NEW JOB IN NORWICH, CONNECTICUT (CBS, 1949)---To the mild amusement of her worshipper Walter (Richard Crenna), Connie (Eve Arden) ponders an offer to become the secretary to Norwich's mayor---and swinging a transfer to that city for her indifferent paramour Boynton (Jeff Chandler), after she finally tires of Conklin's (Gale Gordon) martinet ways---but her plans to lure Conklin into setting her free may collide with Conklin's sudden consideration toward her. Mrs. Davis: Jane Morgan. Harriet: Gloria McMillan. Announcer: Bob Lamond. Writer: Al Lewis.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1854---Charles Goodell (The Shepherd of the Air; clergyman, Sabbath Reveries), Dudley, Massachussetts.
1892---Herbert W. Armstrong (preacher: Plain Truth; The World Tomorrow), Des Moines.
1894---Roy Bargy (conductor: The Jimmy Durante Show; Kraft Music Hall; Rexall Summer Theater), Newaygo, Michigan.
1900---Elmo Roper (pollster: America's Town Meeting of the Air; Word from the People), Hebron, Nebraska.
1902---Robert E. Griffin (actor: The Story of Holly Sloan; Bright Horizon), Hutchinson, Kansas.
1904---Brett Halliday (creator: Michael Shayne; host: Murder By Experts), Chicago; Billy (Trade) Hillpot (singer: The Smith Brothers: Trade and Mark; The Camel Pleasure Hour), Red Bank, New Jersey.
1908---W.F. (Bill) Shadel (newscaster, CBS: he reported the D-Day landings of June 1944, among other significant stories), Milton, Wisconsin.
1909---Roger Krupp (announcer: The Adventures of Ellery Queen; Famous Jury Trials), Minnesota.
1911---George Liberace (violinist: numerous remotes, the Orrin Tucker Band, the Anson Weeks Band; brother of the Liberace), Menasha, Wisconsin.
1912---Irv Kupcinet (sportscaster, WGN Chicago: Chicago Bears football), Chicago; Chester Stratton (actor: Pepper Young's Family; Hop Harrigan), Paterson, New Jersey.
1913---Brook Byron (actor: Top Secret; Suspense), Weakly County, Tennessee.
1915---Chet Forrest (composer/pianist: U.S. Treasury Star Parade), Brooklyn.
1916---Bill Todman (writer/producer/director: Treasury Salute; Winner Take All; Beat the Clock; Hit the Jackpot; Rate Your Mate; The Web), New York City.
1919---Norman Del Mar (conductor: Scottish Orchestra), Hempstad, U.K.; Curt Gowdy (sportscaster: Boston Red Sox baseball), Green River, Wyoming.
1921---Barbara Fuller (actress: One Man's Family; Stepmother), Nahant, Massachussetts.
1924---Garard Green (actor: Sherlock Holmes), Madras, India.
1927---Tony Thomas (announcer, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), Portsmouth, U.K.
1931---Kenny Burrell (jazz guitarist: Newport Jazz Festival; Jazz Alive), Detroit.
1936---David Halliwell (writer: Spongehenge; There's a Car Park in Whitherton), Brighthouse, U.K.

One Battle, Two Bands, Four Brothers: The Way It Was, 30 July

2009-07-30T06:27:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
EXCURSION IN MODERN MUSIC
A BATTLE OF THE BANDS:
CHARLIE BARNET AND HIS ORCHESTRA
WOODY HERMAN AND THE SECOND HERD (A.K.A. THE FOUR BROTHERS BAND)
(MUTUAL, 1949)

Disregard, if you will, the sometimes lame banter between the three bandleaders at the outset. Cut right to the music from two of the more forward-looking yet still accessible surviving big bands. (Ordinarily, this is a regular broadcast by Barnet, the alto saxophonist whose idol was Duke Ellington.) The highlights include, especially, spirited takes on "Bop City," "Ill Wind," and "Bebop Spoken Here" from the Barnet aggregation, and the Herd's unique interpretation of Ellington's "I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good)."

Perhaps the real treat, as good and as vibrant as both ensembles are, is a brisk highlight of "Four Brothers," both the song and the Second Herd saxophone quartet who earned the nickname (and earned the Second Herd a secondary identification as the Four Brothers Band)---Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, and Serge Chaloff, all influenced by Lester Young, whose deceptively lyric tone upended the burly tone Coleman Hawkins had once made a requirement for aspiring tenor saxophonists.

However, it is also a revelatory treat to listen to Kenton---possibly the most experimental of the three bandleaders, but then on a hiatus while trying to determine his next musical move (he "referees" the "battle" between Barnet and Herman)---describe a brief retirement, freshly ended, that included a jaunt to Central and South America to soak up the continent's remarkable musics, a jaunt that informs, in due course, such Kenton exercises as Cuban Fire. Kenton also discusses the dichotomy he believes exists between "great jazz" and the ballroom's need; his belief that "great jazz" has its future in the concert hall and not the ballroom; and, whether young musicians of the day are missing certain fundamentals in preparing for their lives as the new jazzmen.

Announcer: Tom Reddy.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: A PLOT TO BUY THE JOT 'EM DOWN STORE (NBC BLUE, 1935)---Abner (Norris Goff, who also plays Dick Huddleston and Squire Skimp) remains torn by a wave of society behaviour enveloping Pine Ridge in general, and his wife and daughter in particular, both of whom he fears are pushing him to withdraw from the "disgrace" of co-owning the Jot 'Em Down Store. Lum: Chester Lauck. Announcer: Carlton Brickert. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

THE GOLDBERGS: ESTHER AND ALLYSON MEET (CBS, 1941)---Molly (Gertrude Berg) is anxious about the arrival of Esther Miller (Joan Vitez), a woman from the past of the deceptive Sylvia's (Zena Provendie) father---who's anything but anxious to see her again, and what a surprise, considering Molly's implication of how different would things have been if the elder Allyson had married her, instead. Jake: John R. Waters. Sammy: Alfred Ryder. Rosalie: Roslyn Siber. Announcer: Clayton (Bud) Collyer. Writer/director: Gertrude Berg. (Warning: Backskips in recording.)

THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR: WORKMEN HAVE THE MUMPS (CBS, 1958)---Which is the last thing the Arbuckles (Peg Lynch, Alan Bunce) need, when daughter Betsy is fed up with all the attention lavished on her newly-arrived baby brother. Writer/director: Peg Lynch.

BOB & RAY PRESENT THE CBS RADIO NETWORK: SMELLY DAVE AT ALBANY (WE CAN'T IMAGINE, 1959)---The none-too-great whale is there to help WROW and, not coincidentally, its program director George Perkins and, of course, traveling reporter Arthur Shrank---who discover an unexpected problem as the presentation begins. Also: an episode of "Lawrence Fechtenberger, Interstellar Officer Candidate." Writers, actual or alleged: Bob Elliott, Ray Goulding.

Where the Riff Meet The Raff, The Ragamuffin, The Rapacious: The Way It Was, 29 July

2009-07-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
CBS FORECAST:
DUFFY'S TAVERN
(CBS, 1940)

In the first of its two summers as a CBS series in which listeners were asked to hear and vote upon prospective new shows, this otherwise eclectic anthology premieres what's destined to become one of old-time radio's signature successes---the doings and undoings of a seedy New York pub whose malaproprietor Archie (Ed Gardner) presides over riff, raff, ragamuffin, and rapacity, aided and abetted by a few charming guest stars---and the never-seen pub owner whose incessant calls and criticisms drive Archie two shots short of a highball.

Gertrude Niesen: Herself. Col. Stoopnagle: F. Chase Taylor. Larry Adler: Himself. Music: John Kirby Orchestra. Writers: Ed Gardner, Abe Burrows.

AIRWAVES . . .

1977: AN INSTITUTION'S FAREWELL---Buffalo, New York morning radio institution Clint Buehlmann---whose presence traced back to the peak of the old-time radio era (late 1930s-late 1940s)---performed his final program on WBEN.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

FORT LARAMIE: NATURE BOY (CBS, 1956)---Quince (Raymond Burr) has orders to escort a Bureau of Indian Affairs official and his wife, whose presence has unsettled locals disturbed by their teaching Indians some refinements to their routines. Additional cast: Parley Baer, Harry Bartell, John Dehner, Virginia Gregg, Joseph Kearns, Howard McNear, Shirley Mitchell. Announcer: Dan Cubberly. Music: Amerigo Macdonnell. Writer: Kathleen Hite.

A Sunburn and a Soap Slap: The Way It Was, 28 July

2009-07-28T10:46:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
MATINEE WITH BOB & RAY:
RAY'S SUNBURN
(WHDH, 1949)

The only problem is that Ray's sunburn isn't half as funny as one of the team's earliest soap opera zaps. No specific soap was targeted (that sort of thing would come later for the duo), but "King Raymond the Third" casts the die for the team's eventual and far more successful modus operandi when lancing the genre. Their lampoon of You Are There, "Bob and Ray is There," isn't lame, either.

Writers, if you want to call them that: Bob Elliott, Ray Goulding.

AIRWAVES . . .

1901: HEIGH-HO, EVERYBODY---Future "cheerleading, flapper-chasing, raccoon coat-wearing Yalie" Rudy Vallee is born in Island Pond, Vermont, destined to reach fame as a megaphone-whispering crooner and, arguably, the first genuine old-time radio variety megastar, after he establishes himself as a host-impresario first with The Eveready Hour (born in 1923) and, especially, with The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour, which will premiere two days after the stock market crash of 1929.

Vallee was the first Ed Sullivan, whose power and influence in the 1930s equaled that of the real Sullivan on TV and Florenz Ziegfeld on Broadway. He was a Sol Hurok of the air responsible for launching as many major radio careers as anybody in show business. By the early 1930s, his show had replaced the Palace Theater as the prestige booking of vaudeville. It was the first show to revolve around a single host. With his curiously appealing pinched voice, Vallee parlayed a mediocre house band at the Heigh Ho Club (hence his famous opening) into a dominant position as a star and pop hitmaker . . .

