All Posts (500)

Sort by

Himan Brown OTR Giant

The ffollowing is an excerpt from the obituary of Hiram Brown, the legendary Producer/Director/Creator of Inner Sanctum, The Thin Man, CBS Radio Mystery Theater, Terry and the Pirates, Bulldog Drummond, Dick Tracy, Adventure Theater, Grand Central Station, and an endless list of daytime soap operas.Obituary: Himan Brown / Produced radio showsJuly 21, 1910 -- June 4, 2010Thursday, June 10, 2010By Emma Brown, The Washington PostHiman Brown, a producer of popular radio dramas in the 1930s and 1940s including the series "Dick Tracy" and "The Adventures of the Thin Man," and who continued to tell stories in sound long after the rise of television, died June 4 at his home in New York City. The cause of death was not reported. He was 99.Mr. Brown's classic mystery and detective shows kept families huddled around their radio sets during the Depression and World War II, hooked on tales spun through actors' voices and the inventive use of organ music, foghorns and other mood-making sounds.He is perhaps best remembered for the creaking door he employed to open each episode of "Inner Sanctum Mysteries," an anthology of mystery, terror and suspense stories that ranked among the top 20 shows during its run from 1941 to 1952. Each episode ended with the host issuing a creepy invitation to his listeners to enjoy "pleasant dreammms, hmm?""I am firmly convinced that nothing visual can touch audio," Mr. Brown told The New York Times in 2003. "I don't need 200 orchestra players doing the 'Ride of the Valkyries.' I don't need car chases. I don't need mayhem. All I need to do is creak the door open, and visually your head begins to go. The magic word is imagination."In 1974, he resurrected his creaking door for the ghoulish tales of "CBS Radio Mystery Theater," which aired seven nights a week for nine years and won a prestigious Peabody Award.Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10161/1064568-122.stm#ixzz0qeXfMnTk
Read more…

The Restless Gun (aka The Six Shooter)

The Restless Gun is a western television series that appeared on NBC. The series starred John Payne as a gregarious, intelligent, wandering cowhand/gunslinger. The half-hour black and white 1957-59 program ran for 78 episodes. The pilot was broadcast as an installment of the anthology series The Schlitz Playhouse of Stars on March 29, 1957; it was based on the old time radio series "The Six Shooter" and Payne's character had the same name: Britt Ponset. This was changed to Vint Bonner when the actual series began. Some episodes of the series were based on the stories of the old time radio programs. This pilot episode is very interesting to watch for any "Six Shooter" western fans of the radio series. There is some interesting co-stars in this pilot episode like William Hopper who went on to play Paul Drake in the show Perry Mason and a very young Michael Landon who went on to play Little Joe on Bonanza. This Pilot episode was written by Les Crutchfield, one of the major writers for "Gunsmoke" on both radio and television (he wrote 81 scripts for the radio program alone) and also created the character Festus on the Gunsmoke TV series.
Read more…

A Date With Dolly

Dolly_Parton_in_Nashville_cropped.jpg
Episode 1 In the first of two programs, Michael Ball fulfills his longtime ambition to meet the woman who's bigger than country music itself, Dolly Parton. The series, which coincides with the release of Dolly's CD and DVD package 'Live From London,' breaks loose from the familiar "life story" approach to this Nashville superstar. Instead, in a long and revealing conversation, Ball finds out what makes Parton tick, how she keeps her family life private, how she became a canny business woman and how even she takes the wig off sometimes. Also in tonight's first part, Dolly talks about why she turned down Elvis and how she went about writing songs for the Broadway production of her hit movie '9 To 5.' Plus live versions of 'Jolene,' 'Two Doors Down' and the song she reveals as her personal favorite from her catalog. Episode 2 The second installment of Michael Ball's revealing interview with the country queen, recorded at her offices in Nashville. Featuring everything from her Led Zeppelin cover and why her friend Tammy Wynette never gave up her beautician's license; to comic revelations about what Dolly thinks of her image; and the unveiling of her rather impressive British accent. There's also an opportunity to hear more tracks from her new Live From London album, such as Little Sparrow and Backwoods Barbie; as well as many of her best-loved studio recordings. We hear how Dolly reworked Cole Porter bluegrass-style; and she talks about favorite duet partners from Kenny Rogers, to Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. Recorded from Internet Radio and can find in Documentary, Docudrama here
Read more…

The Listener's Drama Club

We are a Collaborative Group writers, actors & of lovers of Old Time Radio Shows coming together to keep Radio Theatre Alive :) We will soon be in production and will offer many new plays as well as a few adaptations of classic works. We are searching for Voice actors, writers & musicians who can provide us with the club signature theme which will fit the following words..“We invite you to a place where imagination has no bounds. It is a world in which sound becomes sight. Ladies and gentlemen...this is The Listener’s Drama Club. Radio Theatre for Today and the Future" We will need music for our series projects (listed below) as well.We currently have three scripts ready for production and a fourth one being written. These four plays are originals. We are still in the casting stages. We are in need of actresses. Most of our members so far are males. Any lady OTR fans willing to lend us your voices in our plays?Our projects on the boards include:A genre related anthology series, featuring horror, suspense, thriller, mystery and all of the creepy stuff :-)))A non genre related series, open to any type of story.A continuing gothic soap opera called "Raven's Landing"And...a historical mini-series entitled "The Ripper Papers" (A dramatic radio version of The Whitechapel Murder Mystery)So far our group is small but we hope that many Old Time Radio Show lovers will wish to jump on board with us for the continuation of Radio Theatre. If anyone is interested in joining us please contact us atthelistenersdramaclub@gmail.comHappy Listening:-)))
Read more…

No Podcast?

