Corey's Ramblings: Old Time Radio Holidays

Showing posts with label Old Time Radio Holidays. Show all posts

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Happy New Year on Old Time Radio - The 32nd of December on Suspense (1958)

After working on highlighting Christmas Old Time Radio episodes for the month, I thought I would close out the year with a few focused on New Year's Eve. In the new year, I will try to get one entry out a week - maybe two. I am going to be working on some series with lighthouses and baseball as themes, probably something related to African-American History Month as well in February. As you all know by now, I do love listening to Old Time Radio and enjoy that it is available on XM 82 and many resources via the Internet.

This is an appropriate recording for New Year's Day 2015. Unless it really is the 32nd of December! To celebrate the new year, there is a great episode of Suspense that I would like to share. Suspense is one of the most famous radio series that ran from 1942 to 1962. It was one of the last regular series that was being broadcast in the early 1960s. In many ways, Suspense was the 'gold standard' of radio mysteries. It was self-described as "radio's outstanding theater of thrills, well calculated to keep you in SUSPENSE." I will be writing about this great series throughout the year.

CBS Columbia Square (Hollywood, Los Angeles, California) - October 31, 2013

Columbia Square (Hollywood, California)

The Home of CBS Radio in the Golden Age (taken in October 2013)

The episode I want to share is "The Thirty-Second Of December." This was broadcast on Sunday December 28, 1958. Interestingly, that was the same day that the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts played The 1958 National Football League Championship Game at Yankee Stadium. It is long considered the "Greatest Game Ever Played" as Baltimore defeated New York in overtime, 23-17. But we are not talking about football today.

Anyway, "The Thirty-Second Of December" is a great episode from Suspense, featuring Frank Lovejoy, Norman Alden, Joan Banks, Barney Phillips, with Morris Lee Green & William Walker (writers) and William N. Robson (producer, director). Frank Lovejoy has been in a large number of episodes, including Suspense, Escape, many Norman Corwin productions, and his own series, Nightbeat (that I showcased here).

Frank Lovejoy plays Joe, a man in a tough situation with one day left to pay off a $1000 gambling debt to the mob. (According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Inflation Calculator - $1000 in 1958 would be $8,171 today - no small amount!) But anyway...Joe takes his wife's ring to a pawn shop. While getting money for it, he was distracted by a special watch. This watch had special powers, the ability to bend time. If you controlled time, then all of your problems would go away. Or will they? This is the lesson that Joe learns about the hard way.

Thirty-Second of December (originally aired December 28, 1958)

Here are some links to programs relating to Suspense:

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

New Year's Eve on Old Time Radio - Quiet, Please & Rain on New Year's Eve (1947)

After working on highlighting Christmas Old Time Radio episodes for the month, I thought I would close out the year with a few focused on New Year's Eve. In the new year, I will try to get one entry out a week - maybe two. As you all know by now, I do love listening to Old Time Radio and enjoy that it is available on XM 82 and many resources via the Internet.

Rainy Day at the University of Michigan - 2008

Quiet, Please was the brain child of Wyllis Cooper, one of the most creative and leading artists on the air. Cooper and Arch Obler both worked on the great series Lights Out. Quiet, Please is one of the most creative and unique shows out there. It ran on the Mutual Network from 1947 to 1948, and then one year on the new ABC Network (the successor to the NBC Blue Network). Each episode starts with star Ernest Chappell saying "Quiet, Please." After a few seconds, he repeats that phrase. Then, a piano plays the second movement of Cesar Franck's Symphony in D Minor - the haunting music that serves as the theme of the show. Star Ernest Chappell then provides the introduction to the story, and seamlessly opens the story as the main character. There is a point when Chappell moves from monologue to dialogue - and with that, the lights turn on and the story begins.

It is really one of the most unique shows on the air. In so many radio series, we can anticipate where the character is going to go based on what we know of him or her. Be it The Saint, Boston Blackie, Marshall Dillon, or any other regular character, we have a sense of what they are like and what they might do. But when Ernest Chappell starts an episode of Quiet, Please, we have no idea where he is going to take us.

There have been many great episodes here. I want to write about the Camera Obscura, a great murder mystery and a seaside attraction that sees all. But the episode that relates to New Year's Day is Rain on New Year's Eve (December 29, 1947). This is a typical story in this series, and by that, I mean quiet excellent!

