The Let George Do It episode of Christmas Day, 1950 is called "Santa Claus in Glass" and opens with a gentle send-up of a typical detective scene as the supposed "victim" is George and Brooksie's Christmas duck! The drama also closes with a fine Christmas greeting from Bob Bailey.
Another Christmas radio program tomorrow!
In the December 10, 1949 episode "Jack Frost," a department store's Jack Frost goes missing. It isn't a tradition I'm familiar with, but it seems some department stores used a Jack Frost figure instead of Santa Claus himself. Anyway, Candy looks for the missing Jack Frost and finds him dead, then recruits her friend Rembrandt to assume the role of Jack Frost while she hunts the killer.
Another Christmas radio program tomorrow!
The Lone Wolf, alias Michael Lanyard, was a lot like Boston Blackie - not only a thief who turned hero but also debuted in prose then moved on to movies and radio (also television!). He was created by Louis Joseph Vance.
The Lone Wolf's radio series lasted from June 29, 1948 to January 1, 1949 on Mutual -- and the only surviving episode appears to be the final episode, which just happens to be a Christmas-themed program! The title is "The Golden Santa" and concerns the Lone Wolf (portrayed by Walter Coy) being hired by a woman who claims to have lost a golden statue of Santa Claus.
Another Christmas radio program tomorrow!
Here's another series I haven't blogged about before; 21st Precinct was one of many police procedural shows that drifted into radio through the wake of Dragnet but it was a little different - there wasn't much action or gunplay, it dealt in the humdrum daily life of a police precinct and the variety of cases that came through their doors, which didn't always mean there was a crime to be solved. It ran on CBS from 1953-1956 with Everett Sloane in the lead as Captain Canelli.
In the bittersweet Christmas episode "The Giver" (December 22, 1954), the police are called to investigate an old man who is said to be selling merchandise from his apartment. As it turns out, he's not selling it - he's giving it away - and he can't account for why it was all delivered to his apartment in the first place!
Another Christmas radio program tomorrow!
Today, let's check in on Sherlock Holmes - via the New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes! This was the series that began with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and Watson but by the time of the episode I'm featuring (December 21, 1947) the roles had been adopted by John Stanley and Alfred Shirley.
In "the Adventure of the Christmas Bride," Holmes and Watson investigate the scene where a woman was once sealed inside a trunk and died, supposedly leaving behind a ghost who haunts a bride-to-be.
Another Christmas radio program tomorrow!
Although Blackie's background was that he was a criminal with a heart of gold; the movies and radio made him a reformed criminal. Despite his good nature, Blackie was perpetually accused of being involved in whatever crime was most recently committed, thanks to the easily-befuddled Inspector Faraday, easily the dumbest of all dumb radio cops.
The episode referred to as "Stolen Rings at Christmas" (December 22, 1948) concerns a criminal who hides some stolen rings inside a street corner Santa Claus' donation pot. To get the rings back, Blackie poses as Santa himself and has to sing 'Jingle Bells' to save his life! It's not radio at it's best but it's a diverting yarn.
Another Christmas radio program tomorrow!
Here's a series I've never written about before: Casey, Crime Photographer. It was based on the pulp magazine hero and adapted to radio by Alonzo Deen Cole (best-known for the Witch's Tale) with Staats Cotsworth as Casey. It aired on CBS in the timeslot right after Suspense and apparently did very well at retaining Suspense's audience, evidently beating whatever NBC was airing in their timeslot.
There are a few episodes of Casey, Crime Photographer set during the holidays but I rather like the episode titled "Christmas Shopping" from December 19, 1946. Casey and his sidekick Ann happen to witness a man get pickpocketed - but when they confronted the man who was robbed, he denies having lost his money. Casey's convinced this is part of a scheme.
Another Christmas radio program tomorrow!
The 12 days before Christmas "Those Old Radio Shows" would spend the first half-hour on a series they called, "The 12 Days of Christmas." These were shows they only broadcast around Christmas time and some of them represented series who had no other episodes circulating in their library. It was one of my favourite times to be tuning in! So this year, I'm going to feature a different Christmas broadcasts on the days leading up to Christmas, with the 12th program on Christmas Day - and as a further link, all of the programs featured will be detective/crime programs!
A series I haven't spotlighted before is Calling All Cars, an early CBS radio program (1933-1939). It was written and produced by William N. Robson, who'd later produce shows like the Man Behind the Gun, Shorty Bell, Beyond Tomorrow, Escape and a few years of Suspense.
As I've noted before, it took a while for radio to start offering Christmas-themed programs, especially on dramatic programs - yet Calling All Cars got in on the act December 25, 1934 with the program "Human Side of a Cop." Calling All Cars was considered a pretty violent program for it's time, so on this Christmas they spent the program highlighting stories about police officers resolving problems peacefully.
Another Christmas radio program tomorrow!
"Countdown for blast-off. X Minus Five, four, three, two. X Minus One. Fire."
There are differences, however. As I noted yesterday, X Minus One had a slightly smaller timeslot (some episodes are just 20 minutes to make room for news and commercials). Also, the tone was much more light and jocular - they added author Robert Sheckley to those they adapted from and his work was mostly humorous. The original stories told on X Minus One were also fairly humorous; when they ran up against a Dimension X script with a gruesome ending (ie, "the Veldt,") they weren't afraid to rewrite the ending into something softer. X Minus One was, generally speaking, the softer, gentler program.
I do owe X Minus One for introducing me to Robert Sheckley. Some of the episodes of the series were adapted from him, especially the hilarious "Skulking Permit" about a human colony who try to prove how Earth-like they are by hiring a town criminal. He also penned "the Lifeboat Mutiny," "a Wind Is Rising" and "Bad Medicine."
Other great adaptations on X Minus One were Tom Godwin's "Cold Equations"; Clifford Simak's "Junkyard" and "Drop Dead"; L. Sprague De Camp's "A Gun for Dinosaur"; Fritz Leiber's "A Pail of Air"; Milton Lesser's "the Sense of Wonder"; Gordon R. Dickson's "Lulungomeena"; Murray Leinster's "If You Was a Moklin"; Theodore Sturgeon's "Mr. Costello, Hero" and "Saucer of Loneliness"; Katherine MacLean's "Pictures Don't Lie"; Frederick's Pohl's "the Haunted Corpse"; and James H. Schmitz's moving story "Caretaker."
Ernest Kinoy adapted most of the stories and penned a few himself, including "Project Trojan" about an effort to fabricate inventions during World War II by using science fiction ideas; and "Real Gone" in which dee jay Al "Jazzbo" Collins portrayed himself (probably the nearest thing to a beat generation science fiction story on radio).
If you want your science fiction to learn a little on the hard side then these won't be for you - X Minus One didn't really tackle big ideas or realistic experiences with fantastic technologies - it was mostly played for fun. If it's fun you want, then X Minus One will likely deliver. I feel Dimension X was the stronger version but it's still a fine series.
