Old Time Radio Shows

November 27, 2013: Hanukkah starts tonight at Sundown. Christmas radio shows  were standard broadcasts throughout the  golden age of radio , but listen a rare Hanukkah themed old time radio shows from  Eternal Light   from 1950:

Some of our favorite and most prominent women at the radio microphone as  actors include: Agnes Moorehead - the first lady of SUSPENSE! Mercedes McCambridge Lurene Tuttle  Arlene Francis   Mary Jane Higby  Natalie Park  Virginia Gregg Anne Elstner  Virginia Payne  Mary Margaret McBride: The "Oprah" of her time with the largest radio audience  Ora Nichols: The mother of sound effects. She founded the craft of radio sound effects, although it would eventually become a male-dominated portion of radio  Peg Lynch: The best comedy writer in radio who also starred in her own shows  (Mary) Kathleen Hite: The first woman writer on the CBS westerns who would go on to write nearly all of the "Ft. Laramie" scripts and later, many TV westerns  Betty Mandeville: Directed "The FBI in Peace and War" thus becoming the first woman to direct a crime show in prime time  Ruth Woodman: Creator and writer of " Death Valle...

When we think of a Hard-Boiled Detective , the image that first pops into our heads is none other than Sam Spade . The question is: how accurate is that picture? The answer is both "very" and "not very". It is far from uncommon for a character or even a story to be modified from the original author's vision. This is especially true when a literary character is adapted for other media. What is interesting in  Sam Spade  's  transformation is that the more he is adapted,  the more correct  he feels to the audience. Convention dictates that the  Sam Spade   introduced to us by Dashiell Hammett would be the correct one. Spade seems to be an amalgam of the actual private detectives that Hammett had worked with when he was an investigator. In the introduction, to the 1934 edition of The Maltese Falcon , Hammett writes that the real private detective has no desire "to be an erudite solver of riddles in the Sherlock Holmes manner; he wants to be a ...

Just as with the Horror Genre , Radio is a superior medium for Science Fiction than TV or Movies. It is not a medium for the lazy Sci Fi fan: the producer couldn't call in the CGI (computer generated image) team and have them created an exploding space cruiser. But for the fan willing to lose himself in his imagination, Radio could make the loneliness of space that much deeper, the burning sands of a distant planet that much bleaker, and the evil of a rogue robot that much more frightening. One of the best Science fiction Anthologies on radio was X Minus One . What made the series great was the stories, which were adapted from the pages of Galaxy Magazine, and later Astounding Science Fiction Magazine. Galaxy had become the leading Science Fiction publisher in the 50's by publishing stories that dealt with social issues and not just technology and monsters. The stories were adapted for radio by NBC staff writers, mostly Ernest Kinoy and Frank Lefferts, who were usually ...

The science fiction radio series ,  Exploring Tomorrow   came to Mutual for a short run in 1957-58. The program, which was a summer replacement for  Gangbusters ,  was narrated by  Astounding  Magazine editor John W. Campbell. Favorite episodes include: Exploring Tomorrow :  The Adventure of the Beauty Queen , broadcast 6/25/1958.  Miss USA 1958 is awakened by a mysterious Voice, from the future! A Future scientist is exploring the nature of beauty, and has fallen in love with the Beauty Queen. Now he wants to bring her to the future, to stay with him. Exploring Tomorrow :  First Baby in Space (a.k.a. Space Baby),   by Randall Garrett, broadcast 6/15/1958.  A space station is damaged by a meteorite, for which it is prepared, but it isn't prepared for the expectant mother who is injured, or her baby which will need an incubator to survive. Incubator? There's no incubator on a space station...

The Mutual Network was in many ways the "little brother" of the Big Four radio networks.  However being small lead to the need to be innovative on many occasions. One example is the world of adult radio Science Fiction . The anthology program  2000 Plus  premiered on Mutual on Mar 15, 1952, nearly a month before  Dimension X  appeared on NBC.  2000+  was unique in that the program used all original stories as opposed to the adaptations featured on  Dimension X   and the later  X Minus One.   S ome of our favorite episodes include: 2000 Plus :  T he Brooklyn Brain , broadcast 6/21/1950.  A young man needs instant wisdom and culture to win his girl, so he volunteers to have scientists give him an electronic brain that will allow him to learn anything instantly. 2000 Plus :    The Green Thing , broadcast 9/27/1950.  A patient in a sanitarium is haunted by dreams of a horrible green monster. The doctors ...

lona Massey was born in Budapest in 1910, while it was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Trained as an opera singer, she worked as a dress maker and theater singer to save money for the trip to Vienna where she joined an Opera Company. Eventually she landed a screen test in London and was offered a Hollywood contract. She appeared in a couple Nelson Eddy operettas, and was billed as "the new Dietrich ." Her acting talent was not quite strong enough, and her soprano voice too light to live up to the hype. She would be called upon to play the alluring sophisticated beauty in Thriller pictures. Notable are  Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman  (1943) with Lon Chaney Jr. and  Love Happy  (1949) with the Marx Brothers. Ilona's character in  Love Happy , the spy Madame Egelichi, was the inspiration for the  Steve Canyon  comic character Madame Lynx.  Steve Canyon   artist Milton Caniff went so far as to hire Massey to model for him. Ma...