Because NBC, Vallee's network, was then the only coast-to-coast hookup, virtually any new song he performed on his show became an instant hit . . . When Vallee introduced a new singer, like Alice Faye, people listened seriously. He first brought Johnny Mercer's name to the airwaves with a rendition of "Lazybones" sung with black inflections . . .

A notorious ladies' man, Vallee would pluck girls out of a chorus line and give them a chance. He spotted Alice Faye in the chorus of George White's Scandals . . . Needing a girl singer, Vallee had an affair with Alice Faye that ended his marriage and then hired her, although he'd only heard her perform solo at a cast party, where he was smitten by her imitation of Maurice Chevalier singing "Mimi" . . .

Rudy Vallee was merely the most resourceful of the big bandleaders who took to radio in the 1930s. Most were content simply to set up shop and play.

---Gerald Nachman, in "For Your Listening and Dancing Pleasure," in Raised on Radio. (New York: Pantheon, 1998.)

To name a few, Vallee will give the first old-time radio exposure to these lights among others, either making them stars or giving them the early cred upon which to build what leads to their own eventual stardom: Larry Adler, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Milton Berle, Victor Borge, Fanny Brice (whose Baby Snooks first turned up on the Vallee show), Burns and Allen, Eddie Cantor, Noel Coward, Ed Gardner, Dolores Grey, Bob Hope, Red Skelton, Mel Torme, and Orson Welles.

He has no patience with stupidity or the slightest deviation from what he considers the truth. He is the most generous of friends, willing to go out of his way to help people. But once he feels they have violated his trust, he is the bitterest of enemies.

---Radioland, 1934.

He went forth with a chip on his shoulder to prove he wasn't a sissy. When he hit his peak he was arrogant and unreasonable, popular with a public that didn't know him and unpopular with his hired hands.

---James Street, Radio Guide.

He would quibble over pennies but would support a disabled musician through years of distant and expensive tuberculosis therapy . . . He saw the world in black and white but was willing to apologise when it was proved to his own satisfaction that he had been wrong.

---John Dunning, in On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.)

When I do something wrong and stupid, I ask the injured person's pardon. I don't mind at all eating humble pie.

---Rudy Vallee, as quoted by Dunning.

2004: FAREWELL, JACKSON---Veteran old-time radio and cartoon voice actor Jackson Beck---he who first hollered, "It's a bird! It's a plane!" as part of the introduction to the original radio serial, The Adventures of Superman, dies at age 92.

Cartoon fans remember him as the voice of Bluto during the Paramount/Famous Studios editions of Popeye, the Sailor, but Jackson Beck's old-time radio cred included Brownstone Theater; Casey, Crime Photographer; The Cisco Kid (the title role); Dimension X; The FBI in Peace and War; Hop Harrigan; Joe and Ethel Turp; The Man Behind the Gun; March of Time; Mark Trail; The Milton Berle Show; Myrt & Marge; The Mysterious Traveler; Philo Vance (also the title role); and, The Timid Soul . . . to name a few.

Beck was also known to do voices for children's recordings of the late 1950s and early 1960s, including such stories as "The Little Red Caboose" (narrating), "Little Toot" (portraying the plucky little tugboat's father), and "The Little Engine That Could" (portraying a diesel engine) on an album (for Diplomat Records) named after the third of those stories.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

VIC & SADE: GARBAGE BOX MYSTERY (NBC, 1944)---A leisurely stroll home becomes a pair of urgent missions for Vic (Art Van Harvey) and Russell (David Whitehouse) when Sade (Bernadine Flynn) accosts them on the front porch. Writer/director: Paul Rhymer.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1892---Joe E. Brown (comedian/host: Ceiling Unlimited; The Joe E. Brown Show; Stop or Go), Holgate, Ohio.
1910---Frank Loesser (composer: Cavalcade for Victory; The Abe Burrows Show; Heartbeat of Broadway), New York City.
1911---Ann Doran (actress: Lux Radio Theater), Amarillo, Texas.
1912---George Cisar (actor: Tina and Tim), Illinois.
1914---Carmen Dragon (conductor: Maxwell House Coffee Time; The Baby Snooks Show; The Railroad Hour), Antioch, California.
1915---Frankie Yankovic (bandleader: Frankie Yankovic and His Yanks; Guest Star Time), unknown.
1916---Laird Cregar (actor: Hello, Americans; Suspense), Philadelphia.
1931---Darryl Hickman (actor: Family Theater), Hollywood.
1937---Peter Duchin (pianist/conductor: Stars for Defense), New York City.

How to Steal a Planet Without Really Trying: The Way It Was, 26 July

2009-07-26T15:47:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
QUIET, PLEASE:
THE MAN WHO STOLE A PLANET
(MUTUAL, 1948)

An archaeologist (Ernest Chappell, who narrates) and his wife discover an ancient Myan temple, deep in a remote and nameless Mexican jungle, and an archaeological treasure so great they fear the Mexican government's despoiling it---but discover in due course that removing it even for safety's sake may pose grave consequences for themselves . . . and the world.

Voice on the Radio: Bill Thompson. Additional cast: Unknown. Writer/director: Wyllis Cooper.

AIRWAVES . . .

1902 (?): DOWN WITH COMMON SENSE---George and Margaret Allen have no clue that the newborn daughter they will christen Grace Ethel Cecile Rosalie (though no one---including her future husband---will seem to remember precisely when she arrives) is destined to become---via old-time radio, especially---the world's unchallenged queen of illogical logic, as the wife and zany partner of one Nathaniel Birnbaum, known better as George Burns.

CHANNEL SURFING SPECIAL: FIRST IN THE HAIR OF HER COUNTRYMEN---THE BEST OF GRACIE

THE HINDS HONEY & ALMOND CREAM SHOW STARRING GEORGE BURNS & GRACIE ALLEN: AUNT CLARA'S KANGAROO (CBS, 8 MAY 1940)---The first of three classic episodes during the "Gracie for President" gag chosen for this tribute: A trip to the Surprise Party convention will have to wait at least long enough to retrieve the train tickets---because the Surprise Party's Presidential candidate (three guesses) gave the tickets to a stranger who wanted to be at the broadcast . . . not to mention assuring George (Burns) will tend Aunt Clara. Additional cast: Frank Parker, Truman Bradley. Music: Ray Noble and His Orchestra. Writers: George Burns, William Burns, Sid Dorfman, Paul Henning.

THE HINDS HONEY & ALMOND CREAM SHOW WITH GEORGE BURNS & GRACIE ALLEN: RAH-RAH IN OMAHA (CBS, 15 MAY 1940)---George (Burns) and Gracie (Allen) and her presidential campaign arrive at Omaha's Exarbin Coliseum in advance of the Surprise Party convention. Additional cast: Truman Bradley, Bubbles Kelly. Music: Ray Noble and the Union Pacific Band, Frank Parker. Writers: George Burns, William Burns, Sid Dorfman, Paul Henning.

THE HINDS HONEY & ALMOND CREAM SHOW WITH GEORGE BURNS & GRACIE ALLEN: 29 MAY 1940: SWEEPING INTO OFFICE (CBS, 29 MAY 1940)---Broadcasting from Treasure Island at the San Francisco World's Fair, George (Burns) thinks Gracie (Allen) will be a shoe-in for the White House if they can get a powerful Bay Area wheel behind her campaign---assuming he can shut her up about the man's sensitivity about his red beard. Additional cast: Frank Parker, Truman Bradley. Music: Ray Noble & His Orchestra. Writers: George Burns, William Burns, Sid Dorfman, Paul Henning.

LUX RADIO THEATERARE HUSBANDS NECESSARY (CBS, 15 FEBRUARY 1943)---In an adaptation of the 1942 Ray Milland-Betty Field film comedy, an aspiring but unlucky banker (Burns) sees his hopes of a vice presidency get compromised by the inadvertent meddling of his scattered wife (Allen) . . . who doesn't realise she's abetting the overt corruption of a rival (Arthur Q. Bryan). Adapted from the screenplay by Frank Davis and Tess Slesinger, based on the novel, Mr. and Mrs. Cugat by Isabel Scott Rorick. (This may or may also have provided a seed for what would become radio's My Favourite Husband in due course.)

MAXWELL HOUSE COFFEE TIME WITH GEORGE BURN & GRACIE ALLEN: KANSAS CITY'S FAVOURITE SINGER (CBS, 6 JUNE 1944)---Discouraged George (Burns), who thinks he's just a miserable, broken-down flop, gets a letter intended for Dinah Shore by mistake---and Gracie (Allen) uses it to help cheer him up, unaware that an official decree naming Shore Kansas City's favourite singer is also going to the Burns home by mistake. Dinah Shore: Herself. The Happy Postman: Mel Blanc. Tootsie Stagwell: Elvia Allman. Additional cast: Jimmy Cash, Hans Conreid, Bill Goodwin, Lawrence Nash. Music: Felix Mills Orchestra. Writers: George Burns, Hal Block, Aaron Ruben, possibly Helen Gould Harvey.

MAXWELL HOUSE COFFEE TIME WITH GEORGE BURNS & GRACIE ALLEN: 17 MARCH 1949: GEORGE HAS A COLD (CBS, 17 MARCH 1949)---Not to mention a few headaches when Gracie gets Marlene Dietrich mixed up in her inimitable style. Additional cast: Bea Benaderet, Bill Goodwin, Harry Von Zell, Toby Reed. Music: Harry Goodwin Orchestra.

MAXWELL HOUSE COFFEE TIME WITH GEORGE BURNS & GRACIE ALLEN: EDDIE CANTOR IS WORKING TOO HARD (CBS, 21 APRIL 1949)---Only the first hints involve how many dates he books in a day and how long it's been since he's kissed his wife. Additional cast: Bill Goodwin, Toby Reed, Bea Benaderet. Writers: Paul Henning, Keith Fowler, George Burns.