Here is the Old Time Radio Researchers Group collection of X Minus One on YouTube!
"Adventures in time and space told in future tense! Dimension X!"
Tomorrow I'll be looking at X Minus One so I won't get too deeply into that series except to acknowledge that yes, the majority of Dimension X episodes were also dramatized on X Minus One, but the latter program had a shorter running time and would often truncate the Dimension X scripts, even making substantial changes to the climax of "the Veldt," for instance!
Unlike X Minus One, Dimension X (April 1950-September 1951) was sponsored for part of its run by Wheaties. Despite being an NBC series it had unique music that wasn't simply recycled from their library. And it featured a majority of programs that were adapted from recent science fiction publications, sprinkling in a mix of original stories written by NBC staffers (notably Ernest Kinoy).
In 2016 I blogged about Ray Bradbury's radio adaptations for Halloween, including "Kaleidoscope," "the Martian Chronicles," "Marionettes, Inc.," "the Veldt," "There Will Come Soft Rains," "Mars Is Heaven!," "Zero Hour," "And the Moon Be Still as Bright." They also adapted his stories "To the Future" and "Dwellers in Silence" and at that time, Bradbury was one of the biggest and best-known authors of science fiction.
Other famous authors on Dimension X who received great adaptations were Kurt Vonnegut ("the Barnhouse Effect"), Jack Williamson ("With Folded Hands"), Robert Bloch ("Almost Human"), Robert A. Heinlein ("the Green Hills of Earth" and "Requiem"), Murry Leinster ("A Logic Named Joe"), Donald Wollheim ("The Embassy"), H. Beam Piper ("Time and Time Again").
Of the original scripts presented on Dimension X I most enjoyed "Perigi's Wonderful Dolls" (I recently blogged about it here); the space invasion story "No Contact'; the bittersweet "Martian Death March"; and the invasion-in-plain-sight story "The Parade."
Dimension X had a bit of humour in the shows I've listed above ("A Logic Named Joe" is a fairly wry bit of comedy) but not as much as X Minus One would. It was an early entry in the effort to prove adult audiences would listen to science fiction drama so Dimension X took itself fairly seriously; I think that paid off for the series - it still sounds good to this day.
Here's the Old Time Radio Researchers collection of Dimension X on YouTube.
Tomorrow: I fire off X Minus One.
It became a NBC program from January-March, 1945 with Edgar Barrier as the Saint. It came back on CBS for June-September, 1945 with Brian Aherne taking over. I haven't heard any surviving copies of this version.
But the Adventures of the Saint really got cooking in 1947 when CBS brought it back and gave the role of Simon Templar to one Vincent Price, who had a pretty respectable Hollywood career at the time. Price stuck with the role of the Saint up to May 1951, sticking with the series from CBS to Mutual and finally NBC.
I don't know what true blue fans of the Saint think of Vincent Price's interpretation; I know they have very particular ideas of who the character is and what they expect from an adaptation (for instance, Saint fandom really disliked the 1997 Val Kilmer movie the Saint). From where I sit, Price's Simon Templar doesn't seem to be much like the Leslie Charteris character. He's witty and clever but not much of an outlaw or a rogue. In the Price series, he simply seems to be a well-to-do bachelor who is forever heading out on taxi rides that are interrupted when someone stumbles across his path to say they're the victim of a crime.
Also unlike Simon Templar, Vincent Price wasn't an Englishman, though his posh-sounding Mid-Atlantic accent came close enough. Although he did okay in fights, he was just typical of other radio detectives - that is, he usually got hit over the head once per episode, unlike the Simon Templar of prose who seemed to be almost always in control of the situations he found himself in and usually armed with a gun.
As Vincent Price's Simon Templar was forever getting into taxis (in one early episode, the culprit turns out to be the cab driver he meets), eventually the series simply worked a taxi driver into the cast - Louie (played by Lawrence Dobkin). Even the characters would note in one episode how unlikely it was that Simon would keep getting the same taxi driver in New York, but that was typical of the show's tongue-in-cheek humour. And really, that what was the best part of the Adventures of the Saint; the mystery dramas were really just average so far as other detective programs of the time. The series was elevated by Simon and Louie's humorous banter and occasional lean upon the fourth wall. Jerome Epstein and Louis Vittes wrote many of the episodes, which were usually directed by Helen Mack.
My pick for the best of the series is the terrific Christmas episode "Santa Claus Is No Saint" (December 24, 1950) in which Simon is mistaken for a jewel thief. The banter in this episode is especially humourous; consider it an early Christmas present from me to you.
Although Vincent Price continued in the role of Simon Templar until May 1951, the series continued until July 1951 with Tom Conway assuming the lead role. I like Tom Conway in other roles but I find him too stuffy as Simon Templar; the writing is basically the same as when Price was in the part, but Conway would have been a better fit for a figure like Bulldog Drummond - he just didn't have a lilt in his voice to add the necessary humour.
You can hear the remaining episodes of the Adventures of the Saint on this YouTube playlist.
Here's the full list of episodes:
Some of the above featured the original stars; others most certainly did not. As I noted in my review of Foreign Correspondent, some adaptations changed the story. But the biggest thing that should surprise you about the list above is that some of the film titles never won or were even nominated for an Academy Award (notably the wonderful film Night Train to Munich and the final broadcast, Lost Angel).
But more than that we have an adaptation of Portrait of Jennie more than 2 years before the actual film was released! It hadn't even been filmed at the time! The announcer lamely ties the adaptation to the series by reminding audiences that Joan Fontaine had been nominated for an Academy Award once. Portrait of Jennie was produced by the tempermental David O. Selznick; I see its appearance on Academy Award Theater as the Academy simply bowing to his pressure to promote what he was certain would be his next great triumph. In fact, I might do a separate blog post about this adaptation because it's such a glaring exception.
Academy Award Theater boasted excellent production values and terrific casts. I think the extent to which a person enjoys the series will depend on their interest in the film being adapted. But I certainly recall that when I first heard the Informer it was more than a decade before I ever saw the film, but I still found the adaptation to be a very good piece of radio drama. I'm also very fond of the Maltese Falcon adaptation, the comedy/drama Ruggles of Red Gap and the excellent British thriller Night Train to Munich.
You can hear Academy Award Theater's entire show run on this YouTube playlist.
The series returned on CBS with Gerald Mohr assuming the lead role and lasted from 1948-1951 (Ford briefly sponsored it in 1950). Mohr would open each episode with the hard-boiled line: "Get this and get it straight: Crime is a sucker's road, and those who travel it end up in the gutter, the prison, or an early grave." Mohr had a terrific voice that was perfect for radio, a deep bass growl. Of course, he toiled as much in comedy as he did drama. I would say that Mohr's Adventures of Philip Marlowe wasn't quite as hard-boiled as Heflin's; it wasn't as farcical as the Adventures of Sam Spade but there was a light touch to the programs, particularly Marlowe's frequent desire to just be left alone so he can get some sleep.
