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The Great Gildersleeve Radio Show

Fri, 05 Jul 2019 20:05:00 +0000

The Great Gildersleeve was a radio situation comedy broadcast in the US from August 31, 1941 to 1958. Initially written by Leonard Lewis Levinson, it was one of broadcast history's earliest spin-off programs. The series was built around Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve, a regular character from the radio situation comedy Fibber McGee and Molly. The character was introduced in the October 3, 1939 episode (number 216) of that series. Actor Harold Peary had played a similarly named character, Dr. Gildersleeve, on earlier episodes. The Great Gildersleeve enjoyed its greatest popularity in the 1940s. Peary played the character during its transition from the parent show into the spin-off and later in four feature films released at the height of the show's popularity.

In Fibber McGee and Molly, Peary's Gildersleeve had been a pompous windbag and antagonist of Fibber McGee. "You're a haa-aa-aa-aard man, McGee!" became a Gildersleeve catchphrase. The character went by several aliases on Fibber McGee and Molly; his middle name was revealed to be "Philharmonic" in "Fibber Discovers Gildersleeve's Locked Diary" episode #258 on October 22, 1940.

"Gildy" grew so popular that Kraft Foods?promoting its Parkay margarine?sponsored a new series featuring Peary's somewhat mellowed and always befuddled Gildersleeve as the head of his own family.

Premiere

The Great Gildersleeve premiered on NBC on August 31, 1941. It moves the title character from the McGees' Wistful Vista to Summerfield, where Gildersleeve oversees his late brother-in-law's estate and rears his orphaned niece and nephew, Marjorie and Leroy Forrester. The household also includes a cook named Birdie. While Gildersleeve had occasionally mentioned his (silent) wife in some Fibber episodes, in his own series he is a confirmed bachelor.

At the outset of the series, Gildersleeve administers a girdle manufacturing company ("If you want a better corset, of course, it's a Gildersleeve"); later and during the remainder of the show he serves as Summerfield's water commissioner.

Family

A key figure in the Gildersleeve home was (black) cook and housekeeper Birdie Lee Coggins (Lillian Randolph). In the first season, under writer Levinson, Birdie was often portrayed as less than intelligent, but she slowly developed as the real brains and caretaker of the household under John Whedon and other writers.

Marjorie (originally played by Lurene Tuttle, later by Louise Erickson and Mary Lee Robb) matured to a young woman through the 1940s. During the ninth season (September 1949-June 1950) she met and married Walter "Bronco" Thompson (Richard Crenna), star football player at the local college. Look devoted five pages in its May 23, 1950, issue to the wedding. After living in the same household for a few years, the newlyweds moved next door.

Leroy (Walter Tetley), who remained age 10-11 during most of the 1940s, began to grow up in the spring of 1949, establishing relationships with the girls in the Bullard home across the street. He developed interests in driving, playing the drums and dreaming of a musical career.

Neighbors and friends

Outside the home, Gildersleeve's closest association was with the executor of his brother-in-law's estate, Judge Horace Hooker (Earle Ross), with whom he had many battles during the first few broadcast seasons. After a change in scriptwriters in January 1943, the confrontations slowly subsided and the two men became friends. During the second season, pharmacist Richard Q. Peavey (Richard LeGrand) and barber Floyd Munson (Mel Blanc for the first year, Arthur Q. Bryan from December 1942 onward) joined Gildersleeve's circle of acquaintances.

In the fourth season, these three friends, along with Police Chief Donald Gates (Ken Christy), formed the nucleus of the Jolly Boys Club, whose activities revolve around practicing barbershop quartet songs between sips of Coca-Cola.

Several women passed through Gildersleeve's life during the series, including three he almost married before settling into a pattern of casual dating. His friends included Shirley Mitchell (Leila Ranson), Una Merkel (Adaline Fairchild), Bea Benaderet (Eve Goodwin), Martha Scott (Ellen Bullard Knickerbocker) Jeanne Bates (Paula Bullard Winthrop) and Cathy Lewis (Katherine Milford). Another woman in Gildersleeve's life was his inept, milkshake loving secretary Bessie played by Gloria Holiday who became Mrs. Harold Peary in real life.

Decline and fall

In 1950, Harold Peary was convinced to move The Great Gildersleeve to CBS, but sponsor Kraft refused to sanction the move. Peary, now contracted to CBS, was legally unable to appear on NBC as a star performer, but Gildersleeve was still an NBC series. This prompted the hiring of Willard Waterman as Peary's replacement as Gildersleeve. Peary, meanwhile, began a new series on CBS which attempted to reproduce the Gildersleeve show with the names changed. The Harold Peary Show, lasting one season, included a fictitious radio show within the show. This was Honest Harold, hosted by Peary's new character.

As with most radio sitcoms still on the air at the time, The Great Gildersleeve began a slow but massive reformat in the early 1950s. Starting in mid-1952, some of the program's long-time characters (Judge Hooker, Floyd Munson, Marjorie and her husband, Bronco) were missing for months at a time. In their place were a few new ones (Mr. Cooley the Egg Man, and Mrs. Potter, the hypochondriac) who would last only a month or so. By 1953, Gildersleeve's love life took center stage over his family and friends. His many love interests were constantly shifting, and women came and went with great frequency. In November 1954, after an extended summer hiatus, Gildersleeve was reformatted as a 15-minute daily sitcom. Only Gildersleeve, Leroy and Birdie remained on a continuing basis. All other characters were seldom heard, and gone were Marjorie and her family as well as the studio audience, live orchestra and original scripts. The series finally ended its run in 1958.

Television

As with most radio series, the show suffered from the advent of television. A televised version of the series, produced and syndicated by NBC, also starring Waterman, premiered in 1955, but lasted only 39 episodes. During that year, both the 15-minute radio show and the television show were being produced simultaneously.

On the television series, Gildersleeve was sketched as less lovable, more pompous and a more overt womanizer. Harold Peary stated that the problem with the television series was that "Waterman was a very tall man" and "Gildersleeve was not a tall man, he was a little man, who thought he was a tall man, that was the character." He added, "Willard [Waterman] did a very good job on the radio show", but was "miscast on the television version".

Actress Barbara Stuart landed her first television role on The Great Gildersleeve in the role of Gildersleeve's secretary, Bessie. Child actor Michael Winkelman, later of The Real McCoys, also made his first television appearance on the show in the role of 9-year-old Bruce Fuller. Actor Clegg Hoyt also made his television debut on the series as a carnival barker in "Practice What You Preach" (1955).

Movies

After joining Jim and Marian Jordan (as Fibber McGee and Molly) and fellow radio favorite Edgar Bergen in Look Who's Laughing (1941) and Here We Go Again (1942), Peary received top billing for a brief series of RKO films. The Great Gildersleeve (1942) also carried Randolph from the radio cast to the screen, with Nancy Gates as Marjorie and Freddie Mercer as Leroy. Walter Tetley, who played Leroy on radio, could not appear on screen as Leroy because he was actually an adult playing a child character.

Gildersleeve's Bad Day (1943) revolved around the mishaps when he is called to jury duty. Gildersleeve on Broadway (1943) centered on Leroy as the odd boy out as everyone around him is falling in love. The fourth and final film in the series, Gildersleeve's Ghost (1944) had Gildersleeve's ancestors, Randolph and Johnson, rise from the dead to help his campaign for police commissioner.

Warner Archives released a DVD collection of all of the Gildersleeve RKO movies in January 2013.

A 1960 version of Gildersleeve, still played by Peary, appears in the 1944 Warner Bros. film The Shining Future, a promotional film for war bonds.

The Gildersleeve character was parodied in the 1945 Bugs Bunny cartoon Hare Conditioned, in which the rabbit distracts a menacing taxidermist by telling him that he sounds "just like that guy on the radio, the Great Gildersneeze!" The taxidermist responds with "I do?!" followed by Gildersleeve's chuckle. The Gildersleeve voice in this cartoon was done by radio actor and voice artist Dick Nelson. (Earlier, in A Coy Decoy, Daffy Duck used Gildersleeve's "you're a ha-a-ard man!" line in an attempt to divert a wolf that is chasing after him.)

Recordings

At the height of the show's popularity, Harold Peary recorded three albums as Gildersleeve, reading popular children's stories for Capitol Records in heavy-bookleted four-disc 78rpm record albums. Stories for Children, Told in His Own Way by the Great Gildersleeve, was released in 1945 and was Capitol's first-ever such release for children. With orchestral accompaniment, it featured "Puss in Boots", "Rumpelstiltskin" and "Jack and the Beanstalk".

The second album, Children's Stories as Told by the Great Gildersleeve, in 1946, featured "Hansel and Gretel" and "The Brave Little Tailor", again with orchestral accompaniment. The third and final album in the series, reverting to the title of the first and released in 1947, included "Snow-White and Rose-Red" and "Cinderella", once more with full orchestral accompaniment.

The music was by Robert Emmett Dolan. Capitol Records brought in The Great Gildersleeve's chief writers at the time, Sam Moore and John Whedon, to adapt the stories to Gildersleeve's style.

In 1950, Peary, as "the Great Gildersleeve", narrated a single 78rpm recording for Capitol of Dr Seuss' "Gerald McBoing-Boing" with full orchestration and sound effects.

After Gildersleeve

Peary continued his career (often billed as Hal Peary) in films and television well into the 1970s; he was especially active as a voice actor for cartoons produced by Rankin-Bass and Hanna-Barbera, among others. He died of a heart attack in 1985. Waterman, who was a regular supporting character on radio's The Halls of Ivy while doing his version of Gildersleeve, died a decade later.

Comics

A Great Gildersleeve story appeared inside of a 1944 edition of Supersnipe comic book.

References

External links

Audio

The Gildersleeve Project (includes over 500 shows)
The Great Gildersleeve old time radio show
The Great Gildersleeve on Outlaws Old Time Radio Corner

Video

All entries for ?Gildersleeve? videos, including the TV series on the Internet Archive

Source : Wikipedia

Fibber McGee and Molly Radio Show

Fri, 05 Jul 2019 20:15:00 +0000

Fibber McGee and Molly was an American radio comedy series. A staple of the NBC Red Network for the show's entire run and one of the most popular and enduring radio series of its time, the prime time situation comedy ran as a standalone series from 1935 to 1956, then continued as a short-form series as part of the weekend Monitor from 1957 to 1959. The title characters were created and portrayed by Jim and Marian Jordan, a real-life husband and wife team that had been working in radio since the 1920s.

Fibber McGee and Molly, which followed up the Jordans' previous radio sitcom Smackout, followed the adventures of a working-class couple, the habitual storyteller Fibber McGee and his sometimes terse but always loving wife Molly, living among their numerous neighbors and acquaintances in the community of Wistful Vista. As with most radio comedies of the era, Fibber McGee and Molly featured an announcer, house band and vocal quartet for interludes. At the peak of the show's success in the 1940s, it was adapted into a string of feature films; a 1959 attempt to adapt the series to television with a different cast and new writers was both a critical and commercial failure, which, coupled with Marian Jordan's death shortly thereafter, brought the series to an end.

Husband and wife in real life

The stars of the program were real-life husband and wife team James "Jim" Jordan (16 November 1896 - 1 April 1988) and Marian Driscoll Jordan (15 April 1898 - 7 April 1961), who were natives of Peoria, Illinois.

Jordan was the seventh of eight children born to James Edward Jordan and Mary (née Tighe) Jordan, while Driscoll was the twelfth out of thirteen children born to Daniel P. and Anna (née Carroll) Driscoll. The son of a farmer, Jim wanted to be a singer; Marian, the daughter of a coal miner, wanted to be a music teacher. Both attended the same Catholic church, where they met at choir practice. Marian's parents had attempted to discourage her professional singing and acting aspirations. When she started seeing young Jim Jordan, the Driscolls were far from approving of Jim and his ideas. Jim's voice teacher gave him a recommendation for work as a professional in Chicago, and he followed it. He was able to have steady work but soon tired of the life on the road. In less than a year, Jim came back to Peoria and went to work for the Post Office. His occupation was now acceptable to Marian's parents, and they stopped objecting to the couple's marriage plans. The pair were married in Peoria on August 31, 1918.

Five days after the wedding, Jim received his draft notice. He was sent to France and became part of a military touring group that entertained the armed forces after World War I. When Jim came home from France, he and Marian decided to try their luck with a vaudeville act. They had two children, Kathryn Therese Jordan (1920-2007) and James Carroll Jordan (1923-1998), both born in Peoria. Marian returned home for the birth of Kathryn but went back to performing with Jim, leaving her daughter with Jim's parents. After Jim Jr. was born in 1923, Marian stayed with the children for a time, while Jim performed as a solo act. Marian and the children joined him on the road for a short time, but the couple had to admit defeat when they found themselves in Lincoln, Illinois in 1923 with two small children and no funds. The couple's parents had to wire them money for their return to Peoria. Jim went to work at a local department store but still felt the attraction of being in show business. He and Marian went back into vaudeville.

While staying with Jim's brother in Chicago in 1924, the family was listening to the radio; Jim said that he and Marian could do better than the musical act currently on the air. Jim's brother bet him $10 that they could not. To win the bet, Jim and Marian went to WIBO, where they were immediately put on the air. At the end of the performance, the station offered the couple a contract for a weekly show, which paid $10 per week. The sponsor of the show was Oh Henry! candy, and they appeared for six months on The Oh Henry! Twins program, switching to radio station WENR by 1927.

When it appeared to the couple that they were financially successful, they built a home in Chicago, which was a replica of their rented home, complete to building it on the lot next door. For their 1939 move to the West Coast, the Jordans selected an inconspicuous home in Encino. Some of Jim Jordan's investments included the bottling company for Hires Root Beer in Kansas City.

From vaudeville to Smackout

Fibber McGee and Molly originated when the small-time husband-and-wife vaudevillians began their third year as Chicago-area radio performers. Two of the shows they did for station WENR beginning in 1927, both written by Harry Lawrence, bore traces of what was to come and rank as one of the earliest forms of situation comedy. In their Luke and Mirandy farm-report program, Jim played a farmer who was given to tall tales and face-saving lies for comic effect. In a weekly comedy, The Smith Family, Marian's character was an Irish wife of an American police officer. These characterizations, plus the Jordans' change from being singers/musicians to comic actors, pointed toward their future; it was at this time when Marian developed and perfected the radio character "Teeny". It was also at WENR where the Jordans met Donald Quinn, a cartoonist who was then working in radio, and the couple hired him as their writer in 1931. They regarded Quinn's contribution as important and included him as a full partner; the salary for Smackout and Fibber McGee and Molly was split between the Jordans and Quinn.

While working on the WENR farm report, Jim Jordan heard a true story about a shopkeeper from Missouri whose store was brimming with stock, yet he claimed to be "smack out" of whatever a customer would ask him for. The story reached the halls of nearby Columbia College, and the students began visiting the store, which they called "Smackout", to hear the owner's incredible stories.

For station WMAQ in Chicago, beginning in April 1931, the trio created Smackout, a 15-minute daily program that centered on a general store and its proprietor, Luke Grey (Jim Jordan), a storekeeper with a penchant for tall tales and a perpetual dearth of whatever his customers wanted: He always seemed "smack out of it". Marian Jordan portrayed both a lady named Marian and a little girl named Teeny, as well as accompanying the program on piano. During the show's run, Marian Jordan voiced a total of 69 different characters. Smackout was picked up by NBC in April 1933 and broadcast nationally until August 1935.

One of the S. C. Johnson company's owners, Henrietta Johnson Lewis, recommended that her husband, John, Johnson Wax's advertising manager, try the show out on a national network. The terms of the agreement between S. C. Johnson and the Jordans awarded the company ownership of the names "Fibber McGee" and "Molly".

From Smackout to Wistful Vista

If Smackout proved the Jordan-Quinn union's viability, their next creation proved their most enduring. Amplifying Luke Grey's tall talesmanship to Midwestern braggadocio, Quinn developed Fibber McGee and Molly with Jim as the foible-prone Fibber and Marian playing his patient, common sense, honey-natured wife. In its earliest incarnation, Fibber McGee and Molly put focus on Fibber's tall tales and extended monologues. During these earliest episodes of the series, Molly had a pronounced Irish dialect. while Fibber's voice was somewhat higher and more cartoonish; both of the Jordans eventually switched to more realistic, Americanized dialects closer to their own natural tones over the course of the late 1930s as the series evolved into the more familiar domestic sitcom format. The show premiered on NBC April 16, 1935, and though it took three seasons to become an irrevocable hit, it became the country's top-rated radio series. In 1935, Jim Jordan won the Burlington Liars' Club championship with a story about catching an elusive rat.

Existing in a kind of Neverland where money never came in, schemes never stayed out for very long, yet no one living or visiting went wanting, 79 Wistful Vista (the McGees' address from show #20, August 1935 onward) became the home Depression-exhausted Americans visited to remind themselves that they were not the only ones finding cheer in the middle of struggle and doing their best not to make it overt. The McGees won their house in a raffle from Mr. Hagglemeyer's Wistful Vista Development Company, with lottery ticket #131,313, happened upon by chance while on a pleasure drive in their car. With blowhard McGee wavering between mundane tasks and hare-brained schemes (like digging an oil well in the back yard), antagonizing as many people as possible, and patient Molly indulging his foibles and providing loving support, not to mention a tireless parade of neighbors and friends in and out of the quiet home, Fibber McGee and Molly built its audience steadily, but once it found the full volume of that audience in 1940, they rarely let go of it.

Marian Jordan took a protracted absence from the show from November 1937 to April 1939 to deal with a lifelong battle with alcoholism, although this was attributed to "fatigue" in public statements at the time. The show was retitled Fibber McGee and Company during this interregnum, with scripts cleverly working around Molly's absence (Fibber making a speech at a convention, etc.). Comedian ZaSu Pitts appeared on the Fibber McGee and Company show, as did singer Donald Novis.

While his wife was ill, Jim Jordan had been closing his radio shows by saying "Goodnight, Molly." In early 1938, the Federal Communications Commission ordered him to stop, claiming it violated a rule about using public airwaves for personal communications. After a few weeks' deliberation, the Commission found that no regulations had been broken, because Molly was a fictional character. Jordan then resumed using the "Goodnight, Molly" signoff. In January 1939, the show moved from NBC Chicago to the new West Coast Radio City in Hollywood.

Cast and characters

Fibber McGee and Molly was one of the earliest radio comedies to use an ensemble cast of regular characters played by actors other than the leads, nearly all of whom had recurring phrases and running gags, in addition to numerous other peripheral characters unheard from over the course of the series.

Main

Fibber McGee (Jim Jordan) - a habitual storyteller and the central figure of the series. Originally portrayed with a cartoonish accent, the character settled into using Jordan's own natural voice by the early 1940s.
Molly McGee (Marian Jordan) - Fibber's Irish wife and the straight woman of the double act. Her traditional putdown, "'Tain't funny McGee!," appears in the very first episode.

Recurring

Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve (Harold Peary) - the pompous next-door neighbor with whom Fibber enjoyed twitting and arguing. Introduced in 1939. Gildersleeve went through several incarnations and first names, all voiced by Peary, before settling on Throckmorton. Many of his interactions with Fibber include the catchphrase "You're a hard man, McGee", in response to a harsh or critical statement from Fibber. Throckmortons's wife is frequently mentioned, never heard, and dropped when Peary moved on to his own show. However, the wife of Homer Gildersleeve (again played by Peary) was briefly heard from in one episode.
The Old-Timer (Bill Thompson) - a hard-of-hearing senior citizen with a penchant for distorting jokes, prefacing each one by saying, "That ain't the way I heer'd it!" For no apparent reason, he refers to Fibber as "Johnny" and Molly as "Daughter". A recurring joke is that he refuses to tell his real name; he uses various aliases before his real name, Adleton P. Bagshaw, is revealed in one of the 15-minute episodes near the end of the series. The Old-Timer's girlfriend is named Bessie, and she usually refers to him as "O.T."
Tini, also known as "Little Girl" and "Sis" (Marian Jordan) - a precocious youngster who frequently tried to cadge loose change from Fibber (often in cahoots with her rarely heard best friend Willie Toops). She often ended her sentences with "I betcha!", and when someone mentioned food, or a word that sounded like a food, she usually responded "I'm hungry." Tini was also known to lose track of her own conversations. When Fibber showed interest in what she was saying, she would forget all about it, and her conversation would switch from telling to asking. After Fibber repeated everything she had been telling him, Tini would reply "I know!" or "I know it!" in a condescending way. Her appearances were sometimes foreshadowed by Molly excusing herself to the kitchen or to have a nap. Fibber would wistfully deliver a compliment to her, saying, "Ah, there goes a good kid," upon which the doorbell would ring and Tini would appear, usually greeting Fibber with "Hi, mister!" On rare occasions Molly and Tini would interact. In the December 21, 1948 broadcast Fibber learned that her real name was "Elizabeth" from a Christmas card she had sent him. She was perpetually a child, and her permanent youth was only mentioned once; Fibber asked her how old she was, to which she responded, "Five". Then he asked how long she'd been coming over to visit him and Molly. "Nine years," she answered. Then, after a pause, she asked, "Ain't it a wonderful world, mister?"
Mayor La Trivia (Gale Gordon) - the mayor of Wistful Vista, whose name was inspired by New York City's famous mayor Fiorello La Guardia. In later episodes, Fibber occasionally addresses the mayor as "Homer" and in one episode, we learn that Fifi Tremaine's pet name for the mayor is "Chuckie". The McGees' regular routine with La Trivia entailed Fibber and Molly misunderstanding a figure of speech, in much the same vein as Abbott & Costello's Who's On First? routine. La Trivia would slowly progress from attempting patient explanation to tongue-tied rage, in Gale Gordon's classic slow-burn. Occasionally, after La Trivia exited a scene, Fibber and Molly's dialogue makes it clear that they were deliberately winding him up.
Foggy Williams (Gordon) - local weatherman and next-door neighbor who tells fanciful stories, lets Fibber borrow his tools, and takes credit or blame for the present weather conditions. He is known for his extensive use of tentative language and usually exits with the line "Good day... probably."
Dr. George Gamble (Arthur Q. Bryan) - a local physician and surgeon with whom Fibber had a long-standing rivalry and friendship. The two often come up with creative insults for each other's excessive weight. Before Bryan joined the cast, Gale Gordon played the part of the town doctor in several episodes.
Ole Swenson (Richard LeGrand, who also played Mr. Peavey on The Great Gildersleeve) - a Swedish-born janitor at the Elks Club, often complaining that he was "joost donatin' my time!" His wife's name is Helga, and their children include Kristina, Sven, Lars, and Ole.
Mrs. Abigail Uppington (Isabel Randolph) - a snooty society matron whose pretensions Fibber delighted in deflating. Fibber often addressed her as "Uppy". In the episode "Fibber Hires A Surveyor" (3/26/40) it is revealed that she is having a romantic relationship with orchestra leader Billy Mills, and in the episode "Gildersleeve's Diary" (10/22/40), we learn that she also has a romantic past with Gildersleeve. She also has a relationship with Horatio K. Boomer in a few episodes, and the McGees assume he is using her for her money. In several episodes, there are references to the fact that Mrs. Uppington wasn't always rich. In the episode "The Circus Comes to Town" (5/28/40), it is revealed that she met the wealthy Mr. Uppington when she was a circus bareback rider known as Mademoiselle Tootsie Latour. Her horse got scared during a trick, and she accidentally did a double back flip into Mr. Uppington's lap, and he proposed on the spot.
Mrs. Millicent Carstairs (Bea Benaderet) - another of Wistful Vista's high society matrons, known to Fibber as "Carsty". Like Mrs. Uppington, Mrs. Carstairs doesn't come from a wealthy lineage. In "Fibber Thinks He's the Governor's Pal" (12/11/45), she lets slip that before she met Mr. Carstairs she was a blackjack dealer in a gambling joint.
Wallace Wimple (Thompson) - Wimple was a soft-spoken man in the Caspar Milquetoast vein. He would enter the episode uttering his mush-mouth catchphrase, "Hello, folks!" Wimple might recite a verse he'd written but more often would recount the latest incident in his ongoing battle with the unheard Sweetie-Face, his massive and abusive "big old wife." ?Wimp,? as Fibber called him, often reported provoking an overreaction from Sweetie-Face, followed by his attempt at revenge in a way that could be prankish, painful, or in some stories potentially fatal. One day (03/09/48) when he asked Sweetie-Face what she was doing, Wallace said she told him she was "practicing her weight-lifting." Wallace said he told Sweetie-Face, "My goodness, you do that every time you get up out of a chair.? ?Uh oh,? fretted Molly. ?And then when I regained consciousness,? continued Wimple, ?she'd left the room.? With a typically evil chuckle, Wallace said that he got even by bolting her 200-pound barbell to the floor, causing her to strain so hard the next time she lifted weights that she popped her girdle Though the term ?wimp? as used to describe a weak-willed person predated Fibber McGee and Molly, the Wimple character and Fibber's nickname for him may have contributed to a surge in popular use. Mr. Wimple had originated on Don McNeill's Breakfast Club in 1934 before he joined the Fibber McGee and Molly cast and would later use the voice and some of his deceptively devious mannerisms for the cartoon character Droopy.
Alice Darling (Shirley Mitchell) - a ditzy and boy-crazy young aircraft-plant worker who boarded with the McGees during the war.
Horatio K. Boomer (Thompson) - a con artist with a W. C. Fields-like voice and delivery. His appearances typically included him rummaging through a pocket or bag or other container and listing the things inside, usually ending with "a check for a short beer".
Nick Depopulis (Thompson) - a Greek-born restaurateur with a tendency toward verbal malapropisms. He normally refers to Fibber and Molly as "Fizzer and Kewpie".
Milt Spilkt - the nephew of Kramer from Kramer's Drugstore.
The Toops Family - Mort and Mabel Toops, and their son Willie, live in the McGees' neighborhood next door to Dr. Gamble. They are rarely heard on the show, but have occasional lines (for example, Mabel has several lines during "Fibber Cooks Dinner for Molly's Birthday" (10/23/51), Mort has some lines in "Halloween Party" (10/28/35), and Willie is heard in "Soapbox Derby Racer for Teeny" (4/24/51)). Willie Toops is most often mentioned in conjunction with Teeny, who sometimes refers to him as her boyfriend or future husband. The character of Beulah first appeared when she stopped at the McGees' on her way to her first day of work at the Toops' house.
Myrtle, also known as "Myrt" - an almost-never-heard-from telephone operator (she makes a brief appearance in the June 22, 1943 episode) that Fibber is friends with. A typical Myrt sketch started with Fibber picking up the phone and demanding, "Operator, give me number 32Oooh, is that you, Myrt? How's every little thing, Myrt? What say, Myrt?" Commonly, this was followed with Fibber relaying what Myrt was telling him to Molly, usually news about Myrt's family, and always ending with a bad pun. Myrtle made one brief on-air appearance on June 22, 1943, when she visited the McGees to wish them a good summer?the McGees did not recognize her in person.
Fred Nitney - another never-heard character, until episode 715, which aired Jan 6, 1953. They meet and chat briefly at the train station. Fibber's old vaudeville partner from Starved Rock, Illinois.
Aunt Sarah - Molly's rich aunt who always sends useless gifts for Christmas, a silent character.
Fifi Tremaine - another never-heard-from character, Fifi was an actress and was courted by both Doc Gamble and Mayor La Trivia, and Fibber enjoyed pitting the two against each other in their competition for Fifi's affections.
Herbert Appel - a stock boy at the hardware store, his character is distinguished by his odd speech patterns. By putting non-standard emphasis on syllables and sounds, his sentences can be confusing and/or humorous (what would now be considered mondegreen). For example, "I had to get up at eight o'clock" is heard by Fibber and Molly as "I had to get a potato clock", "I got up too early" comes out as "I got up twirly", and his own name sounds like "Herber Tapple" (in "Fibber Puts Up Christmas Lights", 12/20/49).
Beulah - the McGees' black maid and possibly the series' most unusual character. Unlike the situation on The Jack Benny Program, where black actor Eddie Anderson played "Rochester", Beulah was voiced by a Caucasian male, Marlin Hurt. The character's usual opening line, "Somebody bellow fo' Beulah??", often provoked a stunned, screeching sort of laughter among the live studio audience; many of them, seeing the show performed for the first time in person, did not know that the actor voicing Beulah was neither black nor female, and expressed their surprise when Hurt delivered his line. Her other catchphrase, typically delivered after a fit of laughter over a Fibber gag, was, "Love that man!" Hurt had created the Beulah character independently and had portrayed her occasionally on other shows prior to his joining the Fibber McGee and Molly cast.
Lena - the McGees' second maid during the series, she replaced Beulah after the character was spun off into her own show. Like Beulah, Lena was played by male actor Gene Carroll.
Uncle Dennis (Ransom Sherman) - Molly's hard-drinking uncle, Dennis Driscoll, who was the subject of a running gag (see below) and was generally never heard. He did appear in a few episodes in 1943-44, including "Renting Spare Room" (October 5, 1943), "Fibber Makes His Own Chili Sauce" (November 9, 1943), and "Dinner Out to Celebrate" (January 25, 1944).
Sigmund "Sig" Wellington (Sherman) - the manager of the Bijou Theater

Non-character

Billy Mills - wisecracking leader of Billy Mills and the Orchestra, who led the show's ensemble through musical numbers in each episode. In addition to standards and popular tunes, Mills occasionally showcased his own original compositions, including "I'm In Love With The Sound Effects Man" (in the episode "Amusement Park" (06/17/41) and later covered by Spike Jones), and "The Cocky Cuckoo" (in the episode "Businessmen's Symphony", (06/12/51)). Mills also was the composer of the longest-running theme song on radio beginning around 1940, also used for the later TV series - he named his composition "Wing To Wing".
Rico Marcelli - the original bandleader prior to Mills's arrival. Unlike Mills, Marcelli had no non-musical role in the series.
Harlow Wilcox - announcer for the series, whom Fibber regularly interrupts during commercial breaks.