CHANNEL SURFING: THE REST OF THE STORY

ED WYNN, THE FIRE CHIEF: THE PRINCE GOES TO SCHOOL (NBC, 1932)
LUM & ABNER: THEY CUT DOWN THE OLD PINE TREE (NBC, 1935)
THE GOLDBERGS: SAMMY RUNS AWAY WITH JOYCE (CBS, 1938)
THE DUKE IS ON THE AIR: DUKE ELLINGTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA FROM THE RITZ CARLETON, BOSTON (NBC, 1939)
VIC & SADE: SADE PLEADS TO SEE A MOVIE (CBS, 1944)
GUNSMOKE: GENTLEMAN'S DISAGREEMENT (CBS, 1952)

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1896---Charles Butterworth (comedian: The Fred Astaire Show), South Bend, Indiana.
1899---Danton Walker (columnist/host: Forty-Five Minutes on Broadway; Twin Views of the News), Marietta, Georgia.
1903---Donald Voorhees (conductor: Cavalcade of America; The Bell Telephone Hour), Allentown, Pennsylvania.
1907---Galen Drake (news commentator), Kokomo, Indiana.
1911---Buddy Clark (singer: Your Hit Parade; The New Carnation Contented Hour), Dorchester, Massachussetts.
1918---Stacy Harris (actor: This Is Your FBI; Pepper Young's Family), Big Timber, Quebec.
,small>1922---Blake Edwards (writer: Lineup; Richard Diamond, Private Detective), Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Undecided, or Stubborn? The Way It Was, 17 July

2009-07-17T12:45:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
COLUMBIA PRESENTS CORWIN:
THE UNDECIDED MOLECULE
(CBS, 1945)

In which a classic cast have at Norman Corwin's impeccable trial-in-verse of a stubborn molecule refusing classification, a clever advance upon the technique with which Corwin first experimented successfully in The Plot to Overthrow Christmas, and a staggering allegorical telegraph of the coming atomic bomb drop.

Prosecutor: Robert Benchley. Clerk: Norman Lloyd. Judge: Groucho Marx. Vice president in charge of physiochemistry: Elliott Lewis. Miss Anima: Sylvia Sidney. Additional cast: Keenan Wynn, in four roles. Music: Carmen Dragon, conducted by Lud Gluskin. Writer: Norman Corwin.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: BOSS ABNER MAKES CLERK EDDARDS' LIFE MISERABLE (MUTUAL, 1935)---That'll teach Lum (Chester Lauck) to forget to buy the fire insurance and lose his theater by fire, as Abner (Norris Goff) has agreed to hire him back at the Jot 'em Down Store . . . but he's exhausted from overwork and spilling his frustrations out to Grandpappy Spear (also Goff). Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

THE SHADOW: ABOARD THE STEAMSHIP AMAZON (MUTUAL, 1938)---A gun smuggler, his mother, and a comely financier planning to graduate to revolution provide a seafaring headache for Lamont (Orson Welles) and Margo (Agnes Moorehead). Additional cast: Unknown. Announcer: Arthur Whiteside. Writers: Possibly Edith Meiser, Edward Hale Bierstadt, Jerry Devine.

THE GREEN HORNET: POOR SUBSTITUTES (MUTUAL, 1940)---Britt (Al Hodge) is only too anxious to discover the reason behind Axford's (Jim Irwin) discovery: several families on the Daily Sentinel's needy families list a year ago doing a little too well this year. Lenore Case: Lee Allman. Kato: Tokutaro Hayashi (a.k.a. Raymond Toyo). Lowry: Jack Petruzzi. Writer: Fran Striker.

ACADEMY AWARD THEATER: THE PRISONER OF ZENDA (CBS, 1946)---Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Virginia Bruce highlight this interpretation of the Oscar-nominated (best art direction, best music score) 1937 swashbuckler about a king's distant cousin (Fairbanks) asked to impersonate the kidnapped monarch, whose fiance (Bruce) notices one too many personality changes for comfort. Adapted from a screenplay by Albert Sanchez Moreno.

OUR MISS BROOKS: THE CARELESSNESS CODE; OR, GREAT CAESAR'S BUST(ED) (CBS, 1949)---In a particularly classic installment, levying petty fines for often spontaneously-enacted school safety rules is the way Conklin (Gale Gordon) plans to finance a new bust for the front of the school library---of himself, to replace a bust of Julius Caesar, until frequent defendant Connie (Eve Arden) finds a way to teach him the hard way how finely pettiness comes to bury Caesar's would-be successor. Mrs. Davis: Jane Morgan. Walter: Richard Crenna. Harriet: Gloria McMillan. Boynton: Jeff Chandler. Writer: Al Lewis.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1889---James Cagney (actor: Arch Oboler's Plays; Screen Guild Theater), New York City; Erle Stanley Gardner (author and creator of Perry Mason; The Adventures of Christopher London), Malden, Massachussetts.
1902---Edward Gargan (actor: This Is Your FBI; This Is Our Heritage), Brooklyn.
1904---William Gargan (actor: Martin Kane, Private Eye; Barrie Craig, Private Investigator), Brooklyn.
1906---John Carroll (actor: Hello Mom; Suspense), New Orleans.
1912---Art Linkletter (as Gordon Arthur Kelly; comedian/host: Art Linkletter's House Party; People Are Funny), Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.
1914---Eleanor Steber (singer: The Voice of Firestone), Wheeling, West Virginia.
1915---Cass Daley (comedienne: The New Fitch Bandwagon; The Cass Daley Show; Maxwell House Coffee Time), Philadelphia.
1916---Irene Manning (singer: Mr. Broadway; The Railroad Hour), Cincinnati.
1918---Red Sovine (as Woodrow Wilson Sovine; singer: Country Music Time; Country Hoedown), Charleston, West Virginia.
1920---Helen Walker (actress: Proudly We Hail; Suspense; Old Gold Comedy Theater), Worchester, Massachussetts.
1935---Diahann Carroll (as Carol Diahann Johnson; singer/actress: Army Bandstand; Manhattan Melodies; Stars for Defense), Bronx, New York.

Budgets and Rivalries: The Way It Was, 21 June

2009-06-21T00:58:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
AMOS 'N' ANDY:
A BUDGET FOR THE CAB COMPANY
(NBC, 1929)

With rival Earl Dixon opening up across the street, Andy (Charles Correll) thinks it's an excellent idea, charts and all, but Andy and Sylvester (possibly Freeman Gosden, who also plays Amos) also worry about Dixon's apparent interest in Ruby Taylor.

Writers: Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

TOWN HALL TONIGHT WITH FRED ALLEN: CRISIS ON THE SHOWBOAT (NBC, 1939)---After pondering the summer playhouse action pending for Broadway actors, and reviewing the no-talents who hope to find summertime work, the Mighty Allen Art Players (Jack Smart, Minerva Pious, possibly Walter Tetley, possibly John Brown) unfurl a Mississippi River satire. With Portland Hoffa. Announcer: Harry Von Zell. Music: Peter van Steeden Orchestra. Writers: Fred Allen, Arnold Auerbach, Harry Turgend, Herman Wouk.

THE GREEN HORNET: WALK OUT FOR PROFIT (MUTUAL, 1941)---Lowry and Axford (Jack Petruzzi, Gil Shea) stumble upon professional strikers who have less interest in legitimate labour issues than in stirring up profitable industrial unrest . . . but Reid (Al Hodge) and Kato (Raymond Toyo) learn the hard way that the leader of the strike gangs kidnaps Lowry to back the Sentinel away from exposing him. Lenore Case: Lee Allman. Additional cast: Unknown. Announcer: Possibly Mike Wallace. Writer: Fran Striker.

Poll Dancing: The Way It Was, 20 June

2009-06-20T05:08:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
CANDY MATSON, YUKON 2-8209:
SYMPHONY OF DEATH
(NBC, 1950)

The good news: She's revealed as San Francisco's favourite old-time radio program detective, by way of a San Francisco Examiner listeners' poll. The bad news: Our heroine (Natlie Masters) gets a visit from the sister (Cilla Skelton) of a hit songwriter (John Rover), who fears her brother's pending symphony might become the soundtrack to his permanent demise.

Watson: Jack Douglas. Mallard: Henry Leff. Announcer: Dudley Manlove. Writer: Monte Masters.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE JELL-O PROGRAM STARRING JACK BENNY: JACK'S MOVIE (NBC, 1937)---A little Father's Day needling ("Hello, Daddy, and I don't mean 'sugar'") graduates to a lot of celluloid sarcasm, and only a week after Mary (Livingstone) gets a whack at a movie. Additional cast: Eddie (Rochester) Anderson, Kenny Baker, Andy Devine, Phil Harris, Don Wilson. Music: Phil Harris and His Orchestra, Kenny Baker. Announcer: Don Wilson. Writers: Al Boasberg, Howard Snyder, possibly Hugh Wedlock, Jr.

INFORMATION, PLEASE: "THAT SURREALISTIC PAINTER" (NBC, 1939)---OK, so she won't be asked, "Gracie, how's your information," but radio's favourite illogical logician will be introduced as "that surrealistic painter" (Allen did paint as a hobby, but the phrase could also have applied to her legendary grammatical inversions); and, she will hold her own very nicely, thank you, becoming anything but an extinguished panelist. Remaining panelists: John F. Kieran, Franklin P. Adams, John Gunther. Host: Clifton Fadiman. Announcer: Milton Cross.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1890---Effie Palmer (actress: Lonely Woman; Scattergood Baines), Albany, New York.
1893---Edwin Wolfe (actor: Pepper Young's Family), unknown.
1897---Bob Howard (pianist/vocalist: Calsodent Presents Bob Howard; Sing It Again), West Newton, Massachussetts.
1899---Helen Traubel (vocalist: Metropolitan Opera; The Bell Telephone Hour; The Jimmy Durante Show), St. Louis.
1904---Matt Crowley (actor: Mark Trail; Buck Rogers), unknown.
1909---Errol Flynn (actor: Modern Adventures of Casanova; Lux Radio Theater), Hobart, Tasmania.
1924---Chet Atkins (as Chester Burton Atkins; guitarist/composer: Boone County Neighbours; Grand Ole Opry), Luttrell, Tennessee.Audie Murphy (World War II hero/actor: Cavalcade of America; The Big Show), Kingston, Texas.
1931---Martin Landau (actor: No Love Lost), Brooklyn.

