October 30, 2008
Happy Halloween!
In keeping with the season, we offer program 14 of the series “Favorite Story”, an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”.
“Favorite Story” was syndicated by Ziv in the late 1940s and each week’s story was chosen by prominent personalities of the day and was hosted by Ronald Colman. Believe it or not, “Frankenstein” was chosen by Fred Allen as his favorite story.
The program was transferred from an original red vinyl set of Ziv transcriptions.
Well, we unfortunately come to the end of our fun little series “The Two Daffodils”, recorded and syndicated by the Continental Broadcasting Corporation circa 1930 and featuring comedians Ken Gillum and Duke Atterbury.
In episode 3084a, Ken sings a snappy little tune about a ladies man and Little Oscar stops by for a visit. The show was transferred from an original Continental Broadcasting laminated transcription pressed by Columbia, matrix 3084a.
By the way - if anyone comes up with some radio logs or other documentation that shows the proper name of this show (credited as “Gillum & Duke Atterbury” on the label), please let me know and I’ll update the posts.
Note: This program contains racial stereotyping themes that may be offensive to some listeners.
Continuing with our short run of episodes from the adventure series, “Jungle Jim”, we take a listen to program 13 in the series, originally broadcast January 25, 1936 and syndicated by Hearst newspapers to promote their Sunday funny pages.
In this episode, Jim continues battling with the nefarious Bat Woman. Hoping to convince her to free Rev. Chalmers, Jim gives himself up to the Bat Woman. She seems to be enjoying the scene with her assistant and the bullwhip a bit too much…
The show was transferred from an original Victrolac transcription pressed by RCA, matrix number MS 98709.
Can a woman doctor be a woman … and a doctor … at the same time?
That’s the question asked by “Joyce Jordan, MD”, a daily soap that ran on NBC in the 1940s. In this post, a previously lost episode of the series, originally broadcast July 3, 1947.
As we join our story in progress with this July 3, 1947 episode, sponsored by Dreft and their snappy little jingle, there are several problems in store for our lead character. An old enemy is headed for New York to work for a newspaper to take her revenge on Joyce. Joyce’s foster son is on the brink of running away from home. But, the most immediate problem is that the mother of Joyce’s boyfriend, Dawson, is plotting to keep them apart and marry the poor boy to some nurse that is Joyce’s arch-enemy at the hospital. Dawson has been recuperating from some kind of accident that has him paralyzed and Joyce hopes to help him walk again. But, Dawson’s mother has arranged to take him away from the hospital. What will Joyce do to help Dawson?
Our fifteen minutes of heartbreak, tears, and grouchy female doctor sidekick that sound like they have a three pack a day smoking habit was transferred from an original Audiodisc acetate; the show was recorded by an unknown local station from their NBC network line.
Sorry – there’s no picture of the label on this one since it’s an acetate with just some grease pencil notations of the name of the show and the date.
What does it mean to be married to one of the richest and most attractive men in the world?
Well, we probably won’t be asking Melinda Gates about that, but we might get some insight from “Laura Lawton”, a soap opera broadcast on NBC in the 1940s. The series looks at “the conflict between love and riches in a world everyone dreams of – but where so few dreams come true”.
Sounds like a reality tv show on MTV, doesn’t it?
From September 3rd, 1947, we offer this episode, brought to you by Bab-O Cleanser, where Gail deals with her sister-in-law, who is putting a plan in motion that may mean Gail’s downfall. And, yes, all the scheming and high drama going on with these people does sound much like a modern day reality tv show. They should all be voted off the island.
The show was transferred from an original Audiodisc acetate recorded from the NBC network line by an unknown local station, probably for time-shifting purposes during Daylight Savings Time or a similar purpose. (There’s no label to post a picture of this time around.)
October 22, 2008
A recent find for my collection is an original acetate containing six episodes of “Falstaff’s Fables”, a program originally broadcast on ABC weekdays in 1950. The series appears be previously “lost” - I haven’t found mention of any surviving episodes floating around.
The five minute show, sponsored by Milky Way candy bars, features actor Alan Reed as poet Falstaff Openshaw, a character originally created for the “Fred Allen Show”. The program also includes Reed’s son, Alan Reed, Jr. D. H. Johnston wrote the programs and Dick Teufeld was the announcer.
