Old Time Radio Shows

 "The world's greatest living radio actress.” That is how none other than Orson Welles described radio legend Mercedes McCambridge . The renowned actress earned this high praise by starring in such popular radio shows as The Guiding Light , Pretty Kitty Kelly and Big Sister . Her cross-over success in film and television came from her roles in All the King’s Men , A Farewell to Arms, Bonanza, Bewitched, Charlie’s Angels and a voiceover in The Exorcist. Over the course of her career, she would share the screen with Joan Crawford , Orson Welles , and twice with Elizabeth Taylor . For her work in All the King’s Men, her very first feature film, Ms. McCambridge won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Acting seemed to be Ms. McCambridge ’s destiny from early on. Born Carlotta Mercedes McCambridge in Joliet, Illionis in 1916, she attended Mundelein College on a drama scholarship. Her sophomore year, Mercedes performed in the Verse Speaking Choir, a group of sixteen women who...

--> A counter part to the Smart-Aleck Kid, a staple character in Family Sit-coms, is the Big-Hearted Blue Collar Oaf. Both are interesting characters to build a show around. The SAK is typified by the long time comic page regular, Dennis the Menace, and immortalized on Radio by such favorites as Henry Aldrich , My Son Jeep, and Leroy from The Great Gildersleeve . The modern incarnation of the SAK is Bart Simpson. Fox TV's The Simpsons is unique in that it features the adventures and misadventures of both a SAK and a BHBCO. Fox made a minor splash on Sunday nights beginning in the late 1980s with a pair of BHBCOs, Both Homer Simpson and Al Bundy from Married With Children . Married pays backhanded homage the original BHBCO, Chester A. Riley from Radio's Life Of Riley . While Married With Children often pushed the boundaries of bad taste, Life of Riley was wholesome family fun. Riley was originally intended as a radio vehicle for Groucho Marx (the Riley ...