rand’s esoteric otr

Finally this week in our look at the end of World War II, we hear a remarkable broadcast - a special episode of “Command Performance” dubbed “Victory Extra”, prepared for VJ Day and broadcast August 15, 1945 on the Armed Forces Radio Network.

Running a full 100 minutes, the show features an incredible array of actors, actresses, comedians, performers and personalities - almost anyone who was anybody showed up to celebrate the end of the War for our troops.  Below, after the jump, is a complete outline of all the program contents for the purposes of indexing and searching for the show, but, if you’ve never heard it, I’d recommend you just listen and be surprised at who shows up.

Of course, since AFRS programs had to be distributed on disc to stations around the world, this special broadcast had to be prepared in advance.  It would be interesting to find out how the show was put together - it sounds like it was specially created and didn’t use recycled excerpts from other programs, like some other AFRS programs.  Was it done in one recording session?  What did they tell the audience?  (Or was the audience made up of the performers themselves?)

The program was transferred from an original AFRS vinyl transcription set.

Click “more” to see a complete listing of the show’s performers.

(more…)

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We continue our look at the work of Bing Crosby this week with what may be the most famous program on AFRS that he appeared in.  It’s program 162 in the series “Command Performance”, the comic strip operetta, “Dick Tracy in B Flat”.

The once-in-a-lifetime cast includes Bing Crosby, Dinah Shore, Jimmy Durante, Judy Garland, Cass Daley, Frank Sinatra, Frank Morgan, Bob Hope, Jerry Colonna, the Andrews Sisters and announcer Harry Von Zell.

There are several unusual aspects to this episode of “Command Performance”.  The show was usually a half-hour and it’s not clear why they expanded it to an hour for this show that was distributed at that particular time.  In fact, if you listen closely, it sounds like it may have been originally recorded as a “two-parter”, since there’s a break in the middle telling you to tune in next week.  This reference falls a couple of minutes into side three of the transcription set, so I don’t think it’s there to give the local stations flexibility in programming it on their schedule.

I’d also like to know how the show originated - who came up with the idea and if it was the work primarly of one or more writers on the “Command Peformance” staff.

Our digital file was recorded directly from an original vinyl AFRS transcription set.  This may be an upgrade for your collection, since at least one popular version of the recording that’s floating around in mp3 format sounds as though it was transferred from a second generation tape and was dubbed too slow, making the cast sound like they have a bad cold.

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