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Link	Quote	Stars	Tags	Author
4e824c4	On Dec. 9, 1953, Lewis gave in to the inevitable urge to link them by offering The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln on Crime Classics and the play that Lincoln was watching at Ford's Theater, Our American Cousin, on On Stage. This was a mistake, Lewis admitted years later: Our American Cousin was dull beyond salvation, and it earned him the only rebuke he ever received from CBS chief William Paley. The next morning there was a note on his d..			John Dunning
7a2d914	Clara, Lu, and Em began as a skit in a sorority house at Northwestern University around 1925. Urged by their classmates to put it on radio, the three creators--Louise Starkey, Isobel Carothers, and Helen King--went to WGN, Chicago, wheedled a timeslot, and did their first broadcasts gratis. By January 1931 they had attracted enough local attention to go on NBC. For a year it was an evening series, moving to the daytime schedule for Super Su..			John Dunning
814971d	A banker's wife with two children, Woodman undertook the story-gathering pilgrimage and was soon writing one of the most respected dramas of early radio. One of the sponsor's employees in California, a self-styled "desert rat" named W. W. "Wash" Cahill, was lined up as her guide. Her trips into the desert became annual events, and soon she was well versed in the ways of prospectors, outlaws, and saloon girls. She spent up to two months a ye..			John Dunning
eababf9	another true Death Valley Days story is presented for your entertainment by the Pacific Coast Borax Company, producers of that famous family of products--20 Mule Team Borax, 20 Mule Team Borax Soap Chips, and Boraxo. Well, Old Ranger, what's your story about tonight?" Through many changes of format, it remained a hardy perennial, eventually becoming a filmed TV series with Ronald Reagan as host."			John Dunning
6d1f3cc	But it was his speaking voice that would be famous, first on The Children's Hour, later as announcer on the Metropolitan Opera Broadcasts. The show was heavily musical, following Cross's deep interest in classical music and opera. There might be an opening hymn, sung by Audrey Egan; then a poem; then a song from one of the youngest children. "And who is standing here with her ticket ready to pay for a ride on the White Rabbit Bus?" Cross wo..			John Dunning
f4077de	Cavalcade productions. The writing was from the best hands in the business, young playwright Arthur Miller becoming (as Barnouw remembers it) a kind of "utility man" who could be tapped for spur-of-the-moment work on the most rigid deadlines. Special projects were put together by Carl Sandburg, Stephen Vincent Benet, Maxwell Anderson, and Robert Sherwood."			John Dunning
2423bdd	The Casebook of Gregory Hood was in some ways an extension of Sherlock Holmes. Basil Rathbone had left his Holmes role, but the Holmes scripters, Anthony Boucher and Denis Green, continued their collaboration on Hood.			John Dunning
61e5f03	Richard Gump, a real-life San Francisco importer, became the prototype for Gregory Hood, serving also as a consultant "whenever they get stuck on a bit of importing business." The artifacts found by Hood and his pal Sandy in the stories usually had intriguing histories and were invariably linked to some present-day mystery."			John Dunning
41880e5	Gunshots were now allowed. The campaign had been a success, and the company was now perceived, truthfully, as something other than a merchant of death. Du Pont dealt in textiles and plastics, in research of all kinds. Its commercial structure on Cavalcade was remarkable. There was no midshow commercial: instead, du Pont took a two-minute spot at the end. Delivered by Bud Collyer or Gayne Whitman, the spots were informative and, at their bes..			John Dunning
74fccb4	Casey, Crime Photographer had more history than substance. It was a B-grade radio detective show, on a par perhaps with The Falcon, better than Mr. Keen, but lacking the polish and style of Sam Spade. Often a picture snapped at a crime scene led Casey to play detective.			John Dunning
fa5b482	The result was a Roosevelt victory, closer than it looked in the electoral college, and a new set of standards for radio. Never again would such a program be allowed. A line had been crossed: radio was the most powerful communications medium yet devised, and turning over the entire broadcast facilities of the nation for a partisan cause to an artist-playwright who was constitutionally unable to write anything in less than his strongest voic..			John Dunning