Chaser, Chased: The Way It Was, 19 June

2009-06-19T04:35:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
LUX RADIO THEATER:
THE EX-MRS. BRADFORD
(CBS, 1939)

With Claudette Colbert taking Jean Arthur's 1936 film role, she's still in love with the husband (William Powell, reprising his film role) she drove to divorce because of her addiction to mysteries. But while she chases him hoping to re-marry him, after a horse trainer ropes him into the suspicious death of a jockey, a group of hoods chase them.

Nick Martell: John Archer. Mrs. Summer: Alice Eden. Based on the story and screenplay by James Edward Grant and Anthony Eiler.

AIRWAVES . . .

1910: "AMERICA'S MOTHER OF THE AIR"---Little do Mother and Dad Payne in Cincinnati know that the baby daughter born to them today, Virginia, will grow up to become known as precisely that, when she plays the title role of legendary old-time radio serial Ma Perkins from its inception until its finish . . . never once missing a performance, and never failing to apply matronly makeup and acoutrements for public appearances tied to the Frank and Anne Hummert serial.

Like other daytime heroines, Ma neither drinks, smokes, takes snuff or has affairs with men. Unlike Ma, Cincinnati-born Virginia Payne, 47, has never been married, downs an occasional whisky sour and makes up to $50,000 a year—more than any other actress in daytime broadcasting. Her present writer (she has had ten) lived on the Riviera for two years, now counts his money on Cape Cod. A devout Roman Catholic with an M.A. in literature (University of Cincinnati), Virginia sheds Ma's vocabulary of "ain'ts," "folks" and "Land o' Goshens" with ease, but insists on making personal appearances in wig, makeup, frumpy clothes and spectacles, "though I often feel like a great imposter." She is an accomplished pianist, lives alone in a posh East Side Manhattan apartment decorated with Duveen-collected oil paintings, accumulates antiques, and grows roses (two varieties have been named for her).

---Time, 1957.

Ma Perkins . . . was an audio milestone that spanned almost the entire lifetime of network radio drama. Typical of Hummert serials, Ma had tears, maniacs, and melodrama in her arsenal of cliffhangers. But she overcame this with long quiet spells, with deep conversations about the meaning of life against an unfolding panorama of family and personality conflicts . . .

In an incredible performance, Virginia Payne played Ma Perkins without missing a show in 27 years. Payne, just 23 when the show premiered, gave a convincing portrayal of a middle-aged battleaxe despite her youth. It was Payne who softened the character by degrees until the real Ma Perkins emerged. Unlike her fictitious counterpart, Payne had a college education and finally a master's degree; at $50,000 a year, she earned more than any other actress in the soaps.

---John Dunning, in On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998; pp. 440, 442.)

This is our 7,065th broadcast, and I want to thank you all for being so loyal all these years . . . If you write to me, I'll try to answer all your letters. Goodbye and may God bless you.

---Virginia Payne, signing off on the final Ma Perkins broadcast, 25 November 1960. (Her message was interrupted only by the show's closing credits---also read by Payne herself on this occasion.)

As the trusting, warmhearted, widowed Ma, Payne would also become the only member of the cast to feature on the soap for that entire 7,065-episode broadcast life.

Payne's Ma Perkins will be one of six classic old-time radio soaps to sign off for the final time 25 November 1960, a date known to radio soap buffs as Black Friday. The others: The Right to Happiness, The Romance of Helen Trent, The Second Mrs. Burton, Young Doctor Malone, and Whispering Streets.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

VIC & SADE FIVE HUNDRED BIJOU TICKETS (NBC, 1944)---They're a topic of gentle debate between Vic (Art Van Harvey) and Sade (Bernadine Flynn), who want to know whether Gumpock has the rightful title to the old tickets he found in someone else's garbage can but left with our friends. Russell: David Whitehouse. Announcer: Ed Roberts. Writer: Paul Rhymer.

FIBBER McGEE & MOLLY: BIG DEAL WITH CARSTAIRS (NBC, 1945)---Fibber (Jim Jordan) is being a little too secretive about a big deal with the wealthy wheeler-dealer ("When you've got a better mouse trap, every big cheese wants to get into it"), amusing Molly (Marian Jordan) as he plays hard to get. Alice Darling: Shirley Mitchell. Mrs. Carstairs: Bea Benaderet. Doc: Arthur Q. Bryan. Beulah: Marlin Hurt. Announcer: Harlow Wilcox. Writers: Don Quinn, Phil Leslie. (Note: This broadcast concludes with a special presentation to the Jordans of the National Commander's Citation from the Catholic War Veterans.)

THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR: CHARLIE HELPS WITH THE COWS (CBS, 1959)---Under the gun to lose two runaway cows that ended up in his garage, our husband (Alan Bunce) isn't that much more thrilled to have obnoxious Charlie Beeman's (Don Briggs) help moving them. Writer, as well as The Mrs.: Peg Lynch.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1865---Dame Mae Whitty (as Mary Whitty; actress: Lux Radio Theater), Liverpool.
1901---Frederic Tozere (actor: Stella Dallas), unknown.
1902---Guy Lombardo (bandleader: The Sweetest Music This Side of Heaven; Lombardo USA), London, Ontario.
1908---Lou Gehrig (as Heinrich Ludwig Gehrig; Hall of Fame baseball player/guest actor: Lux Radio Theater), New York City; Mildred Natwick (actress: Starring Boris Karloff; Best Plays; Campbell Playhouse).
1912---Martin Gabel (actor: Big Sister; The Casebook of Gregory Hood), Philadelphia.
1915---Pat Buttram (actor: National Barn Dance), Addison, Alabama.
1919---Louis Jourdan (actor: Hallmark Playhouse; Screen Guild Theater), Marseilles, France.
1922---Gwen Davies (actress: The Adventures of Helen and Mary; Let's Pretend), New York City.
1928---Nancy Marchand (actress: Cavalcade of America; A Private Space), Buffalo, New York; Barry Took (writer/comedian: Round the Horne; We're In Business), London.

The Question Man: The Way It Was, 18 June

2009-06-18T16:27:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE HENRY MORGAN SHOW:
THE QUESTION MAN
(ABC, 1947)

Radio's intended answer to "The Answer Man," of course, which figures . . . considering he's the critical entry on tonight's edition of the cantankerous comedian's nervy half-hour.

Cast: Arnold Stang, Florence Halop, Madaline Lee, Art Carney. Music: Bernie Green and His Orchestra. Writers: Henry Morgan, Aaron Ruben, Joseph Stein.

AIRWAVES . . .

1905, 1908---Two old-time radio mainstays share a birthday, if not a birth year.

Clayton Johnson Heermance, Jr. (New York City, 1908) will become the announcer---first, as Clayton Collyer, and then as the more familiar Bud Collyer (adopting his mother's maiden name)---for The Goldbergs and Cavalcade of America, not to mention the star of The Adventures of Superman . . . a role he will refuse when offered for the show's adaptation to television, because he will believe his age and actual physical image do not lend itself to the sleek superhero.

Not that Collyer will lack for a television life: in time, he'll become known as the host of two venerable game shows, Beat the Clock (where his habit of tucking his long-stemmed hand mike into his armpit, before instructing a typically slapstick stage stunt, becomes as familiar as the large Sylvania time clock) and To Tell the Truth.

And James Kern Kyser (Rocky Mount, North Carolina, 1905), who will come to resemble Glenn Miller's dour older sibling in adult life (which is saying something, considering how dour Miller himself often appeared), though he himself will be anything but dour, will become a radio hit as Kay Kyser---and, in time, the husband of one of his band singers, Georgia Carroll---leading his big band through a kind of slapdash music, comedy, and musical quiz entry beginning on Mutual in 1938, Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge.

Kyser, too, will bequeath a television legacy---one of his band singers will become a major television star as the host of a genial afternoon blabberfest: Mike Douglas, who will also record one of the more embarrassingly saccharine hit records of the 1960s, the mostly monologic "The Men in My Little Girl's Life."

1945: HAW-HAW, SAID THE CROWN---William Joyce, the old-time radio propaganda broadcaster known better as the infamous Lord Haw-Haw, is charged formally with treason.

An American citizen and a naturalised German, Joyce could be tried on this charge, the prosecution would argue successfully, because he lied about his nationality to gain a British passport and British voting rights and, thus, owed his formal allegiance to the Crown.

One of four broadcasters thought to have been Lord Haw-Haw, Joyce---who replaced one of those, Wolf Mitler, on the notorious Germany Calling broadcasts in 1939---will be hanged seven months after the formal charge of treason is lodged.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE WHISTLER: BLUEPRINT FOR SUICIDE (CBS, 1945)---One of the finest acting exercises for the pair often considered to have been (while their marriage lasted, anyway) old-time radio's first couple: Torn between his patient wife (Cathy Lewis) and his secretary, a popular but tortured stage comedian (Elliott Lewis) inadvertently---and fatally---thwarts his wife's thought of killing him. The Whistler: Possibly Bill Forman. Announcer: Marvin Miller. Writer: Geraldine Merkin.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1885---Ernie Adams (actor: Lux Radio Theater), San Francisco.
1897---Henry Wadsworth (actor: Jane Arden), Maysville, Kentucky.
1898---Carleton Hobbs (actor: Saturday Night Theater; The Children's Hour), Farnborough, U.K.; Francis (Dink) Trout (actor: The Life of Riley; A Day in the Life of Dennis Day), Beardstown, Illinois.
1902---Tom Breneman (host: Breakfast at Sardi's; My Secret Ambition), Waynesboro, Pennsylvania.
1903---Jeanette MacDonald (singer/actress: Nobody's Children; Vicks Open House; Campbell Playhouse), Philadelphia.
1904---Keye Luke (actor: Lux Radio Theater; Image Minorities), Canton, China.
1908---Elmore Vincent (actor: Lum & Abner), unknown.
1910---Dick Foran (The Singing Cowboy; singer: The Burns & Allen Show), Flemington, New Jersey; Russ ("The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!") Hodges (sportscaster: New York Giants baseball), Dayton, Tennessee; E.G. Marshall (actor/narrator: The CBS Radio Mystery Theater), Owatonna, Minnesota.
1913---Sammy Cahn (lyricist: You Bet Your Life; NBC Monitor), New York City.
1917---Richard Boone (actor: Dragnet), Los Angeles.

