rand’s esoteric otr

Here we offer the very first performance of “Sorry, Wrong Number” with Agnes Moorehead from the CBS series “Suspense”, originally broadcast May 25, 1943.  This version is the one heard by our Armed Forces on AFRS in 1943 as program number 8 in the “Suspense” series.

I posted a later performance from the following year in a previous blog entry.  This first performance contains a “flub” at the end where the sound effects person makes a mistake and the actor who plays the killer gets mixed up.  The end of the show confused listeners and, the following week after many letters and phone calls, the producers of “Suspense” started the program with a special announcement explaining how the episode ended.

There are some MP3 files floating around that are labeled as “east coast” and “west coast” versions of the episode, with the “east coast” version containing the mistake and the “west coast” version done properly.  The “west coast” version is actually a fake - someone tacked on a correctly done ending from a performance done months later.  “Sorry, Wrong Number” was only presented once on May 25, 1943 on the network and it was not repeated at a special time for west coast listeners.

The show was transferred from an original AFRS vinyl pressing in nice condition.  Get a load of the AFRS announcer doing the opening with the echo chamber.

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Well, I’ve only got a couple of shows for you this week, but this one’s a doozy.

Direct for a set of Armed Forces Radio Service transcriptions, here’s a special ninety minute edition of “Command Performance” from May 29, 1946, celebrating the fourth anniversary of AFRS.

The show is a compilation of excerpts representing all of the major series produced especially for personnel in the Army, Navy and Marines during World War II.  The program, introduced by Bill Goodwin and hosted by Bob Hope is framed by a “letter” that is a kind of retrospective of major events in the War.

Hope opens the show with one his topical monologues.  Then, after setting up the show with the “letter”, we hear the following excerpts:

• “Downbeat” featuring a couple of tunes from drummer Ray Bauduc (who played with the Bob Crosby Orchestra)
• “Melody Roundup” with the Riders of the Purple Sage doing “New San Antonio Rose” and Abigail and Buddy performing a “hillbilly” version of “Begin the Beguine”
• “Showtime” with Janet Blair singing Cole Porter’s “I Love You”
• “Mail Call” where Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy do a routine on Dickins’s “Oliver Twist”, introduced by Bill Goodwin
• “GI Jive” hosted by GI Jill with the King Sisters singing “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano”
• “Jubilee” where the Slim Gaillard Trio perform the hit novelty tune, “Cement Mixer (Put-Ti Put-Ti)”
• a religions program with “Ave Maria” performed by the Bob Mitchell Boys Choir
• “GI Journal” with Kay Kyser joining Jerry Colonna as the Journal’s “star reporter”, then “copy girl” Linda Darnell and Mel Blanc in character as Private Sad Sack in an extended comedy sketch that includes “The Life of the Sad Sack”
• Fred MacMurray hosting a program reminiscing about the year 1935 where the King Sisters sing “I’ve Had My Moments”
• “Words With Music”, with Donald Crisp reading Thomas Hood’s “I Remember”
• “Command Performance” with Bill Goodwin, Bob Hope and Janet Blair in a parody of radio soap operas, “The Ups and Downs of Brenda Scuttlebutt, Girl Yo-Yo”; Fred MacMurray joins them for a sketch about an annoying little boy on the set of a Hollywood movie
• “Purple Heart Album” with Francis Langford singing “We’ll Be Waltzing Again”

If you’ve never listened to AFRS programming, which was produced especially for military personnel and not broadcast stateside, the show gives you a good idea of the range of shows that were a part of AFRS’s schedule alongside their rebroadcasts of material from the major networks.  It’s a really entertaining ninety minutes and an intriguing immersion into the popular songs, topical jokes and military culture of World War II.

The program was transferred from an original three-disc AFRS transcription set in near-mint condition.

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In this post, “Wet Saturday”, originally broadcast December 16, 1943 on CBS’s “Suspense”.  The episode is a very British black-humored story about a murdered curate and a cast of eccentrics who may have killed him.  The show stars Charles Laughton and also features character actor Hans Conreid trying out his best British accent.  This is the AFRS version of the show, distributed as number 30 in the AFRS “Suspense” series.

