The Black Flame of the Amazon was a 15-minute syndicated radio adventure serial from 1938 starring real-life explorer Harold Noice, who portrayed a fictionalized version of himself on the series. In the series, Harold went on adventures in the Amazon jungles of Brazil alongside his Portuguese friend Pedro and a pair of precocious kids named Jimmy and Jean.
Initially this is a pretty standard juvenile adventure serial, complete with the villains Butch Grogan and Limey Scroggins who want a map to the treasure of the Incas. But about half-way through the series, the heroes escape from the villains and spend quite a lot of episodes just bumming around the jungle, talking to each other. It becomes something of a slice-of-life domestic soap opera instead of an adventure serial! In fact, there's a span of about 5 episodes where the kids are going to be left behind by Noice and so they plan to play a prank on him. Mostly, they talk about their plan, over and over; then Noice figures our the kids are planning something; then, back to the kids, still planning. An adventure serial that just might lull you to sleep.
The Black Flame of the Amazon has many of the problems found in "jungle adventure" tales of its era; to be generous, such stories are very patronizing towards indigenous peoples; or, put bluntly, they get racist. Such as when Harold Noice lectures the kids as to why they need to investigate the absence of a white man from his trading post:
Harold: "This is now a part of our business. We whites, no matter what part of the world, we're in, must never forget that we are white."
Jimmy: "You mean there's been a crime committed here?"
Harold: "Yes, Jimmy, against a white man."
Jimmy: "Then there's got to be punishment of some kind!"
Harold: "That's secondary, Jimmy. A white man made his residence here. We have to find out what happened-- find that white man. That's the white man's law in the jungle."
Jimmy: "Swell, Mr. Noice, that's swell! And we're white!"
Harold Noice's acting is stiff, but acceptable; Pedro sounds like Alan Reed, but I'm not positive it's him; the actors playing Jimmy and Jean are frequently terrible, often delivering their dialogue with a woodness that sounds like no child I ever met.
"Just sit back and relax; you'll be royally entertained, for it's time for Hollywood's Open House."
Hollywood's Open House was a syndicated half-hour radio series hosted by Jim Ameche (Don Ameche's brother). It was something of a smorgasboard of entertainment from Hollywood - first a little music and comedy, followed by a brief dramatization of a popular film, play or short story (sometimes just a single scene excerpted from the source).
The series was meant to advertise Motion Picture Magazine, so the various entertainment capsules are reflective of how the magazine must have summarized its stories. What's odd is that while the show used a number of Hollywood stars as guests on the program is that they also employed impersonators! The earliest surviving episode recreates a Bob Hope/Bing Crosby routine with both men impersonated. They sound pretty good at matching both men's speed and pronunciation, though overall they're fairly obvious imitators. I guess they couldn't license an audio clip?
RadioGoldindex speculates that although the episodes are dated from 1947-1948 the series could have been produced as many as 3-4 years earlier! I don't know about that math - perhaps 3-4 months earlier, they certainly don't sound like wartime radio productions.
On the other hand, Hollywood's Open House wasn't quite in vogue with post-war radio, at least not to my ears. I think programs that mixed comedy, music and drama made sense in 1930s radio when much of what could be done was still being learned and the number of programs on the air was somewhat limited. But post-war, radio was booming; if you wanted comedy, there were so many comedy shows; likewise music shows; likewise dramatic anthologies. I think audiences were more interested in a show that devoted its full runtime to a single genre.
Stories they adapted included Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" (with Peter Lorre!), Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace" and "A Piece of String." They also ran a parody of Ernest Hemingway's "the Killers" titled "the Exterminators" (October 21, 1948).
The comedy guests are a mixed bag; Bert Lahr is always good; Lucille Balls turns up, but only to perform in a dramatic role (she was probably trying to branch out her career); Jackie Gleason appears in the aforementioned "Killers" parody and does a terrific stand-up routine in another episode (November 11, 1948).
I'm currently reviewing a number of radio variety shows and what I have to say for Hollywood's Open House goes for most of them - if you're a fan of one of the stars heard on the program, you'll want to hear the segments where they appear - but you might not be interested in the rest of the show.
Over a decade ago on the blog, I looked at Action Comics #593 (1987), a team-up story starring Superman and Mister Miracle written and drawn by John Byrne. As I noted in that review, this was one of the earliest comic books that I read.