More Than One Lesson: The Way It Was, 17 June

2009-06-17T16:15:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
DEATH VALLEY DAYS:
THE BURRO THAT HAD NO NAME
(NBC BLUE, 1938)

Here is one splendid example of just why devotees consider the lack of available surviving episodes of this "hardy perennial" (as historian John Dunning has called it, appropriately enough, in On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio) a major crime.

Walter Scott Smith and Olin Martin discover an unwanted white burro, who follows the team they did purchase, teaches them more than one lesson in dignity on a brutal trek westward.

The Old Ranger: Jack McBryde. Additional cast: Unknown. Writer: Ruth Cornwall Woodman.

AIRWAVES . . .

1926: CHANGING PARTNERS---Control of WDBO in Orlando, Florida, born two years earlier as a Rollins College station, goes to Col. George Johnston and E.G. Hauselt, who take it over from Justice Lee and Maxwell Green.

Just shy of four years later, the station will become a CBS affiliate, as part of a Southern chain that also includes WTOC (Savannah, Georgie), WIS (Columbia, South Carolina), WDAE (Tampa), and WQAM (Miami).

But WDBO almost passes to public ownership halfway between the Johnston-Hauselt takeover and the affiliation to CBS: Johnston and Orlando Chamber of Commerce representatie H.M. Voorhis propose to the city council that the city buy the station, after Johnston and Voorhis fear the Federal Radio Commission asked for changes not to Johnston's taste. The council puts it to the voters in 1928 but the voters turn it down.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

1947: SHOW AT THE MARKET---"The cost of living is so high now it's cheaper to drop dead," laments Mel (Blanc) when Betty (Mary Jane Croft) dreams (again) of marriage and children . . . until he suggests Mr. Colby (Joseph Kearns) put on a show outside his market to draw customers away from the new rival, on tonight's edition of The Mel Blanc Show. (NBC.)

Additional cast: Hans Conreid, Jim Backus, Jill Walker. Music: Victor Miller and His Orchestra, the Sports Men. Writer: Mac Benoff.

1949: TELEVISION---Iris (Bea Benaderet) thinks an evening watching the football game with Rudolph (Gale Gordon) might change George's (Richard Denning) mind about buying the television set for which Liz (Lucille Ball) is hankering only too heavily, on tonight's edition of My Favourite Husband. (CBS.)

Additional cast: Hans Conreid, Jay Novello. Writers: Bob Carroll, Jr., Madelyn Pugh, Jess Oppenheimer.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1866---Charles Coburn (actor: Roses and Drums; Song of Liberty), Savannah, Georgia.
1904---Ralph Bellamy (actor: These Are Our Men), Chicago.
1910---Red Foley (singer: National Barn Dance; Grand Ole Opry; The Red Foley Show), Blue Lick, Kentucky.
1919---Beryl Reid (actress: Educating Archie), Hereford, U.K.
1921---Ben Morris (actor: Pat Novak For Hire), Oklahoma City.
1922---Jerry Fielding (bandleader: The Hardy Family; The Jack Paar Show; You Bet Your Life), Pittsburgh.

His Piercing Blue Eyes: The Way It Was, 16 June

2009-06-16T06:06:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
VIC & SADE:
PIERCING BLUE EYES
(NBC, 1944)

That's the feature for which someone compliments mild-mannered Vic (Art Van Harvey), much to the mild amusement of Sade (Bernadine Flynn) when he's too coy to disclose just who dropped the compliment upon him.

Uncle Fletcher: Clarence Hartzell. Announcer: Ed Roberts. Writer/director: Paul Rhymer.

AIRWAVES . . .

1962: BOB-A-LOO BOWS---The old-time radio era may have slipped into its final weeks but one of WABC's legendary "All-Americans" disc jockeys bows with the station---Bob Lewis, who premieres in the 12 midnight-6:00 a.m. slot . . . following Bruce (Cousin Brucie) Morrow and preceding Herb Oscar Anderson.

Bob-a-Loo (as he calls himself in these years) will hold the midnight show Monday through Saturday until August 1963, when he's moved to a pair of Sunday/Monday gigs, the Sunday noon-to-five show preceding Scott Muni and the early Monday 4 a.m. show preceding Anderson. (Also running WABC in these years is old-time radio morning favourite The Breakfast Club with Don McNeil.)

Lewis will hold these Sunday/Monday gigs for the rest of his eight years total at WABC (moving to 10 a.m. Sunday in 1968, during which time the station becomes New York's top-rated AM rock station.

Lewis in due course will join WPLJ-FM (originally WABC-FM), a pioneer of what came to be known as album-oriented rock radio.

Bob, Bob-a-Loo Lewis is singin', he's swingin', he's hip, he's happenin' on 77 WABC . . . ---Lewis's frequent identification catch phrase during the WABC years.

Surviving airchecks of Lewis in the WABC years also include a rather pungent debunking of the raciest rumour of late-1960s rock and roll---the rumour, believed to have been instigated by a Detroit radio station, possibly in retaliation for an old wisecrack, that Paul McCartney of the Beatles was dead.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE GOLDBERGS: WALTER WANTS THE JOB AT THE MILL (CBS, 1942)---Cut off by his wealthy family for loving Rosalie (Roslyn Silber), Walter Jerome (Edward Trevor) is willing to accept Jake's (James R. Waters) offer of a job at the mill---but Rosalie wants Walter to prove himself independently . . . and seems to want Molly (Gertrude Berg) to help her convince Jake to let him do just that. Sammy: Alfred Ryder. Announcer: Clayton (Bud) Collyer. Writer/director: Gertrude Berg.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1885---Tom Howard (comedian: It Pays to Be Ignorant), County Tyrone, Ireland.
1903---Ona Munson (actress: Big Town), Portland, Oregon.
1907---Jack Albertson (actor: The Milton Berle Show; The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show; The Henry Morgan Show; Cavalcade of America), Malden, Massachussetts.
1912---Ilona Massey (actress: Top Secret; Screen Guild Theater), Budapest.

A Slap on the Back: The Way It Was, 15 June

2009-06-15T01:31:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
DUFFY'S TAVERN:
FATHER'S DAY
(NBC, 1949)

Eddie (Eddie Green) discovers the roof is leaking . . . just as Archie's (Ed Gardner) fixing up the dive for the day in question. ("The one day of the year fathers get a slap on the back instead of a kick in the pants") And, lamenting his own lack of children---until he fixes on marrying a jukebox singer he's yet to meet.

Guest Star: Bob Crosby. Miss Duffy: Sandra Gould. Finnegan: Charles Cantor. Music: Marty Malneck Orchestra. Writers: Ed Gardner, Larry Marks, possibly Manny Sachs.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

MR. KEEN, TRACER OF LOST PERSONS: THE CASE OF THE WOMAN IN BLUE (CBS, 1944)---A nervous, heartbroken Army Air Force lieutenant's romantic encounter at a masquerade disappeared---two days before they supposedly met, according to her maid, prompting the lieutenant to engage Keen (Bennett Kilpack) and Suzy (Florence Malone). Clancy: Jim Kelly. Additional cast: Unknown. Writer: Possibly Lawrence Klee.

THE CLOCK: ISLAND PARADISE (ABC, 1947)---Role reversal of a sort for a prisoner and the man who captured him. Preston: Leon Biers. Regan: Don Crosby. Arch: Alan Trevor. The Clock: Hart McGuire. Additional cast: Max Ryan, Walter Sullivan. Writer: Lawrence Klee.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1861---Ernestine Schumann-Heink (vocalist: Enna Jettick Melodies; Hoover Sentinels Serenade), Prague.
1894---Robert Russell Bennett (composer: Project Twenty), Kansas City; Leo Cleary (actor: His Honour, The Barber), Massachussetts.
1905---James Robertson Justice (actor: Star Bill), Wigtown, Scotland.
1909---Joseph DeSantis (actor: Under Arrest), New York City.
1910---David Rose (composer/conductor: The Red Skelton Show; Bold Venture), London.
1918---Richard Derr (actor: Crime Does Not Pay), Norristown, Pennsylvania.
1921---Erroll Garner (pianist/composer: Jubilee; Command Performance; Arthur Godfrey Time), Pittsburgh.
1929---Lucille Norman (vocalist: The Time, The Place, and the Tune; The Railroad Hour), Lincoln, Nebraska.

The Donne Deal: The Way It Was, 14 June

2009-06-14T09:14:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE HALLS OF IVY:
THE STOLEN FIRST EDITION
(NBC, 1950)

Hall's (Ronald Colman) gratitude runneth over when Victoria (Benita Hume Colman) surprises him with a first edition of John Donne. The real surprise, however, is when their shock runneth over . . . after learning the hard way just how the rare---and valuable---volume became available so readily, and for fifty cents at the campus book store, yet.

Merriweather: Willard Waterman. Wellman: Herbert Butterfield. Additional cast: Rolfe Sedan, Sidney Miller, William Tracy. Writers: Don Quinn, Barbara and Milton Merlin.

AIRWAVES . . .

1891---Perhaps the second of the great old-time radio soap opera masterminds (between Frank and Anne Hummert and Irna Phillips) is born Elaine Sterne today, in New York City.

