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The Jack Carson Show first appeared on CBS radio for Campbell Soups, on June 2, 1943. The show ran for about four years until 1947 when Carson became the M.C. on The Sealtest Village Store.

The Jack Carson Show centred around Jack’s hectic home life at 22 North Hollywood Lane and his encounters with a variety of strange relatives, friends and neighbors. As in their vaudeville days Dave Willock was the sidekick playing the part of Carson’s nephew Tugwell. Eddie Marr was Jack's press agent, Arthur Treacher his butler.


Biography

John Elmer Carson was born in Carman, Manitoba on 27 October 1910 to Elmer and Elsa Carson. Shortly afterwards the family moved to Milwaukee, which he always thought of as his home town. He attended high school at Hartford School, Milwaukee and St. John's Military Academy, Delafield - but it was while attending Carleton College, Northfield that he got a taste for acting Jack Carson, because of his size - 6ft 2" and 220lbs had his first stage appearance as Hercules in a college production. During a performance he tripped and took half the set with him. A college friend, Dave Willock, thought it was so funny he persuaded Carson to team with him in a vaudeville act - Willock and Carson, and a new career began. In 1936 they decided to try their luck in Hollywood - and landed at RKO where they were able to work in bit parts. Jack Carson quickly qot on the RKO treadmill through a gruelling series of films, sometimes changing costumes four times a day. Willock and Carson meanwhile got their big radio break on the Bing Crosby Kraft Music Hall program in 1938, and it was that appearance that lead to a string of other radio appearances and hosting opportunities which would culminate in his own radio show in 1943. (Jack Carson Fansite)

Jack_Carson_Show_47-02-12_20_Fixing_a_Radio.mp3

There is a excellent set of the shows in the OTR Archives, all HQ 128-44 except for two.

My Favorite Husband began as a radio sitcom on CBS Radio, with Lucille Ball and Richard Denning as Liz and George Cooper (Cugat in a very few early episodes, until bandleader Xavier Cugat was said to be edgy about the radio couple sharing the name). 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 main sponsor was Jell-O, and an average of three "plugs" for Jell-O were made in each episode, including Lucille Ball's usual sign-on, "Jell-O, everybody!" It would start as:(1948 radio version).

The program initially portrayed the couple as being a well-to-do banker and his socially prominent wife, but three new writers — Bob Carroll, Jr., Madelyn Pugh, and Jess Oppenheimer — took over the writing, changed the couple's name to Cooper, and remade them into a middle-class couple, believing average listeners would find them more accessible.

Lucille Ball was asked to do a television version of the show (with Jell-O remaining as sponsor) and CBS insisted on Richard Denning continuing as her co-star, but Ball refused to do a husband-and-wife television show without real-life husband Desi Arnaz playing her on-screen husband. The network reluctantly agreed, reworking the concept into I Love Lucy after Ball and Arnaz took a show on the road to convince the network audiences would respond. But Jell-O dropped out of the show in favor of Philip Morris for television.

Carroll, Pugh, and Oppenheimer agreed to do the switch to I Love Lucy. They subsequently reworked a few My Favorite Husband episodes into I Love Lucy episodes, especially early in the TV show's run. For example, the 1948 radio episode entitled "Giveaway Program" inspired the I Love Lucy episode called "Redecorating," with some lines being exactly the same. Many of the actors who had done My Favorite Husband radio show also appeared on I Love Lucy, sometimes in episodes where they reprised their roles using a reworked Husband script.


Here is a cartoon made from an Old Time Radio episode of My Favorite Husband from Christmas 1949. Really very well done.

 Life with Luigi was a radio comedy-drama series which began September 21, 1948 on CBS, broadcasting its final episode on March 3, 1953. The story concerned Italian immigrant Luigi Basco, and his experiences as an immigrant in Chicago. Many of the shows take place at the US citizenship classes that Luigi attends with other immigrants from different countries, as well as trying to fend off the repeated advances of the morbidly-obese daughter of his landlord/sponsor.

