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Category : Entertainment | Tags : otr comedy drama variety music oldtimeradio vintage historical |
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Hope you continue enjoying the shows!
In this post, we feature a little heard 1940s comedy series, “The Joan Davis Show” also known as “Joanie’s Tea Room”.
According to an article on Joan Davis from Wikipedia, “Joanie’s Tea Room” ran on CBS from 1945 to 1947 and was later called “Joan Davis Time”. Davis’s career extended from vaudeville, films and radio to television, but the comedienne is probably best remembered today for her 50s television series, “I Married Joan”.
In program 23 of the series as broadcast on the Armed Forces Radio Service, and originally heard on CBS on February 11, 1946, the gang at the Tearoom plots to throw a surprise birthday party for Joan. The show features announcer Harry Von Zell, songs by Andy Russell, Paul Weston and His Orchestra, regular cast members Verna Felton and Shirley Mitchell and guest Jack Carson. This appears to be a uncirculated episode of the series among otr collectors.
The program was transferred from an original vinyl AFRS transcription disc.
Updated 3/29/09 - Corrected “Feldon” to “Felton”.
Standard Podcasts [ 25:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (202)This week, we start a brief run of a comedy variety series, “Hollywood’s Open House” that I’ll be featuring in the blog on occasion in coming weeks. Hosted by Jim Ameche, the program might remind you a bit of “The Big Show” - a mix of comedy, music and dramatic sketches.
Program 30 in the series features guests Jan Murray, Phil Regan and Adele Astaire. Regan and Astaire are heard in a little drama called “Interlude in Central Park”.
There’s a log of the series at otrsite.com that notes it was syndicated by NBC in 1947 and 48. However, I’ve found discs for series on NBC/RCA’s Orthacoustic label and, like this example, on the Columbia label. Our episode was transferred from an original vinyl Kermit Raymond Corporation syndication transcription pressed by Columbia, matrix numbers YTNY-5895 and YTNY-5896.
Standard Podcasts [ 28:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (179)“Melody Round-Up” was a quarter hour of country music broadcast on the Armed Forces Radio Service, drawing on programs from Gene Autry and others.
Program 963 in the series proves that you just never know what you’re going to find on an AFRS disc until you play it. This episode contains episodes of “Corn’s a Crackin’”, a live country music program broadcast from the Shrine Mosque in Springfield, Missouri. I haven’t run into any examples of “Corn’s a Crackin’” circulating among otr collectors and have only run into a handful of references to it on country music history sites. The series was probably related to the influential ABC television program “Ozark Jubilee“. I found an interview with country performer Roy Lanham where he notes that “Corn’s a Crackin’” was carried on ABC; I’m guessing the show dates from the early 1950s.
This episode includes Sally and Sue singing “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You”; a guitar and banjo duo, Dale and Benny”, performing “Bye, Bye Blues”; gospel quartet the Matthew Brothers singing “We’ll Stand the Storm”; a steel guitarist billed as “Junior” doing “Rose Room”; the Prairie Playboys singing “The Hills of Old Kentucky” and an unidentified fiddler player doing a tune called “Tom and Jerry”.
The program was transferred from an original AFRS vinyl transcription. The other side contains an show with musical excerpts from one or more episodes of “Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch”, btw.
Standard Podcasts [ 15:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (203)We start off our posts this week with another episode of “The Adventures of Frank Race”, starring Tom Collins and syndicated in the early 1950s.
Let’s give a listen to program 19 in our continuing series of two-fisted noir mysteries, where Race investigates “The Adventure of the Violent Virtuoso”. A woman comes to Race, asking him to find a stolen ring - a theft committed by a well-known actress who happens to be a former romantic interest of Race.
The show was transferred from an original Bruce Eells and Associates red vinyl transcription set, matrix numbers UR-147172 AU-6 and UR-147173 AU-6.
Standard Podcasts [ 27:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (117)I’m sure all of you have heard of the long-running soap opera of the classic otr era, “Ma Perkins“. Running on NBC and later CBS between 1933 and 1960, the show followed the trials and tribulations of Ma as she ran a lumber yard in Rushville Center and tried to keep up with her kids, Evy, Fay, and John. Virginia Payne played Ma Perkins for 27 years, starting in the role at age 23.
In this blog entry, we offer a very rare early episode of the series, dated by the radioGOLDINdex to August 1935. Faye and John have an argument at dinner and Faye announces her intention to seek her fortune in the big city. The show at this point in the run was sponsored by Oxydol and the long organ intro and outro were probably for the local announcer to insert the commercial.
