Blog #1

I've decided to finally break down and do a little blogging. Like most bloggers, I have precious little of note to actually say, of course. So, I'm gonna simply talk about things I enjoy. This week's topic: Old Time Radio!

If you're in the United States, I'll bet that most of you young whippersnappers out there probably don't even remember when AM radio wasn't primarily all talk and when FM radio wasn't all crappy pop music and whatever rap/hip-hop is supposed to be. I think everyone knows that before TV, radio was the way most people got their entertainment. From around 1928 to 1950, radio was the major medium for households everywhere. It also launched the second phase of celebrity (the first being the advent of Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and their fellow silent screen stars). People would stop everything they're doing and tune in to a Bing Crosby broadcast; movie theatres would halt the picture so the patrons would stay to hear the adventures of Amos 'N Andy over the sound system. If there would've been Q-Ratings back then, some of these performers and shows would leave modern shows softly weeping in the corner over their massive popularity.

I've been a fan of the Old Time Radio (OTR) genre since I happened to latch onto a double-album of the original broadcast of the legendary "War of the Worlds" show with Orson Welles. That is the nigh-mythical show that showed how hapless and non-attentive a good portion of the general public was even back then. Quite a few folks thought that, for a brief time, we were under attack by Martians. I have to say that when I first listened to the opening half of the show, I could understand why. The performance was riveting ... I still can "see" Carl Philips being turned into toasted reporter by the aliens' heat-ray mirror. That lone radio operator at the end of the live portion was haunting. After the break, Orson Welles' Professor Pierson began his walk into a well-written adaptation of the second half of the classic novel. It didn't have the same gravitas as the "live" half, but it was still very good.

Since then, I've been grabbing OTR shows wherever I could find them, usually on cassette tape. With the advent of the internet and CD/DVD, it's been much easier to assemble near-complete runs and storylines on many of the popular shows of yesteryear. We all have our favorite shows and performers, and here's a few of mine:

• "The Mirth Parade." The "what" you say? Well, the Mirth Parade was a syndicated show that was recorded back in 1933 and lasted (to my knowledge) for only 26 weeks. It was a fifteen-minute show (including locally-added commercials) that featured comic skits and music on a single subject, like farmers, toreadors, or alarm clocks. Bob Burns, the original Arkansas Traveler and Bill Comstock (portraying Tizzie Lish) played numerous characters. The show was hosted by Don Wilson, who would later gain fame (and weight) as Jack Benny's announcer on his radio and television shows. It's a very simple yet very funny show. The quality of the writing and the ad-libs by the cast are excellent.
  
• Fred Allen. The esteemed Mr. Allen is probably best remembered for his long-running and popular feud with Jack Benny, one of the most memorable events of the golden age of radio. Fred was one of the more erudite and intelligent comedians of the era, and tried his best not to talk down to his audience. This, of course, impaired his popularity, which never reached the heights of Benny or Abbott and Costello. His shows were also quite topical and haven't aged well for that reason. But intelligent humor is timeless and Fred Allen's shines through on every broadcast.
  
• "Dimension X/X Minus Zero." "Dimension X" was a half-hour drama devoted to adaptations of science fiction tales of leading authors of the day. The works of Jack Williamson, Isaac Asimov, Frederick Pohl, Robert Heinlein and even Stephen Vincent Benet were featured. The best known show is probably "Mars is Heaven", which made the rounds of the cassette tape dealers in the seventies and eighties. My particular favorite is "Knock", in which the narrator describes the story as being only two sentences long ("The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door."). "X Minus One" continued along the same lines, using many of the same scripts for stories. "Cold Equations" is one of the highlights of that series for me, as a pilot on a rescue mission has to make an unthinkable decision about a stowaway.
  
• Bob and Ray. Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding were the radio comedy team by which all others should be measured. The vocal duo had a plethora of recurring characters, such as man-on-the-street reporter Wally Ballou, Lawrence Fechtenberger, Interstellar Officer Candidate, Mr. Science (explosively predating Mr. Wizard), all of which used a variety of off-the-cuff humor that you don't see often today. Sure, every episode of Mr. Science ended up with a massive explosion, but it was hilarious getting to it. Listening to Bob and Ray is like watching SCTV or the good years of Saturday Night Live.
  
• "Lum and Abner." Don't ask me why, but I love this show. It's basically about a couple of hicks who run a store in Arkansas, or at least that's the way you'd probably find it described in one-line in a book. But it's really far more - the 15-minute installments get truly engrossing after a while, and there's so many available out there that you can really get a feel for the inhabitants of the town. Think of "The Beverly Hillbillies" if Jed hadn't been shootin' for some food, and then double the IQs of the writers. Think comedic soap-opera. Or don't bother to think and listen to a couple. I recommend the 1935 season, the June 4th, 1942 episode and any of the Christmas shows.
  
• Jack Webb. I'm sure everyone's watched "Dragnet" on TV, especially for the episodes with the freaked-out kids on drugs that are so stupid and so hilarious. "Dragnet", while always being a proponent of law and order, was once a fine noir detective show, and was definitely as noir as you can get on radio. But the reason I put Jack Webb on this list of favorites wasn't for that show. It was because of his comedy work. Yes, Jack Webb, the stoic, stone-faced Joe Friday, did at one time smile, laugh, giggle and make us do the same with the best of them. Unfortunately, there aren't many of those particular shows existing anymore, but there are two episodes of "The Jack Webb Show" in circulation, as well as one episode of "The Little Man Inside." His eponymous show was more of a surreal skit show along the lines of Stan Freberg (in fact, when I first heard it, I thought it was the Freberg show, with someone doing a fantastic Joe Friday-impersonation). The second show featured Jack as the voice inside the head of an average white-collar working man that revealed the inner monologue we all have as we go through our daily activities, being sardonic and almost poignant at times.
  

If you're interested in any of these programs, check out archive.org or otrrlibrary.org to find some of these old shows to download and listen to at your leisure. Believe me, it's worth the time.

Okay, that's all I can really milk out of this right now. I'll think of something to write later when I get bored.