Here's an excerpt from my review:
Mr. Miracle enters his house with his diminuative aide Oberon at his side; however, instead of finding his wife Barda waiting for him, Mr. Miracle is greeted by Darkseid, sitting in an armchair sipping wine. Seriously, I wouldn't kid you. Even though Keith Giffen's Ambush Bug mocked the idea of Darkseid's ubiquity in DC Comics all the way back in 1985, it seems no one got the memo as Darkseid would continue to make appearances like this up to present times. Darkseid sipping wine in Mr. Miracle's living room is about as menacing as Darkseid serving Ambush Bug a hamburger in Ambush Bug#2. Ah well; in 1987, I knew of Darkseid through the Super Powers figures and Super Friends cartoon show, so at least he was a familiar face.
Above you can see the image of Darkseid calmly sipping wine while lounging in Mister Miracle's living room, and below is the final page of Ambush Bug #1 (1985) by Robert Loren Fleming and Keith Giffen. This was the start of a running gag in the four-issue Ambush Bug mini-series as each issue would conclude with Ambush Bug encountering Darkseid in some mundane locale, but the succeeding issue would completely ignore that scene. Finally, at the end of Ambush Bug #4, Ambush Bug reveals that the "Darkseid" in his stories was just an inflatable dummy. He says to the deflated dummy, "Thanks, pal. You bought me an extra fifty thousand sales in the comic shops!"
This trope of Darkseid lounging around in a mundane location instead of unleashing his power to destroy his enemies-- that's become a well-worn trope in DC comics. And I suppose my reaction in the above review came out that way because I was used to a post-Jack Kirby Darkseid. Post-Kirby, Darkseid was no longer the arch-enemy of the New Gods-- now he was basically everyone's arch-enemy, from Superman to the Suicide Squad, from Mary Marvel to the Legion of Super-Heroes. Writers still seemed to understand that he was a villain who needed to show restraint (or else he'd simply wipe most of Earth's heroes out of existence), and thus the many images of Darkseid lounging. This was particularly apparent in the 1987 Legends crossover, which resulted in Darkseid appearing in many, many comics within a six-month span, but mostly he appeared only to plot and scheme rather than take action.
What I didn't appreciate about Darkseid was that Kirby had pretty definite ideas about how to play his arch-villain; after a few cameos in Kirby's Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen stories, Darkseid made his big debut in New Gods #1 (1971), which also introduced Darkseid's true opponent, Orion. Orion spent the entirety of issue #1 battling his way through Darkseid's armies on Apokalips only to learn Darkseid was on Earth. The issue ends with Orion heading to Earth, where Darkseid promises on the last page, "I hear you, Orion! The battle begins!"
But New Gods #2 opens up with Orion entering an apartment where he simply finds Darkseid lounging, waiting for him, as seen above (and it does look like Giffen drew directly from this image for the end of Ambush Bug #1). There is no physical confrontation with Darkseid in that issue; although Orion continues to oppose all of Darkseid's schemes, New Gods was cancelled before the promised showdown with Orion and Darkseid could occur. So, Fleming and Giffen weren't just making light of Darkseid's ability to add sales when they used him in Ambush Bug - they were also poking fun at how, from their perspective, the promised fight between Orion and Darkseid kept being put off.
I should note that Giffen was also the artist of a Legion of Super-Heroes story titled "the Great Darkness Saga," written by Paul Levitz (Legion of Super-Heroes #290-294, 1982). It was a lengthy storyline where the antagonist was ultimately revealed to be Darkseid, still alive in the 31st century; in the climax, Orion suddenly appears and they have the epic battle that fanboys had been asking for since 1971. It's basically fan-fiction, Levitz and Giffen trying to write their own ending to Kirby's New Gods. Many fans call it "the greatest Legion of Super-Heroes story!" That's how lame the Legion are, I guess... their best story is a stealth New Gods comic.
"The Great Darkness Saga" happened early enough in Darkseid's post-Kirby history that it seems to have been extremely influential. Yet I also wonder how much the version of Darkseid seen in that story - the cosmic powerhouse who goes fist-to-fist with the entire Legion of Super-Heroes - owes to Thanos. Thanos was, after all, created by Jim Starlin in 1973 as what he admitted to as a being directly inspired by Darkseid. For Thanos' early appearances, he was quite a bit like Darkseid - he employed a number of lieutenants to do his dirty work and mostly plotted and schemed. It wasn't until he obtained the Cosmic Cube during Starlin's Captain Marvel stories that he ceased being on the sidelines and instead directly engaged the heroes (I wrote a 10-part history of Starlin's Thanos; here's part 1, where I discussed those early comics). I'd say that Starlin's Thanos stepped out from Darkseid's shadow when he reappeared in Warlock as Warlock's ally against the Magus. Although Thanos' quest to win the love of Death could be compared to Darkseid's quest for the Anti-Life Equation, Thanos' subtlety and guile in those Warlock stories is very unlike Darkseid's single-minded approach.