The show is of special interest to those looking at the changing role of women over the years - Faye is representative of an increasing number young women at the time were looking at having careers and a life outside of being a homemaker. Ma Perkins herself was thrust into that role, managing her husband’s business after his death.
This is also the first metal base disc I’ve offered up on the blog. These were used for a period in the early 1930s before instantaneous lacquers became common - the cutting head actually embossed the groove into a thin sheet of bare aluminum. You can read something about the early days of recording radio broadcasts in two articles by otr experts Elizabeth Mcleod and Michael Biel here and here.
The origins of this disc are obscure. I think it may have been made for extension-spotting the show in Canada in conjunction with it’s broadcast in the US. According to this site, Proctor and Gamble was one of the biggest advertisers in Canada in the early 30s, buying up time on stations to broadcast “Ma Perkins” and other soaps, much to the annoyance of Canadian officials who wanted more home-grown content on the radio. This led to restrictions on the use of transcriptions and gave the CBC power to selectively run series live from American radio networks. So, this disc may have been used to broadcast “Ma Perkins” over one of those privately-owned Canadian stations.
Our show was transferred directly from an original uncoated aluminum transcription made by Mercury Recording Studios, Chicago.
Standard Podcasts [ 14:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (307)Next up, we’re going to hear a program about a man who leads a double life, using mysterious powers of the mind to fight crime with his attractive assistant. Sounds like “The Shadow”, doesn’t it?
Well, not exactly…
“The Avenger” was a series that ran for 26 episodes in the Fall of 1945, based on a Street and Smith Publications character that had its own magazine from 1939 to 1942. The character combined elements of the more well-known Shadow and Doc Savage, but never really caught on. A kind of “poor man’s Shadow” is how some have described the series.
In this entry, we hear “The Thoroughbred Murders”, program 14 in the series, originally broadcast September 7, 1945 and syndicated by Charles Michelson, Inc. In this show, the Avenger goes through Standard Radio Mystery Plot Number 37, investigating shady dealings and murder at a race track.
The mp3 was transferred directly from a set of Charles Michelson, Inc-WOR red vinyl transcriptions.
I’d like to give a special acknowledgment to David Kiner for this week’s mp3 transfer. I recently arranged a trade for a couple of transcriptions with him and he generously threw in a digital transfer of the discs, complete with CEDAR processing. Kiner sells high quality discs of old time radio material and you can find his cds at his ebay store.
Standard Podcasts [ 29:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (168)We’ve heard the long-running public service series, “Guest Star”, sponsored by the Treasury Department and promoting the sale of Savings Bonds, on the blog before. This week, we investigate an early entry in the series when they would book more famous actors and comedians for the show.
Program 18 of the series will be of interest to fans of the “Sherlock Holmes” radio series. Guest Basil Rathbone and series announcer Kenny Delmar stage a comedy sketch about a famous detective and his not-too-bright assistant. The show also features music by the Three Dollars with Denes Agay. If the incomplete log of the series at otrsite is accurate, then this show would have dated from circa 1947.
The program was transferred from an original transcription pressed by RCA, matrix number ND7-MM-5435.
Standard Podcasts [ 14:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (164)We continue our run of the Bruce Eells and Associates syndicated series, “The Adventures of Frank Race” with program 18 in the series, “The Adventure of the General’s Lady”. Tom Collins, as Frank Race, is having a quiet drink with his sidekick cab driver in a bar in Tunisia and winds up taking over a case from a fellow insurance investigator that has run into trouble. You know the drill - fisticuffs, broken glass, attractive mystery women.
The show was transferred from an original Bruce Eells and Associates red vinyl transcription set, matrix numbers UR-147192 AU-6 and UR-147193 AU-6.
Standard Podcasts [ 26:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (108)Winding up this week’s blog entries is “Let’s Go to Town”, a National Guard recruiting public service series from the 1950s. Each month, the show featured a different band and vocalist.
Betty Madigan and the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra are heard in program 86 of the series with announcer Corporal Eddie Carter. Songs include “Be a Little Darling” and “Over the Rainbow”, performed by Betty, and “Lover Come Back to Me and “Exactly Like You” from Sauter-Finegan.
The show was transferred from a vinyl transcription recorded by NBC and pressed by RCA, matrix F40720.
Standard Podcasts [ 14:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (209)
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