After the program aired and rehearsal

The radio show was run on a tight schedule. It was considered to be one of the best organized broadcasts on the networks. Jim Jordan insisted that after the Tuesday broadcast everyone affiliated with the program must take a two-day rest. Nothing was done about the following Tuesday's show until Friday morning. Then Jim and Marian Jordan got together with writer Don Quinn and agency producer Cecil Underwood to talk through the next script. They worked in a business office because they were convinced that the businesslike and efficient atmosphere helped them to get the work done in two hours. By Saturday morning, Quinn had the first draft of the script ready, which "Fibber" read, and then Quinn revised into the final, working script. He did this Sunday night, working all night and finishing Monday morning. Monday morning the cast gathered at the NBC Hollywood studios and rehearsed for two hours, after which Quinn made any final changes. Tuesday morning the entire cast, including Billy Mils' orchestra, rehearsed about four times, concluding with a complete run-through around 3:00 p.m. At 5:30 p.m. Pacific time, the show went on the air. This program of preparation never varied by much more than an hour from week to week.

Show format

For most of the show's history, the usual order of the show is the Introduction followed by a Johnson Wax plug by Harlow then his introduction to Section 1 of the script (usually 11 minutes). Billy Mills usually follows with an instrumental (or accompanied by Martha Tilton in 1941). That musical interlude then segues to Section 2 of the script, followed by a performance by the vocal group The Kings Men (occasionally featuring a solo by leader Ken Darby). The final act then ensues, with the last line usually showing the lesson learned that day, a final commercial, and then Billy Mills' theme song to fade. Later, Harlow would meet up and visit with the McGees and work in a Johnson Wax commercial, sometimes assisted by Fibber and Molly.

Ratings

Running gags

Much of the show's humor relied on recurring gags, unseen regulars and punch lines that sometimes popped up here and there for years. The show would usually open the 30-minute broadcast with the audience in full laughter with Harlow Wilcox announcing, "The Johnson Wax Program with Fibber McGee and Molly!" In the episode of December 19, 1944, "Fibber Snoops For Presents In Closet" (at 3:59 is a perfect example of the "Hall Closet", a running gag described in detail later in this entry), Jim Jordan can be caught at the end of his audience warm-up evoking the opening laughter by quipping, "10 seconds? Oh, we got a lot of.... Ooooo!"

When McGee tells a bad joke, Molly often answers with the line "T'ain't funny, McGee!", which became a familiar catchphrase during the 1940s. Molly's Uncle Dennis is one of the more common rarely heard regulars. He lives with the McGees and is apparently a dedicated alcoholic, becoming a punch line for many Fibber jokes and even the main subject of some shows in which he "disappeared".

There are numerous references and jokes about the fact that Fibber doesn't have a regular job. Mayor La Trivia often offers McGee jobs at City Hall, and the jobs usually sound exciting when the duties are vaguely described; but they sometimes end up being very mundane. For instance, a job "looking in on the higher-ups at City Hall" turns out to be a window-cleaning job. Another interesting assignment was for Fibber to work in disguise for days at a time as the Wistful Vista Santa Claus.

McGee is very proud of past deeds, sometimes recalling an interesting nickname he picked up over the years. Each one of these nicknames is, as usual with Fibber, a bad pun. When someone told a man named Addison that McGee was a glib talker, McGee became known as "Ad Glib McGee". Or, when Fibber made expressions with his eyes, he was nicknamed "Eyes-a-muggin' McGee" (a play on the popular Stuff Smith swing tune "I'se A-muggin'"). From there Fibber jumps headfirst into a long, breathless and boastful description of his nickname, using an admirable amount of alliteration.

Mentioned for a time on the program was Otis Cadwallader, who was a schoolmate of Fibber and Molly in Peoria and Molly's boyfriend before McGee. Fibber has a long-standing grudge against Otis, making him out to seem like a self-centered, overblown hack, even though seemingly everyone else sees Cadwallader as a lovely, dashing man. Otis's feelings toward Fibber are never mentioned, giving the impression that Fibber's grudge is one-sided. As revealed late in 1942, Fibber's anger is actually a front to keep Cadwallader away, as Fibber once borrowed money from Otis and never paid it back.

The "corner of 14th and Oak" in downtown Wistful Vista was routinely given as a location for various homes, places of business and government buildings throughout the show's run.

Whenever someone asks the time it's always half-past.

McGee has a reputation for telling tall tales, and there are occasional jokes linking this propensity to his name "Fibber". In the episode "Fibber Changes His Name" (March 25, 1941), he goes so far as to claim that "Fibber" is his actual given name and not just a nickname. According to McGee, "I was named after my fourth cousin, Walpole J. Fimmer .. but the minister who christened me had a cold in his head."

The Hall Closet

None of the show's running gags was as memorable or enduring as The Hall Closet (so popular, in fact, that PBS's Zoboomafoo kept the joke alive). The gag involved McGee's frequently opening a cacophonous closet, with the bric-a-brac it contained clattering down and out and, often enough, over McGee's or Molly's heads. "I gotta get that closet cleaned out one of these days" was the usual McGee observation once the racket subsided. Naturally, "one of these days" almost never arrived. A good thing, too: in one famous instance, when a burglar (played by Bob Bruce) tied up McGee, McGee informed him cannily that the family's silver was "right through that door, bud... just yank it open, bud!" Naturally, the burglar took the bait and naturally, he was buried in the inevitable avalanche, long enough for the police to apprehend him.

This gag appears to have begun with the March 5, 1940, show, "Cleaning the Closet". Molly opens the closet looking for the dictionary and is promptly buried in Fibber's "stuff" ("arranged in there just the way I want it"). Cleaning out the closet becomes the show's plot, inventorying much of the contents along the way: a photo album, a rusty horseshoe, a ten-foot pole. After repacking the closet, Fibber realizes the dictionary has been put away too ? and he opens the closet again, causing an avalanche. This episode also features a cameo by Gracie Allen, running for president on the Surprise Party ticket. Toward the end of the September 30, 1941 show, "Back from Vacation; Gildy Says Goodbye", next-door nemesis Gildersleeve --- who has moved to Summerfield to finish raising his orphaned niece and nephew (and already begun his successful spin-off show The Great Gildersleeve) -- has come back to Wistful Vista to wind up his affairs there. In a farewell to the show that made him famous, Gildersleeve opens the closet to be buried in the usual avalanche.

On at least one occasion, the gag is flipped, and the closet is silent: in "Man's Untapped Energies" (broadcast March 11, 1947), visiting Dr. Gamble makes to leave. Molly warns, "No, Doctor, not through that door, that's the hall closet!" As the audience chuckles slightly in anticipation, Fibber explains: "Oh, I forgot to tell you, Molly, I straightened out the hall closet this morning!" This was certainly not the end of the gag, though, as the closet soon became cluttered once again, leading to many more disasters.

Like many such trademarks, the clattering closet began as a one-time stunt, but "the closet" was developed carefully, not being overused (it rarely appeared in more than two consecutive installments, though it never disappeared for the same length, either, at the height of its identification, and it rarely collapsed at exactly the same time from show to show), and it became the best-known running sound gag in American radio's classic period. Jack Benny's basement vault alarm ran a distant second. Both of these classic sound effects were performed by Ed Ludes and Virgil Rhymer, the Hollywood-based NBC staff sound effects creators. Exactly what tumbled out of McGee's closet each time was never clear (except to these sound-effects men), but what signaled the end of the avalanche was always the same sound: a clear, tiny, household hand bell and McGee's inevitable post-collapse lament. "Fibber McGee's closet" entered the American vernacular as a catchphrase synonymous with household clutter.

Spin-offs

Fibber McGee and Molly spun two supporting characters off into their own shows. By far the most successful and popular was Harold Peary's Gildersleeve, spun into The Great Gildersleeve in 1941. This show introduced single parenthood of a sort to creative broadcasting: the pompous, previously married Gildersleeve now moved to Summerfield, became single (although the missing wife was never explained), and raised his orphaned, spirited niece and nephew, while dividing his time between running his manufacturing business and (eventually) becoming the town water commissioner. In one episode, the McGees arrived in Summerfield for a visit with their old neighbor with hilarious results: McGee inadvertently learns Gildersleeve is engaged, and he practically needs to be chloroformed to perpetuate the secret a little longer.

Peary returned the favor in a memorable 1944 Fibber McGee & Molly episode in which neither of the title characters appeared: Jim Jordan was recovering from a bout of pneumonia (this would be written into the show the following week, when the Jordans returned), and the story line involved Gildersleeve and nephew Leroy hoping to visit the McGees at home during a train layover in Wistful Vista, but finding Fibber and Molly not at home. At the end of the episode, Gildersleeve discovers the couple had left in a hurry that morning when they received Gildy's letter saying he would be stopping over in Wistful Vista.

Marlin Hurt's Beulah was also spun off, leading to both a radio and television show that would eventually star Hattie McDaniel and Ethel Waters.

Jim and Marian Jordan themselves occasionally appeared on other programs, away from their Fibber and Molly characters. One memorable episode of Suspense ("Backseat Driver", 02-03-1949) cast the Jordans as victims of a car-jacking; Jim Jordan's tense, interior monologues were especially dramatic.

Films

The Jordans portrayed their characters in four movies. In the early years of the radio show, they were supporting characters in the 1937 Paramount film This Way Please, starring Charles "Buddy" Rogers and Betty Grable. Once the show hit its stride, they had leading roles in the RKO Radio Pictures films Look Who's Laughing (1941), Here We Go Again (1942), and Heavenly Days (1944).

The first two RKO films are generally considered the best, as they co-star fellow radio stars Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Harold Peary also appears in both as Gildersleeve, with Arthur Q. Bryan, Bill Thompson, Harlow Wilcox, Gale Gordon, and Isabel Randolph appearing in both their show roles and as other characters. Bill Thompson in Look Who's Laughing played two parts: The pushy sales-man, and the man who shouted "It's Hillary Horton". Gale Gordon played Otis Cadwalader, Molly's ex-boyfriend in Here We Go Again. Arthur Q. Bryan played the Mayor's aide in Look Who's Laughing. The Jordans' participation in Look Who's Laughing was set up in the Fibber McGee & Molly episode "Amusement Park" (6/17/41), in which Gale Gordon played an RKO pictures representative who followed the McGees around the amusement park and chose the McGees as a representative American couple to star in a movie with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. The day before the film's real-life premiere in San Francisco, the movie had its fictional opening in Wistful Vista during that week's radio episode, and Bergen and McCarthy made a guest appearance ("Premiere of Look Who's Laughing" (11/11/41)).

Look Who's Laughing has been released on VHS and DVD as part of the Lucille Ball RKO Collection. Here We Go Again has been released on VHS and was released on DVD on January 14, 2014, through Warner Archives. Heavenly Days was also included in the January 2014 DVD release of Here We Go Again as part of a "double feature" DVD. Look Who's Laughing, Here We Go Again and Heavenly Days have been featured on Turner Classic Movies.

In addition to the feature films, the McGees appeared in character in the 1945 film The All-Star Bond Rally, a promotional film for war bonds. The characters appear as bookends to the film, attending a stage presentation hosted by Bob Hope, who knows and recognizes them. The All-Star Bond Rally lapsed into the public domain in 1973 and is widely available.

Other films featured the McGees' neighbors. The first film was called Comin' Round the Mountain (1940) and featured the McGees' neighbors The Old-Timer (played by Bill Thompson) and Gildersleeve, as the mayor of the town. Gildersleeve's character was in many other films before The Great Gildersleeve show and movies. Abigale Uppington is in the film County Fair along with Harold Peary, and his future radio show co-star Shirley Mitchell (who also played Leila Ransom in The Great Gildersleeve); the Uppington character also appeared in Barnyard Follies.

Television

The Jordans, throughout their time on radio, had resisted bringing their show to television. "They were trying to push us into TV, and we were reluctant," Jim Jordan told an interviewer many years later. "Our friends advised us, 'Don't do it until you need to. You have this value in radio?milk it dry.'"

Finally, after the last of the Just Molly and Me shorts ceased production, an attempt at getting the McGees onto television came in September 1959. The Fibber McGee and Molly TV series was produced by William Asher for NBC (and co-sponsored by Singer Corporation and Standard Brands). Neither of the Jordans, nor Phil Leslie (the head writer by the end of the radio series), took part in the series. The decision was made to recast both roles, with younger actors Bob Sweeney and Cathy Lewis as Fibber and Molly respectively; Lewis had previously played Jane Stacy, a very similar straight-woman character, on the radio version of My Friend Irma. Bill Davenport served as head writer for this series. The only radio alumnus to appear as a regular cast member was Harold Peary, who took the role of Mayor La Trivia. The television show was unable to recreate the flavor and humor of the radio version and did not survive its first season, ending its run in January 1960. A pilot episode and at least three episodes of the television series have lapsed into the public domain.

Changes

In 1953, Marian Jordan's periodic health problems necessitated the shortening of Fibber McGee and Molly into a nightly fifteen-minute program, recorded without a studio audience in single sessions, the better to enable Jordan to rest. This timing was sadly appropriate, as classic radio had entered its dying days. Still, the McGees remained favorite presences on radio even after the quarter-hour edition ended in 1956, appearing in shorts from 1957 to 1959 on the NBC's Monitor radio program as Just Molly and Me.

Radio historian Gerald S. Nachman has written that the Jordans anticipated renewing their contract with NBC for another three years when Marian's battle against ovarian cancer ended with her death in 1961. In the 1970s, Jim Jordan briefly returned to acting. An episode of NBC's Chico and the Man featured a surprise appearance by Jordan as a friendly neighborhood mechanic. Jordan also lent his voice to Disney's animated film, The Rescuers (1977) and reprised his role as Fibber McGee (complete with the closet gag) in an advertisement for AARP. He died in 1988?a year before Fibber McGee and Molly was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.

Jim Jordan married Gretchen Stewart (the widow of Yogi Yorgesson) after Marian's death. Gretchen and the Jordan children donated the manuscripts of Smackout and Fibber McGee and Molly to Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications after his death in 1988. Perhaps fittingly for his longtime radio alter ego, Jordan died on April Fool's Day.

The show has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next to the NBC studios where the show was performed. The S.C. Johnson Company has preserved more than 700 shows it sponsored for fifteen years.

References

External links

Fibber McGee and Molly
Gale Gordon Archive at the Wayback Machine (archived October 27, 2009)
Peoria nephew of 'Fibber McGee' keeps memory of uncle alive
Zoot Radio, over 750 free Fibber McGee and Molly radio shows

Audio

Video

In Studio A at NBC Hollywood with Fibber McGee and Molly and The Billy Mills Orchestra LIVE (1948), an original NBC transcription in High Fidelity
Jim Jordan reprises the closet gag for an AARP advertisement in color at the Internet Archive
Four public-domain episodes of the Fibber McGee and Molly TV series at the Internet Archive

Source : Wikipedia

Jack Benny Radio Show

Fri, 05 Jul 2019 21:04:00 +0000

The Jack Benny Program, starring Jack Benny, is a radio-TV comedy series that ran for more than three decades and is generally regarded as a high-water mark in 20th-century American comedy.

Cast

Jack Benny - played himself. Protagonist of the show, Benny is a comic, vain, penny-pinching miser, insisting on remaining 39 years old on stage despite his actual age, and often playing the violin badly.
Eddie Anderson - Rochester Van Jones, Jack's valet and chauffeur. Early in the show's run, he often talked of gambling or going out with women. Later on, he generally complained about his salary.
Don Wilson - Himself. Don generally opened the show and also did the commercials. He was the target of Jack's jokes, mostly about his weight.
Gene McNulty - Dennis Day, a vocalist who was always in his early 20s no matter how old he actually was (by the time of the last television series, McNulty was 49 years old). He was sweet but not very bright. When called upon, he could use a wide variety of accents, which was especially useful in plays. He usually sang a song about 10 minutes into the program. If the episode was a flashback to a previous time, a ruse would be used such as Dennis singing his song for Jack so he could hear it before the show. McNulty adopted the name "Dennis Day" as his stage name for the rest of his career.
Sadie Marks - Mary Livingstone, a sarcastic comic foil whose varying roles all served as, to use the description of Fred Allen, "a girl to insult (Jack)." Marks, who in real life was Benny's wife, later legally changed her name to "Mary Livingstone" in response to the character's popularity. Her role on the program was reduced in the 1950s due to increasing stage fright, and Livingstone finally retired from acting in 1958.
Phil Harris - Himself. A skirt-chasing, arrogant, hip-talking bandleader who constantly put Jack down (in a mostly friendly way, of course). He referred to Mary as "Livvy" or "Liv", and Jack as "Jackson".. Harris explained this once by saying it's "as close as I can get to jackass and still be polite" Spun off into The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show (1946-1954) with his wife, actress Alice Faye. Harris left the radio show in 1952 and his character did not make the transition to television.
Mel Blanc - Carmichael the Polar Bear, Professor Pierre LeBlanc, Sy the Mexican, Polly (Jack's parrot), The Maxwell and many other assorted voices. An occasional running gag went along the lines of how the various characters Mel portrayed all looked alike. He was also the sound effects of Jack's barely functional Maxwell automobile?a role he played again in the Warner Brothers cartoon The Mouse that Jack Built. Another participating voice actor was Bert Gordon. Mel also played a train station announcer, whose catchphrase was, "Train leaving on Track Five for Anaheim, Azusa and Cuc-amonga."
Frank Nelson - The "Yeeee-essss?" man. He was always the person who waited on Jack wherever he was, from the railroad station agent, to the store clerk, to the doorman, to the waiter. Frank always delighted in aggravating Jack, as he was apparently constantly aggravated by Jack's presence.
Sheldon Leonard - A racetrack tout (originated by Benny Rubin) who frequently offered unsolicited advice to Benny on a variety of non-racing-related subjects. Ironically, he never gave out information on horse racing, unless Jack demanded it. One excuse the tout gave was "Who knows about horses?" His catchphrase was "Hey, bud... c'mere a minute".
Joseph Kearns - Ed, the superannuated security guard in Jack's money vault. Ed had allegedly been guarding Jack's vault since (variously) the founding of Los Angeles (1781), the American Civil War, the American Revolutionary War, or when Jack had just turned 38 years old. Burt Mustin took over the role on television following Kearns' death in 1962. (In the 1959 cartoon The Mouse that Jack Built, Mel Blanc played the part of Ed, who asks if the U.S. had won the war, then asks what would be done with the Kaiser). Kearns also played other roles, that of Dennis Day's father, that of a beleaguered IRS agent, and often of a clerk when it wasn't necessary to have Frank Nelson antagonize Jack.
Artie Auerbach - Mr. Kitzel [who originally appeared on Al Pearce's radio show in the late 1930s, where his famous catch phrase was, "Hmmmm... eh, could be!", and several years later as a regular on The Abbott & Costello Show, who originally started out as a Yiddish hot dog vendor selling hot dogs during the Rose Bowl. In later episodes, he would go on to lose his hot dog stand, and move on to various other jobs. A big part of his schtick involved garbling names with his accent, such as referring to Nat King Cole as "Nat King Cohen", or mentioning his favorite baseball player, "Rabbi Maranville". He often complained about his wife, an unseen character who was described as a large, domineering woman who, on one occasion, Kitzel visualized as "...from the front, she looks like Don Wilson from the side!" He often sang various permutations of his jingle, "Pickle in the middle and the mustard on top!" Kitzel was often heard to say, "Hoo-hoo-HOO!" in response to questions asked of him.
Bob Crosby - In 1952, Crosby replaced Phil Harris as the bandleader, remaining until Benny retired the radio show in 1955. In joining the show, he became the leader of the same group of musicians who had played under Harris. Many of his running jokes focused on his apparent inability to pronounce "Manischewitz", his own family, and the wealth and lifestyle of his older brother, Bing Crosby.
Benny Rubin - Played a variety of characters on both the radio and television versions. His most memorable bit was as an information desk attendant. Jack would ask a series of questions that Rubin would answer with an ever-increasing irritated, "I don't know!" followed by the punchline {among them: "Well, if you don't know, why are you standing behind that counter?"/"I gotta stand behind something; somebody stole my pants; I missed a payment and they nailed my shoes to the floor!"}.
Dale White - Harlow Wilson, the son of Don and Lois Wilson, on TV. His catchphrase, "You never did like me!", is usually uttered when he and Jack end up embroiled in an argument, though he once said it to his own mother.
Verna Felton - "Mrs. Day", Dennis' frighteningly domineering mother. She often came to near blows with Jack in her efforts to prevent him from taking advantage of Dennis, and she was often portrayed as working various masculine jobs like a plumber, trucker or karate instructor. Although she cares deeply for her son, Dennis' zany behavior aggravates her to no end, and the show has alluded to her hilariously myriad attempts at killing and abandoning him.
Bea Benaderet and Sara Berner - "Gertrude Gearshift" and "Mabel Flapsaddle", a pair of telephone switchboard operators who always traded barbs with Jack (and sometimes each other) when he tried to put through a call. Whenever the scene shifted to them, they would subtly plug a current picture in an insult such as "Mr. Benny's line is flashing!" "Oh, I wonder what Dial M for Money wants now?" or "I wonder what Schmoe Vadis wants now?"
Jane Morgan and Gloria Gordon - Martha and Emily, a pair of elderly ladies who were irresistibly attracted to Jack.
Madge Blake and Jessica Fax - President and vice president (respectively) of the Jack Benny Fan Club, Pasadena Chapter.
James Stewart and his wife, Gloria - Themselves. Recurring guest stars on the television series playing Benny's often-imposed-upon neighbors, in roles similar to those performed on radio by Ronald and Benita Colman (see below), although re-tailored for Stewart's on-screen persona.
Butterfly McQueen played Butterfly, the niece of Rochester. She worked as Mary Livingstone's maid.

Other cast members include:

Ronald Colman and his wife, Benita - Themselves. Not actually members of the cast, they were among Benny's most popular guest stars on the radio series, portraying his long-suffering next-door neighbors. On the show, the Colmans were often revolted by Jack's eccentricities and by the fact that he always borrowed odds and ends from them (at one point, leading Ronald to exclaim, "Butter? Butter, butter!!! Where does he think this is, Shangri-La???"). Dennis Day often impersonated Ronald Colman. In real life, the Colmans lived a few blocks away from Benny's home.
Frank Parker - The show's singer during the early seasons on radio from New York.
Kenny Baker - The show's tenor singer who originally played the young, dopey character replaced by Dennis Day.
Andy Devine - Jack's raspy-voiced friend who lived on a farm with his ma and pa. He usually told a story about his folks and life around the farm. His catchphrase was "Hiya, Buck!"

Schlepperman (played by Sam Hearn) - A Jewish character who spoke with a Yiddish accent (his catch phrase: "Hullo, Stranger!"). He would return again as the "Hiya, Rube!" guy, a hick farmer from the town of Calabasas who always insisted on referring to Jack as "rube".
Mr. Billingsly - Played by writer and bit player Ed Beloin, Mr. Billingsly was a boarder who rented a room in Jack's home. Mr. Billingsly was a polite but very eccentric man. He appeared in the early 1940s.
Larry Stevens - Tenor singer who substituted for Dennis Day from November 1944 to March 1946, when Dennis served in the Navy.
Mary Kelly - The Blue Fairy, a clumsy, overweight fairy who appeared in several storytelling episodes. Kelly had been an old flame of Jack's, who had fallen on hard times. Benny was unsure of whether to give Kelly a regular role and instead appealed to friend George Burns who put her on his show in 1939 as Mary "Bubbles" Kelly, best friend to Gracie.
Gisele MacKenzie - Singer and violin player, she guest starred seven times on the program. Benny was co-executive producer of her NBC series The Gisele MacKenzie Show (1957-1958).
Blanche Stewart - A variety of characters and animal sounds
Barry Gordon - Played Jack Benny as a child in a skit where Jack played his own father.
Johnny Green - The band leader until 1936 when Phil Harris joined the show.

Radio

Jack Benny first appeared on radio as a guest of Ed Sullivan in March 1932. He was then given his own show later that year, with Canada Dry Ginger Ale as a sponsor ?The Canada Dry Ginger Ale Program, beginning May 2, 1932, on the NBC Blue Network and continuing there for six months until October 26, moving the show to CBS on October 30. With Ted Weems leading the band, Benny stayed on CBS until January 26, 1933.

Arriving at NBC on March 17, Benny did The Chevrolet Program until April 1, 1934 with Frank Black leading the band. He continued with The General Tire Revue for the rest of that season, and in the fall of 1934, for General Foods as The Jell-O Program Starring Jack Benny (1934-42) and, when sales of Jell-O were affected by sugar rationing during World War II, The Grape Nuts Flakes Program Starring Jack Benny (later the Grape Nuts and Grape Nuts Flakes Program) (1942-44). On October 1, 1944, the show became The Lucky Strike Program Starring Jack Benny, when American Tobacco's Lucky Strike cigarettes took over as his radio sponsor, through the mid-1950s. By that time, the practice of using the sponsor's name as the title began to fade.

The show returned to CBS on January 2, 1949, as part of CBS president William S. Paley's "raid" of NBC talent in 1948-49. There it stayed for the remainder of its radio run, which ended on May 22, 1955. CBS aired repeats of previous 1953-55 radio episodes from 1956 to 1958 as The Best of Benny for State Farm Insurance, who later sponsored his television program from 1960 through 1965.