Luigi was played by J. Carrol Naish, an Irish-American. Naish continued in the role on the short-lived CBS television version in 1952 and was later replaced by Vito Scotti when the series was briefly revived in the spring of 1953. With a working title of The Little Immigrant, Life with Luigi was created by Cy Howard, who earlier had created the hit radio comedy, My Friend Irma. Other characters on the radio show included Pasquale (Alan Reed), another Italian-American who was always trying to set Luigi up with his daughter Rosa; and Shultz (Hans Conreid), a German immigrant and fellow student in Luigi's citizenship class.

The show was sometimes regarded as the Italian counterpart to the radio show The Goldbergs, which chronicled the experience of Jewish immigrants in New York.

Life_with_Luigi_48-12-21_014_Antique_Colonial_Silver_Cup.mp3

Visit show page HERE

The Loner was an American western series that ran for less than one season on CBS from 1965 to 1966, under the primary sponsorship of Philip Morris. This is a great western series that is over-looked. Great acting and stories with lots of popular guest stars. The series was conceived and written by none other than Rod Serling, fresh off the successful network run of his legendary Twilight Zone series.

The show was set in the years immediately following the American Civil War. Lloyd Bridges played the title character, William Colton, a former Union cavalry officer who headed to the American west in search of a new life. Each episode dealt with Colton's encounters with various individuals on his trek west.

Here is an episode titled THE VESPERS with guest star Jack Lord. You may remember him, Jack went on to star in the TV series Hawaii Five-O.

Airdate September 25, 1965
Written by Rod Serling
Directed by Leon Benson
Film Editor: George Gittens

CAST
Jack Lord...........Reverend Booker
Joan Freeman............Alice Booker
Ron Soble.......................Deneen
Bill Quinn........................Doctor

Sworn to avenge his brother's death, a hood
comes gunning for a small town's local minister.
When Colton arrives to warn his old friend
and ex-soldier, he finds the man unwilling
to resort to violence to protect himself
and his pregnant wife.

Hear It Now, an American radio program on CBS, began in 1950 and was hosted by Edward R. Murrow and produced by Murrow and Fred W. Friendly. It ran for one hour on Fridays at 9 pm.

Go to Hear It Now page

If you’re ready to enjoy some great audio, take a look at Times Past member Bill Hollweg's website BrokenSea Audio Productions. What are they about? I quote from the site "We are a keen group of audio drama fanatics who create podcast and free download stories in audio format. Included in our line up is original fantasy, sci-fi, horror, drama, comedy and fan-works and audio versions of great films (like Planet of the Apes and Logan’s Run)."

I take my hat off to all the participants from BrokenSea in producing these fine audio productions. 

Dashiell Hammett's SAM SPADE is surely one of the most important figures in the entire private eye genre. He made his debut in 1929 in the pages of Black Mask, in the serialized first part of The Maltese Falcon, and the genre has never been the same. He's a "hard and shifty fellow," a partner in the Archer and Spade Detective Agency of San Francisco. He doesn't particularly like his partner, and he's not above sleeping with his wife, but when Miles is murdered, he swings into action, and ends up mixed up with a quest for a priceless statuette, a rara-avis, called the Maltese Falcon.

The Story of Sam Spade

Three film adaptations were based on it in 1931, 1936, and 1941. The first two were not all that great, but the third time was the charm. The Maltese Falcon, released in 1941 by Warner Brothers, written and directed by John Huston, and starring Humphrey Bogart as Spade was an amazing, powerful piece of work.

And in the forties, Spade was a staple of the airwaves, thanks to The Adventures of Sam Spade, a popular radio show, featuring Howard Duff in the lead role, and sponsored by Wildroot Hair Oil. In fact, a series of single-page comic strip/hair tonic ads appeared in magazines, newspapers and comic books, featuring Spade shilling for Wildroot Hair Oil. (The ads were drawn by Golden Age artist Lou Fine, who later went on to do the Peter Scratch comic strip.)