Marlowe's entire supporting cast consisted of Lawrence Dobkin as Lt. Matthews, Marlowe's usual friend on the force. Dobkin was a great performer, but the casting on The Adventures of Philip Marlowe was so economical that he sometimes doubled up on roles in episodes (in one episode I think I heard him as three different characters). I was taken aback in one episode where Marlowe surprised a figure from behind; when the character spoke in Dobkin's voice I assumed that Marlowe would soon realize he'd made a mistake and accosted his friend Lt. Matthews. As it turned out, Dobkin didn't play Matthews in that episode.
The Adventures of Philip Marlowe was a fairly typical post-war private eye show, with Marlowe usually getting knocked unconscious once per episode (typically before the mid-act break). Still, it had a pretty consistent quality once Gerald Mohr took the lead role. It's hard to cite examples that are particularly notable but I'm fond of "the Last Laugh," involving a practical joker who arranges a mock reading of his will, then ends up dead.
The Old-Time Radio Researchers Group has a collection of the Adventures of Philip Marlowe on the Internet Archive.
The book is slim, numbering only 100 pages plus a 10 page preface. The preface is what I'd hoped the rest of the book would be like - the author's personal experiences as a journalist in Angola, describing what she witnessed and what people told her. But that's not how the other 100 pages were presented; the book is primarily a history of Angola from 1975-1998. It's not really about Angolan society, or even Angolan politics; it's a book about international politics and how Angola was played like a football by various competing nations after it became independent.
The content is fine - I did pick up some interesting details here and there and particular timings of when things were announced versus when they were actually implemented that I hadn't found in other books. Otherwise, the information found in the book could be found in other titles; I was hoping the book would be something more personal and unique.
But while the content is fine, the manner in which it's relayed left me frustrated, and that's what I really want to write about. In the foreword, the author made it clear ther her book would not be "neutral" in tone but rather partisan. The author did not like the rebels and did not use any of its members' interviews in the book because "I have interviewed too many of them and seen too much of their suffering to listen to the lying justifications of those responsible."
She also promised in the foreword that "nor are there interviews with Western diplomats, the normal staple fare of Western journalists." Which is an odd hill to plant one's flag upon. She quoted Western diplomats all the time, featuring public quotes from the likes of Henry Kissinger, Chester Crocker and Margaret Antsee. She also quoted an official from the UN whom she didn't identify; either her source didn't attribute the quote or she contradicted herself? But why make the promise "I won't interview these people, but I will quote extensively from them?"
She emphasized that she did interview many Angolans and quoted them anonymously to protect them, but even there her interviewing is brief; if you added up all the interviews she conducted, it might account for 5 of the 100 pages. She quoted from the rebel's public statements very frequently, but at least she ascribed a portion of agency to them. Contrast that with her treatment of the government in quotes such as this, about the resumption of the civil war in early 1993: "The horror of how life had been reduced to a numb battle for survival in those among the MPLA leadership who never forgot it for a moment paid a heavy psychological prize as they agonised without being able to do anything." The government is written about as though they were, at best, passive.
I suppose what I really wanted was the author's personal experiences and interviews, not an opinionated guide through Angolan history. It's an angry book that is very particular to the time in which it was published (near the end of the war). But as a 1990s work of non-fiction on Angola, I found Karl Maier's book Angola: Promises and Lies - cited in Brittain's bibliography - a much better work.
Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables was adapted to radio in 1937 in a format similar to how television would later create it's own prestigious mini-series adaptations. It aired on Mutual from July 23-September 3, 1937. Starring as the novel's hero Jean Valjean (and as the book's narrator) was Orson Welles, buttressed by Martin Gabel, Agnes Moorehead, Bill Johnstone, Everett Sloane, Frank Readick, Gwen Davies, Ray Collins and Alice Frost. It was during this time that Welles and most of the performers appearing with him founded the Mercury Theatre, which would make its true radio debut the following year with CBS' Mercury Theatre on the Air.
Listening to Les Miserables, it is very much in the same spirit as the subsequent Mercury Theatre on the Air - in part because Welles seems to have bit off a little more than he could chew. It's well-documented that Welles kicked off the Mercury Theatre on the Air by trying to quickly pare down Bram Stoker's Dracula into a viable hour-long drama and it was a struggle for his staff to assemble it in time. Similarly, it feels as though when he started Les Miserables's first episode he didn't have a final script for the series. The first five episodes go fairly briskly through Hugo's novel, but in the 6th episode the story jumps far ahead to the story of Jean Valjean entering the barricade to rescue Marius - whose entire romance with Cosette happened in-between episodes. Then the 7th episode is mostly a recap of the previous episodes, until finally adding Valjean's death from the novel.
But although the pace of the adaptation is uneven, it's a very well-produced program with terrific performances by Welles' regulars. I first heard this series before I had read the novel or seen any of the film adaptations - I came away feeling I had a decent grasp of what the novel's plot and themes were. I also think the 5th episode with the account of Valjean being buried alive is a piece of excellent radio, a very well-done bit of thriller melodrama.
You can hear all seven episodes of Les Miserables on this YouTube playlist.
What made Screen Directors' Playhouse different from Lux Radio Theatre? Or from Ford Theatre, Academy Award Theatre or Screen Guild Theatre? It's in the title: Directors'. Screen Directors' Playhouse attempted to spotlight the directors of the movies. Frequently they appeared at the opening and closing of the drama. Sometimes, however, they dramatized films whose director had passed on. In those cases a guest director would appear to discuss the film. In 121 episodes, the original director appeared 96 times. Usually at least one member of the original cast would appear as well.
The series was usually a half-hour program, which means the stories were much more clipped than the hour-long Lux Radio Theatre. From November 9, 1950 onward it held an hour-long timeslot. Pabst Blue Ribbon sponsored it at first, with RCA Victor, Anacin and Chesterfield chipping in later. In the latter part of the series the number of commercials gets out of control as several different products are advertised in a single broadcast.
I reviewed a few episodes of Screen Directors' Playhouse before when I was covering Alfred Hitchcock adaptations. Here are my reviews of their productions of: Llifeboat, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Shadow of a Doubt and Spellbound.
Outside of their Hitchcock adaptations, I have a few other episodes that I think are good programs. Although I'm not a western fan, I think the first episode's adaptation of Stagecoach is very good; the Gunfighter was a pretty good western drama too. The comedy episodes Ghost Breakers, Miracle on 34th Street and Hired Wife are both quite funny. And the thrillers the Night Has a Thousand Eyes, the Big Clock, Call Northside 777, D.O.A., the Dark Mirror and the File on Thelma Jordan are excellent stories. The Uninvited was a good horror program and the adaptation of the Spiral Staircase had some interesting audio tricks to convey the point-of-view character couldn't actually speak. Obviously like all film adaptation programs, it's hit-or-miss but at its worst, it's just uninteresting - it was never bad radio, even in its final months as it struggled under a reduced budget. For some of the films heard on this series, the Screen Directors' Playhouse adaptation was my introduction to the production and led me to seek out the original film.