d94b1eb	The Fall of the City, the trailblazing broadcast of April 11, 1937. That a playwright with the stature of Archibald MacLeish would write it for radio assured keen attention from the press. It was an allegory in verse, dark and chilling in a time when the Nazi war machine was on the rise. The action took place in the square of a city, which managed while remaining unnamed to suggest both antiquity and a hereafter. The city seemed eternal: it..			John Dunning
d642a3e	More than 225 of the 1930s Columbia Workshop and its 1946-47 revival are available on tape. That this was not a show for the masses is especially true today. Some of these shows, on first listening, seem to move at a glacial pace; some seem quite old and dated. The techniques they pioneered have become so routine, their high-tech counterparts bombarding people in radio commercials around the clock, that a listener seldom gives a thought to ..			John Dunning
1773feb	The initial shows were put together from verbal requests, but soon the mail poured in. For producers Wheaton and Knight, every mailbag was an adventure. One soldier wanted only to hear actress Carole Landis sigh. Another requested that Charles Laughton instruct Donald Duck in the finer points of elocution. The bizarre fed upon itself, and engineers were sent to record the sounds of birds chirping in one soldier's Indiana hometown and, for a..			John Dunning
ac0272c	On Feb. 5, 1945, an all-star cast spoofed America's most popular comic strip in an hour-long play, Dick Tracy in B-Flat; or, For Goodness Sake, Isn't He Ever Going to Marry Tess Trueheart? The stars were Bing Crosby as Dick Tracy; Dinah Shore as Tess Trueheart; Harry Von Zell as Old Judge Hooper; Jerry Colonna as the Chief of Police; Bob Hope as Flat Top; Frank Morgan as Vitamin Flintheart; Jimmy Durante as the Mole; Judy Garland as Snowfla..			John Dunning
93f2886	The memorable commercials on Cresta Blanca Carnival began with a cascade of music, indicating a verbal pouring of wine. Then, in a catchy jingle out of an echo chamber, with each letter punctuated by a plunking violin: C-R-E-S-T-A B-L-A-N-C-A ... Cresta Blanca!			John Dunning
0a666db	Ceiling Unlimited began as a series of informative dramas by Orson Welles, who had just returned from a well-publicized air trip to Latin America with film in the can for an ill-fated movie and a yen to be back on radio. He leaped into two CBS series, Hello, Americans (extolling the achievements of South American countries) and Ceiling Unlimited (describing aviation's role in the war). Welles's tenure was brief: a blowup with an agency man ..			John Dunning
2577815	Cavalcade was a show with a dual purpose. On the surface its job was to sell America by dramatizing the positive aspects of the nation's history. But its real purpose was to stem the tide of criticism directed at its longtime sponsor, the Du Pont Company, in the years after World War I. The du Ponts had been branded "merchants of death" because of the huge profits the company had made with gunpowders in the war. The company had a long tradi..			John Dunning
43789a9	Man has always looked to the heavens for help and inspiration, and from the skies too will come his victory and his future.			John Dunning
abce420	His Plot to Overthrow Christmas was pure delight: first heard Dec. 25, 1938, on Words Without Music, it told of a scheme by the demons of Hell to assassinate Santa Claus. "Did you hear about the plot to overthrow Christmas?" the narrator began: "Well, gather ye now from Maine to the Isthmus/Of Panama, and listen to the story/Of the utter inglory/Of some gory goings-on in Hell." In Hell, the listener met as motley a crew of villains as histo..			John Dunning
1a6aef6	The plots on Counterspy were exactly what the title implies. In the beginning, this meant counterespionage against Germany's Gestapo and Japan's Black Dragon. The approach was slightly above the juvenile. Perhaps one reason for its durability was its reputation for upstaging the news. The Case of the Missing Soldier (Oct. 24, 1945) related the cruel rackets feeding on the families of dead war heroes just two days before a sensational arrest..			John Dunning
3c12ca7	He had been angered by Mussolini's son Vittorio, then on duty with the Italian air force, who described blowing up a group of horsemen during a bombing run as "exceptionally good fun." Corwin's response was a play without rhyme but with all the cadence of dark poetry. They Fly Through the Air with the Greatest of Ease was aired Feb. 19, 1939, dedicated to "all aviators who have bombed defenseless civilian populations." It was the beginning ..			John Dunning