In fact, the only real sequel to The Maltese Falcon was not produced for either prose or film, though, but for radio. Both The Adventures of Sam Spade and the great mystery anthology show Suspense were both produced by the same man, William Speir. During the first year or two that Sam Spade was on the air, Suspense was an hour show, hosted by Robert Montgomery. To get fans of Suspense listening to Sam Spade, Speir produced a special one-hour Spade episode called "The Kandy Tooth Caper" and aired it on Suspense.

"The Kandy Tooth" from the popular old time radio series "Suspense." aired January 10, 1948 on CBS starring Howard Duff as Sam Spade. Based on characters created by Dashiell Hammett. The story of the return of the "Fat Man!" A sequel to "The Maltese Falcon," with "Joel Cairo," Wilmer's younger brother, and other characters from the film. This time, it's a search for a treasure worth more than the "Maltese Falcon!" William Spier speaks after the drama. 

Suspense 48-01-10 (279) The Kandy Tooth (HQ)

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The Lone Ranger is an American radio and television show created by George W. Trendle and developed by writer Fran Striker.

The eponymous character is a masked Texas Ranger in the American Old West, originally played by Paul Halliwell, who gallops about righting injustices with the aid of his clever, laconic Indian sidekick, Tonto. Departing on his white horse Silver, the Ranger would famously say "Hi-yo, Silver, away!" as the horse galloped toward the setting sun.

The theme music was the "cavalry charge" finale of Gioachino Rossini's William Tell Overture, now inseparably associated with the series, which also featured many other classical selections as incidental music including Wagner, Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Tchaikovsky. The theme was conducted by Daniel Perez Castaneda.
Classical music was used because it was in the public domain; thus allowing production costs to be kept down while providing a wide range of music as needed without the costs of a composer. While this practice was started during the radio show, it was retained after the move to television in the budget-strapped early days of the ABC network.

The first of 2,956 episodes of The Lone Ranger premiered on radio January 30, 1933 on WXYZ radio in Detroit, Michigan and later on the Mutual Broadcasting System radio network and then on NBC's Blue Network (which became ABC, which broadcast the show's last new episode on September 3, 1954). Elements of the Lone Ranger story were first used in an earlier series Fran Striker wrote for a station in Buffalo, New York.

On radio, the Lone Ranger was played by several actors, including John L. Barrett who played the role on the test broadcasts on WEBR during early January, 1933; George Seaton (under the name George Stenius) from January 31 to May 9 of 1933; series director James Jewell and an actor known only by the pseudonym "Jack Deeds" (for one episode each), and then by Earle Graser from May 16, 1933 until April 7, 1941. On April 8, Graser died in a car accident, and for five episodes, as the result of being critically wounded, the Lone Ranger was unable to speak beyond a whisper, with Tonto carrying the action. Finally, on the broadcast of April 18, 1941, deep-voiced performer Brace Beemer, who had been the show's announcer for several years, took over the role and played the part until the end. Fred Foy, also an announcer on the show, took over the role on one broadcast on March 29, 1954, when Brace Beemer had a brief case of laryngitis. Tonto was played throughout the run by actor John Todd (although there were a few isolated occasions when he was substituted with Roland Parker, better known as Kato for much of the run of sister series The Green Hornet), and other supporting players were selected from Detroit area actors and studio staff. These included Jay Michael (who also played the lead on Challenge of the Yukon aka Sgt. Preston of the Yukon), Bill Saunders (as various villains, including Butch Cavendish), Paul Hughes (as the Ranger's friend Thunder Martin and as various army colonels and badmen), future movie star John Hodiak, Janka Fasciszewska (under the name Jane Fae), and others. The part of nephew Dan Reid was played by various child actors, including Bob Martin, James Lipton, and Dick Beals.