The Old-Time Radio Researchers Group has a collection of Screen Directors' Playhouse on the Internet Archive.
But from November 11, 1940 to February 6, 1942, Mandrake the Magician was heard 3 times per week on Mutual as a serialized adventure program! Mandrake, Lothar and Princess Narda were all present for the adventures, along with a plucky kid named Tommy. Starring as Mandrake was Raymond Edward Johnson, who became the original host of Inner Sanctum Mysteries during this show's production.
Like all juvenile adventure serials - especially those on Mutual - the production values weren't that high, with only so much available for music and sound effects. The writing was crude and workmanlike, but Mandrake the Magician had one terrific asset - and that was Raymond Edward Johnson. Johnson's earnest and commanding performance as Mandrake is by far the highlight of this series.
We only have so many episodes of the series. There's the first episode, then the middle and ending chapters of Mandrake and his friends battling the submarine crew of Captain X. That flows into the start and middle of a storyline where Mandrake fights a secret society led by one Dr. Carvass. Following that, there are just a few more fragments of other adventures.
You can hear the remaining fragments of Mandrake the Magician at the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library.
When I first heard the Quiet, Please episode "The Thing on the Fourble Board" I was doubly amazed; amazed that after so many years of listening to OTR there could still be a series I had never even heard of - and that the episode could be so good -- so scary!
I think most people who discover Wyllis Cooper's Quiet, Please enter via "The Thing on the Fourble Board." It's easily the best-known episode and that's probably why I haven't discussed it on this blog until now.
Ernest Chappell portrays "Porky," a roughneck working on an oil drill site in Wyoming. One night, Porky and his friend Billy discover something very odd among a recent drilling - a petrified finger. When the mud is removed from the finger, it vanishes from sight. And then the real terror begins.
"The Thing on the Fourble Board" aired on Quiet, Please on August 9, 1948. You can hear this episode at the Quiet Please website.
Suspense was still a young program on its first year when they presented Agnes Moorehead as the star of the first production of Lucille Fletcher's "Sorry, Wrong Number." It went on to be presented a total of 10 times on Suspense; Fletcher adapted her script into a stage play and Hollywood made it into a motion picture starring Barbara Stanwyck in 1948 and a 1989 TV movie with Loni Anderson.
Yet familiarity so often breeds contempt; when OTR fans bring up "War of the Worlds" they might have differing opinions of the program but most of them like it. I have seldom, however, heard an OTR fan champion "Sorry, Wrong Number." I think the commonly-held view is that it's good, but not the greatest episode of Suspense. Heck, it wasn't even the greatest script Lucille Fletcher wrote for Suspense (they adapted her terrific story "The Hitchhiker" in their first year too)!
And that's a shame because if you've never heard "Sorry, Wrong Number," you're in for a treat. It's instantly memorable and a true representation of the kind of drama radio could do so well. Moorehead portrays one Mrs. Stevens, a lonely bed-ridden woman whose only link to the world outside is her telephone. One day she accidentally overhears a conversation in which two men are planning a murder and determines she must do something about it.
Consider how great a debt Suspense owes to the Columbia Workshop, where producer-director William Spier helped make his reputation, Lucille Fletcher produced many of her earliest scripts and talents were given the freedom to pursue unusual ideas for dramatic radio. If "Sorry, Wrong Number" had been aired on Columbia Workshop it would probably be remembered as one of the series' better entries and as good an example as there is of what radio can achieve; instead, it's unfavorably compared to the best of Suspense and found to fall short of the crown. So who needs a crown? It's a great episode in it's own right; never grade OTR on a curve.
"Sorry, Wrong Number" first aired on Suspense on May 25, 1943; one of the actors jumped his cue at the very end of the broadcast, so it was done again on August 21, 1943 not only because it was immediately well-received but so they could render a more satisfactory production. You can download the first version from the Internet Archive here and if you prefer to hear it without the cue jump, the 2nd one is here.
Tomorrow for Halloween: "We found something once - me and Billy Gruenwald - and... something found us. I'll tell you about it."
In "Behind the Locked Door," Cathy Evans confronts her boyfriend Martin, an archaeologist who just returned from an expedition but gone into hiding. Disheveled, Martin tells Cathy what he and his professor found on their expedition - an underground civilization of humans who adapted to life without sunlight and the hideous result of their changes. This episode is famous primarily for how it ends - when the titular locked door is opened!
"Behind the Locked Door" was originally aired on the Mysterious Traveler on May 24, 1949 but the surviving version we have was aired November 6, 1951. You can download this episode from the Internet Archive here.
Tomorrow: "Don't worry. Everything's okay."
A man narrowly survives an accident aboard a train. Awakening from the crash, he soon finds the whole world seems to be involved in a conspiracy against him; his wife is missing; his name and his face have been changed; he seems to be a wanted criminal. Such is the premise of "Dead Man's Holiday."
It's such a good premise that Inner Sanctum Mysteries told this story twice. Four years after "Dead Man's Holiday," someone had the idea of recycling the script but altering the protagonist from a man to a woman. There were a few other changes made to the plot, but for the most part the result, "The Unburied Dead," is the same story, just gender-swapped.
"Dead Man's Holiday" aired on Inner Sanctum Mysteries on June 19, 1945. You can download it from the Internet Archive here. "The Unburied Dead" aired May 16, 1949. You can download it from the Internet Archive here.
Tomorrow: "A noise came from its throat that was more that of an animal than a human being."
An exception is "Murder from the Grave." In this episode, a doctor at a morgue gets the bright idea (in retrospect, very poorly-thought out idea) of resurrecting a dead mobster with his secret formula. Before long, the mobster has control of the formula and is using it to raise recently-killed criminals from the grave, building an army of dead men to go on a crime spree!
This episode is from the era of the Shadow where the hero was portrayed by the excellent Bill Johnstone, with Marjorie Anderson as his faithful companion Margo Lane.
"Murder from the Grave" aired on the Shadow on April 6, 1941. You can hear this episode on YouTube.
Tomorrow: "Somebody's done a perfect job of framing me. Either that -- or I'm a murderer."
The Dimension X episode "Perigi's Wonderful Dolls" feels like a long-lost Ray Bradbury story - a story in which children are kind of terrible but also a bit slow to realize when something horrible is trying to pit them against their parents.
The story was written by George Lefferts as an original tale for Dimension X. It concerns the toymaker Perigi, who is all to eager to give one of his toy dolls to a little girl out shopping with her mother - particularly because the girl's father is an official in the Pentagon. The girl's doll, Toto, is quite a chatterbox, always talking... including some disturbing speech about dolls ruling over humanity.
"Perigi's Wonderful Dolls" aired on Dimension X on August 4, 1950. You can download the episode from the Internet Archive here.