Post-"Great Darkness Saga," DC reprinted Kirby's New Gods stories in 1984 as a prestige-format series. In the final issue, Kirby finally wrote and drew the conclusion to Orion and Darkseid's unresolved fight. To put it mildly, it's not what fans like Levitz and Giffen anticipated. In fact, there is once again, no fight. Orion pursues Darkseid, but Darkseid continually beats a strategic retreat rather than engage in combat. Finally, Darkseid leads Orion into an ambush; a squad of Parademons blast Orion's body full of bullets and he drops out of sight, seemingly dead; the end.
And this isn't a course-correction on Kirby's part, it's consistent with all of his Darkseid stories in the 1970s. Although Darkseid deployed plenty of lieutenants against his enemies, his own interest was simply the Anti-Life Equation. He would indulge his lieutenants if he thought their plans might bring him the equation (or at least inconvenience his enemies so they wouldn't interfere with him) but Darkseid didn't use power for power's sake. I think any of the confrontations Kirby wrote between Darkseid and Desaad would be instructive; Desaad would inflict pain on his enemies because he enjoyed the sensation; Darkseid, however, was not a sadist and expressed annoyance at Desaad for placing his sadism above his actual goal - the Anti-Life Equation. Outside of flashbacks, the only characters Darkseid killed with his own power in Kirby's stories were his lieutenants when he felt they'd gone too far off-track - and then Kirby gave him the power to resurrect his lieutenants in his graphic novel Hunger Dogs (1985), albeit the resurrected lieutenants were mere shades of their former selves.
I submit, then, it's possible that the Darkseid of "the Great Darkness Saga" is a combination of Levitz and Giffen's fanboyish wish for a Darkseid who fights, drawn from Starlin's Thanos. Kirby's Darkseid was not Starlin's Thanos; he had plenty of raw power, but next to no interest in unleashing it. Perhaps a true "final" New Gods story in which Darkseid obtained the Anti-Life Equation would bring the character to a point where he would unleash his full power. But that's not Kirby's Darkseid; without the Anti-Life Equation, what is there for Darkseid to do, but... lounge.
Soldiers of the Press was a 15-minute syndicated program that aired during the greater part of the USA's time in World War II, starting in February 1943 and lasting 'til August 1945. The series features dramatized accounts of events witnessed by journalists that had something to do with the conflict.
Apparently all of the journalists "heard" on the series were actually professional actors. Although the journalists responsible for the news stories were given credit for their work, it seems none of them appeared as themselves in the dramas. Which is fair enough, since journalists aren't professional actors. It is a bit of a missed opportunity in some cases, as the journalists covered included names like Walter Cronkite. The actual performers aren't credited but I swear I heard voices like Bill Johnstone and Raymond Massey.
The stories recounted on Soldiers of the Press give one a pretty good view of the different locales and theaters of operations during the war; some are recounted from the perspectives of journalists who were overseas when the US entered the war and how they suffered in internment camps. There are naval operations, aerial operations and more. It's bit jingoistic, but what would you expect from a wartime program?
The Old Time Radio Researchers have their collection of Soldiers of the Press in this YouTube playlist.
I was very disappointed to learn that one of my local comic shops - Another Dimension - is closing its doors at the end of April. Although I haven't been a regular shopper there in a decade I always felt it was the best comic book store in the city.
Before I even lived in Calgary, Another Dimension was the shop I most enjoyed visiting when my family would come to Calgary. In the early 1990s there were a lot of comic shops in Calgary (Another Dimension had more than one store in that day) but a number of elements at Another Dimension made a big impression-- they carried virtually every new comic book being published, they carried a library of trade paperbacks and they had a vast well-organized selection of back issues.
When I moved to the city Another Dimension wasn't the nearest shop (there were two other stores geographically much closer to my home) but it became the one I visited most often, thanks in part to it being nearby SAIT, where I attended college. I have happy memories of traipsing to Another Dimension in between classes so that I could delve into back issues. I also recall reading some comics on campus after a visit there, particularly an issue of the mini-series Blaze of Glory that I read in the SAIT library during my practicum.