Television

Jack Benny made his TV debut in 1949 with a local appearance on Los Angeles station KTTV, then a CBS affiliate. On October 28, 1950, he made his full network debut over CBS Television. Benny's television shows were occasional broadcasts in his early seasons on TV, as he was still firmly dedicated to radio. The regular and continuing Jack Benny Program was telecast on CBS from October 28, 1950 to September 15, 1964 (finally becoming a weekly show in the 1960-1961 season), and on NBC from September 25, 1964 to September 10, 1965. 343 episodes were produced. His TV sponsors included American Tobacco's Lucky Strike (1950-59), Lever Brothers' Lux (1959-60), State Farm Insurance (1960-65), Lipton Tea (1960-62), General Foods' Jell-O (1962-64), and Miles Laboratories (1964-65).

The television show was a seamless continuation of Benny's radio program, employing many of the same players, the same approach to situation comedy and some of the same scripts. The suffix "Program" instead of "Show" was also a carryover from radio, where "program" rather than "show" was used frequently for presentations in the non-visual medium. Occasionally, in several live episodes, the title card read The Jack Benny Show.

The Jack Benny Program appeared infrequently during its first two years on CBS-TV. Benny moved into television slowly: in his first season (1950-1951), he only performed on four shows, but by the 1951-1952 season, he was ready to do one show approximately every six weeks. In the third season (1952-1953), the show was broadcast every four weeks. During the 1953-1954 season, The Jack Benny Program aired every three weeks. From 1954 to 1960, the program aired every other week, rotating with such shows as Private Secretary and Bachelor Father. Beginning in the 1960-1961 season, The Jack Benny Program began airing every week. The show moved from CBS to NBC prior to the 1964-65 season. During the 1953-54 season, a handful of episodes were filmed during the summer and the others were live, a schedule which allowed Benny to continue doing his radio show. In the 1953-1954 season, Dennis Day had his own short-lived comedy and variety show on NBC, The Dennis Day Show.

Live episodes (and later live on tape episodes) of The Jack Benny Program were broadcast from CBS Television City with live audiences. Early filmed episodes were shot by McCadden Productions at Hollywood Center Studios and later by Desilu Productions at Red Studios Hollywood with an audience brought in to watch the finished film for live responses. Benny's opening and closing monologues were filmed in front of a live audience. However, from the late 1950s until the last season on NBC, a laugh track was utilized to augment audience responses. By this time, all shows were filmed at Universal Television.

In Jim Bishop's book A Day in the Life of President Kennedy, John F. Kennedy said that he was too busy to watch most television but that he made the time to watch The Jack Benny Program each week.

Outside of North America (being also one of the most popular shows on the CBC), one episode reportedly aired first in the United Kingdom (where one episode was filmed). Benny had also been a familiar figure on Australia since the mid-to-late 1930s with his radio show, and he made a special program for ATN-7 Jack Benny In Australia in March 1964, after a successful tour of Sydney and Melbourne.

End

James T. Aubrey, the President of CBS Television and a man known for his abrasive and judgmental decision-making style, infamously told Benny in 1963, "you're through." Benny was further incensed when CBS placed an untested new sitcom, the Beverly Hillbillies spinoff Petticoat Junction, as his lead in. Benny had had a strong ratings surge the previous year when his series was moved to Tuesday nights with the popular Red Skelton Hour in the time slot prior to his. He feared a separation of their two programs might prove fatal. Early that fall he announced his show was moving back to NBC, where he was able to get the network to pick up another season. Benny's fears would prove to be unfounded; his ratings for the 1963-64 season remained strong while Petticoat Junction emerged as the most popular new series that fall.

In his unpublished autobiography, I Always Had Shoes (portions of which were later incorporated by Benny's daughter, Joan, into her memoir of her parents, Sunday Nights at Seven), Benny said that he made the decision to end his TV series in 1965. He said that while the ratings were still good (he cited a figure of some 18 million viewers per week, although he qualified that figure by saying he never believed the ratings services were doing anything more than guessing), advertisers complained that commercial time on his show was costing nearly twice as much as what they paid for most other shows, and he had grown tired of what was called the "rat race."

Syndication

The radio series was one of the most extensively preserved programs of its era, with the archive almost complete from 1936 onward and several episodes existing from before that (including the 1932 premiere). As with the radio shows, most of the television series has lapsed into the public domain, although several episodes (particularly those made from 1961 onward, including the entire NBC-TV run) remain under copyright. During his lone NBC season, CBS aired repeats on weekdays and Sunday afternoons. 104 episodes personally selected by Benny and Irving Fein, Benny's associate since 1947, were placed into syndication in 1968 by MCA TV. Telecasts of the shows in the late evening were running as late as 1966.

Four early 1960s episodes were rerun on CBS during the summer of 1977. Edited 16mm prints ran on the CBN Cable Network in the mid 1980s. Restored versions first appeared on the short lived HA! network in 1990. As of 2011, the series has run on Antenna TV, part of a long term official syndication distribution deal. The public domain television episodes have appeared on numerous stations, including PBS, while the radio series episodes have appeared in radio drama anthology series such as When Radio Was.

Home media

Public domain episodes have been available on budget VHS/Beta tapes (and later DVDs) since the late seventies. MCA home video issued a 1960 version of the classic "Christmas Shopping" show in 1982 and a VHS set of ten filmed episodes in 1990. In 2008, 25 public domain episodes of the show, long thought lost, were located in a CBS vault. The Jack Benny Fan Club, with the blessing of the Benny estate, offered to fund the digital preservation and release of these sealed episodes. CBS issued a press statement that any release was unlikely. June 2013 saw the first official release of 18 rare live Benny programs from 1956 to 1964 by Shout! Factory. This set, part of Benny's private collection at the UCLA film and television library, included guest shots by Jack Paar, John Wayne, Tony Curtis, Gary Cooper, Dick Van Dyke, Rock Hudson, Natalie Wood, President Harry Truman and the only TV appearance with longtime radio foe Ronald Colman.

Episodes

Format

Whether on television or radio, the format of the Jack Benny Program never wavered. The program utilized a loose show-within-a-show format, wherein the main characters were playing versions of themselves. The show often broke the fourth wall, with the characters interacting with the audience and commenting on the program and its advertisements. The show would usually open with a song by the orchestra or banter between Benny and Don Wilson. There would then be banter between Benny and the regulars about the news of the day or about one of the running jokes on the program, such as Benny's age, Day's stupidity or Mary's letters from her mother. There would then be a song by the tenor followed by situation comedy involving an event of the week, a mini-play, or a satire of a current movie. Some shows were entire domestic sitcoms revolving around some aspect of Benny's life (e.g. spring cleaning or a violin lesson).

Racial attitudes

Eddie Anderson was the first black man to have a recurring role in a national radio show, which was significant because at the time it was not uncommon for black characters to be played by white actors in blackface. Although Eddie Anderson's Rochester may be considered a stereotype by some, his attitudes were unusually sardonic for such a role. As was typical at the time in depicting class distinctions, Rochester always used a formal mode of address to the other (White) characters ("Mr. Benny", "Miss Livingston") and they always used a familiar mode in speaking to him ("Rochester") but the formal mode when speaking to him about another White character ("Mr. Benny" when speaking to Rochester but "Jack" when speaking to Jack). In many routines, Rochester gets the better of Benny, often pricking his boss' ego, or simply outwitting him. The show's portrayal of black characters could be seen as advanced for its time; in a 1956 episode, African-American actor Roy Glenn plays a friend of Rochester, and he is portrayed as a well-educated, articulate man not as the typical "darkie stereotype" seen in many films of the time. Glenn's role was a recurring one on the series, where he was often portrayed as having to support two people on one unemployment check (i.e., himself and Rochester). Black talent was also showcased, with several guest appearances by The Ink Spots and others.

References

External links

The Jack Benny Program (TV pilot) on IMDb
The Jack Benny Program (TV series) on IMDb
Jack Benny Christmas Show 18 December 1960 (Season 11, Episode 9) - Internet Archives
Video - Jack Benny Program - Internet Archives
The Jack Benny Program at TV.com
Jack Benny Collection for Radio & Television-Paley Center for Media
The Jack Benny Program at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television
When Radio Was website

Audio

Collection of Jack Benny radio show.
Jack Benny radio show collection
Archive.org 143 episodes
Zoot Radio, 766 free old time radio show downloads of The Jack Benny radio show
Jack Benny at Outlaws Old Time Radio Corner
Jack Benny radio show at oldclassicradio.com
RadioEchoes 786 episodes

Source : Wikipedia

Dragnet Radio Show

Fri, 05 Jul 2019 21:07:00 +0000

Dragnet is an American radio series, enacting the cases of a dedicated Los Angeles police detective, Sergeant Joe Friday, and his partners. The show takes its name from the police term "dragnet", meaning a system of coordinated measures for apprehending criminals or suspects.

Dragnet is perhaps the most famous and influential police procedural drama in media history. The series gave audience members a feel for the boredom and drudgery, as well as the danger and heroism, of police work. Dragnet earned praise for improving the public opinion of police officers.

Actor and producer Jack Webb's aims in Dragnet were for realism and unpretentious acting. He achieved both goals, and Dragnet remains a key influence on subsequent police dramas in many media.

The show's cultural impact is such that after seven decades, elements of Dragnet are familiar to those who have never seen or heard the program. The ominous, four-note introduction to the brass and tympani theme music (titled "Danger Ahead"), composed by Walter Schumann, is instantly recognizable. It is derived from Miklós Rózsa's score for the 1946 film version of The Killers. Another Dragnet trademark is the show's opening narration: "Ladies and gentlemen: the story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent." This underwent minor revisions over time. The "only" and "ladies and gentlemen" were dropped at some point. Variations on this narration have been featured in subsequent crime dramas, and in parodies of the dramas (e.g. "Only the facts have been changed to protect the guilty").

The radio series was the first entry in a Dragnet media franchise encompassing film, television, books and comics.

History and Creation

Dragnet was created and produced by Jack Webb, who starred as stoic Sergeant Joe Friday. Webb had starred in a few mostly short-lived radio programs, and Dragnet would make him a major media personality in his era.

Dragnet origins were in Webb's small role as a police forensic scientist in the 1948 film He Walked by Night, itself inspired by the violent 1946 crime spree of Erwin Walker, a disturbed World War II veteran and former Glendale, California, police department employee. The film was depicted in semidocumentary style, and Marty Wynn (a LAPD sergeant from the Robbery Division) was a technical advisor on the film. Inspired by Wynn's accounts of actual cases and criminal investigative procedure, Webb convinced Wynn that day-to-day activities of police officers could be realistically depicted in a broadcast series, without the forced melodrama heard in the numerous private-detective serials then common in radio programming. (The film contained two elements that would transfer over to the Dragnet television series: the opening text overlay containing the phrase mentioning that the story is true and "only the names are changed --- to protect the innocent", which was then immediately followed by various shots of Los Angeles with a narrator beginning with the phrase "This is the city. Los Angeles, California.")

Webb frequently visited police headquarters, rode along on night patrols with Sgt. Wynn and his partner Officer Vance Brasher, and attended Police Academy courses to learn authentic jargon and details that could be featured in a radio program. When he proposed Dragnet to NBC officials, they were not especially impressed; radio was aswarm with private investigators and crime dramas, such as Webb's earlier Pat Novak for Hire. That program didn’t last long, but Webb received high marks for his role as the titular private investigator, and NBC agreed to a limited run for Dragnet.

With writer James E. Moser, Webb prepared an audition recording, then sought the LAPD's endorsement; he wanted to portray cases from official files to demonstrate the steps taken by police officers during investigations. The official response was initially lukewarm, but in 1949 LAPD Chief Clemence B. Horrall gave Webb the endorsement he sought. Police wanted control over the program's sponsor, and insisted that police not be depicted unflatteringly. This would lead to criticism, as less flattering departmental aspects, such as LAPD's racial segregation policies, were never addressed.

Premiere

Dragnet debuted inauspiciously. The early months were bumpy, as Webb and company worked out the format and eventually grew somewhat comfortable with their characters (Friday was originally portrayed as more brash and forceful than his later usually flat demeanor). Gradually, Friday's deadpan, fast-talking persona emerged, described by John Dunning as "a cop's cop, tough but not hard, conservative but caring." Friday's first partner was Sergeant Ben Romero, portrayed by Barton Yarborough, a longtime radio actor. After Yarborough's death in 1951 (and therefore Romero's, who died of a heart attack, on the December 27, 1951 episode "The Big Sorrow"), Friday was partnered with Sergeant Ed Jacobs (December 27, 1951 - April 10, 1952, subsequently transferred to the Police Academy as an instructor), played by Barney Phillips; Officer Bill Lockwood (Ben Romero's nephew, April 17, 1952 - May 8, 1952), played by Martin Milner (with Ken Peters taking the role for the June 12, 1952 episode "The Big Donation"); and finally Frank Smith (introduced in "The Big Safe", May 1, 1952), played originally by Herb Ellis (1952), then Ben Alexander (September 21, 1952 - 1959) (Alexander would reprise the role of Smith for the initial television version and the 1954 film, making him Friday's longest serving partner in all the franchise's media). Raymond Burr was on board to play the Chief of Detectives. When Dragnet hit its stride, it was one of radio's top-rated shows.

Webb insisted on realism in the show. The dialogue was clipped, understated and sparse, influenced by the hardboiled school of crime fiction. Scripts were fast moving but did not seem rushed. Every aspect of police work was chronicled, step by step: From patrols and paperwork, to crime scene investigation, lab work and questioning witnesses or suspects. The detectives’ personal lives rarely took center stage. (Friday was a bachelor who lived with his mother; Romero, a Mexican-American from Texas, was an ever fretful husband and father.) "Underplaying is still acting", Webb told Time. "We try to make it as real as a guy pouring a cup of coffee.? Los Angeles police chiefs C.B. Horrall, William A. Worton, and (later) William H. Parker were credited as consultants, and many police officers were fans.

Most later episodes were entitled "The Big _____", where the key word denoted a person or object in the plot. In numerous episodes, this would be the principal suspect, victim, or physical target of the crime, but in others was often a seemingly inconsequential detail eventually revealed as key evidence in solving the crime. For example, in "The Big Streetcar" the background noise of a passing streetcar helps establish the location of a phone booth used by the suspect.

Throughout the series' radio years, one can find glimpses of pre-renewal Downtown L.A., with working class residents and the cheap bars, cafes, hotels and boarding houses which served them. At the climax of the early episode "James Vickers", the chase leads to the Subway Terminal Building, where the robber flees into a tunnel only to be killed by an oncoming train. By contrast, in episodes set in outlying areas, it is clear that the locations are far less built up than they are today. Today, the Imperial Highway, extending 40 miles east from El Segundo to Anaheim, is a heavily used boulevard lined with low-rise commercial development. In the episode "The Big Chance" (4 February 1954) scenes along the Highway, at "the road to San Pedro," clearly indicate that it retained much of the character of a country highway at that time.

Verisimilitude

Webb was a stickler for accurate details, and Dragnet used authentic touches, such as the LAPD's actual radio call sign (KMA367), and the names of actual department officials, such as Ray Pinker and Lee Jones of the crime lab or Chief of Detectives (and later LAPD Chief from 1967-69) Thad Brown.

Two announcers were used. Episodes began with announcer George Fenneman intoning the series opening ("The story you are about to hear is true; only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.") and Hal Gibney describing the premise of the episode. "Big Saint" (April 26, 1951) for example, begins with "You're a Detective Sergeant. You're assigned to auto theft detail. A well organized ring of car thieves begins operations in your city. It's one of the most puzzling cases you've ever encountered. Your job: break it."

After the first commercial, Gibney would officially introduce the program: "Dragnet, the documented drama of an actual crime, investigated and solved by the men who unrelentingly stand watch on the security of your home, your family and your life. For the next thirty minutes, transcribed in cooperation with the Los Angeles Police Department, you will travel step-by-step on the side of the law through an actual case from official police files. From beginning to end?from crime to punishment?Dragnet is the story of your police force in action."

Later, the opening would be shortened to: "Dragnet, the documented drama of an actual crime. For the next thirty minutes, in cooperation with the Los Angeles Police Department, you will travel step-by-step on the side of the law through an actual case transcribed from official police files. From beginning to end?from crime to punishment?Dragnet is the story of your police force in action."

The story usually began with footsteps, followed by Joe Friday intoning something like "Tuesday, February 12. It was cold in Los Angeles. We were working the day watch out of Robbery Division. My partner's Ben Romero. The boss is Ed Backstrand, Chief of Detectives. My name's Friday." Friday would then narrate where he or both he and his partner were going, then the time he/they arrived at the location followed by a door opening and an elaboration of the location: "I was on my way in to work, and it was 4:58 PM when I got to Room 42 ... (door opening) Homicide." ("The Big String", January 18, 1953)

Friday offered voice-over narration throughout the episodes, noting the time, date and place of every scene as he and his partners went through their day investigating the crime. The events related in a given episode might occur in hours, or might span a few months. At least one episode unfolded in real time: in "City Hall Bombing" (July 21, 1949), Friday and Romero had less than thirty minutes to stop a man who was threatening to destroy the City Hall with a bomb. In one episode, "The Big Ben" (March 15, 1951), after Friday was shot and hospitalized Romero took over the voice-over narration for the remainder of the episode.

At the end of the episode, usually after a brief endorsement by Jack Webb for the sponsor's product, announcer Hal Gibney would relate the fate of the suspect, usually tried in "Department 187 of the Superior Court of the State of California, in and for the City and County of Los Angeles", convicted of a crime and sent (in most episodes) to "the State Penitentiary, San Quentin California" or "examined by [#] psychiatrists appointed by the court", judged mentally incompetent and "committed to a state mental hospital for an indefinite period". Murderers were often "executed in the manner prescribed by law" or "executed in the lethal gas chamber at the State Penitentiary, San Quentin California". Occasionally, police pursued the wrong suspect, and criminals sometimes avoided justice or escaped, at least on the radio Dragnet. In 1950, Time quoted Webb: "We don’t even try to prove that crime doesn’t pay ... sometimes it does."

Specialized terminology was mentioned in every episode but rarely explained. Webb trusted the audience to determine the meanings of words or terms by their context, and Dragnet tried to avoid awkward, lengthy exposition that people would not use in daily speech. Some specialized terms such as "A.P.B." for "All Points Bulletin" and "M.O." for "Modus Operandi" were rarely used in popular culture before Dragnet introduced them to everyday America.

While most radio shows used one or two sound-effect experts, Dragnet used five: a script clocking in at just under 30 minutes could require up to 300 effects. Accuracy was underlined: The exact number of footsteps from one room to another at Los Angeles police headquarters were mimicked, and when a telephone rang at Friday's desk, the listener heard the same ring as the telephones in Los Angeles police headquarters. A single minute of ".22 Rifle for Christmas" is a representative example of the evocative sound effects featured on Dragnet. While Friday and others investigate bloodstains in a suburban backyard, the listener hears a series of overlapping effects: a squeaking gate hinge, footsteps, a technician scraping blood into a paper envelope, the glassy chime of chemical vials, bird calls, and a dog barking in the distance.

Sometimes the mundane intruded. When shows ran short, directors stalled for time. In "The Big Crime", Dragnet interrupted a scene while a real-estate agent spent a full minute answering and explaining a phone call, simply filling in time.

The old radio programs ended each week with a remembrance of fallen officers who died on the job. The remembrance would be read over somber organ music, and would be officers from all over the country.

Topics and themes

Scripts tackled topics, ranging from the thrilling (murders, missing persons and armed robbery) to the mundane (check fraud and shoplifting), yet Dragnet made them all interesting due to fast-moving plots and behind-the-scenes realism. In "The Garbage Chute" (December 15, 1949), they even had a locked room mystery.

Though tame by modern standards, Dragnet ? especially on the radio ? handled controversial subjects such as sex crimes and drug addiction with unprecedented and even startling realism. In one such example, Dragnet broke an unspoken (and rarely broached) taboos of popular entertainment in the episode ".22 Rifle for Christmas" which aired December 22, 1949 and repeated at Christmastime for the next three years. The episode followed the search for two young boys, Stanley Johnstone and Stevie Morheim, only to discover Stevie had been accidentally killed while playing with a rifle that belonged to Stanley?who was supposed to receive it as a Christmas present but opened the box early. Stanley finally told Friday that Stevie had been running while holding the rifle when he tripped and fell, causing the gun to discharge, fatally wounding Morheim. NBC received thousands of complaint letters, including a protest by the National Rifle Association. Webb forwarded many of the letters to police chief Parker who promised "ten more shows illustrating the folly of giving rifles to children".

".22 Rifle for Christmas" was replaced as the series' Christmas story on December 22, 1953 with "The Big Little Jesus", which followed the detectives' investigation of the theft of a statue of the baby Jesus from a church Nativity scene. With its happier ending than ".22 Rifle", this episode was repeated at Christmastime the following year. The late-1960s TV version of Dragnet included a newly produced version of "The Big Little Jesus", which featured Barry Williams (later of The Brady Bunch) as one of the altar boys.

Another episode dealt with high school girls who, rather than finding Hollywood stardom, fall in with fraudulent talent scouts and end up in pornography and prostitution. Both this episode and ".22 Rifle for Christmas" were adapted for television, with few script changes, when Dragnet moved to that medium. An episode, "The Big Trio" (July 3, 1952), detailed three cases in one episode, including reckless and dangerous (in this case, fatal) driving by unlicensed juveniles. With regard to drugs, Webb's strident anti-drug statements, continuing through the TV run, would be derided as camp by later audiences; yet his character later showed concern and sympathy for addicts as victims, especially in the case of juveniles.

The tone was usually serious, but with moments of comic relief: Romero was something of a hypochondriac and often seemed henpecked; Frank Smith continually complained about his brother-in-law Armand; though Friday dated, he usually dodged women who tried to set him up with marriage-minded dates.

Due in part to Webb's fondness for radio drama, Dragnet persisted on radio until 1957 (the last two seasons were repeats) as one of the last old time radio shows to give way to television's growing popularity. A total of 314 original episodes were broadcast from 1949 through 1957. In fact, the TV show proved to be a visual version of the radio show, as the style was virtually the same [including the scripts, as the majority were adapted from radio]. The TV show could be listened to without watching, with no loss of understanding of the storyline.

The radio show was also adapted into a comic strip by Mel Keefer.

"Just the facts, ma'am"

While "Just the facts, ma'am" is known as Dragnet's catchphrase (it has been parodied many times by other productions), that precise phrase was never actually uttered by Joe Friday. The closest lines were "All we want are the facts, ma'am" and "All we know are the facts, ma'am". The "Just the facts, ma'am" phrase did appear in the parody St. George and the Dragonet, a 1953 short audio satire by Stan Freberg (see below). The phrase was spoken by Ben Alexander in a 1966 cameo appearance on Batman. The phrase was used in the film L.A. Confidential, a reference to Badge of Honor, a fictitious TV show similar to Dragnet.

Main cast

Jack Webb as Los Angeles Police Department (L.A.P.D) Detective Sergeant Joseph "Joe" Friday
Barton Yarborough as Friday's partner, Los Angeles Police Department (L.A.P.D) Sergeant Benjamin "Ben" Romero (1949-1951)
Martin Milner/Ken Peters as Friday's partner Los Angeles Police Department (L.A.P.D.) Detective Bill Lockwood (1951)
Barney Phillips as Friday's partner, Los Angeles Police Department (L.A.P.D) Sergeant Edward "ED" Jacobs (1952)
Harry Bartell/Herb Ellis/Vic Perrin/Ben Alexander as Friday's longest serving partner in the entire franchise, Los Angeles Police Department (L.A.P.D]] Officer Franklin "Frank" Smith (1952-1959) (Alexander reprised his role alongside Webb for both the 1954 film and in the original 1951 television show)
Charles McGraw/Raymond Burr as Los Angeles Police Department (L.A.P.D.) Chief of Detectives Edward "Ed" Backstrand (ep 1-28)
Tol Avery as Los Angeles Police Department (L.A.P.D.) Chief of Detectives Thaddeus "Thad" Franklin Brown (ep 29+)
Herb Butterfield as Los Angeles Police Department (L.A.P.D.) Scientific Investigation Division (S.I.D) Crime lab technician Lieutenant Leland "Lee" Jones/Various
Olan Soule as Los Angeles Police Department (L.A.P.D.) Scientific Investigation Division (S.I.D) Crime lab technician Raymond "Ray" Pinker.
Peggy Webber as Ma Friday, Joe's Mother/Various.

Other Principal Actors: Frank Lovejoy, Paul Frees, Ted DeCorsia, Hans Conried, Homer Welch, Parley Baer, Harry Morgan, Betty Lou Gerson, Herb Vigran, Jeff Chandler, William Johnstone, Tony Barrett, William Conrad, Richard Boone, Whitfield Connor, George McCluskey, Stacy Harris, Charles Smith, Eddie Firestone, Virginia Gregg, Ralph Moody, Helen Kleeb, Jack Kruschen, Marion Richman, Martin Milner, Victor Rodman, Inge Jollos, June Whitley, Gil Stratton, Sam Edwards, Joyce McCluskey, Ken Patterson, Gwen Delano, Cliff Arquette, Sarah Selby, Edwin Bruce, Sammy Ogg, June Whitley, Peter Leeds, Lee Marvin, Carolyn Jones, Jean Tatum, Art Gilmore, Paul Richards, Lillian Buyeff, Irene Tedrow, Michael Ann Barrett, Vivi Janis, Georgia Ellis & Bert Holland.

Episodes

References

External links

Zoot Radio, free old time radio show downloads of Dragnet
Dragnet radio shows on Outlaws Old Time Radio Corner
weekly Saturday podcast with commentary on The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio hosted by Adam Graham

Sources

John Dunning, On The Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-19-507678-8.

Source : Wikipedia

Gunsmoke Radio Show

Fri, 05 Jul 2019 21:11:00 +0000

Gunsmoke is an American western radio series, which was developed for radio by John Meston and Norman Macdonnell. The series ran for nine seasons and was broadcast by CBS. The first episode of the series originally aired in the United States on April 26, 1952, and the final first-run episode aired on June 11, 1961. During the series, a total of 480 original episodes were broadcast, including shows with re-used or adapted scripts. A television version of the series premiered in 1955.

Gunsmoke is set in and around Dodge City, Kansas, in the post-Civil War era and centers around United States Marshall Matt Dillon (William Conrad) as he enforces law and order in the city. The series also focuses on Dillon's friendship with three other citizens of Dodge City: Doctor Charles "Doc" Adams (Howard McNear), the town's physician; Kitty Russell (Georgia Ellis), owner of the Long Branch Saloon; and Chester Wesley Proudfoot (Parley Baer), Dillon's deputy. Other roles were played by a group of supporting actors consisting of John Dehner, Sam Edwards, Harry Bartell, Vic Perrin, Lou Krugman, Lawrence Dobkin, Barney Phillips, Jack Kruschen, Ralph Moody, Ben Wright, James Nusser, Richard Crenna, Tom Tully, Joseph Kearns, Virginia Gregg, Jeanette Nolan, Virginia Christine, Helen Kleeb, Lillian Buyeff, Vivi Janiss, and Jeanne Bates. The entire nine-season run of Gunsmoke was produced by Norman Macdonnell.

Episodes

The original pilot episode of Gunsmoke was entitled "Mark Dillon Goes to Gouge Eye" and was recorded twice. The first was on June 11, 1949, with Rye Billsbury as Dillon and the second on July 15, 1949, with Howard Culver in the lead. Neither pilot was aired and the hero's name was eventually changed from Mark Dillon to Matt Dillon.