Tomorrow: "We ain't very pretty, are we? Well, nobody is - once they've been dead!"
We begin with the drama "Dead Man" starring Humphrey Bogart, which was created as a pilot for a radio series that was never picked up. It's not technically a horror program, but it has a unearthly vibe; it concerns a drifter named Lucky who accidentally causes the death of a railroad detective. Thereafter, Lucky is "haunted" by the dead man - or, rather, his conscience causes him to imagine the dead man's voice in his mind.
"Dead Man" was a 1936 short story written by James M. Cain. Bogart had already had some success with Cain on the radio - he starred in an adaptation of Cain's novel Love's Lovely Counterfeit on Suspense. Post-war, Cain's books were becoming hot properties as successful movies such as the Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce had already been in cinemas prior to Bogart's version of "Dead Man."
Although this very impressive pilot did not result in a series, two years later Bogart would launch his own syndicated radio adventure series - Bold Venture - which he starred in with his wife, Lauren Bacall.
"Dead Man" was recorded as an audition program on September 17, 1949. You can download it from the Internet Archive here.
Tomorrow: "By the time they arrive my people will have prepared something quite shocking!"
The series was meant to be something of a prime-time soap opera drama, following the ongoing trials of Shorty Bell (Rooney), a short newspaper truck driver whose great ambition is to become a journalist. By the end of the debut episode, Shorty gets his first chance to prove himself to the publisher. Presumably the intent was to follow Shorty as he rose the ranks at the newspaper and proved himself as a writer. Certainly journalism is a great source for adventure and drama on radio.
Now, unfortunately, we only have four episodes of Shorty Bell and I don't quite what happened between the first episode and the next surviving episode (dated June 13, 3 months after the debut) but clearly the show was being retooled. Although Robson remained the director (he's even heard as himself on the June 13 episode), Brennan and Carroll were gone, replaced with writer Walter Newman (who also wrote for Robson on Escape). The tone of the June 13 episode is entirely different; Shorty Bell is now a sitcom with a studio audience!
The sitcom version of Shorty Bell follows the same character and situation introduced months earlier, but now it's played for laughs. Rooney is now accompanied by familiar sitcom voices like Alan Reed and Dink Trout (both veterans of CBS' Life of Riley) and the studio audience sound as though they were imported from a broadcast of Archie; they were clearly young and very loud and laughed especially loud when someone flubbed a line of dialogue.
The next surviving episodes are from June 20 and 27 and the tone has shifted back to drama (although a studio audience can be heard on the 27th). Whereas the June 13 episode departed from the series' premise for a typical sitcom plot about Shorty's novel being picked up for a dog hero movie, the other episodes are back to following Shorty's gradual ascent at the ranks at the newspaper. But clearly the series wasn't working because the episode of the 27th was the final broadcast. Rooney hung around to host a new program, Hollywood Showcase (a talent scout program) and Robson went back to Escape.
Shorty Bell had a very promising start; what went wrong? Rooney was a popular star, although by 1948 he was trying to change his image. Maybe audiences didn't respond to him in a dramatic role, so they tried to win them over with more comedy. I think if the series had stuck to its guns and kept to the original idea of a "radio novel" it still would have flopped, but the remaining fragments would be more valuable.
You can hear the four remaining episodes of Shorty Bell at the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Group Library.
Jack Moyles played Rocky Jordan for almost all of the series, until George Raft took over the part for the show's final season (Raft's Hollywood career was basically over when he stumbled into the role). Jay Novello portrayed Sam Sabayya of the Cairo police, Rocky's best frenemy. While Sabayya was an amiable and helpful police official (though frequently he would issue very earnest warnings to Rocky about the episode's trouble), Sabayya's lieutenant Greco (Lou Krugman) was a vicious thug who was all-too-willing to find crimes he could pin on Rocky.
After a few months without a sponsor the show picked up Del Monte food from summer 1949 til summer 1950; advertisements would address the lady of the house, suggesting that a number of women made up the show's listening audience despite the hard-boiled nature of the program. Don't make assumptions about what appeals to different genders, I guess!
The cast benefited from the usual stock of CBS players; Paul Frees turned up frequently, usually in multiple roles per episode. It was lacking in actual Egyptian voices but the series made some allowances for that as Rocky would usually wind up embroiled in some trouble created by a tourist - as his bar was frequented by expats, not by Muslims.
Most of the programs are from the Jack Moyles years and they're very good adventure yarns that sound a lot like the ones CBS was producing simultaneously for Escape (it helped that writers like William Froug and John Dunkel wrote for both shows). One particularly fun episode is "Portrait of Rocky" (April 3, 1949) in which Rocky meets an Egyptian private eye who idolizes radio detectives such as Sam Spade - it includes some funny shout-outs to the Adventures of Sam Spade and even plays the show's theme as the story fades out!
When George Raft took over the series for the summer of 1951, there was quite a shift. Jay Novello and Lou Krugman continued in their respective supporting roles, but the bartender character Chris - previously a very minor person - was suddenly elevated to narrator of the series and portrayed by Lawrence Dobkin. In the Jack Moyles years, Moyles narrated the series from first-person perspective; it feels considerably less visceral and fast-paced when all of Rocky's actions are narrated after-the-fact by Chris, who wasn't even present at the time of the events he would narrate. As the series was announced as being "partially transcribed," I wonder if Raft did all of his recording on transcription with Dobkin and other performers being added later? At any rate, Raft's performance is lackluster and wholly inferior to that of Moyles.
Cliff Howell produced and directed the program from start to finish; his other radio credits included directing episodes of Jeff Regan, Investigator, the Adventures of Philip Marlowe, Broadway Is My Beat and - improbably - Amos 'N' Andy.
You can listen to Rocky Jordan at the Internet Archive.
Somehow, despite a healthy run on radio (1943-1957) and a large archive of episodes, Romance is a series I've seldom seen revisited by old-time radio fans. I first learned of the program's existence in John Dunning's On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio and his entry for Romance was pretty sparse and dismissive. He presented the data surrounding the program's timeslots and production credits but he didn't offer even one paragraph of commentary about the series itself.
Like all anthology programs, Romance was indeed a mixed bag, but the sheer scope of years and formats under which CBS presented Romance demonstrate that it's a program well worth seeking out. At times it was a sponsored program with big-name Hollywood stars; at times it adapted famous Hollywood movies (especially 1944-1946 when called Theater of Romance); sometimes it told romantic stories; other times it was "romantic" in a classical sense. In all its eras, it benefited from CBS' strong production values. And small wonder! The 1944-1946 programs (Theater of Romance) were produced by Charles Vanda of Suspense; the 1950-1953 programs were produced and written by Norman Macdonnell and John Meston just prior to their joint creation of Gunsmoke; and Suspense's Antony Ellis and William N. Robson oversaw the final years of the program, abetted by familiar names from Suspense and Escape like writers Kathleen Hite and E. Jack Neuman. Some scripts were even recycled from Escape, including "Wild Oranges," "Loup-Garou" and "the Cave."
