Posted on 12/23/2014 1:14:04 PM PST by BluesDuke
Where’s the “Let’s Pretend” Christmas episode always broadcast the Saturday morning right before the big day - the best time of the whole year.....
Long ago, I mentioned in a post (to Vision, I believe) about how I wrote to Phil Harris one time in the 1980s, telling him how much I enjoyed his radio show. Got a nice little postcard back from him. I’ve probably gotten more genuine laughs from the “Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show,” as well as “Our Miss Brooks,” than just about any sitcom television shows.
I’m not as keen, per se, on Harris’ band/recordings from that era, but I do tend to like the band he had in the early-1930s, around the time he was at RKO doing those shorts, “So This is Harris” and “Harris in the Spring,” as well as the feature “Melody Cruise.” His band made a number of well-recorded transcriptions around that time.
To be honest, I don’t really think I look at these vintage artifacts through the prism of aesthetics as much as enjoying the contexts that come from the culture that surrounds them.
Items like old Charlie Chan, Abbott and Costello, Jungle Jim films pre-date me, but I did watch them on television as a kid. But now, I often ponder how these same old movies were shown at the neighborhood theater a few blocks down the street from where I lived, albeit decades earlier. Same theater, same sidewalks, same neighborhood I grew up in. But kids back then were also listening to “Jack Armstrong” on the radio, and buying “Nyoka, the Jungle Girl” comic books. While Les Brown and his band were appearing at a local auditorium over the weekend. All part of an intertwining cultural environment, that adds up to a bit of americana. I get a little visceral thrill out of all those connections, whether it’s something from the 1920s to 1950s to even the 1970s.
Bump!! Thanks!
Internet Archive old-time radio collection
The Old Time Radio Researchers Group Library
Between those two sites is how I built a collection of 13,000+ old-time radio shows and counting!
. . . which I still think was the best of the juvenile-oriented radio crime dramas, probably because it didn't exactly sound like a kids' show . . .
Columbia Workshop: The Plot to Overthrow Christmas, a classic written and directed by Norman Corwin, a titan of old-time radio drama.
Oh, I have that serial on dvd. As well as the first “Green Hornet” serial. The second one, with Warren Hull, is better as I recall. Hull was also quite good as The Spider, in the two Spider serials. I probably have about 90% of talkie serials on tape or disc. Not to mention, several of the silent serials that are extant, like “Lightning Bryce” (1919) with Jack Hoxie, and “Trail of the Octopus” (1919 also).
I’m behind the curve on the “Green Hornet” radio series. I have a cd collection of wartime radio episodes, but haven’t gotten around to listening to them yet.
Sad note: Of the original five main players on the television version of The Green Hornet (Williams, Bruce Lee, Wende Wagner, Lloyd Gough, and Walter Brooke), Van Williams is the only one still alive today.
I liked the “Green Hornet” tv-series, for the most part. The cast was particularly fine, and played things just right, for my tastes. In other words, without the kind of self-conscious camp hokeyness that was gradually coming into vogue, courtesy its production-mate, “Batman.” It’s one of the reasons I tend to prefer old-time fare, because of the protagonists’ propensity to exude a kind of stalwart, straight-forward sincerity. Everything nowadays has a jokey, sarcastic undertone that I find extremely grating. I was told the recent “Green Hornet” movie had this in spades.
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