Posted on 12/23/2014 1:14:04 PM PST by BluesDuke
“We try,” co-creator Chester Lauck has told Radio Guide, “to make our program amusing through the situations we build up rather than through the ignorance or obtuseness of any character.” And if you’re looking for an individual episode that proves every word he said is true, even telling a story outside Lum & Abner‘s customary serial style, you’ll find one today.
The Pine Ridge philosophickers are just as good in leaving you to imagine a crawl through the worst of the rural winter as a potbelly stove burning and wares occasionally clacking and clattering inside the Jot ‘em Down Store.
You’ll feel and taste the snow and occasional brisk, slicing shaft of wind today when Grandpap (Norris Goff, who also plays Abner) asks Lum (Lauck, who also plays Doc) and Abner to drag through the snow with him, following the eastern star, bringing supplies for a couple expecting a child. And, to help them find another place to stay, when Doc reveals they’re in an abandones barn, the three waiting outside to toast the coming of 1939, as Doc arranges the supplies for the couple—a carpenter and his wife.
Announcer: Lou Crosby. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff. (Note: This episode would be repeated every year for a few years to come, usually on or around Christmas Day.)
The First Couple of 79 Wistful Vista (Jim & Marian Jordan) receive such a door bell as a Christmas present, which rings just right with them, as opposed to a little to-do with visiting Gildersleeve (Harold Peary) that makes someone want to wring someone’s neck. Classic bit: McGee and Teeny (also Marian Jordan) bantering when the little girl tries to sell him “miserabletoe.”
Mrs. Uppington: Isabel Randolph. LaTrivia: Gale Gordon. Telegram Man: Mel Blanc. Announcer: Harlow Wilcox. Music: Billy Mills Orchestra, the King’s Men, Martha Tilton. Writer: Don Quinn.
The Christmas spirit of a henpecked botanist (Peter Lorre) with a particular passion for experiments with home-grown orchids is compromised by his impatient wife, who has little use for his passion and less patience to get aboard their planned holiday cruise. This is an edgily pleasant yarn, probably characteristic to a fault of the early Suspense years, but taken on its own terms it won’t disappoint.
Additional cast: Unidentified. The Man in Black: Possibly Joseph Kearns. Music: Bernard Herrmann. Director: William Spier. Writer: John Collier.
Gildy (Harold Peary) has a problem the day before Christmas—hiding the presents in any spot in the house Leroy (Walter Tetley) hasn’t discovered first, assuming such a spot can be found. What you’d expect from this show, which isn’t a terrible thing at all.
Birdie: Lillian Randolph. Marjorie: Lurene Tuttle. Hooker: Earle Ross. Floyd: Arthur Q. Bryan. Peavy: Richard LeGrand. Announcer: John Laing. Music: Claude Sweetin. Director: Possibly Cecil Underwood. Writers: Sam Moore, John Whedon.
Reciprocating for a dinner invitation he received a fortnight earlier, Jack (Benny) invites Ronald Colman and his wife, Benita Hume Colman (as themselves) for dinner—assuming Colman gets over his trepidation about the evening and Jack can get the butler he hired for the night to take it all seriously.
In anyone else’s hands this would be mush. In this crew’s hands, it’s a charm.
Cast: Mary Livingstone, Eddie Anderson, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Mel Blanc, Don Wilson (announcer). Music: Mahlon Merrick, Phil Harris Orchestra, Dennis Day. Writers: George Balzar, Sam Perrin, Milt Josefsberg.
The Sap of 79 Wistful Vista (Jim Jordan) usually prefers to give, not receive snow jobs, but he’s got a dandy on his hands when he can’t find a set of keys in the cold white stuff. And that’s almost as much fun in this troupe’s hands (anyone else would probably blow the whole thing in two minutes) as hearing Teeny (Marian Jordan, who also plays Molly), reprise her charming performance (with the King’s Men) of “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.”
The Old Timer/Wallace Wimpole: Bill Thompson. F. Ogden Williams: Gale Gordon. Doc: Arthur Q. Bryan. Music: Billy Mills Orchestra, the King’s Men. Writers: Don Quinn, Phil Leslie.
It’s beginning to look a lot like a pain in the rump roast to find a few too many classic radio holiday episodes called, “Christmas Program” or “Christmas Show.” But here ’tis the week before Christmas, and all through the house, Sam (House Jameson) thinks Henry (Ezra Stone) is being solicitous enough of late to suggest an ulterior yuletide motive; Alice (Katherine Raht) thinks Sam’s being too suspicious for his own good; and, Hen-reeeeeee! really is maneuvering for a certain Christmas present—unaware that his parents think he’s angling for something else.
This is definitely for diehard Aldrich Family fans only.
Homer: Jackie Kelk. Announcer: Hugh James. Music: Jack Miller. Writers: Norman Tokar (who once played Henry when Ezra Stone went off to World War II, before he himself went into the Signal Corps!), Ed Jurist.
The cheerfully cantankerous comedian’s opening monologue does a subtly racy job of setting it up: some neighbourhood city kids who go from worrying about getting Santa into the house—when it has not chimneys but radiators—to being audacious enough to ask Congress for help.
God help them.
The kids: Butch Cabell, David Anderson, Joan Laser. Regular cast: Cast: Arnold Stang, Pert Kelton, Fran Warren, Ben Grauer, Art Carney, Jack Albertson, Joan Gibson. Announcer: Ben Grauer. Music: Bernie Green Orchestra. Writers: Henry Morgan, Carroll Moore, Jr., Aaron Ruben, Joseph Stein. (Note: the source file lists the wrong broadcast date.)
Doc (Arthur Q. Bryan) and his girlfriend Doris (Mary Jane Croft) pitch in to help trim the McGees’ (Jim & Marian Jordan) just in time for Christmas, which probably takes a lot of doing in the first place knowing the Slug of 79 Wistful Vista.
Announcer: John Wald. Director: Max Hutto. Writers: Phil Leslie, Bill Danch.
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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