During the period where it was called Theater of Romance it sounds like the same orchestra that performed on Suspense! Great radio performers like William Conrad, John Dehner, Harry Bartell, Georgia Ellis, Hans Conreid, Paula Winslowe and Lawrence Dobkin were heard on Romance through most of its history and the Theater of Romance included big name stars like Humphrey Bogart, Joseph Cotten, Cary Grant, Edward G. Robinson, James Stewart, Ray Milland, Vincent Price and Herbert Marshall.
The Theater of Romance era of the show is very interesting, although the movie adaptations are a bit odd - because the program's premise was that it was a romantic program, they would often strip the movie plots down to simply the romantic passages. The adaptation of "Goodbye, Mr. Chips," for example, is concerned more so with the titular Mr. Chips' relationship with his wife than his career as a schoolmaster.
Still, there are some especially fine programs during the Theater of Romance period. Be sure to check out Bogart in the murder story "Conflict" (September 11, 1945). From the rest of the series I recommend most strongly "Pagosa" (August 6, 1951), a western tale with William Conrad, Georgia Ellis, writer John Meston and producer Norman Macdonnell together prior to Gunsmoke; the sci-fi farce "the Strip Teaser and the Space Warp" (March 24, 1956); and the humorous "the Lady and the Tiger" (May 12, 1956).
You can hear the Old-Time Radio Researchers Group's collection of Romance episodes at the Internet Archive.
The pilot episode of Night Beat from 1949 is available and it's quite different from what the show became. It's not just that in the pilot Randy was called "Hank Mitchell" and was played by Edmond O'Brien, who went on to star in Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar instead (Frank Lovejoy used the same script for the 2nd pilot). In the pilot, "Hank" is outraged when a reformed criminal he knew is killed and is convinced his friend's old mob ties are responsible. "Hank" takes up a gun and goes seeking revenge; it's very noir, but -- outside of Randy's very noirish narration -- that wasn't the feel Night Beat ultimately went for.
Night Beat was a very humanist program. Randy Stone didn't solve problems with a gun or even his fists - like, ever. Typically, Randy would calm a person down by appealing to their character and what he learned about them across the drama. Indeed, Randy was a long-suffering protagonist whose goodness was often tread upon by the subject of that week's episode. In one episode, Randy was mugged by an old man who needed money for gambling. Randy then went looking for the old man to help him break his gambling habit and in the course of this he was repeatedly beaten up by bouncers at casinos. Randy seldom gets to prove his masculinity by shoving back, he's more likely to be the one who is shoved. In the era of noir-ish tough guys, this makes Night Beat's Randy Stone all the more unusual.
Towards the end, I wonder if Night Beat's budget was running out? One of the later episodes, "The Bomb On Flight 63," (September 4, 1952) uses a script recycled from NBC's the Silent Men that had been aired earlier that same year!
If you like a strong drama with a bit of action and mystery but think all the radio private eyes sound alike, you might do well to check out Night Beat for something a little offbeat. My favourite episodes include "The Man Who Claimed to Be Dead" (March 13, 1950) in which a man keeps insisting to Randy that he's dead and has men ready to vouch for it; "A City at Your Fingertips" (July 31, 1950) in which Randy dials a number at random and is answered by a woman being terrorized by her husband; "The Slasher" (November 10, 1950) in which Randy thinks he might have stumbled upon the identity of a man who disfigures his female victims; "Sanctuary" (June 22, 1951) in which Randy observes the showdown between the police and a man in a church tower; and "Somebody Stop Ann" (August 7, 1952) in which one of Randy's co-workers believes her children are in danger from her husband.
The majority of Night Beat is still in circulation and easy to find on old-time radio channels and websites. You can hear Night Beat on the Internet Archive.
Artlife Magazine is available for free in digital format at her website, Bethany Illustrates. You can download a copy here.
The first was on the Blue network from 1943-1944 as the Adventures of Nero Wolfe, a summer program run by Himan Brown of Inner Sanctum Mysteries. We have only one example remaining of that version: "The Last Laugh Murder Case" with Santos Ortega as Nero Wolfe and John Gibson as Wolfe's sidekick Archie Goodwin. The series went to Mutual in 1945 as the Amazing Nero Wolfe with star Francis X. Bushman as Wolfe and Elliott Lewis as Goodwin; the only surviving episode from that era is "The Shakespeare Folio."
That brings us to the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe and Sydney Greenstreet. Greenstreet was just terrific in the role - cantankerous, obstinante and, of course, always a step ahead of the other characters in the drama. I haven't read any of the Rex Stout stories but I do understand Wolfe didn't normally leave his home, instead using Archie Goodwin to perform the investigations while he would solve the case by expending as little effort as possible. In the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe, he did sometimes leave his home and encounter a case in the wild, much in the melodramatic means of other radio shows (such as the time Wolfe is invited to dinner and the host is murdered). But for the most part, Wolfe remained housebound, reluctant to take on a case and always haranguing Archie for arriving at conclusions too hastily. Goodwin, while performing the legwork (and often getting hit over the head, just like other radio private eyes) would also attempt to romance any woman who crossed his path, despite the alarming frequency at which they would end up dead or arrested. Rarely did Goodwin get the girl - more commonly he would be chided and mocked by Wolfe for his skirt-chasing.
For some reason, the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe seemed unable to lock down the part of Archie Goodwin, which is a shame. Still, they managed to cast three terrific actors in the part - Lawrence Dobkin, Harry Bartell and Gerald Mohr. Dobkin is my favourite Archie as he delivered his rejoinders to Wolfe with a delightful amount of sarcasm. Bartell was very good in the part as well, his voice falling somewhere between savvy and naive. I find Mohr a bit miscast, mainly because Mohr was already a leading man - indeed, he was still appearing on CBS' the Adventures of Philip Marlowe at the same time he was heard on the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe - and it's distracting to hear him demoted to sidekick on a different detective program. Mohr was a terrific radio actor but I think his distinctive voice is too distracting in this instance.
The Old-Time Radio Researchers Group has a collection of the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe on the Internet Archive.
"This is the fascinating story of Dantro, The Planet Man, troubleshooter for the League of Planets organization, the law enforcement body for peace and justice in the celestial world - whose headquarters and center of operations are situated on the capital of all the planets, Planeria Rex. From Mercury to Pluto, wherever danger threatens the universe, you will find Dantro the Planet Man fighting for fair play."
When I say that Planet Man was juvenile, I mean juvenile. It's high camp, and there's an audience for that. If you're the sort who giggles their way through the 1980 Flash Gordon movie, then Planet Man will live up to your expectations.
The writing on Planet Man is so simplistic that I'm not even certain the creators knew what a "planet" is. I mean, why is our hero Dantro "the Planet Man?" He works for the League of Planets, not a singular planet. Why not "Interplanetary Man?" I mean, anyone from Earth could also claim to be a "Planet Man," just from a different planet than Dantro. But this is a show where the dictator of Mars is named "Marston!" And he has vicious "Marlions!"