The last new radio episode of the Lone Ranger was aired on September 3, 1954.

Is there a secret to finding things with the search function. I typed 'durbridge' and nothing showed up. I typed 'springbok' and it gave me one entry.

Any idea for the appropriate nomenclature to use?

Thank you

I had several request to renew the old westerns podcast. This time it will be under the new heading "Times Past Western Theater".  It is handy to subscribe to a podcast and have the new content come automatically to your media player.  Would welcome any suggestions for shows to add to the podcast. Leave your suggestions in the comments section below. The new home for the podcast and all the methods to subscribe can be found here. http://timespastwesterns.blogspot.com/

Columbia Workshop was a radio series that aired on the Columbia Broadcasting System from 1936 to 1943, returning in 1946-47.

The series began as the idea of Irving Reis. Reis had begun his radio career as an engineer and developed a fascination with the possibilities of the relatively new medium. His idea was to use experimental modes of narrative to enhance the way a narrative was conveyed over the radio. Reis had isolated attempts to experiment on the radio: Before the Columbia Workshop's debut, he had directed at least a few radio dramas. For Reis, the Columbia Workshop was a platform for developing new techniques for presentation on radio as noted in the debut broadcast:

Dawn Wells, aka Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island, demonstrates a unique way to peel an Idaho potato...without the use of a potato peeler!

Bold Venture is a 1951-1952 syndicated radio series starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Morton Fine and David Friedkin scripted the taped series for Bogart's Santana Productions.

Salty seadog Slate Shannon (Bogart) owns a Cuban hotel sheltering an assortment of treasure hunters, revolutionaries and other shady characters. With his sidekick and ward, the sultry Sailor Duval (Bacall), tagging along, he encounters modern-day pirates and other tough situations while navigating the waters around Havana. Aboard his boat, the Bold Venture, Slate and Sailor experience "adventure, intrigue, mystery and romance in the sultry settings of tropical Havana and the mysterious islands of the Caribbean."

I have posted the collection I have of Bold Venture. It is the ZIV collection captured in high quality 128-44

You can view here

http://otrarchive.blogspot.com/2009/09/bold-venture.html

The Screen Guild Theater was a popular radio anthology series during the Golden Age of Radio, broadcast from 1939 until 1952, with leading Hollywood actors performing in adaptations of popular motion pictures such as Going My Way and The Postman Always Rings Twice.

The show had a long run, lasting for 14 seasons and 527 episodes. It initially was heard on CBS from January 8, 1939 until June 28, 1948, continuing on NBC from October 7, 1948 until June 29, 1950. It was broadcast on ABC from September 7, 1950 to May 31, 1951 and returned to CBS on March 13, 1952. It aired under several different titles: The Gulf Screen Guild Show, The Gulf Screen Guild Theater, The Lady Esther Screen Guild Theater and The Camel Screen Guild Theater.

George Murphy hosted the show in 1939. In 1940, Roger Pryor began hosting the show. The show began as a general variety show and later changed formats to include old time radio versions of popular films. It starred most of the big name Hollywood celebrities of the time.

Actors on the series included Ethel Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Eddie Cantor, Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby, Bette Davis, Jimmy Durante, Nelson Eddy, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Johnny Mercer, Agnes Moorehead, Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore. Fees these actors would typically charge were donated to the Motion Picture Relief Fund, in order to support the creation and maintenance of the Motion Picture Country Home for retired actors. The series came to an end on CBS June 29, 1952.  Visit show page here.

The Legend of Tom Dula shares the history of the song and some ideas about the story from some people who can trace their roots back to the Happy Valley clan and others who have spent their lives fascinated with this obscure murder. Besides sharing some of the hearsay from the testimony and some opinions about who really committed the deed, the program sheds light on Frank Proffitt's involvement in the song, how the Kingston Trio discovered it, and how Frank finally received credit for the Kingston Trio's version of the song.  (Folkways)