rand’s esoteric otr

Here’s another episode of the long-running weekly dramatic series, “Front Page Drama”, sponsored by Hearst Newspapers and featuring adaptations of stories appearing in the “American Weekly” magazine.

This episode, number 144 in the series, was broadcast January 25, 1936 and is titled “Repayment”.  The story concerns international intrigue about a small European country and a US treaty.

The show was transferred from an original RCA Victrolac pressing, matrix 98715.  The disc, by the way, came from an antiques dealer with the original railroad shipping container and special needle originally used to play the disc at the station.  Amazing that the whole package survived over 70 years in this state.

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Here’s another episode of a long-running fifteen minute dramatic series, “Front Page Drama”, syndicated by Hearst Newspapers and featuring dramatizations of stories appearing in the “American Weekly” newspaper supplement. In this episode, “Conqueror’s Son”, the setting is Vienna in 1832 and the story deals with mixed identities and intrigue in a royal court. The program, number 143, was syndicated for broadcast on January 18, 1936.

The program was dubbed directly from an RCA Victrolac pressing, matrix number MS98586. This is one of four discs in this series, also containing episodes of “Jungle Jim”, that I picked up from an antiques dealer; the discs included the original shipping containers where they were sent to a radio station in Prescott, Arizona in 1936. One also included an original steel “Shadowgraphed” needle used to play the disc - the needle, used during a transition period to early vinyl discs, was “pre-worn” to fit the groove properly.

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Another episode of “Front Page Drama”, dating from circa July 1934.  Program 70, called “The Night of Nights”, looks at a businessman who is being duped by a fake medium who is exposed by the businessman’s partner and a professor.  The play is a fictionalized story based on an article in that week’s “American Weekly” magazine that dealt with new scientific techniques being used by fake mediums.  Note that the sound and overall volume of the show improves as it progresses.

“Front Page Drama” (at least the 1930s episodes) is one of my favorite series.  The stories are sometimes hokey and melodramatic, but are really well written little 15 minute pieces and you can often recognize well-known radio actors in bit parts.  As noted in a previous post, the series was sponsored by Hearst newspapers as a way to promote “American Weekly” that was distributed with the papers each week; it was something like the “Parade Magazine” of its day.

In future weeks, I’ll be posting more shows from early 1936, when production and distribution of the show shifted from General Broadcasting and Brunswick Records to RCA.

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“Front Page Drama” was a program syndicated to local stations for many years during the OTR era by Hearst newspapers. Each 15 minute show was based on a story in an upcoming edition of “The American Weekly”, a magazine distributed with Hearst newspapers. This episode, number 69, dates from circa June or July 1934 and is based on a “true story” about a small town newspaper reporter who complains that there’s no interesting news in the town. Transferred from an original shellac Brunswick pressing of the program; note that the sound improves as the episode progresses.

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