Tuesday, December 2, 2014

25 Days of Old Time Radio Christmas: Day 2 - The Saint is No Santa Claus (Vincent Price)

Working on sending out one blog entry each day in December to showcase great Old Time Radio for the Christmas season.  Here is day #2 (and they said it wouldn't last)

If you have Sirius/XM, you can listen to Greg Bell's Old time radio channel (#82). He has a number of great programs available throughout the month of December on his great show.  You can also get a large number of these programs at a variety or resources on the web. One place to find these shows is the 500 OTR Christmas Shows from the Internet Archive. This is a great resources for many of these wonderful radio shows!

My Antique Radio
My 1937 Detrola Radio - Made in Detroit!

The funny thing about The Saint is that there are often two or three names for each episode.  So the Christmas episode has been called "Santa Claus is No Saint," "Christmas Eve Problems" and "Nineteen Santa Clauses."  And while there might be some confusion about the title, there is none when it comes to the best actor to play Simon Templar.  That distinction goes to Vincent Price, who had a great career on radio as well as television and the movies.  He brought a wit and charm to the role that was not captured by any of the other radio actors who played the part.

Price is fantastic in the "Santa Claus is No Saint" episode.  In the episode, Simon starts off getting ready for a charity event where he will dress up like Santa.  But in the process, he gets confused with a hood named "Fats" Boylan.  But as you might have guessed, Fats is anything but.  So what did this skinny crook hide in his Santa suit.  Listen to the episode and find out.  Here is a link right to the episode:
Here are some links to programs relating to The Saint on Radio and the work of Leslie Charteris:

25 Days of Old Time Radio Christmas:

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