Season 1 (1952-1953)

Season 2 (1953-1954)

Season 3 (1954-1955)

Season 4 (1955-1956)

Season 5 (1956-1957)

Season 6 (1957-1958)

Season 7 (1958-1959)

Season 8 (1959-1960)

Season 9 (1960-1961)

Audio Links

Episodes on Archive.org

Footnotes

References

Barabas, SuzAnne; Gabor Barabas (1990). Gunsmoke: A Complete History. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN 0-89950-418-3.
Haendiges, Jerry (1996-2004). "Gunsmoke radio log". Jerry Haendiges Productions. Retrieved January 14, 2010. (runs to 480 episodes as it includes shows with re-used scripts)

Source : Wikipedia

Our Miss Brooks Radio Show

Fri, 05 Jul 2019 21:13:00 +0000

Our Miss Brooks is an American sitcom starring Eve Arden as a sardonic high-school English teacher. It began as a radio show broadcast on CBS from 1948 to 1957. When the show was adapted to television (1952-56), it became one of the medium's earliest hits. In 1956, the sitcom was adapted for the big screen in the film of the same name.

Characters

Constance "Connie" Brooks (Eve Arden) is an English teacher at fictional Madison High School.
Osgood Conklin (Gale Gordon) is the blustery, gruff, crooked, and unsympathetic principal of Madison High, a near-constant pain to his faculty and students. (Conklin was played by Joseph Forte in the show's first episode; Gordon succeeded him for the rest of the series' run.) Conklin would often abuse his authority to make teachers work extra hours or perform personal favors for him.
Philip Boynton (Jeff Chandler on radio, billed sometimes under his birth name Ira Grossel; Robert Rockwell on both radio and television), is a Madison High biology teacher, the shy and often clueless object of Miss Brooks' affections.
Walter Denton (Richard Crenna, billed at the time as Dick Crenna), is a Madison High student, well-intentioned and clumsy, with a nasally high, cracking voice, which he can disguise when making mischief, often driving Miss Brooks (his self-professed favorite teacher) to school in a broken-down jalopy. Perfectly aware of Miss Brooks' feelings, he tirelessly tries to help her snare Mr. Boynton, despite the latter's cluelessness.
Margaret Davis (Jane Morgan), Miss Brooks' absentminded landlady, has two trademarks, a penchant for whipping up exotic and often inedible breakfasts and tendency to lose her train of thought midsentence.
Harriet Conklin (Gloria McMillan) is a Madison High student and daughter of Osgood Conklin. A sometime love interest for Walter Denton, Harriet is sweet, honest and guileless, unlike her father.
Fabian "Stretch" Snodgrass (Eddie Riley/Leonard Smith) is a dull-witted Madison High athletic star and Walter's best friend.
Daisy Enright (Mary Jane Croft) is a Madison High English teacher and a scheming professional and romantic rival to Miss Brooks.
Ruth Nestor (Isabel Randolph), introduced as the new school principal in the episode "Big Ears" (November 4, 1955)
Minerva, Mrs. Davis' cat. In the radio series, Minerva had the habit of sleeping inside Mrs. Davis' parlor piano, leading to a running gag of an impressive piano riff any time something startled her awake.

Radio

Our Miss Brooks was a hit on radio from the outset; within eight months of its launch as a regular series, the show landed several honors, including four for Eve Arden, who won polls in four individual publications of the time. Arden had actually been the third choice to play the title role. Harry Ackerman, at the time CBS's West Coast director of programming, wanted Shirley Booth for the part, but as he told historian Gerald Nachman many years later, he realized Booth was too focused on the underpaid downside of public school teaching at the time to have fun with the role.

Lucille Ball was believed to have been the next choice, but she was committed to My Favorite Husband and did not audition. Then CBS chairman Bill Paley, who was friendly with Arden, persuaded her to audition for the part. With a slightly rewritten audition script?Osgood Conklin, for example, was originally written as a school board president but was now written as the incoming new Madison principal?Arden agreed to give the newly revamped show a try.

Produced by Larry Berns and written by director Al Lewis, Our Miss Brooks premiered on CBS July 19, 1948. According to radio critic John Crosby, her lines were very "feline" in dialogue scenes with principal Conklin and would-be boyfriend Boynton, with sharp, witty comebacks. The interplay between the cast?blustery Conklin, nebbishy Denton, accommodating Harriet, absentminded Mrs. Davis, clueless Boynton, scheming Miss Enright?also received positive reviews.

Jeff Chandler played Boynton and stayed with the role for five years, even after becoming a movie star. He ultimately resigned because it was too exhausting to juggle a regular radio role with his film commitments. Others in the cast included Anne Whitfield as Conklin's daughter, Harriet.

Arden won a radio listeners' poll by Radio Mirror magazine as the top-ranking comedienne of 1948-49, receiving her award at the end of an Our Miss Brooks broadcast that March. "I'm certainly going to try in the coming months to merit the honor you've bestowed upon me, because I understand that if I win this two years in a row, I get to keep Mr. Boynton", she joked. But she was also a hit with the critics; a winter 1949 poll of newspaper and magazine radio editors taken by Motion Picture Daily named her the year's best radio comedienne.

For its entire radio life, the show was sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive-Peet, promoting Palmolive soap, Lustre Creme shampoo, and Toni hair-care products. The radio series continued until 1957, a year after its television life ended. This content is now available for download at the Internet Archive here.

Television

The show's full cast, minus Jeff Chandler, played the same characters in the television version (with most of the scripts adapted from radio), which continued to revolve largely around Connie Brooks' daily relationships with Madison High students, colleagues, and principal. Philip Boynton was played by Robert Rockwell, who also succeeded Jeff Chandler on the radio series. The television show, sponsored by General Foods, shifted focus later in its run, moving Connie Brooks and Osgood Conklin from a public high school to an exclusive private school in the fall of 1955. It also changed the title character's romantic focus: Gene Barry was cast as physical education teacher Gene Talbot, and Connie was now the pursued instead of the pursuer, although Mr. Boynton reappeared in several episodes before the season ended.

Our Miss Brooks ran for 130 episodes on television and won an Emmy Award before it was canceled in 1956. In the 1954-55 season, it overpowered Dear Phoebe, its NBC competition, starring Peter Lawford and Charles Lane, which failed to be renewed for a second season. Our Miss Brooks finished in Nielsen ratings that season at number 15 overall after previously ranking at number 23 in 1952-1953 and #14 in 1953-1954. For the 1955-56 season, with the format change and Rockwell (as Boynton) replaced by Gene Barry, the ratings fell. To rectify their mistake, the producers brought back Rockwell as Boynton in midseason, but it did not help. The show was canceled in the spring of 1956. However, in the theatrical film Our Miss Brooks released by Warner Bros. in the same year, Connie and Mr. Boynton were finally engaged to be married. The television series was seen for several years thereafter in rebroadcasts.

Awards

Both the radio and television shows drew as much attention from professional educators as from radio and television fans, viewers, and critics. In addition to the 1948-49 poll of Radio Mirror listeners and the 1949 poll of Motion Picture Daily critics, Arden's notices soon expanded beyond her media. According to the Museum of Broadcast Communications, she was made an honorary member of the National Education Association and received a 1952 award from the Teachers College of Connecticut's Alumni Association "for humanizing the American teacher."

Our Miss Brooks was considered groundbreaking for showing a woman who was neither a scatterbrained klutz nor a homebody, but rather a working woman who transcended the actual or assumed limits to women's working lives of the time. Connie Brooks was considered a realistic character in an unglamorized profession (she often joked, for example, about being underpaid, as many teachers are), and who showed women could be competent and self-sufficient outside their home lives without losing their femininity or their humanity.

Our Miss Brooks remained Eve Arden's most identifiable and popular role, with numerous surviving recordings of both the radio and television versions continuing to entertain listeners and viewers. (The surviving radio recordings include both its audition shows.) A quarter century after the show ended, Arden told radio historian John Dunning in an on-air interview just what the show and the role came to mean to her:

I originally loved the theater. I still do. And I had always wanted to have a hit on Broadway that was created by me. You know, kind of like Judy Holliday and Born Yesterday. I griped about it a little, and someone said to me, "Do you realize that if you had a hit on Broadway, probably 100 or 200,000 people might have seen you in it, if you'd stayed in it long enough. And this way, you've been in Miss Brooks, everybody loves you, and you've been seen by millions." So, I figured I'd better shut up while I was ahead.

Television cast

Eve Arden as Connie Brooks
Gale Gordon as Osgood Conklin
Don Porter as Lawrence Nolan
Robert Rockwell as Phillip Boynton
Jane Morgan as Margaret Davis
Jesslyn Fax as Margaret Davis's sister, Angela Devon
Richard Crenna as Walter Denton
Nick Adams as Gary Nolan
Gloria McMillan as Harriet Conklin
Joseph Kearns as Superintendent Stone (eight episodes)
William Ching as Clint Allbright (four episodes)
Gene Barry as Gene Talbot
William Newell as Dr. Henley
Philip Van Zandt as Mr. Webster
Marjorie Bennett as Mrs. J. Boynton
Joseph Forte as Nolan's butler
Orangey as Minerva the cat

List of television episodes

Season 1: 1952-53

Season 2: 1953-54

Season 3: 1954-55

Season 4: 1955-56

References

Sources

Arden, Eve. The Three Phases of Eve (1985)
Buxton, Frank and Bill Owen, The Big Broadcast 1920-1950 (1971) (New York: Avon Books.)
Nachman, Gerald. Raised on Radio (1998) (New York: Pantheon Books.)
Ohmart, Ben, It's That Time Again (2002) (Albany: BearManor Media.) ISBN 0-9714570-2-6
Wertheim, Arthur Frank, Radio Comedy (1979) Oxford University Press, USA, ISBN 0-19-502481-8

External links

Our Miss Brooks radio episodes at Internet Archive
Our Miss Brooks on IMDb
Review of radio show at Variety
Our Miss Brooks on Outlaws Old Time Radio Corner

Watch Online

Home Cooked Meal
Madison Mascot
The Big Jump
This is Your Past

Source : Wikipedia

You Bet Your Life

Fri, 05 Jul 2019 21:32:00 +0000

You Bet Your Life is an American comedy quiz series that aired on both radio and television. The original and best-known version was hosted by Groucho Marx of the Marx Brothers, with announcer and assistant George Fenneman. The show debuted on ABC Radio on October 27, 1947, then moved to CBS Radio debuting October 5, 1949, before making the transition to NBC-TV and NBC Radio on October 4, 1950. Because of its simple format, it was possible to broadcast the show simultaneously on radio and television. The last episode in its radio format aired on June 10, 1960. On television, however, the series continued for another year, debuting in its final season on September 22, 1960, and with a new title, The Groucho Show.

Gameplay on each episode of You Bet Your Life was generally secondary to Groucho's comedic interplay with contestants and often with Fenneman. The program was rerun into the 1970s and later in syndication as The Best of Groucho, making it the first game show to have repeat episodes enter the syndication market.

History

The mid-1940s was a lull in Groucho Marx's career. His radio show Blue Ribbon Town, sponsored by Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, had begun in March 1943 and had failed to catch on. Groucho left the program in June 1944, replaced by vocalist Kenny Baker until the show's end two months later. He also reluctantly appeared in two movies with brothers Chico and Harpo Marx, A Night in Casablanca and the lackluster Love Happy.

During a radio appearance with Bob Hope in March 1947, Marx ad-libbed most of his performance after being forced to stand by in a waiting room for 40 minutes before going live on the air. John Guedel, the Hope program's producer, formed an idea for a quiz show and approached Marx about the subject.

After initial reluctance by Marx, Guedel was able to convince him to host the program once Marx realized the quiz would be only a backdrop for his contestant interviews and the storm of ad-libbing that they would elicit. Guedel also convinced Marx to invest in 50% of the show, in part by saying that he was "untouchable" at ad-libbing, but not at following a script.

As Marx and the contestants were ad-libbing, he insisted that each show be filmed and edited before release to remove the risque or less interesting material. The show for the studio audience ran longer than the broadcast version. The president of Film Craft Productions, which did the filming, cited it as the first television show filmed before a live audience as part of a lengthy essay about production procedures.

Gameplay

Contestant teams usually consisted of one male and one female, most selected from the studio audience. Occasionally, famous or otherwise interesting figures were invited to play (e.g., a Korean-American contestant who was a veteran and had been a prisoner of war during the Korean War).

Each episode began with the introduction "And now, here he is: the one, the only..." by Fenneman, who would pause, evoking the audience to finish the sentence by shouting in unison "GROUCHO!" Groucho replies, "Oh, that's me!" and then the show's band would then play a portion of the tune "Hooray for Captain Spaulding", Marx's signature song. Groucho next would be introduced to the first two contestants and engage in humorous conversations in which he would improvise his responses or employ prepared lines written by the show's writers using pre-show interviews. The total number of contestants in each episode varied depending on the length of Groucho's conversations and the time taken for gameplay in each segment. Generally, however, the 30-minute format of the televised show provided time for two or three two-person teams to play in each episode.

Some show tension revolved around whether a contestant would say the "secret word", a common word revealed to the audience at the outset of each episode. If one of the contestants said the word, a toy duck resembling Groucho?with eyeglasses and a mustache?descended from the ceiling to bring a $100 prize, which would then be divided equally between that segment's two-person team. A cartoon of a duck with a cigar was also used in the opening title sequence. The duck was occasionally replaced with various other things, for example a wooden Indian figure, carrying the required $100 prize to the lucky team. In one episode, Groucho's brother Harpo came down instead of the duck, and in another a female model attired in a tight bodice and very short skirt came down in a birdcage with the money. In his conversations with contestants, Marx would at times direct their exchanges in ways to increase the likelihood that someone would use the secret word.

Formats

Main game

After the contestants' introduction and interview, the actual game began. Couples were allowed to choose from a list of 20 available categories before the show; then they tried to answer a series of questions within that category. From 1947 to 1956, couples were asked four questions.

1947-1953 - Each couple began with $20, wagering part or all of their bankroll for each question.
1953-1954 - Each couple now began with $0, but selected values from $10 to $100 (in $10 increments). A correct answer added the value of the question to their bankroll, while an incorrect answer did nothing. According to co-director Robert Dwan in his book As Long As They're Laughing, Guedel changed the scoring format because too many couples were betting, and losing, most or all of their money.
1954-1956 - The format was slightly altered to start each couple with $100. Incorrect answers now cut their bankroll to that point in half.
1956-1959 - Two couples (reduced from three) answered questions until they either gave two consecutive incorrect responses or answered four consecutive questions correctly for a prize of $1,000.
1959-1961 - For the last two seasons, couples picked four questions worth $100, $200, or $300 each, potentially winning up to $1,200. Winning at least $500 qualified the team to go for the jackpot question.

From 1947 to 1956, if a couple ended their quiz with $25 or less, Marx would ask a very easy question so they could receive consolation money of $25 (later $100), which did not count toward the scores. The question was often patently obvious so there was virtually no chance that departing contestants would answer it incorrectly. Some examples include the following: "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?", "When did the War of 1812 start?", "How long do you cook a three-minute egg?", and "What color is an orange?" The question about Grant's Tomb became such a staple of the show that both Marx and Fenneman were shocked when one man got the question "wrong" by answering "No one". As the contestant then pointed out, Grant's Tomb is an above-ground mausoleum.

Jackpot question

In all formats, one of the two players on the team could keep their half of the winnings while the other risked their half. In this case, all amounts being played for were divided in half.

1947-1956 - The highest-scoring couple was given one final question for the jackpot, which began at $1,000 and increased by $500 each week until won. In the event of a tie, the tied couples wrote their answers on paper and all couples who answered correctly split the jackpot.
1956-1957 - For a brief period following the format change, couples who won the front game could wager half on another question worth $2,000.
1957-1959 - Winning couples now faced a wheel with numbers from 1-10, selecting one number for $10,000. If the number selected was spun, a correct answer to the jackpot question augmented the team's total winnings to that amount; otherwise, the question was worth a total of $2,000.
1959-1961 - For the last two seasons, the format was slightly altered to eliminate the risk and add a second number for $5,000.

Nielsen ratings

Seasonal Nielsen ratings covered the period between October and April of the following year. The rating number represents the percentage of homes tuned into that program.

Nielsen also measured the radio version at tenth among radio shows in 1955.

Despite not being involved with the quiz show scandals, the show's popularity waned and You Bet Your Life fell out of the top 25. NBC ended the show in 1961.

Sponsorship

The radio program was sponsored by Allen Gellman, president of Elgin American, maker of watch cases and compacts, during its first two and a half seasons. Later, seasons of the television show (as well as the radio show, after January 1950) were sponsored by Chrysler, with advertisements for DeSoto automobiles incorporated into the opening credits and the show itself. Each show would end with Groucho sticking his head through a hole in the DeSoto logo and saying, "Friends...go in to see your DeSoto-Plymouth dealer tomorrow. And when you do, tell 'em Groucho sent you." Still later sponsors included The Toni Company (Prom Home Permanent, White Rain Shampoo) with commercials featuring Harpo and Chico, Lever Brothers (Lux Liquid, Wisk Detergent), Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Geritol), and Lorillard Tobacco Co. (Old Gold cigarettes).

Contestants

The interviews were sometimes so memorable that the contestants became celebrities: "nature boy" health advocate Robert Bootzin; Mexican-American entertainer Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez; comedian Phyllis Diller; author Ray Bradbury; virtuoso cellist Ennio Bolognini; blues singer and pianist Gladys Bentley; strongmen Jack LaLanne and Paul Anderson; actors John Barbour and Ronnie Schell all appeared as contestants while working on the fringes of the entertainment industry.

Harland Sanders, who talked about his "finger-lickin'" recipe for fried chicken that he parlayed into the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain of restaurants, once appeared as a contestant. A guest purporting to be a wealthy Arabian prince was really writer William Peter Blatty; Groucho saw through the disguise, stating, "You're no more a prince than I am because I have an Arabian horse and I know what they look like." Blatty won $10,000 and used the money, after quitting his job, to support himself while he focused on establishing a career as a writer. He would later go on to write The Exorcist in 1971. No one in the audience knew the identity of contestant Daws Butler until he began speaking in the voice of cartoon character Huckleberry Hound. He and his partner in the episode went on to win the top prize of $10,000. Cajun politician Dudley J. LeBlanc, a Louisiana state senator and medicine showman, demonstrated his winning style at giving campaign speeches in French, also confessing (in a rare moment of candor) the truth about his signature nostrum, Hadacol: when asked what Hadacol was good for, LeBlanc admitted "about five million dollars for me last year." General Omar Bradley was teamed with an army private, and Marx goaded the private into telling Bradley everything that was wrong with the army. Professional wrestler Wild Red Berry admitted that the outcomes of matches were determined in advance, but that the injuries were real; he revealed a long list of injuries he had sustained.

Other celebrities, already famous, occasionally teamed with their relatives to win money for themselves or for charities. On February 6, 1958, silent-film star Francis X. Bushman and his wife Iva Millicient Richardson appeared on the show and won $1,000 by successfully answering questions in a geography quiz. Arthur Godfrey's mother Kathryn was a contestant on another episode and held her own with Marx. Edgar Bergen and his then 11-year-old daughter Candice also teamed up with Marx and his daughter Melinda to win $1,000 for the Girl Scouts of the USA, with Fenneman taking on the role of quizmaster for that segment. Other celebrity guests included Irwin Allen, Frankie Avalon, Lord Buckley, Sammy Cahn, Ray Corrigan, Sam Coslow, Don Drysdale, Hoot Gibson, physicist and host of Exploring Albert Hibbs, Tor Johnson, Ernie Kovacs, Laura La Plante, Liberace, Joe Louis, Bob Mathias, Irish McCalla, Harry Ruby, Max Shulman, Fay Spain, John Charles Thomas, Edith Head, Pinky Tomlin, and Johnny Weissmuller. In 1961 Groucho's brother Harpo appeared to promote his just-published autobiography, Harpo Speaks.

Cigar incident

The show's best-remembered remark supposedly occurred as Groucho was interviewing Charlotte Story, who had borne 20 children (the exact number varies in tellings of the urban legend). When Marx asked why she had chosen to raise such a large family, Mrs. Story is said to have replied, "I love my husband"; to which Marx responded, "I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in awhile." The remark was judged too risqué to be aired, according to the anecdote, and was edited out before broadcast.

Marion and Charlotte Story were indeed parents of 20 children and had appeared as contestants on the radio version of the show in 1950. Audio recordings of the interview exist, and a reference to cigars is made ("With each new kid, do you go around passing out cigars?"), but there is no evidence of the infamous line. Marx and Fenneman both denied that the incident took place. "I get credit all the time for things I never said," Marx told Roger Ebert, in 1972. "You know that line in You Bet Your Life? The guy says he has seventeen kids and I say, 'I smoke a cigar, but I take it out of my mouth occasionally'? I never said that." Marx's 1976 memoir recounts the episode as fact, but co-writer Hector Arce relied mostly on sources other than Marx himself?who was by then in his late eighties and mentally compromised?and was probably unaware that Marx had specifically denied speaking the legendary line. Snopes surmised that the line may have been conflated with another exchange with a girl who had 16 siblings; in that episode, Groucho asked the girl how her father felt about having 17 children. She replied "my daddy loves children," and Groucho responded "Well, I like pancakes, but I haven't got a closet full of them!"

Legacy

Seven months after You Bet Your Life ended its 11-season run at NBC, Marx had another game show in prime-time, Tell It to Groucho, which aired on CBS during the winter and spring months of 1962. The game involved each of three celebrity pictures being flashed on a screen, each for a quarter of a second. The couple won $500 for each picture they identified. If the couple could not identify any of the three pictures, they were shown one picture and won $100 for a correct guess. As in You Bet Your Life, the focus of the show was on Marx's interviews with the contestants before they played the game.

You Bet Your Life was parodied on a live April 1955 episode of The Jack Benny Program, in which Benny pretended to be someone else to get on the quiz show (competing with a female contestant played by Irene Tedrow), and continually blabbed in an effort to say the secret word. In the skit, Benny is unable to answer the final question, which Groucho asks with a knowing chuckle and ironically is about Benny himself, simply because it asks his real age; Benny would never give his age voluntarily, even for something he valued as much as money. After Marx's death, this film appeared in the Unknown Marx Brothers documentary on DVD. A brief clip of this episode also appeared in the 2009 PBS special Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America.

The title of the show was parodied in the 1989 Weird Al Yankovic film UHF on the U62 Fall Schedule as You Bet Your Pink Slip.

A Bugs Bunny cartoon entitled Wideo Wabbit had a scene where Bugs Bunny impersonated Groucho to Elmer Fudd for the game show You Beat Your Wife, a takeoff on the name You Bet Your Life.

An episode of Animaniacs had a segment called "You Risk Your Life," where if the secret word was said, Wakko would hit the contestant who said it on the head with a mallet. The contestants were Mrs. Myra Puntridge and Aristotle. The secret word was "yes," and Aristotle said it three times.

An episode of In Living Color had a skit called You Bet Your Career where Jamie Foxx plays as Bill Cosby featuring washed up celebrities competing for a walk-on role in sitcoms.

Revivals

1980-1981

In 1980, Buddy Hackett hosted a new version produced by Hill-Eubanks Productions, and syndicated by MCA. Fenneman's announcer/sidekick role was taken over by nightclub entertainer Ron Husmann.

The show would begin with Hacket performing a brief stand up routine followed by a brief chat with Husmann. Three individual contestants appeared on each episode, one at a time. The contestants were interviewed by Hackett and then played a true or false quiz of five questions in a particular category. The first correct answer to a question earned $25, and the amount doubled with each subsequent correct answer. After the fifth question, the contestant could opt to try to correctly answer a sixth question to triple their winnings; however, if the contestant was incorrect, their earnings were cut in half. Additionally, the secret word was still worth $100, but if anyone said, then each of the contestants on that episode won $100.

The contestant with the most money returned at the end of the show to meet "Leonard", the prize duck (If there was a tie, they would be asked a question with a numeric answer, which they wrote down, and whoever was closest without going over won). The contestant then stopped a rotating device, causing a plastic egg to drop out which concealed the name of a bonus prize, one of which was a car.

Some episodes had celebrities, including George Fenneman, Phil Harris, and Greg Evigan, appear as contestants; each played for a member of the studio audience.

1992-1993

Another version hosted by Bill Cosby aired from September 7, 1992 to June 4, 1993 (with repeats airing until September 3 of that year) in syndication. Carsey-Werner syndicated the series, the first show they distributed themselves. Cosby was joined on this show by a female announcer and sidekick, Robbi Chong, who was referred to as "Renfield". Organist Shirley Scott contributed the jazzy theme music, and the program was taped in Philadelphia at the WHYY studios.

Three couples competed, with each couple playing the game individually. After the couple was introduced, they spent time talking with Cosby. When the interview was done, the game began. Each couple was staked with $750 and were then asked three questions within a category presented at the start of the game. Before each question, the couple made a wager, which would be added to their winnings if they were correct or subtracted if they were incorrect. The secret word in this version, worth $500, was delivered by a stuffed toy black goose dressed in a sweatshirt from Temple University, Cosby's alma mater; if one couple said it, a new word would be chosen when the next couple was introduced.

The couple with the most money (independent of any secret word bonuses) advanced to the bonus round, in which they were asked one last question in any given subject. A correct answer won a choice of three envelopes, which were all attached to the goose. Two of the envelopes displayed the goose's face and would double the couple's money, while the third awarded an additional $10,000.

As the 1992/93 season progressed, many stations carrying the show either moved it to overnight time slots or dropped it entirely due to low ratings. Although the series was canceled at the end of the season, Cosby won a Kid's Choice Award for his hosting.

Episode status

Most of the episodes still exist, with 1954-61 episodes syndicated by NBC as The Best Of Groucho. Also existing is the unaired pilot episode (TV version), which was produced for CBS on December 5, 1949. A handful of audio recordings from the radio show also exist dating as far back as 1947, as do a number of one-hour, uncut audio recordings, which were edited to create the radio version, mostly from spring 1949 and fall 1953.

Unlike most pre-1973 NBC in-house productions, it was not part of the package of series sold to National Telefilm Associates (later Republic Pictures Television, Worldvision Enterprises, Paramount Domestic Television, CBS Paramount Domestic Television, and finally CBS Television Distribution). After Best of Groucho reruns began local broadcasts again in 1974, producer John Guedel explained what led NBC to want to destroy the films which had been in their warehouses: "They were slow and in black-and-white and old fashioned. When NBC sold its library to NTA and went out of the syndication business, NTA had no interest in Groucho." Marx's grandson, Andy Marx, recounts a similar story: while entertaining show business friends at a 1973 party, NBC called and announced that they were discarding the You Bet Your Life archives to make room for newer series and were willing to give them back to Marx for free. Although Marx had no personal interest in the tapes, those present convinced him to take the tapes so that they would be saved from destruction; once the tapes arrived, Marx (dismayed at the sheer volume of the archive) contacted Guedel, who put the reruns into syndication almost immediately.

With Guedel having "made a royalty deal with NBC to syndicate" the old shows himself, NBC still held ancillary rights of this version, thus distribution began with NBC Enterprises as a distribution unit from 2001 to 2004. Since September 2004, NBCUniversal Television Distribution handles syndication rights to the Marx (non-public domain) and Hackett versions.

In the United States, public domain and official releases were distributed on home video by the following companies:

Additionally, two official DVD compilations were released by Shout! Factory and Sony Music Entertainment; the first was You Bet Your Life: The Lost Episodes, released in 2003, which contained 18 classic episodes not seen since the original broadcasts, as well as numerous bonus features, including outtakes, a behind-the-scenes piece, and rare audio clips. A second release, You Bet Your Life: The Best Episodes, followed in 2004 and included another assortment of 18 original episodes, as well as three game show pilots featuring Marx among its bonus features. Both of the DVD presentations in both of SHOUT! Factory/Sony Music Entertainment’s DVD releases of Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life were presented uncut and unedited, remastered and restored from the original kinescopes and in its original NBC broadcast presentation.

The Carsey-Werner Company owns the Cosby version, as it produced that revival with Cosby.