“Wet Saturday” reminds me a bit of one of Hitchcock’s lesser-known films, “The Trouble With Harry”.  There’s the whole premise of having a kind of “mixed up” murder, but also a kind of droll attitude about the killing that makes it seem like something rather bothersome and inconvenient.  According to the Goldin index, the story was performed on “Suspense” in 1942, 1947, and 1948 in addition to the 1943 version heard here.

The program was transferred from an original AFRS vinyl disc.  The AFRS opening announcer is our old friend Howard Duff and there’s a five minute classical music fill at the end of an unknown work conducted by Donald Vorhees.

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In this episode of the classic NBC science fiction series “X Minus One”, a group of human traders at a far planetary outpost deal with an alien population that can control the characteristics of their offspring.

“If You Was a Moklin” was originally broadcast on June 12, 1956; the version heard here is an excellent condition copy broadcast on the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service as program 77 in the “X Minus One” series.  It was transferred directly from a set of AFRTS vinyl transcriptions.

The episode was written by Murray Leinster and adapted for the series by Ernest Kinoy.  The program stars Joe Julian, Patricia Weil, Karl Weber and Ralph Camargo.

This really is “X Minus One” at its best - great little stories that focus on the characters and use just the right touch of humor with the sci-fi element as a backdrop and motivator of the plot.  It’s frustrating to me how the sci-fi genre has become centered on all kinds of quasi-technical gobbledygook or new age mysticism and quack philosophy in recent years, rather than using a sci-fi theme or setting to create good storytelling.

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See an update at the end of this post on this puzzling disc …

In this post, we take a look at an uncirculated episode of the adventure series “Rocky Jordan” which may be from a previously undocumented run of the series. Directly transferred from an AFRTS set of discs dating to June, 1956, it’s the episode “The Nile Runs High”, program 7 in the AFRTS run of “Rocky Jordan”, series IED-557.

“Rocky Jordan” was a mystery-adventure series set in Cairo running on CBS’s Pacific Network. The show started as a quarter hour serial broadcast five days a week in January, 1945 as “A Man Named Jordan”. By July, the show took on a half-hour format and ran for two years. The show returned to CBS in October 1948 as “Rocky Jordan”.

Jack Moyles played the title character for most of the run with George Raft taking over the part during the summer of 1951 through the end of the series run in June 1953. The First Generation Radio Archives offers a ten-cd set of “Rocky Jordan” shows transferred from original acetates and has an informative page about the series here and here.

This disc has me a bit puzzled. On the same AFRS discs is an episode of “X Minus One”, “If You Was a Moklin”, broadcast on June 12, 1956. (I’ll be posting the “X Minus One” episode soon.) The 1956 broadcast date would put the origin of the discs three years after the end of “Rocky Jordan”’s run on CBS, according to logs of the series and lists of existing episodes I’ve researched.

“The Nile Runs High” was performed on the series on September 18, 1949 and survives in a copy that includes ads for Del Monte and an orchestral score. This AFRS disc uses the same script, but an organ is used for the music. (The September, 1949 version of the show is available at archive.org.)

What’s really strange about the show is that there are no actor or other credits and it sounds like Rocky Jordan was being played by Jack Moyles (remember that George Raft was playing the part from 1951 through the end of the series in 1953). Also, sampling several episodes of the series at archives.org, I don’t find any that use this sparse production style with minimal sound effects and organ accompaniment like this show.

So, was AFRS re-running episodes of “Rocky Jordan” after it left the network and did Moyles play the part in later episodes, which would make this show from the 1953 period? Was this taken from an undocumented version of the show recorded for syndication or broadcast locally in 1956 after its CBS run?

Martin Grams, Jr. from the OTR mailing list suggested it might be a rehearsal recording since it features organ accompaniment and minimal sounds effects. I’d be curious to hear other discs in the AFRTS series if they turn up to see what they might contain to see if they’re similar in style.

