Episodes
Wednesday Aug 25, 2010
Action in the Afternoon - Secret Agent Five
Wednesday Aug 25, 2010
Wednesday Aug 25, 2010
A few years back, I read about a most unusual series and have been wanting to take a peek at it ever since. "Action in the Afternoon" was broadcast live on CBS for about a year, from 1953 to 1954. Originating at WCAU-TV in Philadelphia, the program was a five day a week Western, staged on an outdoor set behind the tv station. Come rain or shine, the show was on the air. Usually when we think about the "Golden Age" of live television, it's the big prestigious dramas, comedies and variety shows that we recall with misty-eyed fondness about the "good old days". "Action in the Afternoon" is a wonderful reminder about how experimental - and awkward - early tv could be. If you want to see a rare episode of the show, go to http://www.tvswestern.com/tv.cfm - scroll down on the page a bit and you should see it listed as the first program in the list. Apologies for the annoying ad at the beginning of the video. For something a bit more modern on that new-fangled tv set, you might check out a show on PBS called "History Detectives". Old time radio researcher Elizabeth McCloud was featured in a recent episode, which you can watch online, with a segment on a script that someone found for the 1932 radio series "Secret Agent Five" - it's an intriguing little story about the FBI's involvement in early radio as a tool to promote its image. The segment starts at 36:00. You even get to see and hear played a unique Victor Home Recording from one of the shows. You can also view a pdf of the script.
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