Dantro isn't much of hero - he usually manages to get himself captured by the bad guy, leaving it up to one of his many sidekicks (a scientist, scientist's daughter, Texan engineer and two kids) to get him out of hot water. The announcer frequently had difficulty coming up with an appropriate cliffhanger at the end of an episode. Each time he'd spout off a series of questions to engage the listener, but some of them were as lame as, "did Slats set the circuits correctly?" If the question won't even be raised in the succeeding episode, maybe don't bring it up?
You can hear all the surviving episodes of Planet Man in the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library collection on the Internet Archive.
Until recently, Marvel's official credit byline for the character Wolverine cited writer Len Wein with artists Herb Trimpe and John Romita (Romita designed the costume but Trimpe drew the finished comic). As of the recent movie Deadpool and Wolverine, Roy Thomas is now included at the end of the byline. This apparently came about because Thomas has for himself a very cutthroat talent agent - and because Wein, Trimpe and Romita are all deceased. Thomas has been very pleased with himself for getting a co-creator credit on Wolverine, although he did pause to complain that his name was listed last when it "should have" been first in a classic case of "shut up when you're winning."
Until I arrived on the internet in 1998, I didn't realize that Thomas was a bit controversial in comics fandom. I knew him only from his works, from the editorials he wrote on the letters pages of his various Marvel and DC titles over the years. I was especially flummoxed when I began to meet other fans of 1940s super heroes online and discovered none of them seemed to like Thomas' work very much. Why, wasn't it Thomas who did more than any other writer to bring back forgotten heroes of the 1940s to give them new adventures in places like Marvel's Invaders and DC's All-Star Squadron? Sure, they rejoined, and he did more than other writer to retcon 1940s heroes out of existence, kill them off or turn them into villains.
Heck, on at least three occasions Thomas brought out a story where a classic hero comes back, goes insane, turns evil, fights the heroes, then destroys himself (Toro in Sub-Mariner #14; Red Raven in Sub-Mariner #26; Marvel Boy in Fantastic Four #165). That should have been a clue to me.
Thomas' case for being Wolverine's co-creator is that he was the editor of Wolverine's first appearance and participated in the original brainstorming sessions for the character. I'd like to say it's not cricket to claim that this makes you a co-creator, but I'm afraid Marvel has already been building precedent along these lines. The Kamala Khan version of Ms. Marvel has always been credited as a co-creation of editors Sana Amanat and Stephen Wacker, writer G. Willow Wilson and artists Jamie McKelvie and Adrian Alphona. With the precedent established, why not take advantage of it?
Well, for one, you could injure your legacy. For Roy Thomas, he's an aging creator (turns 84 this year) and he's not liable to produce more art in the future as counterweight against his present legacy. Thomas was already someone fans had a few misgivings about - now they're looking at him as the true inheritor of Stan Lee's mantle, and not in a good way - that like Stan Lee, he wants to claim more ownership over ideas than he is due.
Comics don't pay very well and offer few incentives to reward loyalty, even for those who put decades of their lives into careers at the major companies. If you view the business from a libertarian dog-eat-dog perspective then sure, Thomas can demand and receive compensation for Wolverine and any other characters whose first appearances he might've edited (which his agent is apparently trying to do). You can "prove" you deserve more credits and more dollars from your corporate publishers. What you can't prove is how it makes you any better than Bob Kane.
For a man who rose up the ranks from fandom, Thomas hasn't had a great reputation within fandom and not because of sour grapes. I'm afraid that when Thomas passes on, fandom will not long mourn him. And that's a pity, because if he would just stick to his actual accomplishments he would leave a legacy to be celebrated.
The concept behind Public Domain feels all-too-familiar. Singular Comics are the publishers of a super hero called "the Domain" who was originally created by Syd Dallas and Jerry Jasper. The Domain has become a massive franchise, the character appearing in blockbuster motion pictures. While artist Syd Dallas is invited to film premieres, he sees few other benefits from his creation's success - but as long as the fans are happy, he doesn't complain. Jasper seems to have done much better for himself, perhaps because his sister is the publisher of Singular.
So far, so on the nose. It's a familiar tale in comics, mostly reminiscent of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. But where Public Domain really gets moving is when Jerry's assistant Tanya Ko discovers a document that proves Syd is the true owner of the Domain. Syd doesn't really want to start a legal fight for his propery (especially when US law favours the side with the most money to spend) but over the course of "Past Mistakes" he resolves to fight for his rights for the sake of his sons Miles and Dave. Dave is something of a screw-up who can't hold on to a job, although he's very bright and chipper (possibly due to drug use); Miles appears to be the more grounded and relatable of the two brothers, up until he proves to be a gambling addict with massive debts that need to be paid. It's Miles' debts, above all, that cinches Syd's decision to go after his rights for the Domain.
I blogged before about Stan Lee in my joint review of I am Stan and Stuf' Said, so this blog has already aired my strong feelings on the shabby treatment comic book creators have received from their publishers and the outrageous methods corporations have used to assert control over character copyrights. Public Domain isn't merely a find-and-replace telling of the Lee/Kirby saga, there are also elements of Siegel and Shuster's struggles over Superman and Bob Kane's struggle against all of his betters.
I didn't realize Public Domain was an ongoing series when I bought the trade, I thought it was a single graphic novel - so you might see more posts about Public Domain on the blog in the future, I enjoyed it quite a bit!
Dear Adolf was 6-week long program that aired on NBC from June 21 to August 2, 1942. It was a wartime propaganda program; all of the shows I've surveyed thus far, it's most similar to the Man Behind the Gun. It's unlike that program in that it was driven by a singular creative talent - said talent being author Stephen Vincent Benet. Each episode was written by Benet and drawn from material found in open letters actual people had written "to" dictator Adolf Hitler.
I like Benet, although I can only take so much of him. He was a very pro-American author. Sometimes that was tempered when he would examine his nation's faults. Dear Adolf is not tempered but because it was propaganda being directed against the Nazis, I find it more palatable than other propaganda pieces. It also helps that Dear Adolf was a lean 15-minute program instead of a half-hour. Further, each of Benet's letters was performed as a sort of soliloquy by a first-rate famous performer. The six letters were thus:
Dear Adolf feels like a Columbia Workshop offshoot, which I mean as high praise; NBC didn't often invest in dramatic programming to the extent CBS did, especially pre-1946 (a lot of Benet's stories were adapted on Columbia Workshop). The Cagney episode alone is a bit of a treat as Cagney didn't perform on radio very often!
The Old-Time Radio Researchers Group has a playlist collection of Dear Adolf on YouTube.