Apologies about the absence of a podcast the last couple of weeks - technical problems have meant that I've been unable to upload anything new, but I'm hopeful that with a little help, we'll be back on track before too much longer
Read more…

New and improved Grandpa's iPod

My tumblr page never worked like I wanted it to so I've set up a new blog. Go to www.grandpasipod.com to check it out! I'm adding new recordings/programs a couple of times per week now and hope to be able to keep up that pace. You can stream the files, download them in a variety of formats, subscribe to the blog or subscribe to the podcast. You never know what you might find there!
Read more…

Down upsy

I'm trying to identify an old radio programme. I thought it included George Cole, but might be mistaken In it the dog, called 'Upsy' would yap, and soeone in the cast would call, 'Down Upsy!', and this became quite a well known catch phrase, Anyone help me out please?.
Read more…

Rudy's Radios

. A fellow in Franklin, Tennessee who goes by the name of Rudy has been preserving old radios for over 60 years. I think you will find this clip to be very interesting and entertaining as well as educational. The clip is from some local programing we have here in my area called Tennessee Crossroads.
.
Read more…

post links to your favorite OTR related sites!

hi all,many of you know of my OTR site, http://TennesseeBillsOTR.com. i also publish http://OtrShareAndTrade.com which houses a variety of otr sites for people.i finally seem to have managed to get the main site at http://OtrShareAndTrade.com to work! it is a link site with OTR related catagories.Although i publish my own OTR site, OTR Share and Trade is an unbiased site where the OTR community can post links for their favorite otr related sites and people can vote on them and write reviews for the sites.i would like this site to be a comprehensive OTR link site encompassing as many otr related web sites (including the dreaded vendors!) as possible.You can post links to sites, forums, yahoo (and other) groups, p2p member sites, vendors and current 'audio drama' producers and whatever else that might be out there that i can't think of at the moment.there's no mention on otr share and trade that it is published by me. i want this to be a community resource, open to all otr related sites and groups. my only roles in the site are... approving the listings... i don't want a bunch of unrelated spam... and, of course paying the bills to keep it online.please pass the word about the site on to other groups that you belong to.thanks,tennesseebill
Read more…

Naxos Audiobooks: 3 FREE Sherlock Holmes short stories

. "
Naxos AudiobooksNaxos Audiobooks, in partnership with AudioFile Magazine, is offering three unabridged Sherlock Holmes short stories FREE for download until December 29th, 2009! The first of these had already been made available, but the other two are definitely new to my collection (and SFFaudio). Narrator David Timson has a really terrific voice for Sherlock Holmes narration. Have a listen to Timson talk about Doyle and Holmes |MP3|. He’ll make you want to get the rest of the Sherlock Holmes short stories and the four Sherlock Holmes novels he narrated for Naxos.
Naxos Audiobooks - Silver Blaze by Sir Arthur Conan DoyleThe Adventure of Silver Blaze
1 |MP3 download| – Approx. 60 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Naxos Audiobooks
Published: 2009
One of the most famous images of Sherlock Holmes, Sidney Paget’s drawing of Holmes, complete with Deerstalker and Inverness cape, leaning eagerly forward to a an attentive Watson in a railway carriage as they hurtle towards their next adventure comes from ‘The Silver Blaze.’
Naxos Audiobooks - The Adventure Of The Stock-Broker's Clerk by Sir Arthur Conan DoyleThe Adventure of the Stock-Broker’s Clerk
1 |MP3 download| – Approx. 41 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Naxos Audiobooks
Published: 2009
In Stock-Broker’s Clerk, the intrepid pair travel by train to Birmingham, and it is nostalgic to think that despite it being 1889, when Holmes and Watson alighted at New Street station they would have been greeted by cobbled streets, eighteenth-century houses and a town still largely undeveloped.
Naxos Audiobooks - The Adventure Of The Bruce-Partington Plans by Sir Arthur Conan DoyleThe Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
1 |MP3 download| – Approx. 71 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Naxos Audiobooks
Published: 2009
Trains feature consistently throughout the canon, incidentally and as a main component of the story as in ‘The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans’. It is popular amongst railway enthusiasts, as a significant part of the investigation takes place among the subterranean tunnels of the London Underground system.
[via AudioFile]
"
Read more…

Lux Video Theater - A Holiday Affair

I would like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and share with you an episode from Lux Video Theater. "A Holiday Affair" is about the Christmas-season romance of a young widow and a sales clerk. Delightful and definitely something to watch during the holidays.
. Download
Read more…

Blog Topics by Tags

Monthly Archives