Thursday, December 6, 2018

25 More Days of Old Time Radio Christmas - Day 5: Gracie Works Retail on Maxwell House Coffee Time (1946)



Maxwell House Coffee Sign at Night (Jacksonville, Florida - July 29, 2016)
Maxwell House Coffee Sign at Night (Jacksonville, Florida - July 29, 2016)
OK...I am only a few days into this advent calendar of sorts and am already behind.  I will catch up next week - I promise.  Today, I was inspired by something I heard on the radio on the way home.  And it was on XM, but it was not on Greg Bell's Old time radio channel (#148).  Instead, it was Robert Preston on Broadway.  He was singing a hit from The Music Man.  I had never thought that much about that musical until I saw it this summer at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario (Canada) and developed a whole new appreciation for the music of Meredith Willson.  So with that in mind, I think I will go BACK to Burns and Allen so I can feature a program with Meredith Willson and his Orchestra.  

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. 

So lets go to December 19, 1946 to the Maxwell House Coffee Time. The two big coffees of the day each had their own program on radio.  Maxwell House had Burns and Allen.  Chase and Sanborn had Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.  But only Maxwell House is good to the last drop....  Gracie was trying to earn her own money to pay for Christmas gifts.  So off she went to a local department store to get that job one week before Christmas.  They had very strict requirements to get the job.  You did not need to work in a store before - but just walk past one.  She had that experience and got the job!  So they send her up to housewares - and does as well as you would expect.  In addition to George Burns and Gracie Allen are a great supporting cast including announcer Bill Goodwin, Sandra Gould, Jim Backus (or Mr. Magoo fame), Mel Blanc, and Gale Gordon.  And, of course, the show features music from Meredith Willson and his Orchestra.  I hope you enjoy this great Christmas episode and your shopping is less...well, comical.  I'll catch up soon.

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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