Much like Omar, the Wizard of Persia, Ghost Corps indulged in orientalism, or put another way, racism... but mostly of a patronizing variant. The Ghost Corps are identified in the program as follows:
"Scattered about the far east at strategic points there live certain quiet, unobtrusive men. Who, banded together under the name of the Ghost Corps, tread the danger trails of romance and adventure. Far-reaching in its peculiar scope of activity, the Ghost Corps is composed of a mere handful of intrepid adventurers owing allegiance to none but C. D. Baker, chief of this mystery-shrouded band of freelance diplomats."
Based in Egypt, K. C. Smith is the hero of these stories, serving as an agent of the Ghost Corps. He's aided by his adept servant Ali (although C. D. Baker is often mentioned he only occasionally appears to give Smith orders). There are 26 episodes of the Ghost Corps divided into 2 13-chapter serials - "The Knives of el Malique" and "the Prayer Rug of Nana Sahib." The closing minute of the final episode sets up a new adventure concerning "the Ming ruby" but with information on this series so scarce, I don't know whether more adventures were recorded or not.
If you want a pulp adventure serial in the manner of Indiana Jones, I think Ghost Corps will deliver for you. There's treasure hunts, booby traps, beautiful women, a chamber that crushes its occupants to death and even ventriloquism. I definitely rank it much higher than Omar, the Wizard of Persia - it has better acting, better sound effects and more music.
There's a collection of the Ghost Corps you can listen to at the Internet Archive.
All three of these series are deliberate efforts at courting nostlagic readers - and I guess it worked, since I bought them! I don't consider myself a great Ron Marz fan, although I did enjoy his 1990s work on Silver Surfer. The real draw for me is to see new interior art by Ron Lim, who has been otherwise turning out variant covers in recent years. Lim was a personal favourite artist of mine in the 1990s and I enjoy seeing him show off his flair for splashy yet carefully composed storytelling.
Like the other two series, Silver Surfer: Rebirth - Legacy is set during the 1990s continuity; it includes the character Legacy (son of Captain Marvel) whom Marz and Lim debuted in the 1990s. Adam Warlock, Gamora and Pip make quick cameo appearances. Thanos shows up; there's also a character called Eve Warlock whom Marz and Lim created for Warlock: Rebirth and plays a pivotal role in this series. The mini-series is concerned yet again with the Infinity Gems, as Mephisto dupes Legacy into giving him the Time Gem. Honestly, to read Marz's stories, you'd think the Infinity Watch were constantly losing track of the gems back in the 90s.
There's also a brief trip to the distant future of "the Last Galactus Story," mainly to acknowledge that in that future Nova was still alive, yet Marz and Lim killed her during their 1990s Silver Surfer stories. It doesn't amount to much other than a brief opportunity to see Nova again (Marz has been pretty unrepentant about killing her way back when).
Silver Surfer: Rebirth - Legacy has a bit of flash and flair to its tale, but mostly it's for those of us with fond memories of reading Marz and Lim's work in the 1990s and enjoy seeing a bit of a remix of those stories.
I've seen the series described by virtually all old-time radio fans as an attempt to duplicate the success of Escape. Of course, Escape only enjoyed a few months with a sponsor so although it was a very well-made program it wasn't a huge success; High Adventure at least had a sponsor during the NBC run yet you'd hardly know it to listen to the series, there's no sense of a change in budget. Old Spice didn't bring in any big name stars, just reduced the drama's running time to squeeze in commercials.
There are a few famous names in the program's final year on the air among the few surviving episodes. Basil Rathbone pops up in a 1953 episode titled "the Hungry Peacock." And the last few episodes of High Adventure feature George Sanders as the series' host. Unfortunately, Sanders sounds extremely bored with his role. His narration is dry to the point of disinterest in what he's saying. Although you'll perk up at his voice - because he did have a terrific voice for radio - you'll lose interest because he can't even bring himself to make the words "High Adventure" sound adventurous.
I don't think this is by any means comparable to Escape and if you expect something similar to Escape, you'll be disappointed. High Adventure did not adapt famous stories nor did it set its tales in exotic locales. Heck, there's nary a poisonous snake to be found. In fact, High Adventure was often a dramatic about characters struggling with interpersonal troubles. A good example of that is the 1950 episode "Wild Pitch," a baseball drama about the rivalry between a catcher and a pitcher and their troubled history.
There are fewer than 2 dozen episodes of High Adventure still in circulation. The Old-Time Radio Researchers Group has a collection of High Adventure on the Internet Archive.
I'm very fond of Mad Max: Fury Road - I think it was one of the best filmgoing experiences I've ever had because the film itself is such pure cinema - visual storytelling with an unyielding pace and sense of momentum. Even though I had seen all of the previous Mad Max films and thought they were okay (Road Warrior was the best, I thought), I didn't have strong opinions on them. Heck, I didn't have strong opinions on filmmaker George Miller, even though I had seen virtually all of his movies.
The success of Mad Max: Fury Road apparently gave us Miller's 2022 film Three Thousand Years of Longing, an adaptation of an obscure piece of literature that deconstructed fairy tales. That movie came and went with barely anyone other than me paying attention to it, but I suppose it was an indulgence Miller was permitted. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga seems more like the kind of movie a studio would request - something that should definitely bring back those who enjoyed Mad Max: Fury Road. But that movie came out in 2015, so whatever 'heat' surrounded Mad Max at the time has surely cooled; I'm afraid the lukewarm response to Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is to be expected.
And that's a shame, because Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a pretty good film. It's not inventive in the way that Mad Max: Fury Road was. In that film, we learned how the world worked as the film unfolded. Immortan Joe, the War Boys, the Citadel, the Green Place, the Vuvalini... Furiosa doesn't only revisit the titular Furiosa, as a prequel it has to -- by necessity -- revisit the people and places we saw in Mad Max: Fury Road. Some of the places we only glimpsed (Gastown, Bullet Farm) are embellished further. But the visuals of the world are kept faithful between the two films and it suffers from that problem with prequels - everything in the film has to end up in a place consistent with where the story begins in the chronologically subsequent picture.
Furiosa has a different feel in part because it doesn't cover a short span of time (Mad Max: Fury Road covered, what, 48 hours in the characters' lives?), instead transpiring over a decade's worth of history. The way the story is broken up with 'chapter' breaks contributes to the different feeling, but it means that although there's plenty of peril and thrills, it lacks the unrelenting momentum of Mad Max: Fury Road. We do eventually get to scenes on a War Rig with the occupants fending off invaders (several of them air-based invaders, lending a welcome variety from the previous film) but the emphasis is on Furiosa's life and struggles. Ultimately it's a story of vengeance directed by Furiosa at the man who killed her mother, but it takes a very long time for her to find the opportunity to claim her vengeance.
It's never boring; it's frequently amazing. If you enjoyed Mad Max: Fury Road you'll enjoy seeing more of that film's world and explanations for the characters' backgrounds. Heck, Furiosa's line in Fury Road - "Remember me?" - uttered to Immortan Joe, now has a context and it's not what I imagined when I saw the earlier film.