References and notes

External links

Illustrated web page depicting the changes in You Bet Your Life episodes when they were adapted into Best of Groucho episodes and Supplement page to preceding; these pages explain the relevance of the changes to copyright status
You Bet Your Life radio shows on archive.org
Episodes from the TV show (Public Domain)
You Bet Your Life (Cosby) @ Carsey-Werner.net (en)
Carsey-Werner - You Bet Your Life (Cosby)
You Bet Your Life (1950) on IMDb
You Bet Your Life (1992) on IMDb
Snopes.com page about the "I love my cigar..." urban legend
The Day My Grandfather Groucho and I Saved You Bet Your Life
You Bet Your Life on Outlaws Old Time Radio Corner

Source : Wikipedia

Suspense Radio Show

Sat, 06 Jul 2019 00:56:00 +0000

Suspense is a radio drama series broadcast on CBS Radio from 1940 through 1962.

Production background

One of the premier drama programs of the Golden Age of Radio, was subtitled "radio's outstanding theater of thrills" and focused on suspense thriller-type scripts, usually featuring leading Hollywood actors of the era. Approximately 945 episodes were broadcast during its long run, and more than 900 still exist.

Suspense went through several major phases, characterized by different hosts, sponsors, and director/producers. Formula plot devices were followed for all but a handful of episodes: the protagonist was usually a normal person suddenly dropped into a threatening or bizarre situation; solutions were "withheld until the last possible second"; and evildoers were usually punished in the end.

In its early years, the program made only occasional forays into science fiction and fantasy. Notable exceptions include adaptations of Curt Siodmak's Donovan's Brain and H. P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror", but by the late 1950s, such material was regularly featured.

Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock directed its audition show (for the CBS summer series Forecast). This was an adaptation of The Lodger a story Hitchcock had filmed in 1926 with Ivor Novello. Martin Grams Jr., author of Suspense: Twenty Years of Thrills and Chills, described the Forecast origin of Suspense:

On the second presentation of July 22, 1940, Forecast offered a mystery/horror show titled Suspense. With the co-operation of his producer, Walter Wanger, Alfred Hitchcock received the honor of directing his first radio show for the American public. The condition agreed upon for Hitchcock's appearance was that CBS make a pitch to the listening audience about his and Wanger's latest film, Foreign Correspondent. To add flavor to the deal, Wanger threw in Edmund Gwenn and Herbert Marshall as part of the package. All three men (including Hitch) would be seen in the upcoming film, which was due for a theatrical release the next month. Both Marshall and Hitchcock decided on the same story to bring to the airwaves, which happened to be a favorite of both of them: Marie Belloc Lowndes' "The Lodger." Alfred Hitchcock had filmed this story for Gainsborough in 1926, and since then it had remained as one of his favorites.

Herbert Marshall portrayed the mysterious lodger, and co-starring with him were Edmund Gwenn and character actress Lurene Tuttle as the rooming-house keepers who start to suspect that their new boarder might be the notorious Jack-the-Ripper. [Gwenn was actually repeating the role taken in the 1926 film by his brother, Arthur Chesney. And Tuttle would work again with Hitchcock nearly 20 years later, playing Mrs. Al Chambers, the sheriff's wife, in Psycho.] Character actor Joseph Kearns also had a small part in the drama, and Wilbur Hatch, head musician for CBS Radio at the time, composed and conducted the music specially for the program. Adapting the script to radio was not a great technical challenge for Hitchcock, and he cleverly decided to hold back the ending of the story from the listening audience in order to keep them in suspense themselves. This way, if the audience's curiosity got the better of them, they would write in to the network to find out whether the mysterious lodger was in fact Jack the Ripper. For the next few weeks, hundreds of letters came in from faithful listeners asking how the story ended. Actually a few wrote threats claiming that it was "indecent" and "immoral" to present such a production without giving the solution

1942-1962

In the earliest years, the program was hosted by "The Man in Black" (played by Joseph Kearns or Ted Osborne) with many episodes written or adapted by the prominent mystery author John Dickson Carr.

One of the series' earliest successes and its single most popular episode is Lucille Fletcher's "Sorry, Wrong Number", about a bedridden woman (Agnes Moorehead) who panics after overhearing a murder plot on a crossed telephone connection but is unable to persuade anyone to investigate. First broadcast on May 25, 1943, it was restaged seven times (last on February 14, 1960)?each time with Moorehead. The popularity of the episode led to a film adaptation in 1948. Another notable early episode was Fletcher's "The Hitch Hiker", in which a motorist (Orson Welles) is stalked on a cross-country trip by a nondescript man who keeps appearing on the side of the road. This episode originally aired on September 2, 1942, and was later adapted for television by Rod Serling as a 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone. The episode's primary plot device of a motorist being relentlessly pursued by a diabolical hitchhiker was also featured in the 1986 horror classic The Hitcher, with 18-year-old C. Thomas Howell assuming Welles's role as the young protagonist.

After the network sustained the program during its first two years, the sponsor became Roma Wines (1944-1947), and then (after another brief period of sustained hour-long episodes, initially featuring Robert Montgomery as host and "producer" in early 1948), Autolite Spark Plugs (1948-1954); eventually Harlow Wilcox (of Fibber McGee and Molly) became the pitchman. William Spier, Norman MacDonnell and Anton M. Leader were among the producers and directors.

Suspense received a Special Citation of Honor Peabody Award for 1946.

The program's heyday was in the early 1950s, when radio actor, producer and director Elliott Lewis took over (still during the Wilcox/Autolite run). Here the material reached new levels of sophistication. The writing was taut, and the casting, which had always been a strong point of the series (featuring such film stars as Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Henry Fonda, Humphrey Bogart, Judy Garland, Ronald Colman, Marlene Dietrich, Eve McVeagh, Lena Horne, and Cary Grant), took an unexpected turn when Lewis expanded the repertory to include many of radio's famous drama and comedy stars?often playing against type?such as Jack Benny. Jim and Marian Jordan of Fibber McGee and Molly were heard in the episode "Backseat Driver", which originally aired February 3, 1949.

The highest production values enhanced Suspense, and many of the shows retain their power to grip and entertain. At the time he took over Suspense, Lewis was familiar to radio fans for playing Frankie Remley, the wastrel guitar-playing sidekick to Phil Harris in The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show. On the May 10, 1951 Suspense, Lewis reversed the roles with "Death on My Hands": A bandleader (Harris) is horrified when an autograph-seeking fan accidentally shoots herself and dies in his hotel room, and a vocalist (Faye) tries to help him as the townfolk call for vigilante justice against him.

With the rise of television and the departures of Lewis and Autolite, subsequent producers (Antony Ellis, William N. Robson and others) struggled to maintain the series despite shrinking budgets, the availability of fewer name actors, and listenership decline. To save money, the program frequently used scripts first broadcast by another noteworthy CBS anthology, Escape. In addition to these tales of exotic adventure, Suspense expanded its repertoire to include more science fiction and supernatural content. By the end of its run, the series was remaking scripts from the long-canceled program The Mysterious Traveler. A time travel tale like Robert Arthur's "The Man Who Went Back to Save Lincoln" or a thriller about a death ray-wielding mad scientist would alternate with more run-of-the-mill crime dramas.

The series expanded to television with the Suspense series on CBS from 1949 to 1954, and again in 1962. The radio series had a tie-in with Suspense magazine which published four 1946-47 issues edited by Leslie Charteris.

The final broadcasts of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and Suspense, ending at 7:00 pm Eastern Time on September 30, 1962, are often cited as the end of the Golden Age of Radio. The final episode of Suspense was Devilstone, starring Christopher Carey and Neal Fitzgerald. It was sponsored by Parliament cigarettes.

Opening introductions

There were several variations of program introductions. A typical early opening is this from April 27, 1943:

(MUSIC ... BERNARD HERRMANN'S SUSPENSE THEME ... CONTINUES IN BG)

THE MAN IN BLACK: Suspense!

This is The Man in Black, here again to introduce Columbia's program, Suspense.

Our stars tonight are Miss Agnes Moorehead and Mr. Ray Collins. You've seen these two expert and resourceful players in "Citizen Kane" - "The Magnificent Ambersons" in which Miss Moorehead's performance won her the 1942 Film Critics' Award. Mr. Collins will soon be seen in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Technicolor film, "Salute to the Marines."

Miss Moorehead and Mr. Collins return this evening to their first love, the CBS microphone, to appear in a study in terror by Lucille Fletcher called "The Diary of Sophronia Winters."

The story told by this diary is tonight's tale of... suspense. If you've been with us on these Tuesday nights, you will know that Suspense is compounded of mystery and suspicion and dangerous adventure. In this series are tales calculated to intrigue you, to stir your nerves, to offer you a precarious situation and then withhold the solution... until the last possible moment. And so it is with "The Diary of Sophronia Winters" and the performances of Agnes Moorehead and Ray Collins, we again hope to keep you in...

(MUSIC: ... UP, DRAMATICALLY)

THE MAN IN BLACK: ... Suspense!

Recognition

Suspense was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2011.

Satire

The familiar opening phrase "tales well-calculated to..." was satirized by Mad as the cover blurb "Tales Calculated to Drive You... Mad" on its first issue (October-November 1952) and continuing until issue #23 (May 1955).

Radio comedians Bob and Ray had a recurring routine lampooning the show called "Anxiety." Their character Commander Neville Putney told stories that were presented as dramatic but were intentionally mundane, with the opening line "A tale well designed to keep you in... Anxiety."

Theater

For the Poway Performance Art Company, the 70-year-old San Diego actor-director Robert Hitchcox mounted a 2006 stage production recreating Suspense, complete with commercials, in a stage set designed like a CBS radio studio.

Partial list of episodes of Suspense

1940

1942

1943

1944

1945

1946

1947

1948

1949

1950

1951

1952

1953

1954

1955

1956

1957

1958

1959

1961

1962

Revival

In 2012, John C. Alsedek and Dana Perry-Hayes of Blue Hours Productions revived Suspense for Sirius XM Radio, recording all-new scripts including originals and adaptations of works by the likes of H.P. Lovecraft, Cornell Woolrich, and Clark Ashton Smith. The Suspense revival is currently airing on nearly 250 radio stations worldwide, and has been nominated for a Peabody Award. Season One is also available as video on YouTube.

Season Two is under production, with episode #25 slated to premiere March 1, 2015. For more information on the Suspense revival, please visit www.bluehoursproductions.com.

Since 2007, Radio Classics, on Sirius XM channel 82, has been airing episodes of Suspense in its daily lineup among other classic shows, such as The Whistler, The Mysterious Traveler, and The Hermit's Cave. The show is also streamed nightly at 7 pm Pacific time on kusaradio.com from the original masters.

Season One episodes

"Cool Air," starring Adrienne Wilkinson & Daamen Krall
"The Pipes of Tcho Ktlan," starring Daamen Krall & Rocky Cerda
"The Return of the Sorcerer," starring Tucker Smallwood & Ron Bottitta
"Proof in the Pudding," starring Adrienne Wilkinson & Christina Joy Howard
"The Devil?s Saint," starring Daamen Krall & Christopher Duva
"Gag Reflex," starring Daamen Krall & Elizabeth Gracen
"The Graveyard Rats," starring Daamen Krall & Christopher Duva
"An Ungentle Wager," starring Elizabeth Gracen & Adrienne Wilkinson
"The Fire of Asshurbanipal," starring Christopher Duva & Steve Moulton
"The Walls Between Us," starring Adrienne Wilkinson & Rocky Cerda
"The Horla," starring Christopher Duva & Elizabeth Gracen
"Essence," starring Dana Perry-Hayes & Skyler Caleb
"The Hounds of Tindalos," starring Christopher Duva & Daamen Krall
"Madeline’s Veil," starring Dana Perry-Hayes & Rocky Cerda
"Wet Saturday," starring Daamen Krall & Adrienne Wilkinson
"Forest of the Dark Unbound," starring Catherine Kamei & Elizabeth Gracen
"Who Goes There?" starring Steve Moulton & Sean Hackman
"De Vermis Manorum," starring Elizabeth Gracen & John Lauver
"The Night Reveals," starring David Collins & Susan Eisenberg
"Ebb Tide," starring Christopher Duva & Adrienne Wilkinson
"Far Below," starring Daamen Krall & Catherine Kamei
"Behind Every Great Man..." starring Brett Thompson & Adrienne Wilkinson
"Pigeons From Hell," starring Scott Henry & Daniel Hackman
"Red Rook, White King...Black Cat," starring Adrienne Wilkinson & David Collins

References

Sources

External links

Escape and Suspense
Internet Archive: Suspense
Old Time Radio Review: Suspense - episode reviews
OTR Plot Spot: Suspense - plot summaries and reviews.
Suspense on Way Back When
'Podcast Feed'
Suspense on Outlaws Old Time Radio Corner

Source : Wikipedia

Sam Spade Radio Show

Sat, 06 Jul 2019 02:13:00 +0000

The Adventures of Sam Spade, Detective was a radio series based loosely on the private detective character Sam Spade, created by writer Dashiell Hammett for The Maltese Falcon. The show ran for 13 episodes on ABC in 1946, for 157 episodes on CBS in 1946-1949, and finally for 51 episodes on NBC in 1949-1951. The series starred Howard Duff (and later, Steve Dunne) as Sam Spade and Lurene Tuttle as his secretary Effie, and took a considerably more tongue-in-cheek approach to the character than the novel or movie. The announcer was Dick Joy.

The series was largely overseen by producer/director William Spier. In 1947, scriptwriters Jason James and Bob Tallman received an Edgar Award for Best Radio Drama from the Mystery Writers of America.

Before the series, Sam Spade had been played in radio adaptations of The Maltese Falcon by both Edward G. Robinson (in a 1943 Lux Radio Theater production) and by Humphrey Bogart (in a 1941 Academy Award Theater production), both on CBS.

Dashiell Hammett's name was removed from the series in the late 1940s because he was being investigated for involvement with the Communist Party. Later, when Howard Duff's name appeared in the Red Channels book, he was not invited to play the role when the series made the switch to NBC in 1950.

Television

In 1961 Broadcasting reported that Four Star Productions planned to film a Sam Spade television pilot with Peter Falk in the title role, but no such series ever arrived on TV.

The 1946-51 series

The different incarnations of the series were:

The Adventures of Sam Spade (1946, ABC) - 13 30-minute episodes
The Adventures of Sam Spade (1946-49, CBS) - 157 30-minute episodes
The Adventures of Sam Spade (1949-50, NBC) - 51 30-minute episodes
The Adventures of Sam Spade (1950-51, NBC) - 24 30-minute episodes

The Adventures of Sam Spade (1946, ABC)

13 30-minute episodes

Starring Howard Duff as Sam Spade and Lurene Tuttle as Effie

(Duff replaced on some occasions by Stephen Dunne)

"Sam and the Guiana Sovereign" (July 12, 1946)
"Sam and the Farewell Murders" (July 19, 1946)
"Sam and the Unhappy Poet" (July 26, 1946)
"Sam and the Psyche" (August 2, 1946)
"Death and Company" (August 9, 1946)
"Two Sharp Knives" (August 16, 1946)
"Zig Zags of Treachery" (August 23, 1946)
"Sam and the Scythian Tiara" (August 30, 1946)
"The Corporation Murders" (September 6, 1946)
"The Dot Marlow Caper, Part 1" (September 13, 1946)
"The Dot Marlow Caper, Part 2" (September 20, 1946)
"The Count on Billy Burke" (September 27, 1946)
"The Gutting of Couffignal" (October 4, 1946)

The Adventures of Sam Spade (1946-49, CBS)

157 30-minute episodes

Starring Howard Duff as Sam Spade and Lurene Tuttle as Effie

Sponsor: Wildroot Cream-Oil

Writers: John Michael Hayes, Gil Doud, Bob Tallman

Guest stars: Sandra Gould (played the "new secretary" while Lurene Tuttle was on vacation, in the June 27, 1948, show), William Conrad, Jack Webb.

"The Blood Money Caper" (September 29, 1946)
"The Unwritten Law Caper" (October 6, 1946)
"The Ten Clues Caper" (October 13, 1946)
"The Fly Paper Caper" (October 20, 1946)
"The Midway Caper" (October 27, 1946)
"The Certified Czech Caper" (November 3, 1946)
"Sam and the Farewell Murders" (November 10, 1946)
"The Hot Ice Caper" (November 17, 1946)
"The Kandy Tooth Caper, Part 1" (November 24, 1946) (reperformed on Suspense January 10, 1948)
"The Kandy Tooth Caper, Part 2" (December 1, 1946) (see note for part 1)
"The Minks of Turk Street" (December 8, 1946)
"The Picture Frame Caper" (December 15, 1946)
"Sam and the Three Wise Men" (December 22, 1946)
"The Golden Horeshoe" (December 29, 1946)
"The Liewelyn Caper" (January 5, 1947)
"The Cremona Clock Caper" (January 12, 1947)
"The False Face Caper" (January 19, 1947)
"The Agamemnon Caper" (January 26, 1947)
"The Dead Duck Caper" (February 2, 1947)
"The Girl With The Silver Eyes" (February 9, 1947)
"Inside Story on Kid Slade" (February 16, 1947)
"The Big Production Caper" (February 23, 1947)
"The Uncle Money Caper" (March 2, 1947)
"Orpheus and His Lute" (March 9, 1947)
"The Murder About Bliss" (March 16, 1947)
"Too Many Spades" (March 23, 1947)
"The Dancing Pearl Caper" (March 30, 1947)
"The Poisonville Caper" (April 6, 1947)
"The Double-Scar Caper" (April 13, 1947)
"The Scrooge of Portrero Street" (April 20, 1947)
"The Debutante Caper" (April 27, 1947)
"Duet in Spades" (May 4, 1947)
"The Yule Log Caper" (May 11, 1947)
"The Assistant Murderer" (May 18, 1947)
"Jury Duty" (May 25, 1947)
"The Mishakoff Emeralds" (June 1, 1947)
"The Calcutta Trunk Caper" (June 8, 1947)
"The Convertible Caper" (June 15, 1947)
"The Greek Letter Caper" (June 22, 1947)
"The Cosmic Harmony Caper" (June 29, 1947)
"The Simile Caper" (July 6, 1947)
"The Buff-Orpington Caper" (July 13, 1947)
"Sam and the Unhappy Poet" (July 20, 1947)
"The Gold Rush Caper" (July 27, 1947)
"The Crooked Neck Caper" (August 3, 1947)
"The Commonwealth Tankard" (August 10, 1947)
"The Doctor's Dilemma Caper" (August 17, 1947)
"The Jade Dragon Caper" (August 24, 1947)
"The Corkscrew Caper" (August 31, 1947)
"The Forty-Nine Cent, Caper" (September 7, 1947)
"The Cinderella Caper" (September 14, 1947)
"The April Caper" (September 21, 1947)
"The Madcap Caper" (September 28, 1947)
"The Adam Figg Caper" (October 5, 1947)
"The Tears of Buddha Caper" (October 12, 1947)
"The Untouchable Caper" (October 19, 1947)
"The Bonnie Fair Caper" (October 26, 1947)
"The Wrong Guy Caper" (November 2, 1947)
"The Bow Window Caper" (November 9, 1947)
"The Purple Poodle Caper" (November 16, 1947)
"The Caper With Eight Diamonds" (November 23, 1947)
"The Full House Caper" (November 30, 1947)
"The Palermo Vendetta Caper" (December 7, 1947)
"The Gumshoe Caper" (December 14, 1947)
"The Nick Saint Caper" (December 21, 1947)
"The Perfect Score Caper" (December 28, 1947)
"The One Hour Caper" (January 4, 1948)
"The Short Life Caper" (January 11, 1948)
"The Pike's Head Caper" (January 18, 1948)
"The Gold Key Caper" (January 25, 1948)
"The Nimrod Caper" (February 1, 1948)
"The Great Drought Caper" (February 8, 1948)
"The Goldie Gates Caper" (February 15, 1948)
"The Mason Grayson Caper" (February 22, 1948)
"The Grim Reaper Caper" (February 29, 1948)
"John's Other Wife's Other Husband" (March 7, 1948)
"The Ides of March Caper" (March 14, 1948)
"The Nightmare Town Caper" (March 21, 1948)
"The Blood Money Payoff" (March 28, 1948)
Title Unknown (April 4, 1948)
"The Judas Caper" (April 11, 1948)
"The Night Flight Caper" (April 18, 1948)
"The Great Lover Caper" (April 25, 1948)
"The Double-S Caper" (May 2, 1948)
"The Curiosity Caper" (May 9, 1948)
"The Girl Called Echs Caper" (May 16, 1948)
"The Navarraise Falcon" (May 23, 1948)
"The Prisoner of Zenda Caper" (May 30, 1948)
"The I.Q. Caper" (June 6, 1948)
"The Honest Cop Caper" (June 13, 1948)
"The Caper with Two Death Beds" (June 20, 1948)
"The Bail Bond Caper" (June 27, 1948)
"The Rushlight Diamond Caper" (July 4, 1948)
"The Wheel of Life Caper" (July 11, 1948)
"The Missing Newshawk Caper" (July 18, 1948)
"The Mad Scientist Caper" (July 25, 1948)
"The Dry Martini Caper" (August 1, 1948)
"The Bluebeard Caper" (August 8, 1948)
"The Critical Author Caper" (August 15, 1948)
"The Vaphio Cup Caper" (August 22, 1948)
"The Lawless Caper" (August 29, 1948)
"The Stella Starr Caper" (September 5, 1948)
"The Lazarus Caper" (September 12, 1948)
"The Hot 100 Grand Caper" (September 19, 1948)
"The Dick Foley Caper" (September 26, 1948)
"The Sugar Kane Caper" (October 3, 1948)
"The Bostwick Snatch Caper" (October 10, 1948)
"The Rumanian Con Game Caper" (October 17, 1948)
"The Insomnia Caper" (October 24, 1948)
"The Fairley-Bright Caper" (October 31, 1948)
"The S.Q.P. Caper" (November 7, 1948)
"The Gin Rummy Caper" (November 14, 1948)
"The Golden Fleece Caper" (November 21, 1948)
"The Quarter-Eagle Caper" (November 28, 1948)
"The Neveroff Masterpiece Caper" (December 5, 1948)
"The Bouncing Betty Caper" (December 12, 1948)
"The Giveaway Caper" (December 19, 1948)
"The Nick Saint Caper" (December 26, 1948)
"The Three-Sided Bullet Caper" (January 2, 1949)
"The Double Negative Caper" (January 9, 1949)
"The Betrayal in Bumpus Hell Caper" (January 16, 1949)
"The Main Event Caper" (January 23, 1949)
"The Double Life Caper" (January 30, 1949)
"The Firebug Caper" (February 6, 1949)
"The Brothers Keeper Caper" (February 13, 1949)
"The Attitude Caper" (February 20, 1949)
"The Three Cornered Frame Caper" (February 27, 1949)
"The Waltzing Matilda Caper" (March 6, 1949)
"The Underseal Caper" (March 13, 1949)
"The Trojan Horse Caper" (March 20, 1949)
"The Loveletter Caper" (March 27, 1949)
"The Vacation Caper" (April 3, 1949)
"The Stopped Watch Caper" (April 10, 1949)
"Edith Hamilton" (April 17, 1949)
"The Hot Cargo Caper" (April 24, 1949)
"The Battles of Belvedere" (May 1, 1949)
"The Fast Talk Caper" (May 8, 1949)
"The Darling Daughter Caper" (May 15, 1949)
"The Cartwright Clip Caper" (May 22, 1949)
"The Jane Doe Caper" (May 29, 1949)
"The Overjord Caper" (June 5, 1949; AKA "The Corpse in The Murphy Bed")
"Sam and the Guiana Sovereign" (June 12, 1949)
"The Apple of Eve Caper" (June 19, 1949)
"The Goat's Milk Caper" (June 26, 1949)
"The Hamburger Sandwich Caper" (July 3, 1949)
"The Queen Bee Caper" (July 10, 1949)
"The Cuttyhunk Caper" (July 17, 1949)
"The Tears of Night Caper" (July 24, 1949)
"The Hot-Foot Caper" (July 31, 1949)
"The Champion Caper" (August 7, 1949)
"The Sourdough Mountain Caper" (August 14, 1949)
"The Silver Key Caper" (August 21, 1949)
"The Prodigal Daughter Caper" (August 28, 1949)
"The Flashback Caper" (September 4, 1949)
"The Costume Caper" (September 11, 1949)
"Over My Dead Body Caper" (September 18, 1949)
"The Chargogagogmanchogagogchabunamungamog Caper" (September 25, 1949)

The Adventures of Sam Spade (1949-50, NBC)

51 30-minute episodes

Starring Howard Duff as Sam Spade and Lurene Tuttle as Effie

Sponsor: Wildroot Cream Oil

"The Junior G-Man Caper" (October 2, 1949)
"The Hot Hothouse Caper" (October 9, 1949)
"The Pretty Polly Caper" (October 16, 1949)
Title Unknown (October 23, 1949)
Title Unknown (October 30, 1949)
"The Cheesecake Caper" (November 6, 1949)
"The Blues In The Night Caper" (November 13, 1949)
"The Peacock Feather Caper" (November 20, 1949)
Title Unknown (November 27, 1949)
"The Floppsey, Moppsey and Cottontail Caper" (December 4, 1949)
Title Unknown (December 11, 1949)
"The Whispering Death Caper" (December 18, 1949)
"The Canterbury Christmas 7(December 25, 1949)
"The Gorgeous Gemini Caper" (January 1, 1950)
"The Third Personville Caper" (January 8, 1950)
"The Phantom Witness Caper" (January 15, 1950)
"The Wedding Belle Caper" (January 22, 1950)
"The Too Many Leads Caper" (January 29, 1950)
"The Black Magic Caper" (February 5, 1950)
"The Crossword Puzzle Caper" (February 12, 1950)
"The Valentine's Day Caper" (February 19, 1950)
"The Cornelius J. Morningside Caper" (February 26, 1950)
"The Homicidal Husband Caper" (March 5, 1950)
"The Barbary Ghost Caper" (March 12, 1950)
"The Emerald Eyes Caper" (March 19, 1950)
"The Bay Psalm Caper" (March 26, 1950)
"The Endurance Caper" (April 2, 1950)
"The Picture Frame Caper" (April 9, 1950)
"The Kansas Kid Caper" (April 16, 1950)
"The Caldwell Caper" (April 23, 1950)
"The Hamite Curse Caper" (April 30, 1950)
"Caper With Marjorie's Things" (May 7, 1950)
"The Prodigal Son Caper" (May 14, 1950)
"The Red Amapola Caper" (May 21, 1950)
"The Honest Thief Caper" (May 28, 1950)
"The V.I.P. Caper" (June 4, 1950)
"The Color Scheme Caper" (June 11, 1950)
"The Elmer Longtail Caper" (June 18, 1950)
"The Toytown Caper" (June 25, 1950)
"The Beryl Green Caper" (July 2, 1950)
"The Runaway Redhead Caper" (July 9, 1950)
"The Man Who Knew Almost Everything Caper" (July 16, 1950)
"The Stormy Weather Caper" (July 23, 1950)
"The Rod And Reel Caper" (July 30, 1950)
"The Bell Of Solomon Caper" (August 6, 1950)
"The Missing Persons Caper" (August 13, 1950)
"The Preposterous Caper" (August 20, 1950)
"The Too Many Clients Caper" (August 27, 1950)
"The Farmer's Daughter Caper" (September 3, 1950)
"The Big Little Woody Caper" (September 10, 1950)
"The Femme Fatale Caper" (September 17, 1950)

The Adventures of Sam Spade (1950-51, NBC)

24 30-minute episodes

Starring Steve Dunne as Sam Spade and Lurene Tuttle as Effie

"Caper Over My Dead Body" (November 17, 1950)
"The Terrified Turkey Caper" (November 24, 1950)
"The Dog Bed Caper" (December 1, 1950)
"The Dry Gulch" (December 8, 1950)
"The 25/1235679 Caper" (December 15, 1950)
"The Caper Concerning Big" (December 22, 1950)
"The Prodigal Panda Caper" (December 29, 1950)
"The Biddle Riddle Caper" (January 5, 1951)
"The Red Star Caper" (January 12, 1951)
"The Cloak and Dagger Caper" (January 19, 1951)
"The Chateau McCloud Caper" (January 26, 1951)
"The String Of Death Caper" (February 2, 1951)
"The Sure Thing Caper" (February 9, 1951)
"The Soap Opera Caper" (February 16, 1951)
"The Shot in the Dark Caper" (February 23, 1951)
"The Crab Louis Caper" (March 2, 1951)
"The Spanish Prisoner Caper" (March 9, 1951)
"The Sinister Siren Caper" (March 16, 1951)
"The Kimberley Cross Caper" (March 23, 1951)
"The Vendetta Caper" (March 30, 1951)
"The Denny Shane Caper" (April 6, 1951)
"The Civic Pride Caper" (April 13, 1951)
"The Rowdy Dowser Caper" (April 20, 1951)
"The Hail and Farewell Caper" (April 27, 1951)

References

Grams Jr., Martin. The Radio Adventures of Sam Spade. Churchville, Maryland: OTR Publishing, 2007. ISBN 978-0-9703310-7-6

Listen to

Tom Heathwood interviews Martin Grams, Jr. about his book, The Radio Adventures of Sam Spade, plus episode of The Adventures of Sam Spade (August 1, 1948)

External links

The Definitive: The Adventures of Sam Spade, Detective article and log
The Adventures of Sam Spade radio programs
The Adventures of Sam Spade on Outlaws Old Time Radio Corner

Source : Wikipedia

My Favorite Husband Radio Show

Sat, 06 Jul 2019 02:15:00 +0000

My Favorite Husband is the name of an American radio program and network television series. The original radio show, starring Lucille Ball, evolved into the groundbreaking television sitcom I Love Lucy. The series was based on the novels Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, the Record of a Happy Marriage (1940) and Outside Eden (1945) written by Isabel Scott Rorick, the earlier of which had previously been adapted into the Paramount Pictures feature film Are Husbands Necessary? (1942), co-starring Ray Milland and Betty Field.

