Radio America

Riding out of the sunny back lots of Hollywood, All Star Western Theatre delivered Republic Western-style entertainment with chuck wagon sized doses of fine music, broad humor and guest appearances by the best of the West. The music was provided by the Riders of the Purple Sage, fronted by Foy Willing, with the help of Kenny Driver, Al Sloey and Johnny Paul. The group appeared on various shows on radio, including the Andrews Sisters' Eight-to-the-Bar Ranch in '44-'45, and the Roy Rogers Show during the 1946 - 48 period. Western swing was big in those days, and this show has some really fine renditions in that great American music style.

These half-hours of drama and sometimes comedy were often very exciting and suspenseful. The cast was very good New York veterans of radio and stage, including Jan Minor and John Larkin as featured performers. The director, Harry W. Junkin, also served as the show's host and narrator. Each week the show introduced a new story, often written by well-known writers of fantasy and suspense such as Ray Bradbury, Cornell Woolrich, Agatha Christie and Paul Gallico. They were dramatized with a full orchestral soundtrack and excellent sound effects.

Unknown to many, including me, Jimmy Stewart loved radio drama and appeared in almost as many radio broadcasts as he did movies and stage plays. His radio career spanned over seven decades, starting with Yellow Jack in 1934 and ending with his last performance in a Thanksgiving special, which aired on November 22, 1990. He was best known for his appearances in the Lux Radio Theatre, which first broadcast in 1937. Lux Radio Theatre, a CBS showcase, played to a weekly audience of over 36 million people. Hosted by Cecil B. DeMille, programs consisted of feature length films compressed into one-hour radio plays. Stewart starred in such classics as Destry Rides Again, It’s a Wonderful Life, Winchester ’73 and the Philadelphia Story, to name a few.

Many fine actors of the British stage and screen were involved, such as Robert Morley, Harry Andrews, Muriel Forbes and Daphne Maddox. Music was by the renown British organist and arranger, Sidney Torch, and featured in some shows the Campbell Singers. Harry Alan Towers produced and directed. The show was a Towers of London syndicated show, and was broadcast in America in various markets through the years, including WRVR-FM, Riverside Radio, in New York City. A fine addition to the dramatic radio library, done in the grand manner of English dramatic excellence

Chet Lauck and Norris Goff were the creators of Lum & Abner. Chet was born on February 2, 1902 in Aleene, Arkansas and Norris was born in Cove, Arkansas on May 30, 1906. Both had moved to Mena with their families by 1911. They lived only a few blocks apart and grew up together. They were both very talented comedians and by 1931 had become local "Amos and Andy" imitators. They were scheduled to perform on a local charity program in Hot Springs, Arkansas on April 26, 1931. At the last minute they decided to appear as two old-time Arkansas philosophers with the names "Lum Eddards" and "Abner Peabody". Thus was formed a team that was to delight radio audiences for the next 25 years. Just three months later on July 27, 1931 "Lum & Abner" made its' national radio debut on the NBC radio network from Chicago with the Quaker Oats Company as their first sponsor. This was to continue, with different sponsors and networks, for nearly 25 years. They also performed their routines on vaudeville stages throughout the

These famous words, and the sinister laugh that followed, have become part of Americana, forever embodying the special magic of radio drama and mystery. The adventures of The Shadow have thrilled millions for more than 70 years, demonstrating that "crime does not pay" on radio and movie screens, in pulp magazines, Big Little Books, comics and hardcover and paperback books

Jeff Chandler played the original "Chad Remington" Reed Hadley later replaced Chandler and is shows in the film THE HALF BREED (1952) Chad Remington was a two fisted lawyer in the town of Dos Rios. Chad's sidekick, Cherokee O'Bannon, played by Wade Crosby, who performed his role in a W.C. Fields dialect. Mr. Chandler remained in the lead role for the first 23 shows and was replaced by Reed Hadley who played Remington until the end of the series.

One of the most respected shows of early radio, Death Valley Days was well written and endured throughout the decades. Ruth Cornwall Woodman was asked to write the show in 1930. Though she knew nothing of the desert and its people, New York Vassar graduate Ruth undertook the project with enthusiasm. When the show began in 1930, many of the areas she was writing about were still quite rough in nature, with many roads but mostly mere trails. Each year Ruth would spend several months traveling through the desert to explore ghosttowns, saloons, backpacking just outside Death Valley, and interviewing old timers. She would talk to gas station men, bartenders, and small town newspapermen. She did her research well, pouring over old newspapers and visiting old west museums, scouring the west for anything that would inspire a good story. The result of all this hard work was rewarding - a highly successful show that lasted over two decades, and later became a television show with Ronald Regan as the host. Death Valley

During a period that was to last twenty years, the Nelson Family--Ozzie, his wife Harriet Hilliard, and their two sons, David and Ricky--were regarded as the preeminent icon of the ideal nuclear family. From his bandleading days of the mid-1930s through his reign, a generation later, as the bumbling patriarch of television's best known family, Ozzie Nelson was able to conflate, reduce and transform the professional activities of his family's personal reality into a fictional domestic banality.