Elaine Carrington . . . had sold many short stories to women's magazines in the nineteen-twenties. They dealt with the frustrations, heartbreaks, kindliness, nastiness, cruelties, and tragedies of the middle class. She created little men, cold women, and thankless children to the taste of various editors. Her dialogue was frequent and facile. She felt that radio might be more profitable than magazine writing in the depression years, and in 1932 she decided to take a crack at it. Her first program, Red Adams, was put on by NBC, as a half-hour nighttime show, once a week. It was broadcast on a sustaining basis; that is, it had no sponsor and the network paid the production costs. Mrs. Carrington got seventy-five dollars a script. At the end of three months, the Beech-Nut Company decided to sponsor Red Adams, as a daytime serial. They agreed to pay Mrs. Carrington a hundred dollars apiece for three scripts a week. They also wanted the title changed. Adams is the name of a Beech-Nut rival celebrated for the singing commercial that begins, "I like Chiclets candy-coated chewing gum." Mrs. Carrington changed the name to Red Davis. In 1936, Procter & Gamble offered Mrs. Carrington twice as much money per script for five scripts a week. She accepted, and the name was changed again, this time to Pepper Young's Family. Under the aegis of Procter & Gamble, Mrs. Carrington prospered and proliferated. Pepper Young's Family is still going, and she is now responsible for Rosemary and When A Girl Marries, too.

Mrs. Carrington's original radio income of seventy-five dollars a week has grown to an estimated forty-five hundred. Unlike the majority of serial authors, who are merely hired to write soap operas and are known disparagingly as "dialoguers," Mrs. Carrington was wise and firm enough to retain the ownership of her literary properties. She leases broadcasting rights to sponsors. Most dialoguers get credit on the air only once a week, but Mrs. Carrington's name is mentioned before and after each of her shows. Today she lives in a penthouse apartment in the West Fifties and a country place in Bridgehampton. Aided only by a few notes on a sheet of memo paper, she dictates her scripts into a dictaphone, usually standing. Her working hours are from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with time out for a long lunch. She never bothers about hearing a playback . . . Mrs. Carrington rarely listens to one of her soap operas---she prefers to call them daytime serials---and has never heard a broadcast of any of her colleagues' serials. She is known as the Member in Mink to the other members of the Radio Writers' Guild, which she helped to found and on whose committees she has frequently served.

---James Thurber, in "Soapland: O Pioneers!", The New Yorker, 1947-48; republished in The Beast in Me and Other Animals: A New Collection of Pieces and Drawings About Human Beings and Less Alarming Creatures. (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1948.)

She will marry George Dart Carrington in 1920; the marriage will produce two children, Patricia and Robert, and will end only upon her husband's death in 1945; she will never re-marry.

She had been a short story writer but was interested in theater, so if she saw a young actor on Broadway she liked, she'd write in a part for him . . . Pepper Young's Family wasn't very different from other soaps. You were doing shit day after day, so literature it wasn't, but there were no demands on you and it was interesting work . . . A lot of actors tap-danced their way through, but you couldn't really phone it in. You couldn't have contempt for the material. I really enjoyed it. There was such variety.

---Mason Adams (later the managing editor on television's Lou Grant and the voice of those Smucker's preserves spots), who played the title role in Pepper Young's Family from 1945 until the show ended its run in 1959, to Gerald Nachman, for "The Soap Factory," in Raised on Radio. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998.)

A high-spirited, buxom, silver-haired Jewish woman, [Carrington] had a fondness for risque jokes and liked to sneak double-entendres into her scripts. Carrington had a more sexual approach than the Hummerts. According to historian Jim Harmon: "Hers was a revered, harmless, and no doubt beneficial pornography---the make-believe fantasy of women about how marriage and sex might be and perhaps should be, but seldom is after many years."

---Nachman.

If they aren't a highfalutin' form of art, they frequently contain profound wisdom expressed in universal terms.

---Elaine Carrington on the radio soaps, as cited by Nachman.

1923---His successor will earn a real reputation as a radio-friendly President, but Warren G. Harding isn't exactly oblivious to the new medium himself: today, the President uses old-time radio to bring the message home when a memorial to "The Star Spangled Banner's" author, Francis Scott Key, is dedicated in Baltimore.

It will be one of the few chances Americans actually have to hear the voice of the 29th President, whose reputation for a commanding speaking style may be equaled by a reputation for such verbal and grammatical gaffes that, when he dies just under two months following the Key dedication, e.e. cummings will note, "The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead."

That will be nothing compared to the description of the scandal-plagued Harding from the Sage of Baltimore.

He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.

---H.L. Mencken.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE LIFE OF RILEY: JUNIOR WINS A SOAPBOX DERBY (NBC, 1947)---But, after seeming more interested in a girl than in the race before he decided to go in, Junior (Tommy Cook) wanted to build the racer himself, which creates more than a little rift between himself and Riley (William Bendix) . . . and on the day before Father's Day, of all times.

Peg: Paula Winslowe. Babs: Barbara Eiler. Digger O'Dell: John Brown. Writers: Alan Lipscott, Ruben Shipp.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1893---Joe Forte (actor: Our Miss Brooks; Life with Luigi), U.K.
1895---Cliff (Ukulele Ike) Edwards (singer: Fun and Fancy Free; Cliff Edwards, Ukulele Ike), Hannibal, Missouri.
1908---John Scott Trotter (conductor: Kraft Music Hall; Philco Radio Time), Charlotte, North Carolina.
1909---Burl Ives (singer/actor: Columbia Country Journal; Radio Reader's Digest), Hunt Township, Illinois.
1914---Nat Polen (actor: Indictment; The CBS Radio Mystery Theater), New York City.
1915---Kay Sutton (actress: Lux Radio Theater), Irvington, New Jersey.
1917---Paul Monash (writer: Molle Mystery Theater), New York City.
1918---Dorothy McGuire (actress: Big Sister; Joyce Jordan, M.D.; Lux Radio Theater), Omaha.
1919---Gene Barry (actor: Lux Radio Theater), New York City; Sam Wanamaker (actor: Variety Playhouse; Pocket Theater; The Guiding Light; Lone Journey), Chicago.
1929---Cy Coleman (pianist/composer: Cy Coleman at the Piano; Voices of Vista), New York City.

Better Red-Headed than Dead-Headed? The Way It Was, 13 June

2009-06-13T21:36:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
ROGUE'S GALLERY:
RED-HEADED STRANGER
(MUTUAL, 1946)

On a Sunday drive around the San Fernando Valley, Rogue (Dick Powell) calls on a friend with a property in the area and discovers him dead . . . right before he's knocked out cold himself.

Additional cast: Unknown. Writer: Ray Bufham.

AIRWAVES . . .

1897: MAKE A JOYOUS BROADCAST NOISE UNTO THE LORD---Reuben Larson, the eventual co-founder (with Clarence Jones of the Salvation Army) of the World Radio Missionary Fellowship, is born. Based in Opa Locka, Florida since 1969, the fellowship will make its first broadcast (under the call letters HCJB, still in use today) 12 December 1931.

1946: FAREWELL, MAJOR---Edward Bowes, whose weekly amateur talent show becomes perhaps the best-remembered old-time radio show of its kind, dies at home in Rumson, New Jersey---72 years to the day after he was born in San Francisco.

The show continues with Bowes's talent coordinator, Ted Mack, as its host, and it will be Mack who shepherds the show to television nineteen months after Bowes's death. The show remains Major Bowes's Original Amateur Hour until 1951, when it will drop Bowes's name from the title, a year before leaving radio at last but remaining a television fixture for nearly two decades more, as Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour as of 1955.

Despite the formal title of the show, it was actually an hourlong program only once in its long broadcasting life, on ABC television from March 1956 through June 1957.

But for all that it's remembered, only a very few performers who ever appeared on the show went on to become major stars, including jazz-pop titan Frank Sinatra; opera stars Lily Pons, Robert Merrill, and Beverly Sills; comedian Jack Carter; and, pop star turned jazz stylist Teresa Brewer.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: SQUIRE SPREADS RUMOURS ABOUT THE MATINEE (NBC, 1935)---All in a day's dirty work, if it involves discrediting our heroes' film venture beyond merely opening a rival movie house. Lum/Grandpappy: Chester Lauck. Abner/Squire: Norris Goff. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

VIC & SADE: A PORCH COLLAPSES (NBC, 1939)---It happened on Center Street and Rotten Davis---who blasted in and out of the Gook house earlier in search of his old suitcase---takes the blame, in the translation of buddy Rush (Bill Idelson). Sade: Bernadine Flynn. Vic: Art Van Harvey. Announcer: Ralph Edwards. Writer: Paul Rhymer.

SUSPENSE: TOO MANY SMITHS (CBS, 1946)---A janitor (Hume Cronyn) finding a memo with the name of a toothpaste contest winner from Boston ponders a piece of the $25,000 pot but finds a deadly surprise when he hunts the winner. Additional cast: Unknown. Writer: Unknown.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1873---Jean Adair (actress: Radio Guild; Theater Guild on the Air), Hamilton, Ontario.
1890---Elmer Davis (news reporter/commentator, CBS, U.S. Office of War Information, NBC: Elmer Davis and the News), Aurora, Indiana.
1892---Basil Rathbone (actor: Sherlock Holmes; Scotland Yard's Inspector Burke), Johannesburg.
1894---Mark Van Doren (poet: NBC University Theater; Invitation to Learning), Hope, Illinois.
1900---Ian Hunter (actor: Hollywood Hotel), Kenilworth, South Africa.
1903---Jack Fulton (singer: Paul Whiteman's Painters Show), Philipsburg, Pennsylvania.
1913---Bob Bailey (actor: Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar; Let George Do It), Toledo, Ohio; Ralph Edwards (announcer/host: Vic & Sade; Truth or Consequences), Merino, Colorado.
1916---Mary Wickes (actress: Meet Corliss Archer; Lorenzo Jones), St. Louis.
1920---Ben Johnson (actor: Francis Burke for Attorney General), Pawnee, Oklahoma.

A Mother and Child Reunion? The Way It Was, 12 June

2009-06-12T21:27:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
LUX RADIO THEATER:
THE WHITE BANNERS
(CBS, 1939)

A tasteful adaptation of the 1938 film about a homeless woman (Fay Bainter, reprising her film role) taken in by a kindly family . . . who doesn't know their teenage neighbour (Jackie Cooper, also reprising his film role) is the son she surrendered for adoption after his out-of-wedlock birth.