Radio

My Favorite Husband was first broadcast as a one-time special on CBS Radio on July 5, 1948. CBS's new series Our Miss Brooks had been delayed coming to the air, so to fill in the gap that week CBS aired the audition program (the radio equivalent of a television pilot) for My Favorite Husband. Lucille Ball and Lee Bowman played the characters of Liz and George Cugat, and a positive response to this broadcast convinced CBS to launch My Favorite Husband as a series. Bowman was not available to do the series, so when it debuted later that month it starred Lucille Ball and Richard Denning as the leads. The couple lived at 321 Bundy Drive in the fictitious city of Sheridan Falls, and were billed as, "two people who live together and like it."

The episode would progress into a minor crisis or problem, typically caused by one of Liz' zany ideas. Each episode would end with the problem solved and Liz saying, "Thanks, George. You're my favorite husband."

Beginning with the 26th episode on January 7, 1949, confusion with bandleader Xavier Cugat prompted a name change to Cooper. On this same episode the series, which had begun as a sustaining program, acquired Jell-O as its sponsor. An average of three "plugs" for Jell-O were made in each episode. The show opened with:

Bob LeMond: It's time for My Favorite Husband starring Lucille Ball!

Lucille Ball: Jell-O, everybody!

Theme music [composed by Marlin Skiles, conducted by Wilbur Hatch]

LeMond: Yes, it's the new gay family series starring Lucille Ball with Richard Denning, brought to you by the Jell-O family of desserts:

Singers:

J-E-L-L-

O! The big red letters stand for the Jell-O family,

Oh, the big red letters stand for the Jell-O family,

That's Jell-O!

Yum, yum, yum!

Jell-O pudding!

Yum, yum, yum!

Jell-O tapioca pudding, yes sir-ee!

LeMond: And now, Lucille Ball with Richard Denning as Liz and George Cooper, two people who live together and like it.

A total of 124 episodes of the program aired from July 23, 1948 through March 31, 1951. It was initially written by Frank Fox and Bill Davenport, who were the writers for radio's Ozzie and Harriet. The show portrayed the Cugats as a well-to-do banker and his socially prominent wife. That fall, after about ten episodes had been written, Fox and Davenport departed and three new writers took over?Bob Carroll, Jr., Madelyn Pugh, and head writer/producer Jess Oppenheimer. They subsequently changed the couple's name to Cooper and remade them into a middle-class couple, which they thought average listeners would find more accessible. In March 1949 Gale Gordon took over the existing role of George's boss, Rudolph Atterbury, and Bea Benederet was added as his wife, Iris.

One discovery made during the run of the show was that Lucille Ball performed comedy far better when she played to an audience.

Characters

Liz Cooper, played by Lucille Ball; happily married and slightly zany housewife
George Cooper, played by Richard Denning; Liz's husband, works for Mr. Atterbury
Mr. Rudolph Atterbury, played first by Hans Conried and then Joseph Kearns, and in subsequent episodes by Gale Gordon; George's boss, friend of the Cooper family, often refers to George as "boy," as in "George-Boy"
Mrs. Iris Atterbury, played by Bea Benaderet; wife of Rudolph and friend of the Cooper family, often refers to Liz as "girl," as in "Liz-Girl"
Katy, played by Ruth Perrott; the Coopers' maid, presumably enjoys making Jell-O
Mrs. Leticia Cooper, played first by Benaderet and in subsequent episodes by Eleanor Audley; George's aristocratic mother, who typically looks down on Liz

In 1950 Lucille Ball was asked to do a television version of the show, and CBS and Jell-O both insisted that Richard Denning continue as her co-star. Ball refused to do it without real-life husband Desi Arnaz playing her on-screen husband. The network reluctantly agreed, and the concept was reworked into I Love Lucy after Ball and Arnaz took a show on the road to convince the network that audiences would respond. Jell-O dropped out and Philip Morris became the television sponsor. Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet, who played the Atterburys, were both given first consideration for the roles that would become Fred and Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy, but both had contract conflicts that forced them to turn down the roles.

Writers Carroll, Pugh and Oppenheimer all agreed to continue with I Love Lucy. They subsequently reworked numerous My Favorite Husband episodes into I Love Lucy episodes early in the TV show's run. For example, the March 18, 1949 radio episode entitled "Giveaway Program" inspired the November 24, 1952 I Love Lucy episode "Redecorating". Many of the actors who appeared on My Favorite Husband on radio later appeared on I Love Lucy, often in episodes where they reprised their original roles from a reworked My Favorite Husband script. During the first season of I Love Lucy Gale Gordon twice played the role of the boss, and the May 26, 1952 episode entitled "Lucy's Schedule" was a rewrite of the April 22, 1949 My Favorite Husband episode "Time Schedule" (also called "Budgeting Time".)

Television

CBS brought My Favorite Husband to television in 1953, starring Joan Caulfield and Barry Nelson as Liz and George Cooper. The couple now resembled their earliest radio version, with George Cooper a well-to-do bank executive and with plots dealing with the couple's society life. The television version ran two-and-a-half seasons, from September 1953 through December 1955, and was produced live at CBS Television City for most of its run, until switching to film for a truncated third season filmed at Desilu and recasting Liz Cooper with Vanessa Brown.

Characters

Liz Cooper; the housewife
George Cooper; Liz's favorite husband, and bank executive
Gilmore Cobb, played by Bob Sweeney; the Coopers' wealthy next-door neighbor (first two seasons)
Myra Cobb, played by Alix Talton, Gilmore's social-climbing wife (first two seasons)
Oliver Shepard, played by Dan Tobin, the Coopers' neighbor in the third season
Myra Shepard, Oliver's wife (third season), played by Alix Talton, the same actress who earlier played Myra Cobb

CD/DVD releases

Though the radio show was never commercially released on its own CD or DVD collections, at least one episode can be found on each disk from the I Love Lucy DVD releases. In 2003, two episodes were released together on a CD in the UK.

These radio episodes are in the public domain, and CDs containing the entire run of My Favorite Husband in the MP3 format are legally offered by several private vendors through eBay and other sites, such as at the public domain repository, the Internet Archive.

Sources

Brooks, Tim and Marsh, Earle. The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows (ninth edition), ISBN 978-0-345-49773-4
Lance, Steven. Written Out of Television: A TV Lover's Guide to Cast Changes 1945-1994, ISBN 1-56833-071-5
Andrews, Bart. The "I Love Lucy" Book, ISBN 0-385-19033-6

References

External links

Isabel Scott Rorick biography
My Favorite Husband episodes
My Favorite Husband (35 episodes)
My Favorite Husband episodes (100+ episodes)
My Favorite Husband at the Internet Archive (109 out of 124 aired episodes)
My Favorite Husband episodes with notes including which corresponding I Love Lucy episode it spawned.
My Favorite Husband on Outlaws Old Time Radio Corner

Source : Wikipedia

CBS Mystery Theater

Sat, 06 Jul 2019 02:16:00 +0000

CBS Radio Mystery Theater (a.k.a. Radio Mystery Theater and Mystery Theater, sometimes abbreviated as CBSRMT) is a radio drama series created by Himan Brown that was broadcast on CBS Radio Network affiliates from 1974 to 1982, and later in the early 2000s was repeated by the NPR satellite feed.

The format was similar to that of classic old time radio shows like The Mysterious Traveler and The Whistler, in that the episodes were introduced by a host (E. G. Marshall) who provided pithy wisdom and commentary throughout. Unlike the hosts of those earlier programs, Marshall is fully mortal, merely someone whose heightened insight and erudition plunge the listener into the world of the macabre (in a manner similar to that of "The Man in Black" on yet another old time radio program, Suspense).

As with Himan Brown's prior Inner Sanctum Mysteries, each episode of CBS Radio Mystery Theater opened and closed with the ominous sound of a creaking crypt door, accompanied by Marshall's disturbing utterance, "Come in!? Welcome. I'm E. G. Marshall." This was followed by one of Marshall's other catchphrases, usually either "The sound of suspense" or "The fear you can hear." At the conclusion, the door would swing shut, preceded by Marshall's classic sign off, "Until next time, pleasant? dreams?" Marshall hosted the program from January 1974 until February 1982, when actress Tammy Grimes took over for the series' final season, maintaining the format.

CBSRMT was broadcast each weeknight, at first with a new program each night. Later in the run three or four episodes were new originals each week, and the remainder repeats. There were 1,399 original episodes. The total number of broadcasts, including repeats, was 2,969. Each episode was allotted a full hour of airtime, but after commercials and newscasts, episodes typically ran for around 45 minutes.

When repeats of the show were broadcast in the early 2000s, Himan Brown re-recorded E.G. Marshall's original host segments.

Target audience

The program was pitched, at least initially, to an audience old enough to remember classic radio; Brown was a legend amongst radio drama enthusiasts for his work on Inner Sanctum Mysteries, The Adventures of Nero Wolfe and other shows dating back to the 1930s. Even young characters in early episodes of CBSRMT tended to have names popular a generation earlier, such as Jack, George, Phyllis and Mary. Many scripts, especially those by Ian Martin, showed a tin ear for 1970s youth slang ("Don't let her give you no run-around, dad!"; "I think bein' around here's gonna be kicks!"; "I dig a man who's far out!"). As late as 1981, Sam Dann's scripts included uncomfortable or skeptical references to "women's lib", a term that was by then around a decade out of date. In short, Brown made no attempt to broaden the program's appeal beyond the older generation that had been raised on radio.

The debut of CBSRMT, only a few months after the American Graffiti phenomenon, coincided with the wave of 1950s nostalgia that swept young America during the mid to late 1970s. The program quickly developed a very large fan base among teenage and young adult listeners, in addition to its older, target audience.

Music

Each show began with host E. G. Marshall intoning, "The CBS Radio Mystery Theater presents?", followed by the sound of a creaking door slowly opening, seeming to invite listeners in for the evening's adventure. Three descending notes from the double basses introduced Marshall's sinister intonation, "Come in? Welcome." A stopped horn sting and timpani roll, then: "I'm E.G. Marshall." A low, eerie theme played by the bass clarinet followed as Marshall introduced the program. At the end of each show, Marshall delivered his classic signoff, "? inviting you to return to our Mystery Theater for another adventure in the macabre. Until next time, pleasant?dreams?" The door then creaked and slammed shut, followed by a repeat of the show's ominous theme music.

The opening and closing themes for CBSRMT are derived from an abbreviated form of the music from the classic Twilight Zone episode "Two", composed by Nathan Van Cleave. Series listeners will immediately recognize the "RMT Theme" beginning about 1:35 on the "Two" soundtrack selection from the Twilight Zone CD boxed set. Other background tracks from the Twilight Zone music library, to which CBS owned full rights, were featured repeatedly in episodes of CBSRMT. The theme song and the other music was also previously used in the 1950s and 1960s in other CBS-owned radio and television dramas (Perry Mason; Rawhide; The Fugitive; Gunsmoke; Have Gun Will Travel; Suspense; Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar; etc.), in addition to Twilight Zone, as it was all owned by CBS.

Scope

Despite the show's title, Brown expanded its scope beyond mysteries to include horror, science fiction, historical drama, westerns and comedy, along with seasonal dramas at Christmas: A Christmas Carol, starring host Marshall as Scrooge, aired every Christmas Eve except 1974 and 1982.

In addition to original stories, there were adaptations of classic tales by such writers as O. Henry, Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, H. Rider Haggard, Oscar Wilde and others. Brown typically devoted the first full week of each January to a five- or seven-part series on a common theme. These included a full week of stories by an American writer, (Edgar Allan Poe in 1975, Mark Twain in 1976); week-long adaptations of classic novels (The Last Days of Pompeii in 1980, Les Miserables in 1982); and original dramas about historical figures (Nefertiti in 1979, Alexander the Great in 1981).

Radio historian John Dunning argued the CBSRMT scripts varied widely in quality and concept. Many of the hour-long scripts were padded with filler, Dunning suggested, and could have been worked better as 30-minute programs, while other episodes suffered due to having been written by scribes unfamiliar with the unique needs of radio drama.

Notable performers

Prominent actors from radio's heydey, TV and film performed on the series. Notable regulars included Mason Adams, Kevin McCarthy, Arnold Moss, John Beal, Howard Da Silva, Keir Dullea, Morgan Fairchild, Veleka Gray, Jack Grimes, Fred Gwynne, Larry Haines, Paul Hecht, Celeste Holm, Kim Hunter, Mercedes McCambridge, Tony Roberts, Norman Rose, Alexander Scourby, Marian Seldes and Kristoffer Tabori, and a then-unknown John Lithgow.

The series introduced a new generation of listeners to many of the great old time radio voices, including such distinctive performers as Joan Banks, Jackson Beck, Virginia Gregg, Victor Jory, Roberta Maxwell, Marvin Miller, Santos Ortega, William Redfield, Alan Reed, Rosemary Rice, Anne Seymour, Les Tremayne, Lurene Tuttle and Janet Waldo.

A number of well-known veteran and future stars made guest appearances, including

Theodore Bikel ("Just One More Day," first aired May 29, 1975)
Richard Crenna ("Ghost Plane," September 12, 1975)
Joan Hackett ("The Eye of Death," March 7, 1975)
Margaret Hamilton ("Triptych for a Witch," October 30, 1975)
Casey Kasem ("The Headless Hessian," September 23, 1975)
Agnes Moorehead (appeared in the first broadcast, "The Old Ones Are Hard to Kill"; and "The Ring of Truth," January 26, 1974)
Jerry Orbach ("The Follower," January 25, 1975)
Sarah Jessica Parker ("The Child Cat's Paw", May 17, 1977)
Mandy Patinkin ("Lost Dog," January 9, 1974)
Kathleen Quinlan ("Ring of Evil," April 16, 1979)
Jerry Stiller ("The Frontiers of Fear," August 13, 1974)
Roy Thinnes ("Journey Into Terror," August 14, 1974)
John Lithgow ("The Deserter," February 6, 1980)

Actors were paid union scale at around $73.92 per show. Writers earned a flat rate of $350 per show. Production took place with assembly-line precision. Brown met with actors at 9:00 a.m. for the first script reading. After he assigned roles, recording began. By noon, the recording of the actors was complete, and Brown handed everyone checks. Post-production was done in the afternoon. The program was taped at the CBS Studio Building, 49 East 52nd Street in Studio G, formerly Studio 27 (renamed in honor of Arthur Godfrey whose programs originated in the building for decades).

Episodes

Below are lists of episodes for each of the nine seasons of CBS Radio Mystery Theater.

Awards

In 1974, CBSRMT won a Peabody Award, and in 1990 it was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame. On May 6, 1979, Himan Brown was presented a Broadcast Preceptor Award by San Francisco State University for his contributions with the CBSRMT.

Continuing popularity

From June 3 to November 27, 1998, CBSRMT was rebroadcast over CBS radio affiliates and, in 2000, on some NPR stations, in both cases, Himan Brown replaced the original introduction and narrations of E. G. Marshall.

CBSRMT remains perennially popular with collectors to this day, with numerous websites, discussion forums and a Usenet newsgroup devoted to trading MP3 files of episodes. Many of the episodes were taped with original local and network news and commercials embedded, providing an interesting insight into the period when the show first aired. While some may judge CBSRMT as inferior to similar shows from the past such as Inner Sanctum Mysteries, The Mysterious Traveler, and Suspense, which were produced in a 30-minute format, such comparisons must take into account the sheer prodigiousness of production by Brown and his players. At the rate of one program per day, it would take nearly four years to listen to each of the 1,399 hour-long episodes of CBSRMT.

Books

The episode "Children of Death", broadcast February 5, 1976, written by Sam Dann, served as the basis for Dann's 1979 novel The Third Body, published by Popular Library. Another of his stories for Mystery Theater, "Goodbye Carl Erich" from the 1975 season, was also turned into a novel by the same name, first published in 1985.

In 1976, a paperback anthology with three short stories adapted from the series' radio scripts was published by Pocket Library, Strange Tales from the CBS Radio Mystery Theater, edited and with a foreword by Himan Brown.

In January 1999, McFarland & Company, Inc. published The CBS Radio Mystery Theater, a book documenting the history of the program, including an episode guide. Fully indexed, the 475-page book was authored by Gordon Payton and Martin Grams, Jr. It was published in both hardcover and trade paperback.

In October 2006, Stahl Consolidated Manufacturing Corporation published a third book about Mystery Theater, examining the series' value today in education and instruction, The CBS Radio Mystery Theater As An Educational Degree, authored by Michael Anthony Stahl of Huntsville, AL. 180 pages, the hardcover was also selected for inclusion into the libraries of The University of Georgia,(one of the few venues with a complete collection of the series from the CBS vaults) as well as included into their Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection of the Film and Television Library in Summer, 2009.

All three books were reviewed in an article by Roger Sobin in Old-Time Detection Magazine in the Spring 2008 issue.

References

External links

Himan Brown's Audio Theater
CBS Radio Mystery Theater Complete collection posted in internet archive
CBSRMT.info is a fan forum
OTR Plot Spot: CBS Radio Mystery Theater - plot summaries and reviews.
"CBS Radio Mystery Theater". RadioEchoes. 1974-1982.CS1 maint: Date format (link) 1399 episodes.

Source : Wikipedia

The Adventures Of Ozzie and Harriet

Sat, 06 Jul 2019 02:33:00 +0000

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet is an American sitcom, which aired on ABC from October 3, 1952 through April 23, 1966, and starred the real-life Nelson family. After a long run on radio, the show was brought to television, where it continued its success, initially running simultaneously on radio and TV. The series starred the entertainment duo of Ozzie Nelson and his wife, singer Harriet Nelson, and their sons, David and Ricky. Don DeFore had a recurring role as the Nelsons' neighbor "Thorny".

Cast

The Nelsons

Ozzie Nelson
Harriet Nelson
David Nelson
Ricky Nelson

Supporting

The following represents the major supporting cast associated with the show.
(Source: The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present (Ninth edition))

Don DeFore as Erskin "Thorny" Thornberry
Parley Baer as Darby
Lyle Talbot as Joe Randolph
Mary Jane Croft as Clara Randolph
Connie Harper (Constance Nelson) as Miss Edwards
Skip Young as Wally Plumstead
Gordon Jones as Butch Barton
Frank Cady as Doc Williams
Lloyd Corrigan as Wally Dipple
Joseph Kearns as Herb Dunkle
James Stacy as Fred
Jack Wagner as the announcer and the soda clerk
Joe Flynn as Mr. Kelley
Kent McCord as Kent, Kappa Sigma fraternity brother
Jimmy Hawkins as Jimmy, Kappa Sigma fraternity brother

Background

Early radio days

In the early 1930s, a booking at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, New York gained national network radio exposure for Ozzie Nelson's orchestra. After three years together with the orchestra, Ozzie and Harriet signed to appear regularly on the radio show, The Baker's Broadcast (1933-1938), hosted first by Joe Penner, then by Robert Ripley (famed for Ripley's Believe it or Not!) , and finally by cartoonist Feg Murray. The couple married on October 8, 1935 during this series run, and realized working together in radio would keep them together more than continuing their musical careers separately.

The Red Skelton Show

In 1941, the Nelsons joined the cast of The Red Skelton Show, also providing much of the show's music. The couple stayed with the series for three years. They also built their radio experience by guest appearances, together and individually, on many top radio shows, from comedies such as The Fred Allen Show, to the mystery titan Suspense, in a 1947 episode called "Too Little to Live On".

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet radio show

When Red Skelton was drafted in March 1944, Ozzie Nelson was prompted to create his own family situation comedy. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet launched October 8, 1944 on CBS, it moved to NBC in October 1948, then made a late-season switch back to CBS in April 1949. The final years of the radio series were on ABC (the former NBC Blue Network) from October 14, 1949 to June 18, 1954. In total 402 radio episodes were produced. In an arrangement that exemplified the growing pains of American broadcasting, as radio "grew up" into television, the Nelsons' deal with ABC gave the network the option to move their program to television. The struggling network needed proven talent that was not about to defect to the more established and wealthier networks like CBS or NBC.

The Nelsons' sons, David and Ricky, did not join the cast until the radio show's fifth year (initially appearing on the February 20, 1949 episode, ages 12 and 8, respectively). The two boys were played by professional actors prior to their joining because both were too young to perform. The role of David was played by Joel Davis from 1944 until 1945 when he was replaced by Tommy Bernard. Henry Blair appeared as Ricky. Other cast members included John Brown as Syd "Thorny" Thornberry, Lurene Tuttle as Harriet's mother, Bea Benaderet as Gloria, Janet Waldo as Emmy Lou, and Francis "Dink" Trout as Roger. Vocalists included Harriet Nelson, The King Sisters, and Ozzie Nelson. The announcers were Jack Bailey and Verne Smith. The music was by Billy May and Ozzie Nelson. The producers were Dave Elton and Ozzie Nelson. The show's sponsors included International Silver Company (1944-49), H.J. Heinz Company (1949-52) and Lambert Pharmacal's Listerine (1952-54).

Here Come the Nelsons feature film

In 1952, the Nelsons starred with Rock Hudson in the Universal-International feature film, Here Come the Nelsons. The film depicted Ozzie as an advertising executive assigned to a campaign promoting women's underwear. The film, produced in the summer of 1951 while the radio show was on hiatus, opened theatrically on February 23, 1952. It also doubled as a pilot for the television series, as Ozzie wanted to see if his family would be accepted on film as they were on radio. The success of Here Come the Nelsons convinced him that Ozzie & Harriet's future was on the small screen, while continuing their weekly radio show.

Television series

Before the television series aired, Ozzie Nelson persuaded ABC to agree to a 10-year contract that paid the Nelsons whether the series was canceled or not. The unprecedented contract and Ozzie's insistence on perfection in the series' production paid off in the series' remarkable longevity.

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet premiered on ABC on October 10, 1952, staying until April 23, 1966; in 1962, it became the first prime-time scripted series on American television to reach the 10-year milestone. The series strove for realism and featured exterior shots of the Nelsons' actual southern California home at 1822 Camino Palmero Street in Los Angeles as the fictional Nelsons' home. Interior shots were filmed on a Hollywood Center Studios sound stage recreated to look like the real interior of the Nelsons' home. Viewers naturally assumed the action took place in Los Angeles since the occasional exterior shots were of actual Los Angeles streets rather than a studio backlot. But for many years the opening credits of each episode noted that the Nelson characters were "played by" the Nelson family, as though taking pains to ensure viewers knew these were not literal true-life accounts. And a 1959 episode titled "Ozzie Changes History" is devoted entirely to the history of "Warfield," the fictional town where they live. This finally accounted for the small-town atmosphere of the series whereby, like the other main sitcom families of the era (the Andersons and the Cleavers), the Nelson home seemed to be within walking distance of the town center.

Like its radio predecessor (which finally ended in 1954), the series focused mainly on the Nelson family at home, dealing with everyday problems. As the series progressed and the boys grew up, storylines involving various characters were introduced. Many of the series story lines were taken from the Nelsons' real life. When the real David and Rick got married, to June Blair and Kristin Harmon respectively, their wives joined the cast of Ozzie and Harriet and the marriages were written into the series. What was seldom written into the series was Ozzie's profession or mention of his lengthy and successful band-leading career. The popular joke about his career was that the only time he left the house was to go buy ice cream. According to his granddaughter, actress Tracy Nelson, Ozzie went to Rutgers to study law and when pressed would tell interviewers that the TV Ozzie was a lawyer.

By the mid-1960s, America's social climate was changing, and the Nelsons, symbolizing the 1950s values and ideals, were beginning to seem dated. Ozzie, who wrote and directed all of the series's episodes, attempted to alter the series to fit the times, but most viewers associated the series with a bygone era. The series cracked the top thirty programs in the Nielsen ratings for the first and only time in its eleventh season (1963-1964), when it ranked in 29th place. It made the transition from black-and-white to color in the 1965-66 season. That year, Ozzie tried to recapture the series's early success by introducing 9-year-old Joel Davison and other young children to relate to younger families. Although Davison appeared in three episodes, the series' Nielsen ratings continued to decline. In January 1966, ABC moved the series to Saturdays where it completed its 14-season run that spring.

Having run for a total of fourteen seasons, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet which averaged 29-30 episodes per season, remains the longest-running live-action American television sitcom. On April 1, 2017, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was renewed for a thirteenth and fourteenth season, which tied for the record in number of seasons, but not in total episodes aired.

Broadcast history

Fridays at 8:00-8:30 PM, October 3, 1952 - June 8, 1956
Wednesdays at 9:00-9:30 PM, October 3, 1956 - June 11, 1958
Wednesdays at 8:30-9:00 PM, October 1, 1958 - May 10, 1961
Thursdays at 7:30-8:00 PM, September 28, 1961 - June 6, 1963
Wednesdays at 7:30-8:00 PM, September 18, 1963 - January 5, 1966
Saturdays at 7:30-8:00 PM, January 15, 1966 - April 23, 1966

Springboard for Ricky Nelson's music career

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet made the Nelsons' younger son, Rick, into a music teen idol. Ozzie realized the impact his musically gifted son could bring to the series, and went on to write storylines featuring Rick singing. Rick first sang in the April 10, 1957, episode, "Ricky the Drummer," performing a version of Fats Domino's hit, "I'm Walkin", and later signed a recording contract with Domino's label, Imperial Records. Subsequent episodes that aired after Rick became one of the nation's most successful musicians were some of the series' highest-rated episodes.

Syndication

In the decades since the series' cancellation, it has been continuously shown on stations in public domain prints. Between 1985 and 1994, The Disney Channel aired the series as remastered from original 35mm film elements, with new introductions by Harriet Nelson.