The Goldbergs is a situation-comedy series about a family living, learning, and loving in a Jewish ghetto of the Bronx, to some it's an East Coast variety of One Man's Family. It is considered to be one of the first popular radio comedies based on the lives of a working-class Jewish family. Gertrude Berg wrote The Goldbergs, as a loosely based autobiography on her life as a wife and mother in New York. To gain insight into the tribulations of her characters Berg researched incognito in the Bronx among the tenements and poor conditions of family in poverty. In 1951, The Goldbergs became a feature film with the production of Molly.

These were fact-based dramas that told the story of FBI cases from the agent's point of view. Producer/director Jerry Devine had previous radio experience on the show Mr. District Attorney, which was a solid and responsible pro-law enforcement radio drama. J. Edgar Hoover himself endorsed Devine's development of the new show, and obviously the FBI's story would be told in the best possible way. Divine worked with the FBI in Washington, DC, planning programs to highlight the latest developments in criminal laboratory and surveillance techniques worked in to solid, exciting radio shows.

Guiding Light is the longest running drama of all time. It began as a 15 minute radio show in 1937, running until 1947. It then ran through its metamorphosis into a television drama until 1956. In 1952, it became a television show and the radio and television programs ran concurrently for some time. Today this television show is still running. It was originally sponsored by Procter and Gamble, who put the “soap” in soap opera.

Duffy's Tavern was first heard in 1940 and became a regular feature. It was hailed from the start by critics and whole neighborhoods of working-class listeners alike…a duo that doesn't often see eye-to-eye! Duffy's Tavern was a place on Third Avenue and 23rd St. in New York City, where the "elite meet to eat, Duffy ain't here, Archie the Manager speakin'…" Anyone who loved old time radio probably knows that phone patter by heart! Ed Gardner played Archie, the manager of Duffy's Tavern, and he was as "real" sounding as any character on radio, as he had grown up in the Big Apple. His use and abuse of language was "exempulary" - the same type of local "parlese" that made The Damon Runyan Theater a favorite with New Yorkers everywhere. Gardner was a theatrical veteran, whose wife, Shirley Booth, well-known stage and screen actress, began on the show with him.

The Captain Midnight radio series had its beginnings in 1938 on Chicago radio station, WGN. Created by Robert M. Burtt and Willfred G. Moore, the creators of The Air Adventures of Jimmie Allen, the series was sponsored by the Skelly Oil Company. In the beginning, "Captain Midnight" was simply an undercover name for Jim "Red" Albright, who regularly piloted cargo and passengers. As an undercover agent, Albright was trying to gather information on a gang of criminals. However, by the end of the first run, ending in a summer hiatus, the Captain Midnight persona was beginning to stick and many knew him only by that name. Captain Midnight was constantly trying to stop the plans of the evil Ivan Shark and his daughter Fury. Shark remained as Midnight's evil nemesis throughout the length of the radio run. Captain Midnight was helped in his efforts by Chuck Ramsey and Patsy Donovan (later, Joyce Ryan) who were members of his Secret Squadron. In the national versions, there was also Ichabod Mudd, Midnight's mechanic.

The Avengers burst in the door of spy and super-hero adventure drama on South African radio in 1971, starring Donald Monat as John Steed, and Diane Appleby as the wonderful Emma Peel. It was based on the fine British TV series, which was very popular from the start in the UK, and is an excellent example of radio's adaptation of the television medium...as it had done with movies all along.

During the mid-1930's, radio began to displace movies as the most popular entertainment medium. After all, it was free, it didn't require going out, and a much broader array of show formats was available, most of which did not require the time commitment of the audience that movies required. This boom in popularity saw a scramble to secure available talent for radio shows, and big-name Hollywood movie personalities were a prime target. As luck would have it, the Marx Brothers were on the downhill side of their cinematic careers and were looking to branch out into other areas. Groucho especially sought out radio, which gave him opportunity to exercise his natural wit. Chico pursued a career as a band leader, which landed him occasional air time, as the broadcasting of big band music was a popular use of the airwaves. For obvious reasons, Harpo was at a handicap in this medium, but still found an occasional guest spot. I have attempted here to document several radio appearances by each of the three brothers; ho

This series was based upon a character developed in over 40 motion pictures of the 1930s and 1940s starring Warner Oland and Sidney Toler and Roland Winters. It was also a sequel to several radio series. The films and radio series were based upon a character created in novels of Earl Derr Biggers, but were said to have been loosely based on the life of Honolulu police detective named Chang Apana.

One of the finest NBC drama programs offered. Broadcasts were heard between 07/03/48 to 01/01/50. It began with the tensioned filled "Long Distance." Week after week the drama continued. Top writers were used such as Paul Gallico, Cornell Woolrich, Ray Bradbury and Stephen Vincent Benet. Heard in these New York productions were Jan Miner and John Larkin. Bob Warren and Fred Collins announced. This is one of the great series to collect. Try a few, you'll be back for more.

One of the most beloved and popular radio programs in the history of radio is probably the one that is least spoken of because of its controversial connotations in today's society. And an additional irony is that the series was a comedy, a genre that most people think of as harmless. The series began as Sam n' Henry, but was later changed to Amos n' Andy. What gives the series its "off limits" tag is that the two characters are based on the minstrel blackface comedians that were so prevelant in Vaudeville.