Additional cast: Lewis Stone, Jean Hainey, Elizabeth Wilbur, Richard LeGrand, Lou Merrill, Ross Forrester, Mary Lansing, Conway P. Coe. Host: Cecil B. DeMille. Writers: Lenore Coffee, Abem Finkel, Cameron Rogers, based on the book by Lloyd C. Douglas.

AIRWAVES . . .

1851: THE AETHER ZONE---Oliver Joseph Lodge---the British physicist who will address light-bearing aether as the wave-bearing medium filling all space and toward the radio transmission he produces between those of Tesla and Marconi, improving Branly's coherer radio wave detector with a kind of trembler dislodging clumped filings and restoring its sensitivity (Wikipedia)---is born in Stoke-on-Trent.

1936: FIFTY GRAND---The first known fifty thousand watt radio station begins its experiments in Pittsburgh.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE SHADOW: DEATH FROM THE DEEP (MUTUAL, 1938)---In one of old-time radio's best known, best loved dramatic episodes, Lamont (Orson Welles) fears a brilliant but disgraced Navy designer just may be the designer of a weapon responsible for a series of heretofore-unsolved and deadly shipping disasters . . . and, that this designer may be just remorseful enough---and, frightened enough of the man who hired and then betrayed him---to help the master mentalist blow up the plan before it blows anything else up on the high or low seas. Margot: Agnes Moorehead. Additional cast: Unknown. Writer: Unknown.

BOX 13: THE DEAD MAN WALKS (MUTUAL, 1949)---A woman writes the box fearing her father is in some sort of trouble, and you could say he is---Dan (Alan Ladd) learns he's dead, then alive, only too suspiciously. Sheila: Lurene Tuttle. Suzy: Sylvia Packer. Kling: Edmund McDonald. Additional cast: Alan Reed, Luis van Rooten, Betty Lou Gerson, Frank Lovejoy. Writer: Russell Hughes.

GUNSMOKE: THE COVER-UP (CBS, 1954)---It begins with Barnaby Hoffer wanting to shoot on sight Art Long, usually a man of peace, which puzzles Matt (William Conrad) before he's cut in a brief scuffle with the man. Chester: Parley Baer. Kitty: Georgia Ellis. Doc: Howard McNear. Additional cast: Joseph Kearns, Helen Klee, Paul Savage, Clayton Fuller. Writer: John Meston.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1884---William Austin (actor: Jack Oakie's College), Georgetown, British Guiana.
1890---Junius Matthews (actor: David Harum; Gasoline Alley), Chicago.
1893---Evelyn Varden (actress: Easy Aces; This Is Nora Drake; Young Dr. Malone; mr. ace and JANE), Adair, Oklahoma.
1909---Archie Bleyer (bandleader: Arthur Godfrey Time; Arthur Godfrey and His Friends; Casey, Crime Photographer), Corona, New York.
1914---Herbert C. Kenny (singer, with the Ink Spots: The Four Ink Spots; Let's Go Nightclubbing), unknown.
1915---Priscilla Lane (singer: The Fred Waring Show), Indianola, Iowa.
1919---Uta Hagen (actress: The Big Show), Gottingen, Germany.
1924---Dave Parker (actor: The Lone Ranger; The Green Hornet; Challenge of the Yukon), Fresno, California.
1928---Vic Damone (as Vito Rocco Farinola; singer: Saturday Night Serenade; Stars in Khaki 'n' Blue), Brooklyn.

Summertime Blues: The Way It Was, 11 June

2009-06-11T06:36:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE HENRY MORGAN SHOW:
MORGAN'S SUMMER RESORT HOTEL
(ABC, 1947)

Answering the question of where you can be sent for two weeks worth of sunstroke, the title institution has less to do with a hotel and an awful lot to do with a customer looking to book his wife a one-way cruise.

Cast: Arnold Stang, Florence Halop, Madaline Lee, Art Carney. Music: Bernie Green and His Orchestra. Writers: Henry Morgan, Aaron Ruben, Joseph Stein.

AIRWAVES . . .

1985---Once a Blue Network/ABC affiliate which featured Metropolitan Opera broadcast performances, and soon became an early incubator of what became rock and roll, thanks to the success of Alan Freed (1951-1954), Cleveland's WJW---an all-news station since 1965---changes its call letters to WRMR, becomes a pop standards station, and later integrates a wide variety of soft music before becoming sports-dominated WKNR.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE JELL-O PROGRAM STARRING JACK BENNY: THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (NBC, 1939)---The conclusion of a classic satire, previewed the previous week, with a bored Holmes (Jack Benny) and indifferent Watson (Kenny Baker) thrown into the case of Philip Baskerville's fiancee, Lady Barrow (Mary Livingstone), who fears he's the next marked for death and fears the howling of a dog (Andy Devine) will be the signal that said death is due. Additional cast: Don Wilson. Music: Phil Harris and His Orchestra. Writers: George Balzar, Milt Josefsberg, Sam Perrin, John Tackaberry.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1889---Wesley Ruggles (director: Screen Guild Theater), Los Angeles.
1900---Lawrence Spivak (moderator/panelist: Meet the Press), Brooklyn.
1913---Rise Stevens (vocalist: The Rise Stevens Show; Palmolive Beauty Box Theater; Texaco Star Theater with Fred Allen), New York City.
1914---Dudley Manlove (announcer: Candy Matson), unknown; Gerald Mohr (actor: The Adventures of Philip Marlow; Our Miss Brooks), New York City.
1919---Richard Todd (singer: Rinso-Spry Vaudeville Theater; Your Hit Parade), Dublin.
1920---Hazel Scott (singer/pianist: Free World Theater; A New World A-Coming), Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.

Father and Daughter, Rediscovered: The Way It Was, 10 June

2009-06-10T20:31:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
GUNSMOKE:
DADDY-O
(CBS, 1956)

In one of this series' most understatedly gripping installments, Kitty (Georgia Ellis) learns she's due for a slightly unnerving visitor---the father (John McIntire) who hasn't seen her since she was eight months old.

Matt: William Conrad. Chester: Parley Baer. Doc: Howard McNear. Sam: Lawrence Dobkin. Announcer: George Fenneman. Writer: John Meston.

AIRWAVES . . .

1924: NOT-SO-SILENT CAL---The old-time radio era strikes a milestone when the Republican National Convention, which nominates incumbent President Calvin Coolidge to be their candidate (and would see him be elected to a full term in his own right, after he succeeded the late Warren G. Harding), is broadcast.

Coolidge's reputation as a quiet man bordering on reclusiveness notwithstanding, the GOP certainly picks the right man in terms of radio friendliness: he takes to radio and makes himself strikingly available to the new medium as well as the traditional press: before his term expires, Coolidge will be the first President whose inauguration is broadcast on radio; he will give over 529 press conferences; he will become the first President to give a political speech on the air; and, he will sign into law the federal legislation that creates the Federal Radio Commission.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: LOSING TO SQUIRE (NBC, 1935)---It turns out our heroes had very good reason to worry about Squire Skimp (Norris Goff) launching a rival movie theater. Lum/Grandpappy: Chester Lauck. Abner/Dick Huddleston: Norris Goff. Writers: Chester Lauck and Norris Goff.

THE INNER SANCTUM MYSTERIES: DEATH IS A JOKER (BLUE NETWORK; REBROADCAST: ARMED FORCES RADIO NETWORK, 1944)---Peter Lorre has a field night narrating and playing a murder defendant pleading to his jury about the surreal circumstances leading to the crime in question. Host: Raymond Edward Johnson. Writer: Possibly Himan Brown.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1889---Sessue Hayakawa (actor, with NHK), Tokyo.
1891---Al Dubin (lyricist: Mutual-Don Lee Dedicatory Program), Zurich.
1895---Hattie McDaniel (comedienne/actress: Beulah; Maxwell House Showboat), Wichita, Kansas.
1897---Boris Kroyt (violinist, Budapest String Quartet: The Library of Congress Concert), unknown.
1898---Norman Brokenshire (announcer: Music That Satisfies; Theater Guild On the Air), Murcheson, Ontario.
1903---Ernest Chappell (actor/announcer: The Fabulous Dr. Tweedy; Quiet, Please; The Big Story), Syracuse, New York.
1909---Larry LeSueur (correspondent, CBS News: This Week in Europe; The World Today), unknown.
1920---Anne Burr (actress: Mary Noble, Backstage Wife; Wendy Warren and the News), Boston.
1922---Judy Garland (as Frances Ethel Gumm; singer/actress: The Hardy Family; Good News of 1938; Lux Radio Theater), Grand Rapids, Minnesota.
1926---June Haver (as Beverly Jane Stovenour; singer: Hollywood Hotel), Rock Island, Illinois.
1931---Harlan Stone, Jr. (also known as Hal Stone; actor: Archie Andrews), Whitestone, New York.

Between Business and Pleasure: The Way It Was, 9 June

2009-06-09T06:13:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
AMOS 'N' ANDY:
MISS RUBY TAYLOR ARRIVES
(NBC, 1929)

Andy (Charles Correll) continues wrestling with the Fresh Air Taxi Company's banking problems, and forcing one creditor to come clean, but Amos (Freeman Gosden) has a far more profound anxiety of his own: seeing Ruby (Elinor Harriot) again.

Writers: Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll.

AIRWAVES . . .

1993: STAMP ACTS---Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, Clyde McPhatter (with and without Billy Ward and the Dominoes and, then, the original Drifters), Elvis Presley, Otis Redding, Ritchie Valens, and Dinah Washington began their hitmaking lives in the tail end of the old-time radio era. (Redding's first single, "These Arms of Mine," was issued in fact during the final months of the era in 1962.) Today, they're struck on postage stamps when the U.S. Postal Service rolls out "Legends of American Music, Rock and Roll-Rhythm and Blues."