Regardless of the origins, sit back and enjoy this uncirculated and rather mysterious episode of “Rocky Jordan” and please leave a comment on the blog if you have some ideas or information on where this episode may have came from.

Update, 7/6/08 –

Dee from the OTR mailing list notes that the “Directory of Armed Forces Radio Series” by Harry McKenzie lists the show as being broadcast in 1957; the series was a 22 episode run of shows previously broadcast on AFRS in 1949.

The Directory also lists the series with the correct number (557), but the disc I have has it as “IED-557″. The series should have had a END prefix - END was used for entertainment shows and IED was for information and education. (The flip side label lists the “X Minus One” program correctly as “END-483″.)

The show is still puzzling - it doesn’t match the production style of any of the circulating 1949 “Rocky Jordan” shows, but the cast and script sound the same as the 1949 version of the episode. So, is this a rehearsal recording?

Update, 7/8/08 –

See the comments for an in-depth comparison of this show to the original 1949 CBS network version and some possibilities on the show’s origins from Stewart Wright.

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Another fifteen minutes of great big band music by service bands from an original AFRS transcription disc. In this entry, Sgt Tommy Enos and his Orchestra present music by Marines from Camp Pendleton, California.

Songs in the show include “What is This Thing Called Love?”, “Dream”, “Piccolo Pete”, and “She’s Funny That Way”. Vocals are from Shorty Prior and Joan Estrata.

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“Yank Bandstand” was an AFRS series devoted to music service bands; well recorded and upbeat, they give a glimpse of lesser known bands and songs enjoyed by service men and women during World War II. In this episode, number 47 in the series, we hear Al Taylor and His Orchestra from the Army Grounds, Santa Barbara, California; the host is Shirley Musters.

Songs in the show include “I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love With Me”, “She’s My Pretty” with a vocal by Eddie Robinson, “The One I Love” with vocals by Jean Osborne, “Together”, and “The Trolly Song”.

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As if this blog weren’t esoteric enough, here’s a show that’s a bit different from the material I’ve usually posted here. It’s the Sept 16, 1944 episode of the series “Gilbert and Sullivan” with a presentation of “Yoeman of the Guard”. In the cast are Florence Aims, Mureal Wilson, Fred Hufsmith, Paul Reed, Celia Branz, Hugh Thompson, Veronica Wiggins. The orchestra is conducted by Joseph Stopak.

This show actually comes from an AFRS disc set from their series “Metropolitan Opera” and is program number 43 in their series of that title. The AFRS used the “Metropolitan Opera” series as a kind of “catch all” for opera performances and they would use broadcast recordings by other companies or from other opera radio series; I’ve run into another example in the series that is a broadcast recording by the San Francisco Opera.

“Gilbert and Sullivan” was a series broadcast on the Blue Network of operas by the duo. There are two other surviving shows from the series I’ve been able to find references for; one of “Iolanthe” and another of “The Gondoliers”, both broadcast in September 1944 and from AFRS transcriptions.

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On this blog and podcast, I’ve focused on presenting original transcription discs from my collection, most all of programs that are not in circulation among collectors or are very uncommon. Thanks to an estate auction on ebay, I’m pleased to offer a “world premiere” of sorts for the Web of an elusive and highly sought-after program.

Unheard publicly since September 30, 1943, we bring you Orson Welles starring in “The Lost Special” a “tale well calculated to keep in you … Suspense!”. Originally broadcast on the CBS radio network, but now lost, the version heard here was distributed by the Armed Forces Radio Service as program 24 in the “Suspense” series.

“The Lost Special” is based on a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story and concerns a train that mysteriously disappears. The story was also used on the series “Escape” on February 12, 1949, so it may seem familiar. (You can give it a listen here.) However, in the “Suspense” version, the story is told by the main character and framed as a broadcast by a condemned man that will reveal the identity of persons responsible for certain crimes.