You might recognize Alan Reed’s voice. He was heard on several classic old time radio programs, playing Chester Riley’s boss on “The Life of Riley” and a recurring character on “Life with Luigi”. Younger listeners might recognize Reed as the voice of Fred Flintstone.
In Program 46 of the series, probably broadcast in November 1950, Falstaff and the cast tell a story that parodies “Space Patrol”. The show was transferred from an original ABC radio acetate.
I’ll be posting more shows in the series in coming weeks.
The “Dennis Day Show” was broadcast in the late 1940s on NBC and sponsored by Colgate. Day, a singer and comedian that was a regular on “The Jack Benny Show”, got his own sitcom where he played a down on his luck clerk in a drugstore. The show is sometimes referred to as “A Day in the Life of Dennis Day”.
There are several episodes of this series that are lost, but I’ve been lucky enough to dig up one that hasn’t been publicly heard since it originally aired. In this episode, broadcast January 8, 1947 from 9:00 to 9:30 pm, the government accidentally sends Dennis a tax refund of $100,000. Dennis sings “My Pretty Girl” and “The Anniversary Song”.
There’s also a very special guest cameo about half-way through the show - I won’t spoil the surprise and just let you listen to find out who it is.
The program was transferred from an original NBC reference acetate numbered R-28131.
Note: This program contains racial stereotypes that may be offensive to some listeners.
In this post, we start a short run of four programs in the series “Jungle Jim” from early 1936. The program was based on an adventure comic first published in 1934 in Hearst newspapers. The radio show was an early attempt at “cross promotion”, with each week’s radio episode reflecting the content of the Sunday comic running in the newspaper.
In the storyline, Jungle Jim goes up against the nefarious “Bat Woman” who has captured the Reverend Chalmers. Will Jim rescue the Reverand from the evil clutches of the Bat Woman? Will Chalmers be able to withstand the Bat Woman’s methods of torture? Will the Reverend’s daughter find more ways to give us exposition about the story? Listen and find out…
I purchased these four discs from an antiques dealer. They were found in the attic of an old hardware store, still in the original shipping packages where they were sent by railroad to a station in Arizona. One even included the special “Shadowgraph” needle used to play these early vinyl discs.
Program 12 in the series was released for broadcast on January 18, 1936. The show was transferred from original RCA Victrolac transcription, matrix MS98584.
“Hancock’s Half Hour” was an innovative and influential British comedy series broadcast from 1954 through 1961 on BBC radio. The show was one of the earliest British radio comedy series to take the form of a sitcom, rather than the variety show format that was common on the BBC at the time. The introduction of the format was probably influenced by the availability of network comedy series from the US that could be heard over Armed Forces Radio in Europe during and after World War II; of course, the sitcom had been a mainstay of American radio for several years.
“The Bequest” was program 17 in the series as it was syndicated by the BBC in the US and Canada in the late 1950s. In the series, Hancock plays a down-on-his-luck comedian and, in this episode, he discovers that he’s inherited a large sum of money on the condition that he gets married. The program originally ran on the BBC in the 3rd Series of “Hancock’s Half Hour”, recorded October 30, 1955 and broadcast on November 2, 1955.
You can find out more about “Hancock’s Half Hour” and Tony Hancock’s work at this fan site. And if you’re wondering about Sabrina, mentioned near the end of the show, you can find out more about her at Wikipedia.
The program was transferred to digital directly from a set of BBC Transcription Service discs, matrix numbers 16PH 87858 and 16PH87859.
October 10, 2008
“Komedy Kingdom” was produced by Transco in 1937 using many of the performers and material used on “The Blue Monday Jamboree”, a program running locally on KFRC in San Francisco, and later on CBS and Mutual-Don Lee, from 1927 to the mid-1930s.
In Program 1 in the series, titled “Royalty”, comedian Joe Blow tries out for the position of Court Jester. The Rhythmettes perform “The Queen Was in the Parlor,” Broader and MacDonald sing “The India Rubber Man,” and “Love is King” is sung by Tony Romano.
The First Generation Radio Archives has assembled a wonderful restored collection of the programs and has a detailed web page about the series. This MP3 was transferred directly from a blue shellac Transco disc from my collection. It hasn’t gone through the CEDAR audio restoration process done on the First Generation Radio Archives set - so, if you enjoy the series, I encourage you to buy the CD set they’re offering of the series.
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