8d37ed6	Tommy Bernard as Bullard's son Craig, a chip off the old block. Pauline Drake as Bessie, Gildersleeve's well-baked secretary at the water department. Gloria Holliday also as Bessie.			John Dunning
f0026bc	The purpose of The Doctor Fights was twofold: to honor the nation's 180,000 doctors, 60,000 of whom were in the theaters of battle, and to acquaint the public with the new miracle drug, penicillin. The sponsor, Schenley Laboratories, was one of 22 companies charged with making penicillin, and often the stories described wondrous cures effected with its use by doctors in distant and primitive outposts. Many listeners at that time had never h..			John Dunning
9e29e95	The dog was named Yukon King, the hero of the series in a real sense. Sgt. Preston had a horse, Rex, which he often rode in the summer months, but it was Yukon King who usually saved the day. He mauled bushwhackers and crooks, gnawed guns out of hands, hauled down one villain while Preston polished off the other. Dewey Cole "barked and whined and made other appropriate dog sounds as King," said Osgood in Wyxie Wonderland. And at the end, Sg..			John Dunning
1a2be17	The shows would never be taken for great literature, but they gave inspiration of a kind that hasn't been heard much since. Black was black, good was good, and evil never went unpunished. When the Lone Ranger rode again, and Sgt. Preston mushed his way into the frozen north, the vistas were wide and the experience new and wondrous.			John Dunning
9718a2f	His wit surfaced early: once, reviewing a vaudeville act, he noted that the performer could not be heard beyond the third row and advised patrons to request seats at least four rows back.			John Dunning
c0751fc	They would talk about the bridge game they had played the night before with two friends. The main topic of conversation had been a Kansas City murder in which a woman had killed her husband over a hand of bridge. "You be dumb," Ace told Jane (as he reconstructed it years later for Jerome Beatty of American Magazine): "I'll try to explain the finer points of bridge, and why murder is sometimes justified."			John Dunning
3d67861	DR. KILDARE, medical drama, also known as The Story of Dr. Kildare, based on the Metro Goldwyn Mayer films.			John Dunning
aad0ce0	Dr. Kildare was about battles with silly hospital administrators, conflicts with ignorant patients, medical dilemmas building to personal crises. Sometimes it seemed that Blair was peopled with eccentrics. Dr. Gillespie, played to the hilt by Barrymore, was eccentric in his own right; the petty bureaucrat Dr. Carough was their chief antagonist, and Nurse Parker was an unbelievable fussy old maid.			John Dunning
9044e3a	Doctors at War was a joint project of NBC, the American Medical Association, and the Armed Forces. Its purpose was to give the public an idea of what the nation's physicians were contributing to the war effort. Topics covered included combat training programs, dealing with plasma under desert wartime conditions, the mortality rate for the wounded, and the work of Navy doctors and Army nurses.			John Dunning
3d4bb17	Ace was an original: a fiercely independent writer who seemed proud to have made it in radio without pandering to lowest common denominators or playing for belly laughs. Every year he placed an ad in the trade press, making fun of his own low ratings: the ratings, he pointed out, were conducted by telephone poll, and his audience never answered the phone while the show was on.			John Dunning
764620d	The Easy Aces was billed as "radio's laugh novelty," and Jane Ace was Mrs. Malaprop of the air. Jane had a twangy midwestern voice, slightly softer in natural conversation, that reminded a listener of Bernardine Flynn's Sade Gook (Vic and Sade). She was one of radio's enduring female screwballs, Gracie Allen and Marie Wilson being the others. Under the guidance of her husband and writer, Goodman Ace, she defined the term "malapropism" to a ..			John Dunning
84949d7	But Dragnet evolved slowly. Webb pondered the idea he had received from Marty Wynn and developed it for more than a year. Realism should be the show's hallmark: the stories should be authentic to the last sound effect. He began hanging out at police headquarters, riding with detective teams on house calls. He attended classes at the police academy, becoming fluent in police terminology and technique. But when he prepared his series proposal..			John Dunning