In time, I moved to other parts of the city and Another Dimension became the nearer shop. I opened up a file at the store and was pleasantly surprised that unlike other shops in the city where I'd previously had files, I didn't have to pay a fee to open the file and I didn't get pushback if someone put the wrong book into my file. If they made a mistake, they apologized (there are other shops in the city that seem to think the customer is always wrong).
Eventually my relationship with the shop changed, in part because of my own career at Marvel Comics, especially writing for the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. I now needed access to all kinds of back issues that I would normally never have sought out. I vividly recall buying a stack of issues for research that included an issue of Nighstalkers. At the till, my friend Riley held up that comic at me then slowly shook his head in disbelief.
Riley Rossmo was another part of what changed; he was a clerk at Another Dimension, but he was also a rising comic book artist. Because I knew him personally, I started following his career as of his Image series Proof. Although our careers in comics were very different, he and I always supported and boosted each other. One of my fondest memories is from the year when the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo declined to grant me a table in their artist's alley; instead, Another Dimension offered to have me sign at their booth, next to Riley. That one just one of many conventions where I encountered Riley and they were always fun.
Since quitting my job at Marvel and buying my own home (thus moving far from any comic shops) I haven't had the need or time to visit Another Dimension. I'm very sad to see the shop go - it was the best.
The Danny Kaye Show was a comedy-variety program starring Danny Kaye. It was heard on CBS from January 6, 1945 until May 31, 1946. Kaye was joined by Eve Arden (as Kaye's manager), Lionel Stander (as Kaye's elevator boy), announcer Ken Niles and orchestra leader Harry James. It was sponsored by Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer. Frank Nelson was heard in the first episode as "Mr. Pabst," Kaye's sponsor.
Now, I grew up on Danny Kaye; my mother was (and is) a big fan of Kaye's - she shared one of his albums with us when we were children and we listened to it very often. Later, when my brother and I shared a room, we would listen to her Best of Danny Kaye LP most evenings, to the point that I can still recall many of Kaye's comedic songs from memory. And that's without getting into all the movies we watched! Every time I dig up one of Kaye's films that I didn't see during my childhood, I wish I'd been exposed to it back then - I would have loved it much more. Similarly, listening to the Danny Kaye Show, I wished I'd heard it all when I was a kid. Among other things, almost all of the songs on the Best of Danny Kaye were heard on his radio program - possibly some of them originated there.
The Danny Kaye Show enjoyed two seasons - a half-season from January-June, 1945, then a full season from October, 1945-May, 1946. There's quite a difference between the two seasons. Although Pabst remained his sponsor (and during the summer break they sponsored Harry James in a replacement show), all of Danny's stooges left between seasons. Danny did pick up a new stooge - Butterfly McQueen (who had just exited the Jack Benny Program) portraying the president of Danny Kaye's fan club and a new orchestra led by Dave Terry but otherwise the show became less of an ensemble program.
The other huge change is that Danny missed a few episodes; check that, a lot of episodes! Throughout the fall of 1945 Danny Kaye did not appear on the Danny Kaye Show while he went on a USO tour, with instead the casts of other shows filling in for him, including Frank Sinatra with Judy Garland, George Burns/Gracie Allen, Jack Benny and Eddie Cantor. They're decent broadcasts (in fact, the script for the Jack Benny episode was later repeated on his own show a couple of times) but they're not, in any meaningful sense, episodes of the Danny Kaye Show! I think it's especially notable that most of the guest hosts just insert a reference to Kaye in their scripts but otherwise play out as though it's an episode of their own programs- but Jack Benny structured his guest episode entirely around Kaye, with his cast having seen Kaye's film Wonder Man and upsetting Benny by showering Kaye with accolades as a great comedian.
Missteps? The show made a few. I like Danny's rendition of "Accentuate the Positive," but boy he sings it quite often on his show - four times in 1945! "Minnie the Moocher," "the Railroad Song" and "the Fairy Piper" turned up multiple times as well. But I should add this is only a problem during the first half-season - in the second season I didn't hear Danny repeat any songs.
Neither season feels quite like the right fit for Danny Kaye's talents; he loved speech and song, making funny voices. All he really needed were straight men, not stooges like Eve Arden and Lionel Stander. Why give him a popular bandleader like Harry James? Or a smarmy commercial spokesman like Ken Niles? The first half-season sounds like an attempt to make Danny sound like other popular comedy-variety shows of the 40s. But Danny was not Jack Benny. I like Arden and Stander just fine, but when the show went into jokes with their characters I simply thought, "that's not what I want from a Danny Kaye program." As for Harry James, he had a running gag about what a terrible performer he was; he'd show up in most sketches declaring, "I am James, the butler." Seriously, that was his entire gag.