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

FIBBER McGEE & MOLLY: POT ROAST (NBC, 1942)---It's Fibber's (Jim Jordan) favourite dish, it's Molly's (Marian Jordan) pleasure to make for him, and it's ruined by interruptions---and wheedling for dinner invitations---that only begin with La Trivia's (Gale Gordon) poll taking. The Old-Timer: Bill Thompson. Harlow Wilcox: Himself. Mrs. Uppington: Isabel Randolph. Writers: Don Quinn, Phil Leslie.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1890---Leslie Banks (actress: Theater of Romance), West Derby, U.K.
1900---Fred Waring (bandleader: Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians; Pleasure Time/Victory Tunes), Tyrone, Pennsylvania.
1905---Martha Boswell (singer, with the Boswell Sisters: The Boswell Sisters; The Woodbury Soap Show), Kansas City.
1908---Bob Cummings (actor: Those We Love; Cavalcade of America, The Big Show), Joplin, Missouri.
1910---George Bryan (announcer: Helen Hayes Theater; Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts), New York City; Joseph Julian (actor: Lorenzo Jones; The Adventures of Nero Wolfe), St. Marys, Pennsylvania.
1915---Les Paul (as Lester William Polsfuss; guitarist/composer: The Fred Waring Show; The Bing Crosby Show; The Drene Show; The Les Paul Show), Waukesha, Wisconsin.
1922---George Axelrod (writer: Midnight in Manhattan; Grand Ole Opry), New York City.
1926---Mona Freeman (actress: Lux Radio Theater; Suspense), Baltimore.
1933---Dick Orkin (comedian: Chickenman; The Tooth Fairy), Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

Quietly Yours: The Way It Was, 8 June

2009-06-08T06:40:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
QUIET, PLEASE:
NOTHING BEHIND THE DOOR (SERIES PREMIERE)
(MUTUAL, 1947)

If The Twilight Zone has a genuine old-time radio father---in terms of subtle turns, intelligent writing, and an airy but unmistakeable, quiet, psychologically poetic horror, it is probably the poetically psychological suspense anthology created by the mastermind behind Lights Out, with narration and lead character portraiture by the tastefully arresting, "quietly yours," Ernest Chappell, that premieres today.

NETWORK ANNOUNCER: The Mutual Broadcasting System presents the first of a series of new and unusual dramatic programs, written and directed by Wyllis Cooper and featuring Ernest Chappell.
MUSIC: Extract from Franck, Symphony in D Minor; fade in and up.
NARRATOR: Quiet, please . . .(pause; music up, then under). . . Quiet, please . . .
MUSIC: (fade)
NARRATOR: About 5800 feet above sea level---a little house, maybe twenty feet long, fifteen feet wide. It's made of corrugated iron sheets with a high peaked roof, sort of hangs over the edge of the mountain top, with nothing but the spikes of pine trees stretching all the way down to Pasadena, better than a mile below you.
MUSIC: (Up and out.)
NARRATOR: You ever get out to California? Well, if you do, get up there sometime and take a look at that little house . . .

---The opening of "Nothing Behind the Door," episode one of Quiet, Please.

[A] more literate fright-fest . . . Quiet, Please, which went in for surreal psychological horror stories.

---Gerald Nachman, in "Radio Noir---COps and Grave Robbers," from Raised on Radio. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998.)

. . . unsung and little heard in its day, but a few good-sounding episodes among the dozens surviving on tape in poor quality give evidence of a potent series bristling with rich imagination . . .

With Quiet, Please, Cooper was returning to his radio roots. His characters walked in a fuzzy dream world where the element of menace was ripe and ever-present. In Cooper's hands, a field of lilies could be deadly; a grove of trees touched with sinister implication. Little was explained or justified; the impact was the thing, and at its best Quiet, Please packed a terrifying punch.

---John Dunning, in On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.)

A reasonable, simple peer of Suspense and Lights Out for perhaps the most cleverly memorable thriller/horror offering in old-time radio history, Quiet, Please may been just a little too advanced to enjoy a long air life: the show will live barely past a second anniversary overall and well short of a year following its move from Mutual to ABC.

But the show will have its moments in the popular imagination, especially when "Twelve to Five"---about a disc jockey visited by a dead colleague during an overnight request program---provokes listeners to jam the Mutual switchboard with music requests . . . thanks to Cooper's script calling for a background of popular music of the day.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

AMOS 'N' ANDY: THEY MAY LOSE THE FRESH AIR TAXI COMPANY (NBC, 1929)---That's if Andy (Charles Correll) can't make the next installment to the furniture company. Amos: Freeman Gosden. Writers: Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll.

THE CLOCK: COMING EVENTS (ABC, 1947)---They prove rather intriguing in 1912, spinning forth from between a circus fortune teller and a winning sweepstakes ticket. Alvin Sweet: Don Crosby. The Clock: Hart McGuire. Additional cast: Amanda Dodd, Sheila Sorou, Rip Becknell, Len Taylor. Writer: Lawrence Klee.

PREMIERING TODAY

1918---Robert Preston (actor: Lux Radio Theater; Eternal Light; Medicine USA; Silver Theater), Newton Highlands, Massachussetts.
1921---Alexis Smith (as Gladys Smith; actress: Lux Radio Theater; Stars in the Air; Screen Guild Theater), Penticton, British Columbia.
1927---Jerry Stiller (comedian/actor: The CBS Radio Mystery Thearer), New York City.
1931---Dana Wynter (as Dagmar Wynter; actress: The Black Museum; The Lives of Harry Lime), Berlin.
1937---Joan Rivers (as Joan Alexandra Molinsky; comedienne: The Voices of Vista), Brooklyn.

The Farmer's Son: The Way It Was, 7 June

2009-06-07T09:54:00.000-07:00

FEATURED BROADCAST
THE HALLS OF IVY:
PHILIP WEATHERBEE
(NBC, 1950)

Victoria (Benita Hume Colman) awakens Hall (Ronald Colman) from a pleasant Saturday morning dream to face a law student's father---a farmer (Bill Scott) whose disillusion about his life's work doesn't square with his son's (Conrad Binyon) apparent agricultural passion.

Announcer: Ken Carpenter. Writer: Carmine Blake, Don Quinn.

AIRWAVES I: THE GREAT CRUSADE, CONTINUING . . .

And, in one case, completely pre-empting a popular soap opera, as The CBS News Roundup pre-empts Young Doctor Malone. However, four other popular CBS soaps broadcast as usual, with the periodic reference to or quick word from the fighting: Big Sister, The Romance of Helen Trent, Portia Faces Life, and Joyce Jordan, M.D. (formerly Joyce Jordan, Girl Intern), not to mention the semi-serial mystery, The New Adventures of Perry Mason.

GEORGE HICKS: ABOARD THE USS ANCON (BLUE NETWORK)---The veteran reporter delivers a magnificent report in the wake of the initial landings success for ABC-to-be.

AIRWAVES II . . .

1917: AIN'T THAT A KICK IN THE HEAD---He does not ask for another belt when getting that first slap; neither does his obstetrician start him crying with a certain foot movement that would provoke him to croon, "Ain't that a kick in the head" . . . but a Steubenville, Ohio baby born today will grow up to play the crooning straight man to a certain madcap partner in nightclubs, films, and old-time radio (1949-1953), before graduating to fame as a more polished singer, actor, and the all but official kapellmeister of the second and best-known edition of the Hollywood Rat Pack.

He will grow up as a high-school dropout, a bootleg booze deliverer, an amateur boxer, and a speakeasy and underground casino dealer, before getting his first singing break with the Ernie McKay Orchestra, using a style derived from Bing Crosby and the Mills Brothers, and in due course joining Sammy Watkins---who encourages him to adopt the name under which he becomes famous, especially when he meets a young comedian named Jerry Lewis at New York's Glass Hat: Dean Martin.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

THE MOLLE MYSTERY THEATER: FEMALE OF THE SPECIES (NBC; REBROADCAST: ARMED FORCES RADIO SERVICE, 1946)---A beautician (Lizbeth Scott) tries explaining to her prospective attorney a murder she only contemplated but didn't commit. Additional cast: Unknown. Writer: Irene Winslow.

THE LIFE OF RILEY: COURTING AT SUMMER CAMP (NBC, 1947)---Junior's (Scotty Beckett) vacation plans, possibly interrupted when Riley (William Bendix) needs to borrow a fin from him, provoke Peg (Paula Winslowe) to remember the summer he courted her while working at a camp. Digger: John Brown. Writers: Reuben Ship, Alan Lipscott.

GUNSMOKE: BUFFALO KILLERS (often mislabled BUFFALO HUNTERS; CBS, 1952)---Chester (Parley Baer) and Matt (William Conrad) fear Arapaho tribesmen have stirred uncharacteristic trouble, after Chester finds two dead from among one man's buffalo hunting crew . . . but their horses and guns are left behind, and a prize albino buffalo is missing, leading Matt to suspect the killers weren't Indians. Mr. Biggs: Stan Waxman. Additional cast: John Dehner, Larry Dopkin, Sam Edwards, Julian Byatt, Tom Holland, Mary Lansing. Announcer: Roy Royan. Writer: Joel Murcott.

PREMIERING TODAY

1891---Alois Havrilla (annoucner: The Campbell Soup Orchestra), Pressov, Hungary.
1896---Hope Summer (actress: Girl Alone), Mattoon, Illinois.
1897---George Szell (conductor: NBC Symphony Orchestra; New York Philharmonic), Budapest.
1903---Glen Gray (bandleader, with the Casa Loma Orchestra: Camel Caravan), Metamora, Illinois; Joseph Kahn (pianist: The Voice of Firestone; The Story of Mary Marlin), New York City.
1908---Boris Goldovsky (commentator: Metropolitan Opera), Moscow; Clarence Straight (actor: Those We Love), unknown.
1909---Jessica Tandy (as Jessie Alice Tandy; actress: The Marriage), London.
1911---Stanley Unwin (actor/sound/commentator: Beyond Our Ken), Pretoria.
1913---Tom Collins (actor: Chandu the Magician; One Man's Family), Chicago.
1919---Ray Scherer (NBC News: News of the World), Fort Wayne, Indiana.
1924---Dolores Gray (singer/actress: The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street; The Jack Smith Show), Chicago.
1926---Dick Williams (singer, with the Williams Brothers: The Bing Crosby Show), Wall Lake, Iowa.