The series was also aired on the Nostalgia TV Network and currently airs on the Retro Television Network (RTV) at 7:30 p.m. EST Monday-Friday.

PBS member station KVCR-TV in San Bernardino, California (in the Los Angeles market) aired the series as late as May 2010, connected to the station's nostalgic television series, I Remember Television. In addition, the majority of the series can be found on YouTube, most with original commercials.

Home video releases

Most of the pre-1964 episodes of the television series are in the public domain in the United States, except for the musical performances of Ricky Nelson included in the episodes (these are the exclusive and sole property of The Rick Nelson Company, LLC). Many episodes have been unofficially released on home video, including VHS and DVD, on many different low-budget company labels. Sixteen DVDs containing episodes from the series are available from Alpha Video. One hundred of the episodes in the public domain have been released on DVD by Mill Creek Entertainment as part of the Essential Ozzie & Harriet Collection.

The Rick Nelson Company, LLC, currently owns the rights to the original film elements. An officially released video version of The Best of the Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet was released May 1, 2007, by Shout! Factory under license from The Rick Nelson Company. Both the Nelson company and David Nelson's trust hold copyright ownership for any new material derived from the film elements. Rick Nelson's son, Sam Nelson, currently heads a project to digitize all 435 episodes from the original 35mm network negatives and will include the series' original commercials. The collection's release on DVD/Blu-ray has, as of the present, yet to be announced.

Episodes of the television series have been screened at the non-profit Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention held annually in Aberdeen, Maryland. 16 mm prints were used.

Collector/historian Martin Grams, Jr., presently owns the production materials, scripts, casting call sheets, contracts, telegrams, letters and other materials significant to the radio and television series.

Author Jim Cox addressed the radio program's cultural significance in an article that appeared in SPERDVAC's Radiogram in early 2008.

Ozzie's Girls

In 1973, David Nelson produced a short-lived, syndicated spin-off entitled Ozzie's Girls, in which Ozzie and Harriet rented the boys' old room to two college students, portrayed by Susan Sennett and Brenda Sykes. Story lines centered around the Nelsons' attempts to solve the problems of two girls after having raised two boys. The series's pilot episode was shown on NBC in September 1972, but the network passed on a weekly series. The unsold pilot, however, generated enough interest for Ozzie to bypass the network in favor of producing the series for syndication (through Viacom and Filmways).

Ozzie's Girls premiered on local stations, including New York's WABC-TV, in September 1973, but was cancelled in September 1974 after one season.

The Nelsons' post-TV lives

Ozzie

Ozzie Nelson continued to work in show business after the failure of the short lived sitcom Ozzie's Girls. He took on the role of producer and director for some of TV's popular series, most notably: Adam-12, The D.A., and Bridget Loves Bernie. In 1975, Ozzie Nelson died of liver cancer at the age of 69.

Rick

In the years after Ozzie and Harriet was cancelled, Rick Nelson's career and personal life changed drastically. Rick continued to record and perform music. He shied away from his teen idol image and sound, forming the rock and roll/country-fused Stone Canyon Band. Rick and the Stone Canyon Band had success with the 1972 single, "Garden Party". Rick and the Band wrote the song in response to having been booed off the stage at a rock and roll revival concert at Madison Square Garden after having refused to play his old hits. Throughout the 1970s, Rick was riddled with debt. In 1981, he and wife Kristin Harmon divorced. While touring the United States, Rick Nelson was killed in a plane accident on December 31, 1985, in DeKalb in Bowie County near Texarkana, Texas in northeast Texas. He was 45 years old. He was en route to a New Year's Eve concert in Dallas. In 1987, Rick was inducted posthumously into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Harriet

Following Ozzie's death in 1975, Harriet grew reclusive. In 1989, she made her last onscreen appearance in her granddaughter Tracy Nelson's TV series, Father Dowling Mysteries. Harriet never fully recovered from Rick's death and died of congestive heart failure and emphysema in 1994 at the age of 85.

Ozzie, Harriet, and Rick are interred together at Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery, in Los Angeles, California.

David

David Nelson continued to produce feature films and television commercials and owned his commercial production company until his death at age 74 from colorectal cancer in January 2011.

Legacy

The series attracted large audiences and became synonymous with the 1950s ideal American family life. Although it was never a top-ten hit, it remains the longest-running live-action sitcom in United States television history by number of episodes aired.

References

External links

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet on IMDb
Adventures Of Ozzie & Harriet on Way Back When
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet at TV.com
Encyclopedia of Television
The Nelson Brothers
Adventures Of Ozzie & Harriet on Outlaws Old Time Radio Corner

Source : Wikipedia

the adventures of sherlock holmes radio series

Sat, 06 Jul 2019 23:44:00 +0000

This article features minor characters from the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and from non-canonical derived works.

Inspector Baynes

Inspector Baynes of the Surrey force appears in the two-part story "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge", subtitled (i) "The Singular Experience of Mr John Scott Eccles", and (ii) "The Tiger of San Pedro". He is the only official policeman in the books to have ever matched Sherlock Holmes in his investigative skills. In this story, the reader finds that despite working along different lines, they both arrive at the correct conclusion and solve the case at the same time. In fact, Baynes had misled even Holmes as he used a method similar to one that Holmes often used when he arrested the wrong man and provided inaccurate information to the press in order to lull the true criminal into a false sense of security. Holmes congratulated this inspector and believed that he would go far.

In Japanese puppetry Sherlock Holmes, Baynes is a pupil of Beeton School as well as Holmes and has a strong sense of rivalry against him. Baynes speaks in a precocious manner and provokes Holmes to find the truth of the disappearance of two pupils, Garcia and Henderson. After that, he provokes Holmes again by posting a message using the stick figures of dancing men in the school. Y?suke Asari voices him.

Billy

Billy is Holmes's young page, appearing in the stories The Valley of Fear, "The Problem of Thor Bridge" and "The Mazarin Stone". In the latter, he plays a significant role in helping to arrest the lead villain. He is a more significant character in all three of Doyle's plays featuring Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes; A Drama in Four Acts, The Stonor Case and The Crown Diamond, and in the spoof The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes written by William Gillette. In 1903 Charlie Chaplin began his career by playing Billy on stage in both the four-act play and Gillette's spoof. Billy has appeared in the films Sherlock Holmes (1922), Sherlock Holmes (1932) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939). In the episode of the TV series Sherlock entitled "The Abominable Bride", Billy makes an appearance played by Adam Greaves-Neal, who previously played an original character named Archie in "The Sign of Three" (though presumably Archie drew some inspiration from Billy).

Inspector Bradstreet

Inspector Bradstreet is a detective who appears in three short stories: "The Man with the Twisted Lip", "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" and "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb".

Doyle described him as "a tall, stout official... in a peaked cap and frogged jacket". Sidney Paget's illustrations for the Strand Magazine depict him with a full beard. Beyond this little is revealed about him in the canon.

Bradstreet originally served in Scotland Yard's E Division which associates him with the Bow Street Runners, a forerunner of Scotland Yard. He claims to have been in the force since 1862 ("The Man with the Twisted Lip") but in June 1889 Dr Watson writes he is in B Division to oversee "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle". According to Sherlockian author Jack Tracy, B Division was:

one of the twenty-two administrative divisions of the Metropolitan Police Force. Its 5.17 square miles include parts of south Kensington and the south-western section of West-minister [sic?]...

In "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb", he accompanied Holmes to Eyford, a village in Berkshire. According to Jack Tracy's The Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana, he was "assigned most likely to the central headquarters staff."

Bradstreet is not a martinet; in "The Man with the Twisted Lip" he could have prosecuted the false beggar, but chose to overlook this action to spare Neville St Clair the trauma of shaming his wife and children.

Bradstreet appears four times in Granada Television's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: "The Blue Carbuncle", "The Man with the Twisted Lip", "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" (substituting for Inspector Lestrade, as Colin Jeavons was unavailable), and a cameo appearance in "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone". Initially he was played by Brian Miller as a blustering, pompous plodder, then later as much more competent by Denis Lill.

He is also featured in M. J. Trow's series The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade.

Inspector Gregson

Inspector Tobias Gregson, a Scotland Yard inspector, was first introduced in A Study in Scarlet (1887), and he subsequently appears in "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter" (1893), "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge" (1908) and "The Adventure of the Red Circle" (1911). Holmes declares him to be "the smartest of the Scotland Yarders," but given Holmes' opinion of the Scotland Yard detectives, this is not sweeping praise. In one of the stories Watson specifically mentions the callous and cool way in which Gregson behaved.

Gregson first appears in A Study in Scarlet and is a polar opposite of another Yarder Doyle created, Inspector Lestrade. Lestrade and Gregson are such visual opposites, it indicates the barrier Doyle drew between them to emphasise their professional animosity. Gregson is tall, "tow-headed" (fair-haired) in contrast to the shorter Lestrade's dark "ferretlike" (narrow) features and has "fat, square hands".

Of all the Yarders, Gregson comes the closest to meeting Sherlock Holmes on intellectual grounds, while acknowledging Holmes's abilities. He even admits to Holmes that he always feels more confident when he has Holmes's aid in a case. Regrettably, he is bound within the confines of the law he serves, and the delay in getting his assistance turns to tragedy in "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter". He also has some regrettable human flaws. During A Study in Scarlet he publicly laughs at Lestrade's incorrect assumptions, even though he is also on the wrong trail.

Unlike Lestrade, Gregson overlooks the little grey areas of the law, and in "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter" overlooks Holmes's breaking of a window in order to enter a premises. The life of Mycroft Holmes's fellow lodger is saved by this minor criminal act.

Gregson last appears in Doyle's "The Adventure of the Red Circle" in events that happen in 1902 but are not published by Dr Watson until 1911. In this story, Watson observes that:

Our official detectives may blunder in the matter of intelligence, but never in that of courage. Gregson climbed the stair to arrest this desperate murderer with the same absolutely quiet and businesslike bearing with which he would have ascended the official staircase of Scotland Yard. The Pinkerton man had tried to push past him, but Gregson had firmly elbowed him back. London dangers were the privilege of the London force.

In the 1945 film The Woman in Green, Gregson was played by Matthew Boulton.

A character named Captain Gregson of the NYPD appears in the TV adaptation Elementary, portrayed by Aidan Quinn. Originally he was to be called Tobias Gregson, after the character in the stories, but his name was changed to Thomas Gregson.

Inspector Hopkins

Inspector Stanley Hopkins is a Scotland Yard detective and a student of Holmes's deductive methods, who attempts to apply them in his own investigations. Holmes, however, is very critical of Hopkins's ability to apply them well, Hopkins sometimes making such mistakes as arresting a man whose notebook was found at a crime scene despite it being physically impossible for the man in question to have killed the victim in the manner that he was discovered; after the real culprit was captured, he learns to be more open-minded in future cases. Hopkins refers several cases to Holmes, all within the South-East areas of England and London, including:

"The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez", set in 1894 in Chatham, Kent, and
"The Adventure of Black Peter", in Weald set in 1895, and
"The Adventure of the Abbey Grange", in 1897 in Chislehurst.

In the 1946 film Dressed to Kill, Hopkins was portrayed by Carl Harbord.

In the first episode of Season Two of Elementary, a "DCI Hopkins" calls Holmes to London from New York.

A female Inspector named Stella Hopkins appears in the episode of Sherlock entitled "The Six Thatchers". While uncertain, it can be presumed that the character drew inspiration from Inspector Hopkins.

Mrs. Hudson

Mrs. Hudson is the landlady of the house 221B Baker Street, in which Holmes lives.

Mrs. Hudson is a woman who wants the home to be clean and tidy, and often fights with Holmes for this. Watson describes her as a very good cook; in "The Naval Treaty," Holmes says "Her cuisine is a little limited, but she has as good an idea of breakfast as a Scotchwoman," which some readers have taken to mean that she is Scottish, and others that she cannot possibly be. Other than one mention of her "stately tread", she is given no physical description or first name, although some commentators have identified her with the "Martha" in "His Last Bow".

Watson described the relationship between Holmes and Hudson in the opening of "The Adventure of the Dying Detective":

Mrs. Hudson, the landlady of Sherlock Holmes, was a long-suffering woman. Not only was her first-floor flat invaded at all hours by throngs of singular and often undesirable characters but her remarkable lodger showed an eccentricity and irregularity in his life which must have sorely tried her patience. His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London. On the other hand, his payments were princely. I have no doubt that the house might have been purchased at the price which Holmes paid for his rooms during the years that I was with him.

The landlady stood in the deepest awe of him and never dared to interfere with him, however outrageous his proceedings might seem. She was fond of him, too, for he had a remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women.

At one point in "A Scandal in Bohemia" Holmes calls the landlady "Mrs. Turner", rather than Mrs. Hudson, which has caused much speculation among Holmes fans.

Film and television appearances

In the BBC series Sherlock, she is played by actress and TV presenter Una Stubbs. She offers Holmes a lower rent because he helped her out by ensuring the conviction and execution of her husband in Florida after he murdered two people. In "A Scandal in Belgravia" when agents torture Mrs. Hudson trying to find a mobile phone, Sherlock repeatedly throws the agent responsible out of an upper-level window, and later states that "England would fall" if Mrs. Hudson left Baker Street. In "His Last Vow" her name is revealed to be Martha Louise Hudson (née Sissons), a semi-reformed alcoholic and former exotic dancer. Her "pressure point", according to Charles Augustus Magnussen’s information on her, is marijuana.

In Granada Television's Sherlock Holmes series, Mrs. Hudson is played by Rosalie Williams and dressed as a domestic servant, implying Holmes is her employer rather than her tenant.

A transgender Ms. Hudson appears in the 19th episode of the US series Elementary as an expert in Ancient Greek who essentially makes a living as a kept woman and muse for various wealthy men; Holmes allows her to stay in the apartment after a break-up, and she subsequently agrees to clean for them once a week as a source of income and to prevent Holmes from having to do it himself.

In the TMS anime series Sherlock Hound directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Mrs. Hudson is depicted as a younger woman, and a widow of a pilot named Jim. In this incarnation, her full name is revealed to be Marie Hudson, and fitting with the theme of the characters being canines, she resembles a Golden Retriever. She normally stays behind at 221B Baker Street, but accompanies Hound and Watson on a few cases, usually any that involve something related to flight, and is shown to be a very skilled driver, pilot, and marksman. She is once kidnapped by Professor Moriarty and his henchmen as a part of a scheme to defeat Hound, though Moriarty vows to never involve her in his schemes after she shows him kindness during the time she's kept as a hostage. Additionally, it's shown that most of the main male cast of the series (namely Hound and especially Watson) are attracted to her.

In the NHK puppetry Sherlock Holmes, Mrs. Hudson (voiced by Keiko Horiuchi) is a jolly housemother of Baker House, one of the houses of Beeton School. She loves singing and baking biscuits and calls Holmes by his first name Sherlock. She is particularly kind to him and Watson for Holmes saves her when she is in a predicament in the first episode "The First Adventure" based on "A Study in Scarlet". In the episode 11 based on "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", she finds a big snake in the school.

Pastiche appearances

Mrs. Clara (née Clarisa) Hudson is a much more developed character in Laurie R. King's series of novels focusing on the detective scholar Mary Russell. In this alternative extension of the Holmes mythology, the retired Holmes marries his much younger apprentice and partner. Russell and Holmes meet after the traumatic death of her family in California when she moves to the farm adjoining Holmes' Sussex home. Mrs. Hudson takes the young and emotionally fragile Russell under her wing, and Russell comes to think of her as a friend, a second mother, and a rock in the whirl of danger that always surrounds Holmes. The novel The Murder of Mary Russell tells Mrs. Hudson's biography over several generations, her meeting and bond with Holmes, and her ties to Russell. The novel appeared after the development of Mrs. Hudson's character in the BBC series Sherlock. As in that rendition of the character, Mrs. Hudson has a criminal past and initially met Holmes in unsavory circumstances, in this case when she murdered her father to save Holmes' life. Holmes buys the Baker St. house for Hudson and establishes her as his landlady. In typical Holmesian logic, this relieves him of the tedium of homeownership and explains both her forbearance with her tenant and his uncharacteristic affection for her. A skilled actress and con artist, she is comfortable with the criminals who inhabit his world and enjoys playing occasional roles in investigations in which an eminently respectable older woman might be needed. In this series, she is slightly older than Holmes (although Russell and Watson thinks she is significantly older), born in Scotland, raised in Australia, and an immigrant to England. She acted as a mother surrogate to Billy Mudd, Holmes' first 'Irregular', has one sister who lived to adulthood, and one illegitimate child of her own. Holmes states explicitly that the condition of her remaining in England and their relationship is that Hudson's life prior to the murder is never to be mentioned, that they must never have a sexual or romantic relationship, and that she know that her history as a criminal and murderer will always be present in his mind whenever they interact. To Holmes, Hudson represents a way of solving the ethical problem of what to do with someone who murders to prevent harm, but who may return to criminal activity. His manipulation of Hudson removes Hudson and Mudd from lives as criminals, keeps Hudson's infant from the workhouse, and provides Holmes with a housekeeper and intelligent ally.

In Sherlock Holmes' War of the Worlds it is suggested that Holmes and the younger Mrs. Hudson had a long-lasting love relationship, obvious to all but the naive Watson.

Mrs Hudson is the detective in the novels Mrs Hudson and the Spirits' Curse (2002), Mrs Hudson and the Malabar Rose (2005) and Mrs Hudson and the Lazarus Testament (2015), by Martin Davies, and in The House at Baker Street (2016) and The Women of Baker Street (2017), by Michelle Birkby.

Shinwell Johnson

Shinwell "Porky" Johnson is a former criminal who acts as informant and occasional muscle for Sherlock Holmes (Although Watson notes that he is only useful in cases that by their nature will not go to court as he would compromise his connection to Holmes and thus render himself useless as a source if he ever had to testify as part of a case). He appears in "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client" where he protects Kitty from Baron Grüner's henchmen and provides Holmes with insight into how he might go about infiltrating Grüner's house to acquire a certain book. He is referred to in the radio adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, specifically in The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Ferrers Documents where he appears to carry on with intimidation business.

The fifth season of the TV show Elementary introduced an updated version of the character (played by Nelsan Ellis) as both a former patient of Watson's and ex-convict now attempting to go straight. He became part of a complex sting operation to infiltrate and dismantle his old gang, but after Sherlock and Joan decided to trust him even after learning that he killed one of his old associates in the gang, he was killed before he could complete his assignment.

Athelney Jones

Inspector Athelney Jones is a Scotland Yard detective who appears in The Sign of the Four. He arrests the entire household of Bartholomew Sholto, including his brother and servants, on suspicion of his murder, but is forced to release all but one of them, much to his own embarrassment.

Jones makes an appearance in the third series of BBC Radio 4's The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, in the episode "The Thirteen Watches".

Mary Morstan (later Watson)

Mary Morstan is the wife of Dr. Watson. She is first introduced in The Sign of the Four, where she and Watson tentatively become attracted to each other, but only when the case is resolved is he able to propose to her. She is described as blonde with pale skin. At the time she hires Holmes she had been making a living as a governess. Although at the end of the story the main treasure is lost, she has received six pearls from a chaplet of the Agra Treasure.

Her father, Captain Arthur Morstan, was a senior captain of an Indian regiment and later stationed near the Andaman Islands. He disappeared in 1878 under mysterious circumstances that would later be proven to be related to the mystery, The Sign of the Four. Her mother died soon after her birth and she had no other relatives in England, although she was educated there (in accordance with the received wisdom of the time about children in the colony of India) until the age of seventeen. Shortly afterwards her father disappeared and she found work as a governess. Watson and Mary marry in 1889.

Mary Morstan is mentioned in passing in "The Adventure of the Crooked Man" and "The Boscombe Valley Mystery", but by the time of "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder" (after Holmes's return) Mary Morstan has died and Watson has returned to his former lodgings in Baker Street. Her cause of death is never mentioned.

Film and television appearances

Mary Morstan has been portrayed on film and television by several actresses. In many cases, her role is expanded to be critical in new stories, and she is often given a career of her own.

Isobel Elsom in the 1913 silent film Sherlock Holmes Solves The Sign of the Four
Isla Bevan in the 1932 film The Sign of Four: Sherlock Holmes' Greatest Case featuring Arthur Wontner as Holmes
Ann Bell in The Sign of Four episode of the 1965-68 Sherlock Holmes series featuring Peter Cushing as Holmes and Nigel Stock as Watson
Gila von Weitershausen in the 1974 French/German film Das Zeichen der Vier
Samantha Eggar in the 1976 film The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
Cherie Lunghi in the 1983 film The Sign of Four featuring Ian Richardson as Holmes
Yekaterina Zinchenko in the 1983 Soviet film The Treasures of Agra (Priklyucheniya Sherloka Kholmsa i doktora Vatsona: Sokrovishcha Agry)
Jenny Seagrove in the 1987 television film starring Jeremy Brett
Lexi Wolfe in the 2012-2015 web series The Mary Morstan Mysteries. Lexi would also play the character (as Mrs. Watson) in one episode of the show's parent series, No Place Like Holmes.
Susannah Harker in the 1991 television adaptation of the play The Crucifer of Blood, starring Charlton Heston as Sherlock Holmes. In the play and the telefilm, Morstan is renamed "Irene St. Claire". Glenn Close played the character in the original 1978 Broadway cast of the play; Susan Hampshire played her in the original 1979 London cast.
Sophie Lorain in the 2001 film The Sign of Four, with Matt Frewer as Sherlock Holmes and Kenneth Welsh as Dr. Watson. In this version, Mary Morstan becomes engaged to Thaddeus Sholto rather than Dr. Watson.
Kelly Reilly in Guy Ritchie's 2009 film Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey, Jr. as Sherlock Holmes and Jude Law as Dr Watson. In the film, Mary is first introduced to Holmes as Watson's fiancée rather than as a client. Reilly reprises the role in the 2011 film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.
Amanda Abbington in the third season of Sherlock. She is first introduced in "The Empty Hearse" when Watson is attempting to propose. Sherlock interrupts and surprises John to let him know that he is not dead; however, this backfires as Watson is angry with Sherlock. Morstan likes Sherlock and agrees to talk to Watson, whom she marries, but in the following episode, she shoots Sherlock non-fatally and it is revealed she was an assassin in the past with the initials A.G.R.A.. Sherlock admits that he had deduced some degree of her secret due to her past only extending back a few years, and muses that Watson would have only married a woman who appealed to his subconscious 'need' for danger. She and Watson are reconciled and they are expecting a daughter as of the last episode of the series. In a subsequent special, Mary is shown to be less guarded about her past, using her skills from her former profession to assist Sherlock and vex Mycroft. Her past is expanded upon in the first episode of the fourth season, The Six Thatchers. Mary was once part of an international secret agent group, called A.G.R.A., an acronym of the names of the members: Alex, Gabriel, Rosamund (Mary's real name) and Ajay. During a rescue mission in the British Embassy in Tbilisi, A.G.R.A. is betrayed by Vivian Norbury, secretary to Lady Elizabeth Smallwood, resulting in the deaths of half the team, the ones surviving being Mary and Ajay. Ajay, having been tipped off by his captors, attempted to kill Mary on the belief that she betrayed the team. Ajay is killed in the confrontation. Mary later finds out that Vivian was the traitor and confronted her with Sherlock. As Vivian was about to be arrested, she shot at Sherlock, but Mary dived in front of it. John arrived and watched as she succumbed to her wound.
Anna Ishibashi voices Mary Morstan, a pupil of Archer House in the NHK puppetry Sherlock Holmes. In the show, her elder brother Arthur is attacked by someone and she requests Holmes to find the truth behind it. Meanwhile, Watson falls in love with her at first sight and tries to show her his braveness. But there is a rival called Jonathan Small who sent her a picture postcard every week before her entrance into Beeton School and writes a song "You are My Treasure" for her. Small joins a chorus band formed by Arthur and the Sholto twins but is betrayed by Arthur who changes the title to "Agra Treasure" and makes it his own.

Langdale Pike

Langdale Pike is a celebrated gossipmonger whose columns are published in numerous magazines and newspapers (referred to as the "garbage papers" by Watson). He's introduced in "The Adventure of the Three Gables" in which he helps Holmes learn the name of the woman who led Douglas Maberley to his demise, although he does not actually appear in the story itself and is only referred to by Watson who describes Pike as "strange" and "languid" and states that all of Pike's waking hours are spent "in the bow window of a St. James's Street club". His character has however been expanded on or fleshed out elsewhere.

In William S. Baring-Gould's biography of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, it is claimed that Pike is a college acquaintance of Holmes who encourages a young Holmes to try his hand at acting. Here his real name is given as 'Lord Peter'. In Peter Ling's radio play for the BBC Radio series, Pike's real name is said to be Clarence Gable. Here he is also an old school-friend of Holmes's and is nervous of strangers and reluctant to leave his club for this reason. In the Granada television adaptation starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes meanwhile, Pike (played by Peter Wyngarde) is also apparently an old university friend of Holmes's. Here he claims to be the benevolent counterpart of Charles Augustus Milverton (the eponymous blackmailer of The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton), who suppresses more information than he exposes. Though Watson is rather scathing about Pike, Holmes is more sympathetic towards him, suggesting that Pike is isolated, much like Holmes himself.

In the American television series Elementary, Pike appears in the first episode of the second season as one of Holmes' sources in London; details are not seen as Pike moves quickly when delivering a package to Watson.

"Langdale" is used as a British Intelligence codename in the first episode of the fourth series of Sherlock, along with "Porlock," the name of another Holmes informer in the original stories.

In the NHK puppetry Sherlock Holmes, Pike is a pupil of Beeton School and assists Holmes in his investigation. He also works as informant and is fast at his job but tight with money. Besides he sells photographs of girls to male pupils. Tomokazu Seki voices him.

Toby

Toby is a dog who is used by Sherlock Holmes. He is first introduced in The Sign of the Four and is described by Watson as an "ugly long haired, lop-eared creature, half spaniel and half lurcher, brown and white in colour, with a very clumsy waddling gait." Though used by Holmes, the dog belongs to Mr. Sherman who keeps a menagerie of creatures at No. 3 Pinchin Lane in Lambeth. Toby lives at No. 7 within his house. Holmes states he would "rather have Toby's help than that of the whole detective force in London" and requests the dog by name.

Toby also featured in the pastische novel Sherlock Holmes vs Dracula; or, The Adventures of the Sanguinary Count by Loren D. Estleman, when Watson and Holmes called on Toby to track Count Dracula after finding him in a meat-packing district - Dracula's carriage having rolled through blood and old entrails - allowing the two to track Dracula to Watson's house in time to learn that he has abducted Mary Watson.

In the Holmes-esque The Great Mouse Detective, Toby is a Basset Hound and a permanent resident of 221b Baker Street. He is frequently used by Basil, the eponymous protagonist, as a means of transport and to pick up trails.

In the NHK puppetry Sherlock Holmes, Toby is kept by Sherman in a shed in Beeton School and assists Holmes in his investigation. In the series, Sherman is a female pupil who loves animals and communicates with them, unlike Mr. Sherman in The Sign of the Four. Though being a pupil of Baker House, she does not live in the house, but in the shed with animals.

In the BBC series Sherlock, in the first episode of the fourth season titled "The Six Thatchers", Sherlock Holmes requires the services of a bloodhound named Toby.

Wiggins

Wiggins is a street urchin in London and head of the Baker Street Irregulars. He has no first name in the stories. His first appearance is in A Study in Scarlet (1886). The film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, directed by Billy Wilder, features a character called Wiggins (played by Graham Armitage) who is a footman at the Diogenes Club. He delivers a note to Mycroft Holmes (played by Christopher Lee) and receives instructions concerning various items. The character, credited as "Bill Wiggins", also appears in the series three finale of Sherlock portrayed by Tom Brooke as a drug user who actually demonstrates the beginning of Sherlock's deductive skills, and later appoints himself a "pupil" of Sherlock's.