So the second season - once Danny came back from the USO - should have been more to my liking, right? It's true that in the 2nd season Danny didn't have to compete with stooges for laughs (Butterfly McQueen's role wasn't that large) and there was a wider sampling of Danny's silly songs. But there were also a lot of guest stars - people like Orson Welles and Arthur Treacher. Probably the best guest star was Dick Powell, who popped up to promote his show Rogue's Gallery. Powell appeared in a sketch with Kaye in which Powell was constantly being knocked out by unlikely objects, a funny parody of his own program.
The bottom line is: the Danny Kaye Show could have been great. I felt Danny was restrained by the conventional format of 1940s radio comedy, not permitted to cut loose in the manner of his movie performances. I still would have loved this series when I was a child and I definitely point to the Jack Benny and Dick Powell episodes as diamonds in the rough.
For my final entry of "Shadow Without a Shadow," I'm visiting the Shadow episode "Death Keeps a Deadline" (November 1, 1942) by writer Max Ehrlich, which was re-written for Murder at Midnight as "Trigger Man" (May 17, 1946). As I indicated in my Radio Recap of Murder at Midnight, this is just one of several instances where Murder at Midnight repurposed an episode of the Shadow.
As with Wednesday episode of Suspense, this is a script where the Shadow's role had be written out for the revised script. So, let's examine how that was accomplished!
A massive difference between the two from the top is that while the Shadow has a brief bit of narration to set the stage, Murder at Midnight tells its story from the perspective of "Chicken" Charlie Nix, who narrates frequently through the drama. "Trigger Man" starts with Charlie telling us he's dying from a gunshot wound as he thinks back to how it all happened.
The Shadow opens with Lamont Cranston escorting Margo Lane to her apartment after a date night. As Lamont parts ways, a man asks him for a match, then draws a gun on him. It's mostly the same on Murder at Midnight, although the couple are simply walking together when the stick-up occurs. In both cases, Lamont and his counterpart - John Riley - startle the hold-up man by calling him by his nickname. On the Shadow, the gunman is dubbed "Rabbit" Eddie Burke; on Murder at Midnight, it's "Chicken" Charlie Nix. Lamont/Riley confidently asserts that Rabbit/Chicken doesn't have the nerve to use the gun. Lamont/Riley easily disarms and knocks out the hold-up man. Lamont/Riley explains to their female counterpart that they were aware of the hold-up man's psychological profile, knowing the man had never been able to use a gun (Riley is a plainclothes policeman).
After a musical transition, we learn a year has passed. Rabbit/Chicken meets up with the boss of his gang, Tony Morello/Angelo Dinelli. Rabbit/Chicken bears a deep grudge against Lamont/Riley and insists he'll get back at him. Tony/Angelo tells Rabbit/Chicken that he looks sick and tells him to see his own doctor, Dr. Bryan/Leonard. Amazingly, this scene plays out mostly word for word aside from the name changes!
In the next scene, Tony/Angelo accompanies Rabbit/Chicken on his visit to Dr. Bryan/Leonard. The doctor claims Rabbit/Chicken has a bad heart condition - a severe aneurysm; he gives Rabbit/Chicken six months to live. Another near-identical scene!
Next scene: Rabbit/Chicken meets again with Tony/Angelo and muses that he's like a man standing around in a death house "waiting for the hot seat." Tony/Angelo gives him a drink and suggests that if it were him, he'd use his last six months to paint the town red, do everything he'd always wanted to do before but never had the nerve. He observes that now Rabbit/Chicken has the chance to be a real trigger man and get revenge on Lamont/Riley. At that point, the scenes diverge; in the original script, Tony points out a policeman named Donovan, who was the first one to arrest Rabbit and suggests he start by killing him. Rabbit kills the man, then the Shadow cuts to a commercial. On Murder at Midnight, the scene changes as Angelo leads Chicken to where Riley is and convinces him to kill him (although the dialogue in which Angelo drives Chicken to kill is mostly the same). Afterward, Angelo calls him Charlie because he's not a chicken any more.
In other words, Murder at Midnight has just killed off their version of the Shadow! At this point the two shows become very different.
