Monday, December 3, 2018

25 More Days of Old Time Radio Christmas - Day 3: Looking for the Christmas Show Scripts with Gracie Allen and George Burns (1940)


238/365/1699 (February 4, 2013) - So much to read...

Looking for scripts - maybe they are in this pile (back from 2013)
So even though it is early in December, we can already feel the holidays taking over.  We have a great deal on our minds and are misplacing things.  Have a big party to setup for?  Dancing in the Nutcracker?  Putting on a holiday show on the radio and lose your scripts?  Any of these things are possible.  So that is the exact predicament that Gracie Allen and George Burns found themselves in this Christmas episode from 1940.  Even though I have been showcasing Christmas on the radio since 2014, I did not feature Burns and Allen until last year.  So no time like the present to jump in and grab another episode featuring these stars of the Golden Age of Radio.  There will be many opportunities to catch Christmas and holiday themed episodes from the Golden Age of Radio on the web and on Greg Bell's Old time radio channel (#148).  But these all have the joy of not needing anything other than a web connection to enjoy.  If you want to see all of my previous entries, please click here - OTR Christmas (or drop to the bottom of this message).

New York born George Burns was a struggling vaudeville comedian when teamed up with a San Francisco born Gracie Allen back in the twenties.  They would start off their career with Gracie being the straight man to George - but realized that they should flip their roles.  When Gracie became the one who got all the laughs, Burns and Allen became a pair of stars!  That stardom placed them on radio in the mid-1930s where they worked through the early 1950s on both CBS and NBC Programs.  Over the years, their program was sponsored by a number of products including White Owl cigars, Cambell's Tomato Juice, Campbell's Soup Presents, Grape Nuts cereal, Chesterfield cigarettes, Hormel and Spam, and maybe their most well known product connection - Maxwell House Coffee.  But today - we go back to one of their earliest episodes when they were sponsored by Campbell's Soup.

So lets go to December 23rd, 1940 to George Burns and Gracie Allen Show on NBC.  The show was sponsored by Spam (the food product from Hormel).  As the jingle goes - 'Spam. Oh boy! Spam what joy!"  The episode is typical Burns and Allen mayhem as they are getting ready to do their Christmas show when they realize that they are missing the scripts.  Gracie, in her exuberance to get packages out to the recipients, inadvertently mailed the scripts as well.  So off they go to the crowded Post Office to retrieve the scripts.  Not much of a plot, but lots of fun featuring Artie Shaw and His Orchestra and Señor Lee who was making lots of wise cracks along the way.  I hope your holiday starts out with shipments going to the right people!

Burns and Allen Show - December 23, 1940




Here are some links to programs relating to Burns and Allen:

25 More Days of Old Time Radio Christmas (from 2018) & Other Links
Another 25 Days of Old Time Radio Christmas (from 2017) 
25 Days of Old Time Radio Christmas (from 2016) 

25 Days of Old Time Radio Christmas (from 2015) & Other Links

25 Days of Old Time Radio Christmas (from 2014)
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