Non-canonical

Some fictional characters associated with Sherlock Holmes are not part of the Conan Doyle canon and were created by other writers.

Auguste Lupa

Auguste Lupa is the son of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler. He appears in two pastiche novels by author John Lescroart, Son of Holmes (1986) and Rasputin's Revenge (1987). Lupa, a secret agent during the First World War, is strongly implied to be the younger version of fictional detective Nero Wolfe in the mystery series by Rex Stout.

Enola Holmes

Enola Holmes is the younger sister and youngest sibling of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes. She appears in the series The Enola Holmes Mysteries by Nancy Springer and it could be inferred that she appears in the story The Copper Beeches as Violet Hunter, however there is not enough evidence to support the idea. Enola is a very independent and rebellious girl who likes to wear trousers while riding her bike. She becomes a Perditorian, or finder of lost things, when her mother runs away with the gypsies and her brothers try to send her to boarding school. Using her natural cunning which seems to be inherited by every member of the Holmes family, she creates multiple disguises on her quest to be reunited with her mother and evade her brothers.

Eurus Holmes

A third Holmes sibling appears as a reference by Mycroft in the BBC Sherlock series, in the third-season episode "His Last Vow". At the end of the first episode of the fourth season, Mycroft requests to be put through to "Sherrinford" (see below).

In the second episode of the fourth season, it was confirmed that Mycroft and Sherlock in fact have a sister named Eurus. She had posed as Faith Smith, the daughter of serial killer Culverton Smith and gave Sherlock a piece of paper which led him to the belief that Culverton Smith was a serial killer. Eurus had also posed as a woman on the bus who John Watson met and later texted, wanting to further their relationship. She also posed as John Watson's therapist and then later revealed herself to be Eurus Holmes, and at the end of the episode shoots John Watson with a handgun.

In the last episode, "The Final Problem", it is revealed that Sherrinford is in fact a high-security complex on an island to house some of the most dangerous criminals in the world, including Eurus. With Eurus having simply shot John with a tranquiliser dart, Sherlock and John stage a scenario where Mycroft will admit Eurus' existence. Mycroft explains that Eurus was the youngest child, eight years younger than Mycroft and one year younger than Sherlock, possessing a transcendent intellect that gave her the potential to be the equivalent of Newton in her era, but she was twisted by her inability to comprehend human feeling, once slicing at her arm to see her own muscles and having to ask the meaning of 'pain'.

After a traumatic experience where she was involved in (or perpetrated) the disappearance and death of Sherlock's best friend, and then burned down the family home, she was confined as a child in a mental institution by her uncle, who took charge of her care. The traumatized young Sherlock reinvented his friend in memory as his dog, to lessen the emotional pain, and successfully repressed any memory of her or his childhood friend well into his adult life.

Later, Mycroft assumed responsibility for Eurus, and arranged for her death to be faked to their parents, and for Eurus to be incarcerated in a highly secure prison facility. Despite her incarceration, Mycroft occasionally consulted Eurus for her insight into potential national threats, apparently predicting the dates of three major attempted terrorist attacks on Britain after an hour on Twitter, in exchange for 'favours', including five minutes of unsupervised conversation with Jim Moriarty.

Having taken subtle control of her prison through her skills at manipulating others, Eurus traps Sherlock, John, and Mycroft in a game which culminates in her ordering Sherlock to shoot either John or Mycroft, only to resort to tranquilising all three of them when Sherlock threatens to shoot himself instead.

At the conclusion of the episode Eurus has trapped John in the deep well where Eurus left her first victim to drown. Under pressure Sherlock deduces that a childish song she gave as the only 'clue' to what she had done to his disappeared friend was actually a coded message that invited Sherlock to Eurus' room, allowing Sherlock to save his friend by making a genuinely emotional appeal to Eurus, giving her the love of an older brother and a form of relationship he had denied her as a child, which convinces her to stand down. She is returned to incarceration, with Mycroft describing her as reduced to a catatonic state, although she responds in duet when Sherlock plays the violin near her cell.

Mary Russell

Mary Russell is a fictional character in a book series by Laurie R. King, focusing on the adventures of Russell and her mentor and, later, husband, an aging Sherlock Holmes.

Morland Holmes

Morland Holmes is the influential businessman and father of Sherlock and Microft, interpreted by John Noble in the TV adaptation Elementary. According to Sherlock, Morland Holmes doesn't care about his sons, and only does what he does out of a sense of familial obligations. Sherlock says he is a serial absentee, and that he has been so since Sherlock was a boy. He sent Sherlock to boarding school when he was eight years old.

Raffles Holmes

Raffles Holmes, the son of Sherlock Holmes, is a fictional character in the 1906 collection of short stories Raffles Holmes and Company by John Kendrick Bangs. He is described as the son of Sherlock Holmes by Marjorie Raffles, the daughter of gentleman thief A.J. Raffles.

Wold Newton family theorist Win Scott Eckert devised an explanation in his Original Wold Newton Universe Crossover Chronology to reconcile the existence of Raffles Holmes with canonical information about Sherlock Holmes and A.J. Raffles, which fellow Wold Newton speculator Brad Mengel incorporated into his essay "Watching the Detectives." According to the theory, Holmes married Marjorie in 1883, and she died giving birth to Raffles later that year. Since Raffles and Holmes are contemporaries, it has been suggested that Marjorie was actually Raffles' sister.

Eckert further proposed in his Crossover Chronology that (1) Raffles Holmes was the same character as the "lovely, lost son" of Sherlock Holmes referred to in Laurie R. King's Mary Russell novels, and (2) Raffles Holmes was the father of Creighton Holmes, who is featured in the collection of short stories The Adventures of Creighton Holmes by Ned Hubble.

Mengel's online essay was revised for publication in the Eckert-edited Myths for the Modern Age: Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton Universe (MonkeyBrain Books, 2005), a collection of Wold Newton essays by Farmer and several other "post-Farmerian" contributors, authorised by Farmer as an extension of his Wold Newton mythos. He does not appear or is ever mentioned in any of the original stories of Sherlock Holmes and is not a creation of Doyle.

Sherrinford Holmes

Sherrinford Holmes is a proposed elder brother of Sherlock Holmes and Mycroft Holmes. His name is taken from early notes as one of those considered by Arthur Conan Doyle for his detective hero before settling on "Sherlock Holmes". The name is used of Holmes by Stamford in the 1954 radio show 'Dr Watson Meets Sherlock Holmes' as he attempts to remember Holmes' first name.

He was first proposed by William S. Baring-Gould who wrote in his fictional biography Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street (1962) that Sherrinford was the eldest brother of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes once stated that his family were country squires, which means that the eldest brother would have to stay to manage the estate. If Mycroft were the eldest, he could not play the role he does in four stories of the Sherlock Holmes canon, so Sherrinford frees them both. This position is strengthened by the fact that Mycroft's general position as a senior civil servant was a common choice among the younger sons of the gentry.

The character (as "Sherringford") appears along with his brothers in the Virgin New Adventures Doctor Who novel All-Consuming Fire by Andy Lane, where he is revealed to be the member of a cult worshiping an alien telepathic slug that is mutating him and his followers into an insect-like form; the novel culminates with Holmes being forced to shoot his brother to save Watson.

He also appears, accused of a murder that Sherlock must find him innocent of, in the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game adventure The Yorkshire Horrors. Sherrinford also appears in the Italian comic series Storie da Altrove (a spin-off of Martin Mystère) as the eldest brother, born nine years before him, of Sherlock himself.

Sigerson Holmes

The film The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother has as its protagonist Sigerson Holmes who Sherlock (a minor character) identifies as a brother of himself and Mycroft. The name "Sigerson" is an alias mentioned in passing in a Conan Doyle story as an alias Sherlock used while posing as an explorer.

Amelia Watson

She is the second wife of Dr. John Watson whose adventures are chronicled in a series of short stories and novels by Michael Mallory. Amelia Watson is based upon the enigmatic reference to Watson's having left Holmes in 1902 for a wife, which appears in the canonical story The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier, though the woman in the story is never named or identified, nor mentioned again in the canon.

References

Source : Wikipedia

Burns and allen radio

Sat, 06 Jul 2019 23:50:00 +0000

The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, sometimes called The Burns and Allen Show, is a half-hour television series broadcast from 1950 to 1958 on CBS. It stars George Burns and Gracie Allen, one of the most enduring acts in entertainment history. Burns and Allen were headliners in vaudeville in the 1920s, and radio stars in the 1930s and 1940s. Their situation comedy TV series received Emmy Award nominations throughout its eight-year run.

Production

A half-hour TV series broadcast October 12, 1950 - September 22, 1958, on CBS, The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show was initially staged live and broadcast every other Thursday at 8 pm ET. In fall 1952, it became a weekly series filmed on the West Coast. From March 1953 through September 1958, The Burns and Allen Show aired Mondays at 8 pm ET.

The show was an immediate success. Six episodes were produced live from the Mansfield Theatre in New York, with the stage set as the Burns's living room. The show relocated to the CBS Columbia Square facilities in Hollywood beginning with the seventh episode.

Ever the businessman, Burns realized it would be more efficient to do the series on film; the half-hour episodes could then be syndicated. From that point on, the show was filmed at General Service Studios without a live audience present; however, each installment was screened before an audience to provide live responses prior to the episodes being broadcast. With 291 episodes, the show had a long network run through 1958 and continued in syndicated reruns for years.

The sets were designed to look like the couple's real-life residence. An establishing shot of the actual house on Maple Drive in Beverly Hills, California, was often used. Although extensively remodeled, that house still exists today?including the study over the garage where George would "escape" from Gracie's illogical logic. Burns lived in the house until his death in 1996, at the age of 100.

One running gag of the TV show involved a closet full of hats belonging to various visitors to the Burns household, who would slip out the door unnoticed and leave their hats behind rather than face another round with Gracie. The format had George watching all the action (standing outside the proscenium arch in early live episodes; watching the show on TV in his study towards the end of the series) and breaking the fourth wall by commenting upon it to the viewers. Another running gag was George's weekly "firing" of announcer Harry Von Zell after he turned up aiding, abetting, or otherwise not stopping the mayhem prompted by Gracie's illogical logic.

During the course of the eight-year run, the TV show had remarkable consistency in its cast and crew. The episodes were produced and directed by Ralph Levy (1950-53); Frederick de Cordova, later director of NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1953-56); and Rod Amateau (1956-58). The original writing staff consisted of Sid Dorfman, Harvey Helm, Paul Henning, and William Burns (George's brother). Later writers included Nate Monaster, Jesse Goldstein, Norman Paul, and Keith Fowler. The associate producer was Al Simon, the director of photography was Philip Tannura, A.S.C., and the editor was Larry Heath. The show's primary sponsor was Carnation Evaporated Milk, later alternating with B.F. Goodrich (1952-55, 1956-57), and General Mills, for Betty Crocker (1955-56, 1957-58).

Bea Benaderet carried over from the Burns and Allen radio show, portraying neighbor Blanche Morton, but over the course of the series, four different actors played her husband. The character's first name was "Harry", the same first name as the real-life announcer Harry Von Zell, requiring the writers to craft dialogue that would distinguish the two characters' names. Blanche's husband Harry Morton was first portrayed by Hal March (October-December 1950), then John Brown (January-June 1951), and after that, Fred Clark, until 1953 and Larry Keating until 1958. In one episode, "Morton Buys Iron Deer/Gracie Thinks George Needs Glasses", George walks on-stage and freezes the scene just before Harry's entrance and explains that Clark has left the show to perform on Broadway. He introduces Larry Keating, who enters, and then calls over Bea Benaderet to introduce the two saying, "This is Larry Keating and he is going to be your husband now". The pair greet and chat briefly, complimenting each other on their previous work. George remarks that if they are going to be so nice to each other, no one will believe they are married. Burns then gives a cue, Blanche resumes her position, and the scene continues where it stopped as if nothing had happened. The new Harry enters and Blanche hits him in the head with a catalog for spending $200 to buy an iron deer.

Also appearing in the TV series were Burns and Allen's two children. Ronnie, adopted in 1935, and Sandra, adopted the year before, first appeared in the third-season episode, "Uncle Clyde Comes to Visit" (January 1, 1953), playing themselves. The teenagers are in the Burns living room, threading a 16 mm projector with that night's episode. In voiceover, George introduces them, and tells the audience that they have been away at school and that is why we have not met them before. Ronnie made a guest appearance on the episode, "Gracie Gives Wedding in Payment of a Favor" (October 18, 1954), playing a character named Jim Goodwin, and was introduced to the audience at the episode's conclusion. Ronnie joined the regular cast October 10, 1955, playing himself, but cast as a young drama student who tended to look askance at his parents' comedy style. Their daughter, Sandra, declined becoming a regular member of the cast, although she appeared in a few episodes as a classmate of Ronnie. In one episode, Ronnie's drama class puts on a vaudeville show to raise funds for the school. Gracie hosts the show while Ronnie and Sandy deliver an impersonation of their famous parents along with one of their classic routines. Since Ronnie played himself, Gracie closed the segment with a wisecrack: "The boy was produced by Burns and Allen."

Starting in the fall of 1955, Burns and Allen often reappeared after the end of the episode, before a curtain decorated with the names and locations of the various theaters where they headlined in their vaudeville days. They would perform one of their signature "double routines", often discussing one of Gracie's fictional relatives (including "Death Valley Allen" the prospector, "Florence Allen" the nurse, "Casey Allen" the railroad man). Burns always ended the show with, "Say goodnight, Gracie", to which Allen simply replied, "Goodnight." She never said, "Goodnight, Gracie", as legend has it. Burns was once asked this question and said it would have been a funny line. Asked why he did not do it, Burns replied, "Incredibly enough, no one ever thought of it."

In March 1953, The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show joined I Love Lucy as part of the CBS Monday-night primetime lineup. As a result, the show entered the top 30 television programs in the Nielsen ratings ranking at number 20. For the 1954-1955 season, it ranked number 26, and for both the 1955-56 and 1956-57 seasons it was number 28.

With I Love Lucy ending its six-year run on CBS in the spring of 1957, the television network wanted to renew the Burns and Allen series, but by this time, Allen had grown tired of performing. Nevertheless, Burns committed both of them for another year, which would be their eighth?and last?on television.

Allen announced her retirement on February 17, 1958, to be effective at the end of the current season.

Burns and Allen filmed their last show on June 4, 1958. The filming was an emotional experience, although nothing was said about it being Allen's last performance. At the wrap party, Allen took a token sip of champagne from a paper cup, hugged her friend and co-star Bea Benaderet, and said "Okay, that's it." After a brief last look around the set, she said, "And thank you very much, everyone."

"She deserved a rest," Burns said when Allen devoted herself to gardening and being a housewife:

She had been working all her life, and her lines were the toughest in the world to do. They didn't make sense, so she had to memorize every word. It took a real actress. Every spare moment?in bed, under the hair dryer?had to be spent in learning lines. Do you wonder that she's happy to be rid of it?

Burns attempted to continue the show with the same supporting cast but without Allen. The George Burns Show lasted one season (October 21, 1958 - April 14, 1959) on NBC.

Following a mild heart attack in the 1950s, Allen suffered a series of angina episodes over a number of years. She had a major heart attack in 1961. She lived a slower but comfortable retirement for another three years, often appearing in public with her husband, but never performing. Gracie Allen died August 27, 1964, as Burns was underway with his short-lived ABC sitcom, Wendy and Me, with Connie Stevens and a cast including Ron Harper, James T. Callahan, and J. Pat O'Malley. All the TV shows were produced under the banner of McCadden Productions, a company run by George Burns which he named after the street on which his brother William lived. McCadden also produced the iconic TV show, Mister Ed. The McCadden catalog is owned by Sony Pictures Television.

Episodes

Accolades

The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show received the following Primetime Emmy Award nominations:

1952: Best Comedy Show
1953: Best Situation Comedy Series
1954: Best Situation Comedy Series
1954: Bea Benaderet, Best Series Supporting Actress
1955: Best Situation Comedy Series
1955: Gracie Allen, Best Actress Starring in a Regular Series
1955: Bea Benaderet, Best Supporting Actress in a Regular Series
1956: Gracie Allen, Best Actress, Continuing Performance
1957: Gracie Allen, Best Continuing Performance by a Comedienne in a Series
1958: Gracie Allen, Best Continuing Performance by a Comedienne in a Series
1959: Gracie Allen, Best Continuing Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Continuing Character) in a Comedy Series

In 1997, the 1954 episode, "Columbia Pictures Doing Burns and Allen Story", was ranked #56 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All-Time.

Home media

The kinescope recordings of the live telecasts from the 1950-1952 seasons of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show are thought to be in the public domain; they are available on "dollar DVD" collections and have rerun as part of America One's public domain sitcom rotation and on public television stations.

A select number of episodes were released on VHS by Columbia TriStar Home Video.

1992: Burns and Allen Christmas. Burbank, California: Columbia TriStar Home Video, 1992, VHS 92763, ISBN 978-0-8001-1532-6. Contains the episodes "Company for Christmas" (6.12) and "Christmas in Jail" (7.13).

References

External links

The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show on IMDb
The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show at TV.com
Public domain episode on the Internet Archive

Source : Wikipedia

johnny dollar radio show

Sat, 06 Jul 2019 23:53:00 +0000

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar was a radio drama that aired on CBS Radio from February 18, 1949 to September 30, 1962.

The first several seasons imagined protagonist Johnny Dollar as a private investigator drama. In 1955 after a yearlong hiatus, the series came back in its best-known incarnation with Bob Bailey starring in "the transcribed adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account - America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator." There were 809 episodes (plus two not-for-broadcast auditions) in the 12-year run, and more than 720 still exist today. (Jim Cox's book American Radio Networks: A History cites "886 total performances.")

Format

Each story of the Bailey years started with a phone call from an insurance adjuster, calling on Johnny to investigate an unusual claim: a suspicious death, an attempted fraud, a missing person, or other mysterious circumstances. Each story required Johnny to travel to some distant locale, usually within the United States but sometimes abroad, where he was almost always threatened with personal danger in the course of his investigations. He would compare notes with the police officials who had first investigated each strange occurrence, and followed every clue until he figured out what actually happened. Johnny's file on each case was usually referenced as a "matter," as in "The Silver Blue Matter" or "The Forbes Matter". Later episodes were more fanciful, with titles like "The Wayward Trout Matter" and "The Price of Fame Matter" (the latter featuring a rare guest-star appearance by Vincent Price as himself).

Johnny usually stuck to business, but would sometimes engage in romantic dalliances with women he encountered in his travels; later episodes gave Johnny a steady girlfriend, Betty Lewis. Johnny's precious recreational time was usually spent fishing, and it was not uncommon for Johnny's clients to exploit this favorite pastime in convincing him to take on a job near good fishing locations. His past was rarely mentioned, but Dollar in one episode described himself as a four-year US Marine veteran who then worked as a police officer for a decade before changing careers to insurance investigation.

Each story was recounted in flashback, and every few minutes the action would be interrupted by Johnny listing a line item from his expense account, which served as an effective scene transition. Most of the expense account related to transportation, lodging, and meals, but no incidental expense was too small for Johnny to itemize, as in "Item nine, 10 cents. Aspirin. I needed them." The monetary amounts weren't always literal: the smallest line item Johnny ever recorded was "two cents: what I felt like" after a professional setback; the largest was "one million dollars" (the way he felt after finding a missing woman and her daughter in a snowbound cabin). The episodes generally finished with Johnny tallying up his expense account and traveling back to Hartford, Connecticut, where he was based. Sometimes Johnny would add a sardonic postscript under "Remarks," detailing the aftermath of the case. ("The Todd Matter," which especially disgusted Johnny, ended abruptly with "Remarks - nil!")

In later seasons the program sometimes referred to itself, with other characters recognizing Dollar's voice from the radio.

History

Original run

As originally conceived, Johnny Dollar was a smart, tough, wisecracking detective who tossed silver-dollar tips to waiters and bellhops. Dick Powell starred in the audition show, recorded in 1948, but withdrew from the role in favor of other detective programs, Rogue's Gallery and Richard Diamond, Private Detective. The Johnny Dollar role went instead to Charles Russell. The show for which Powell auditioned was originally titled Yours Truly, Lloyd London, although the name of the show and its lead character were changed to avoid legal problems with the actual insurance company, Lloyd's of London, before the audition tape of December 7, 1948, was recorded.

With the first three actors to play Johnny Dollar - radio actor Russell and movie tough-guy actors Edmond O'Brien and John Lund - there was little to distinguish Johnny Dollar from other detective series at the time (Richard Diamond, Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade). While always a friend of the police, Johnny wasn't necessarily a stickler for the strictest interpretation of the law. He was willing to let some things slide to satisfy his own sense of justice, as long as the interests of his employer were also protected. The series ended in September 1954.

Revival

CBS Radio revived Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar in October 1955 with a new leading man, a new director, and a new format. The program changed from a 30-minute, one-episode-per-week program to a 15-minute, five-nights-a-week serial (Monday through Friday, 8-8:15 pm EST) produced and directed by radio veteran Jack Johnstone. The new Johnny Dollar was Bob Bailey, who had just come off another network detective series, Let George Do It. With a new lead and 75 minutes of air time each week, it became possible to develop each storyline with more detail and with more characters. Almost all of the Johnny Dollar serials were presented by CBS Radio on a sustaining basis (unsponsored, with no commercials); only two of the 55 serials take time out for a sponsor's message.

Bob Bailey was exceptionally good in this format, making Johnny more sensitive and thoughtful in addition to his other attributes. Vintage-radio enthusiasts often endorse Bailey as the best of the Johnny Dollars, and consider the 13-month run of five-part stories to be some of the greatest drama in radio history. The serial scripts were usually written by Jack Johnstone, "John Dawson" (a pseudonym for E. Jack Neuman), Les Crutchfield, or Robert Ryf. Blake Edwards also contributed several scripts and the show was always produced and directed by Johnstone. The show featured a stock company of supporting actors, including Virginia Gregg, Harry Bartell, Vic Perrin, Lawrence Dobkin, Stacy Harris, Parley Baer, Howard McNear, John Dehner, Barney Phillips, Lillian Buyeff, Tony Barrett, Don Diamond, Alan Reed, and Forrest Lewis. Movie character actors appeared occasionally, including Jay Novello, Hans Conried, Frank Nelson, Leon Belasco, William Conrad, Edgar Barrier, Gloria Blondell, and Billy Halop.

In late 1956, CBS Radio retooled the show, which reverted to a weekly half-hour drama, airing on late Sunday afternoons. Bob Bailey continued in the leading role until 1960 and wrote one episode, "The Carmen Kringle Matter," under his first and middle names (Robert Bainter).

Roy Rowan was the announcer for the first two years of Bob Bailey's run; he also was an announcer on CBS's I Love Lucy. Rowan was succeeded by staff announcer Dan Cubberly.

Changes at CBS

CBS Radio tried to institute an economy measure in June of 1959: its four remaining dramatic series (Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar; Suspense; Gunsmoke; and Have Gun, Will Travel) would be moved from Hollywood to New York. The plan met with some resistance, because the cast members and crews of Gunsmoke and Have Gun, Will Travel were willing to cancel the shows themselves rather than move to New York. The situation was stalemated for 17 months, as all four programs remained on the air. Finally, in November 1960, CBS Radio kept Gunsmoke in California, discontinued Have Gun, Will Travel, and moved Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and Suspense to New York. Bob Bailey, unwilling to relocate, gave up the Johnny Dollar role. Bailey's last performance, aired November 27, 1960, was in a script titled "The Empty Threat Matter," perhaps writer Johnstone's editorial comment on CBS's intention to shut down production in California.

In New York, CBS staff producer Bruno Zirato, Jr. (who also directed TV game shows for CBS) took over Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, although Jack Johnstone continued to write the scripts. Former child actor Bob Readick took over the leading role in a manner reminiscent of the original Dollar, Charles Russell. After six months he was replaced by Mandel Kramer, who gave the role his own low-key interpretation. Many fans found Mandel Kramer second only to Bailey as the most effective Johnny Dollar. Both Readick and Kramer were members of CBS's stock company in New York, and both appeared in other CBS dramas.

The end

The final episodes of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and Suspense, airing on CBS, are often cited as the end of the golden age of radio. The last episode of Johnny Dollar, "The Tip-Off Matter", ended at 6:35 pm. Eastern Time on September 30, 1962, followed immediately by the final broadcast of Suspense.

Although network radio drama returned to the airwaves - in ABC's Theater Five (1964-65), and CBS Radio Mystery Theater (1974-82) - these were more experimental "drama workshop" shows, and did not adhere to a continuing format or leading character, albeit the latter did spark a bit of a revival of drama on US commercial radio networks in the 1970s. The "Golden Age" of radio drama, as pioneered in the 1920s, died with Johnny Dollar in 1962.

Two unsuccessful attempts were made to transfer the success of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar to television. Bob Bailey starred in a 1958 pilot entitled The Adventures of Johnny Dollar (which failed because Bailey's 5-foot 9-inch, 150-pound physique didn't match the tough-guy characterization), and William Bryant starred in a 1962 pilot entitled Johnny Dollar. The latter was written, produced, and directed by Blake Edwards.

Actors who portrayed Dollar

Dick Powell (Audition show in 1948)
Charles Russell (February 1949 - January 1950)
Edmond O'Brien (February 1950 - September 1952)
John Lund (November 1952 - September 1954)
Gerald Mohr (Audition show in 1955)
Bob Bailey (October 1955 - November 1960)
Bob Readick (December 1960 - June 1961)
Mandel Kramer (June 1961 - September 1962)

Legacy

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar was so familiar to CBS Radio's listeners that the network's resident comedians, Bob and Ray, occasionally satirized it. Their version, "Ace Willoughby, International Detective," followed the Johnny Dollar format of exotic locales, continental officials, cool villains, and tense confrontations, with Ray Goulding doing a letter-perfect imitation of Bob Bailey's delivery. In the comedy version, however, the detective usually gave up on the case after being beaten up incessantly.

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar was a popular weekly radio mystery play in the 1960s and early 1970s on Radio Iran. The role of Johnny Dollar was played by Heidar Saremi, a popular radio performer. Contrary to the original, Johnny Dollar was more of a criminal investigator. At the end of each episode, the narrator asked the radio audience how Johnny found the perpetrators, making the show a mystery quiz as well as a drama; those who guessed correctly were entered into a raffle for a prize.

In the 1970s and 1980s the comedy troupe The Firesign Theatre released a number of satirical record albums; several featured spoofs of old-time radio featuring the character Nick Danger, Third Eye, who was loosely based on Sam Spade and Johnny Dollar. The scripts included inside references to radio with lines such as, "It had been snowing in Santa Barbara ever since the top of the page," and riffs on radio sound effects.

In 2003, Moonstone Books adapted the Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar radio program into a graphic novel illustrated by Éric Thériault and written by David Gallaher.

As of August 2015, a documentary about the program,The Real Johnny Dollar Matter, is in production.

The show has been the opening item on The Big Broadcast on WAMU in Washington, D.C. since the early 1990s.

As of August 2017, the show is being aired several times a day on KTQA FM 95.3 in Tacoma, WA and CHLU FM in Middle LaHave, Nova Scotia, Canada.

As of November 2018, the SiriusXM satellite radio network is airing some episodes of the show on its "Radio Classics" channel.

References

External links

"Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar Website"
Jim Widner: "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar: An Introduction"
Debut Episode of Yours Truly Johnny Dollar
Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar in the Internet Archive's Old-Time Radio Collection
Thrilling Detective website: Johnny Dollar
Listen to Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar on Outlaws Old Time Radio Corner

Source : Wikipedia

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