The opening of the show is rather odd.  It sounds like Howard Duff who was a staff announcer at AFRS at the time and would do custom openings and closings for some shows like this.  However, Duff sounds a bit “out of it”, either bored after reading so many show openings one day or thinking this was a rehearsal instead of a real “take”.*

On the disc itself, someone made grease pencil marks just after the opening and just before the close of the show and there’s a typewritten note glued to the original sleeve:

29′30″ Programme 24 Pt. 1 & 2 SUSPENSE The Lost Special Pt. 1 Open at mark on yellow line and play to end. Pt. 2 Fade quickly at line after words “… tale of Suspense.” The Lost Special by Arthur Conan Doyle starring Orson Welles

The grease pencil mark near the opening is on the music cue just after the “Suspense” announcer says “… anything, however strange, that will hold our listeners in … Suspense!” Strange, since this cuts out the entire opening that sets up the “show within the show” format.

Orson Welles appeared in the series “Suspense” eight times between 1942 and 1944 in such classics as “The Hitchiker and “Donovan’s Brain”. One of Welles’s performances, “The Lost Special”, was thought to be one of about thirty-five “Suspense” programs missing out of over 900 broadcast during the run of the series.

Welles appeared on “Suspense” in a run of four episodes during September and October 1943. The others, including “The Most Dangerous Game”, “Philomel Cottage” and “Lazarus Walks” are available for download from archive.org, which has a collection of all of Welles’s other existing appearances on the show. (Included in this collection is a funny parody Welles did of “Donovan’s Brain” on his program “Orson Welles Radio Almanac”.)

If you’re a member of the otr mailing list, you’ve heard about my finding “The Lost Special” in an ebay auction a few days ago. If you’re wondering if I’m going to be selling the disc, I’m not. I collect for the enjoyment of the shows and discovering something new. The disc is a unique find that needs to find its way to an archives someday.

I’m offering “The Lost Special” as part of my podcast in an unrestored medium-quality MP3 that’s optimized for downloading. I’m investigating the best way to offer it to the OTR community on a CD or high quality .WAV file and to get the sound restored with more advanced tools than I have, so stayed tuned for more info.

Hope you enjoy the show. In the mean time, if you know of some old transcriptions scurried away somewhere, send me an email. You never know what might turn up in an old stack of records!

*Entry corrected, 6 May 08 - Inserted corrected info on Howard Duff. 

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In this post, “Suspense” from February 24, 1944, broadcast on AFRS as program 41, “Sorry, Wrong Number” starring Agnes Moorehead. “Sorry” has been circulated by OTR fans for years and is one of the all-time classic episodes of the series and, indeed, of old time radio in general. This episode circulates in a CBS network version; here, you can give a listen to how the show was presented to troops overseas, including a preview of next week’s show to fill out the time at the end.

This particular episode was the third performance of “Sorry” on “Suspense”. Moorehead performed the story eight times during the run of the series, the first on May 25, 1943 and the last on February 14, 1960.

Some listeners really dislike “Sorry, Wrong Number”, finding Agnes Moorehead’s performance “shrill” and “over top” and the show unpleasant to listen to. I really think that’s the beauty of the script and a facet of the character that Moorehead understands that made the show so popular that it was repeated many times over the run of the “Suspense” series - Mrs. Stevenson is utterly unlikable and the script plays with our sympathies (or animosity) towards her.

I read somewhere that Lucille Fletcher got the idea for the show after hearing an obnoxious woman in line at a store, demanding service and indignant that she was being treated improperly. Fletcher sets up the character as demanding, whiny and shrill - the type of person that would test the patience of any telephone operator and, even more, the patience of her husband.

As the program progresses and the potential murder story becomes more clear, we have either one of two reactions. We either feel more sympathy for Mrs. Stevenson, realizing the situation she is in and the frustration she feels. Or, as in my case when sometimes listening to the show, you think, “Man, I wish she was the one being killed - she’s annoying!” Of course, if you feel for Mrs. Stevenson and understand her terror, the ending is frightening and disturbing. If you can’t stand Mrs. Stevenson, the ending is satisfying and exhilarating.

If it hasn’t been done already, someone could do a fun parody of “Sorry, Wrong Number”, where the telephone operator storms in to murder her for being such a nuisance and not looking up and dialing her own damn telephone numbers.

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