80a24c7	While stationed in Oklahoma with the Army, he came up with the idea that would make his fortune. He was reading the gripe column in the GI newspaper Yank. It might be interesting, he thought, to record something along this line for broadcast. The problem was that "ordinary people" often became rigid and tense before a microphone. But what if he could record them on the sly: hide the microphone and let them know they had been duped only afte..			John Dunning
168164c	After his discharge, he rented an office and opened for business. There were no portable recorders then: the smallest was a bulky wire recorder whose two parts weighed more than 100 pounds. He would have to lure people to his office and record them there. He had located on the 15th floor of a building across from Grand Central Station, well outside the radio district so his victims would have no reason to suspect him of stunt-show shenaniga..			John Dunning
a1f7e27	Gang Busters was the noisiest show on the air. The sharp blast of a policeman's whistle. Shuffling feet. Gunshots. A broken window. The stark metallic voice of a burglar alarm, and the forlorn answer of a police siren. Machine guns spraying bullets like Flit. Tires screeching, more glass breaking.			John Dunning
98e04c5	Double or Nothing endured because of the nimble ad-libbing of its hosts and because, over the years, the show gained a reputation for double entendres and unexpected embarrassment. By far the most sensational of these came to be known as the "waitress episode," which was so shocking to audiences of that innocent late 1940s era that its content could not even be hinted in the press (reporter Shirley Gordon mentioned it in Radio Life years la..			John Dunning
6a5bd7c	The entire run is preserved in fine quality on tape. Huxley gave an ominous opening, warning that "if I were writing today, I would date my story not 600 years in the future, but at the most 200." Then came the sounds of the brave new world, "of test tube and decanter," where humans were artificially bred and cultivated. The sound was just 30 seconds long, but it had taken three sound effects men and an engineer more than five hours to crea..			John Dunning
88848bd	Jack Webb had been active in radio for several years before Dragnet propelled him to national prominence. He had arrived at KGO, the ABC outlet in San Francisco, an unknown novice in 1945. Soon he was working as a staff announcer and disc jockey. His morning show, The Coffee Club, revealed his lifelong interest in jazz music, and in 1946 he was featured on a limited ABC-West network in the quarter-hour docudrama One out of Seven. His Jack W..			John Dunning
2eda767	The advertising firm Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn was charged with creating a positive campaign, and The Cavalcade of America was its answer. In the beginning, in its CBS run, Cavalcade was a stale and predictable package. Du Pont was obviously gunshy: nothing could be used that even hinted of its wartime activities. Erik Barnouw, who wrote for the show and later authored a three-volume history of radio, summed it up. There could be..			John Dunning
84763c5	Report on the Weans (Nov. 11, 1956) was novelist Robert Nathan's wise and whimsical look at what archaeologists of the distant future might deduce, wrongly, about our way of life. And 1489 Words (Feb. 10, 1957) remains a favorite of many, a powerful Conrad performance proving that one picture is not necessarily worth a thousand words. A lovely way to end a day, a decade, or an era.			John Dunning
21ca4a6	But it was still a poor man's version of what radio once was, an echo of its unfulfilled promise. CBS gave the time but precious little money, and the affiliates felt free to tape-delay or drop it from the schedule at will. At KOA in Denver, it was often a casualty of the station's sports docket. A complaining listener was told that, in effect, he was lucky they were carrying it at all. Sports pays, drama doesn't: that was the bottom line i..			John Dunning
92ccb75	But it was Archie, the creation of an eccentric radio writer-director named Ed Gardner, who refined the insult and made it an art form. When the tavern was visited by noted critic Clifton Fadiman (the similarity of whose name to Clifton Finnegan needed no elaboration), Archie greeted him with "Whaddaya know, besides everything?" Dancer Vera Zorina was introduced as "da terpsicorpse from da ballet." To heavyweight party-giver Elsa Maxwell, A..			John Dunning

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