Chappell plays Ramsey, a screen writer working on a B-quality horror film that is still trying to find itself weeks after they were supposed to wrap up filming. This is how the story opens (from the Quietly Your site):

RAMSEY: It's raining again. Pretty near New Year's and it's raining again. Back east, it's probably snowing different places. Or maybe the moon's out, shining on the snow and people are saying, "Why, it's so bright out you could read a newspaper!" Ya can't read a newspaper by moonlight. Only the headlines. Maybe if you take your newspaper out in the yard and stand in the moonlight, you light find a headline with my name in it. It's been there before. Well, anyway, so there's moonlight. Here, there's rain -- like it was that other New Year's Eve. That's what the rain makes me think of, as if I ever thought of anything else. (MUSIC ... AN ACCENT, THEN IMITATES RAIN UNDER)

RAMSEY: Listen to the rain. [chuckles quietly] I was sitting in my office in the writers' court out there after we'd been on the picture for two or three months. Writing it, that is. They'd been shooting for about three weeks but I was still on the picture because we had a producer that couldn't make up his mind and the director was one of those guys, uh, sort of road company Hitchcock, you know? He makes the picture up as he goes along. Only there has to be a writer filed away someplace where he can find him when he runs out of ideas - which is not more than eleven times a day. So I'm dying. I go on the set and I find actors there I never heard of speaking lines I never wrote in scenes I couldn't figure out. Then the director'd get me in a corner and put the arm on me: [imitates the director] "This thing doesn't seem to quite gel, old man. You know?" And me and my little typewriter go to work to unscrew things while the overtime and the gin rummy games go right on. [chuckles] Great life, that.
Well, so I'm sittin' in my office and the rain is on the roof and the gas heater is frying my ankles while the draft from the window is giving my neck the deep freeze. Mary Lou, my secretary, comes in from her little cubbyhole next to mine.

So the screen writer needs to tweak his monster.  Maybe there is something that only happens on New Year's Eve.  Maybe there is something about the face of a monster.  Maybe the monster is in within.

Please enjoy this New Year's Eve treat from Quiet Please:

Here are some links to programs relating to Quiet, Please:

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

New Year's Eve on Old Time Radio - New Year's Nightmare (1947) on The Mysterious Traveler

After working on highlighting Christmas Old Time Radio episodes for the month, I thought I would close out the year with a few focused on New Year's Eve. In the new year, I will try to get one entry out a week - maybe two. As you all know by now, I do love listening to Old Time Radio and enjoy that it is available on XM 82 and many resources via the Internet.

Birds in the Snow (Saline, Michigan) - December 31, 2013

New Year's Eve is for the Birds
From last year on December 31, 2013 - Saline, Michigan

Here is an entry from The Mysterious Traveler, a great old time radio series focused on the supernatural. This series was broadcast on the Mutual Radio Network and recorded in the studios of WOR in New York City. The show was the brainchild of Mutual Network's Robert Arthur
and David Kogan. They also produced other series including Dark Destiny, The Strange Dr. Weird and The Sealed Book. The Strange Dr. Weird was a 15 minute show sponsored by Adam Hats, and often was a trimmed version of a story on one of their 30 minute series. The Sealed Book is one of my favorites - despite being pretty campy! I will definitely write about that later. The series was directed and co-produced by Sherman 'Jock' MacGregor.

Each episode of the Mysterious Traveler starts off with the following introduction:

This is the Mysterious Traveler inviting you to join me on another journey into the realm of the strange and the terrifying. I hope you will enjoy the trip! And that it will thrill you a little, and chill you a little. So settle back and get a good grip on your nerves - if you can!

The Mysterious Traveler was played by Maurice Tarplin, a very well known radio actor. Tarplin also played the often frustrated Inspector Faraday on Boston Blackie, one of my favorite Old Time Radio series. His wonderful voice sets the mood so perfectly on the show, though he is only on air in the beginning and end of each episode. In each of these episodes, strange and mysterious happenings take place. There would be an explanation offered, if there was one! The show was so popular that it even inspired a series of comic books that started in 1948 (that are also on the Internet Archive) and a magazine starting in 1951.

On January 5, 1947, The Mysterious Traveler offered a tale called New Year's Nightmare. Drinking on New Year's Eve is a right of passage. And sadly, drinking too much is also par for the course. So when Chris's fiance gives him back the engagement ring on New Year's Eve to protest his excessive drinking, he has nothing holding him back. So when he awakes in a hospital, the mystery is just starting. I hope your New Year's Eve celebration is less...adventurous!

New Year's Nightmare (January 5, 1947)

Here are some links to programs relating to The Mysterious Traveler:

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Casey's Thanksgiving - Old Time Radio (Casey, Crime Photographer)

On this week of Thanksgiving, I wanted to share a wonderful item that you can listen to as you are preparing your meal at home. I will be doing the same. If you have Sirius/XM, you can listen to Greg Bell's Old time radio channel (#82). He has a number of great Thanksgiving-themed programs available this week. You can also get a large number of these programs at a variety or resources on the web.

Columbia Square in Hollywood - the home of all CBS radio programs after World War II. This picture was taken on October 31, 2013.

On a lark, I decided to search the Internet Archive for shows that have Crime in the name. I stumbled across Casey, Crime Photographer, which is a cool series that follows...wait for it...a crime photographer. As a budding photographer myself, I love the idea of following a cameraman through the rough streets of the city. The series was sponsored by Anchor Hocking glass company of Lancaster, Ohio.

From another page on the Internet Archive, the series was described as follows: "Casey, whose first name was never revealed, was the major crime photographer at the fictional Morning Express newspaper. With the help of reporter Ann Williams, he tracked down criminals and solved numerous crimes on this popular mystery-adventure series. Often a picture snapped at a crime scene led Casey to play detective." The show went by many names over the years - including Flashgun Casey; Casey, Press Photographer; Crime Photographer; and Casey, Crime Photographer. The characters remained mostly the same, with Casey and his constant companion Ann Williams setting out to solve the mysteries that the police could not figure out. Their evenings would almost always end up at the Blue Note Tavern with its great bar keep - Ethelbert.

The voice talent was primarily Staats Cotsworth as Casey, Jan Miner as Ann Williams and John Gibson as Ethelbert the bartender. The two Thanksgiving Themed episodes are linked below. They include 1947's "After Turkey, The Bill" when an ex-con is framed for a robbery on Thanksgiving and 1948's "Holiday" when a reformed ex-con is forced to pull one last safe-cracking job. You can see a trend here. The series is often cited as an example of a second-rate series - but I generally like it. This is good radio detectives - not great! But, unlike the incident in Missouri this summer, Casey would never show up unprepared! He always had his equipment.

Here are additional links to Casey, Crime Photographer items on the web.

Here are links to other Thanksgiving themed shows available on the Internet Archive:

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Elgin Watch Company's Thanksgiving Specials (Old Time Radio)

Elgin Watch Company's Thanksgiving Specials (Old Time Radio)

On this week before Thanksgiving, I wanted to share a wonderful item that you can listen to as you are preparing your meal at home. I will be doing the same. If you have Sirius/XM, you can listen to Greg Bell's Old time radio channel (#82). He has a number of great Thanksgiving-themed programs available this week. You can also get a large number of these programs at a variety or resources on the web.

One of the really cool shows I recently discovered are the Elgin Seasonal Specials for Thanksgiving and Christmas in the 1940s. The shows were sponsored by the Elgin Watch Company of Elgin, Illinois. Starting in 1942 for the soldiers overseas, the Elgin Holiday Specials were two hour programs that featured the brightest stars in radio and the movies. Heard on these programs is Bing Crosby, Mario Landa, Jimmy Durante, Bob Hope and were all hosted by Don Ameche. These shows are a combination of songs, skits and other performances that capture the best of radio. The Internet Archives has five total shows (see the link below). Also, given that the program runs 2 hours, these are not commonly played on current radio programs like XM 82.

Here is a link right to the two Elgin Thanksgiving Holiday Shows on the Internet Archive:

Here are additional Thanksgiving themed shows available on the Internet Archive:

Thanksgiving and Christmas specials sponsored by the Elgin Watch Company via the Internet Archive.
100 OTR Thanksgiving Holiday Shows from the Internet Archive