On the Shadow, Lamont and Commissioner Weston confront Tony, convinced the trigger man committing murders is one of his men but Tony plays dumb (there's no equivalent scene on Murder at Midnight since Riley is dead). In the next scene, Lamont's cab driver buddy Shrevvy shares some gossip with Lamont and Margo about Rabbit's heart condition. This leads Lamont to deduce Rabbit is the trigger man they're looking for. In the following scene, Rabbit meets with Tony and insists he be given the chance to kill Lamont now. When Tony refuses, Rabbit kills him.
In the next scene, the Shadow confronts Dr. Bryan and asks for the truth about Rabbit's condition. Dr. Bryan explains Tony ordered him to lie to Rabbit about his heart. Lamont returns to Shrevvy to find he's lost track of Margo. Rabbit telephones Lamont to inform him he's kidnapped Margo and he'll kill her in one hour, then he'll hunt down Lamont and kill him; Rabbit ends the phone call. In the next scene, Lamont telephones the police for information to help him find Rabbit. We then switch scenes to where Rabbit is holding Margo as his prisoner. Before he can kill her the Shadow enters the room and tells him the truth about his heart condition. The Shadow notes the police are coming and he'll be arrested but Rabbit turns his gun on himself, killing himself just six months after the doctor's fake diagnosis. The story then ends on a typical Shadow wrap-up scene where Lamont and Margo relax after the episode's drama, Lamont explaining how the police guided him to Rabbit's location.
Murder at Midnight continues through Chicken's narration guiding the story, including a scene where he kills a fellow mobster named Tommy Devine for calling him "Chicken." One night Charlie is robbing a warehouse with Mike when they're surprised by the police and flee in their car. Charlie is nicked by a bullet and Mike brings him to a doctor. The doctor fixes him up and remarks Charlie has a good heart; this surprises Charlie, who realizes Angelo's Dr. Leonard had lied to him. In the next scene, Charlie goes looking for Dr. Leonard but finds he moved his practice to another location. In the next scene, Charlie goes home and receives a call from Angelo, telling him he's got another job for him. In the following scene, Charlie goes to Angelo's apartment and reveals he knows the truth about his heart. Angelo and Charlie shoot at each other; Angelo dies immediately. A policeman arrives and calls him "Chicken Charlie," easily slapping him around and disarming him. It looks like he's a chicken again and going back to prison (or maybe the electric chair?).
The first halves of these scripts are nearly word-for-word the same but they certainly do diverge, what with the Shadow's counterpart being killed. It is strange, too, that the Murder at Midnight version ends with the killer surviving - it seemed more poetic for him to die six months after the false diagnosis, as in the original script.
Thanks for following this 3-part series, I hope it was diverting. The episodes are available for your listening pleasure below:
My wife Bethany and I recently co-authored a book about our experiences in Angola; this is my second book about Angola, following the Benefit of Steel. We kept a daily journal during our visit to Angola last year and this book is drawn from what we wrote in that journal; it's also filled with paintings Bethany created based on scenes she observed during our visit.
We're working on getting the book into all the ebook and print markets that the Benefit of Steel has enjoyed, but for now you can buy the ebook directly from Bethany's store page or you can buy it on Amazon's Kindle page.
Bethany and Michael Hoskin are associate missionaries to Angola with SIM Canada. In July 2024 they travelled there for a month-long mission trip and kept a visual and written journal.
Enjoy reading about each day's activities which included repairing a mural at the CEML Hospital, leading worship at the Spiritual Life Conference at Tchincombe Farm and teaching an ESL Bible Study in Lubango.
Also included are a series of original illustrations by Bethany K. Hoskin with some original sketches, as well as poetry written by both her and Michael.
In today's "Shadow Without a Shadow," I'm looking at an episode of the Shadow titled "Nightmare at Gaelsbury" (February 2, 1941) by writer Jerry Devine. It was then retooled into the Suspense episode "the Kettler Method" (September 16, 1942), one of the earliest episodes of Suspense!
Now, the Lights Out episode we looked at was an instance where the Shadow was added to a script; this time he had to be eliminated from the script! So, let's analyze how that was accomplished:
Both scripts open in the office of the physician in charge of an insane asylum during a stormy night; in "Nightmare at Gaeslbury" it's Dr. Blair in Gaelsbury, in "the Kettler Method" it's Dr. Morriseey in Calston. The biggest difference with the Suspense version though is that it has a narrator who adds a lot of additional details at the start of each scene.
Dr. Blair is treating a difficult patient who believes he received secret knowledge from the sorcerer Cagliostro. He rants at Dr. Blair then is returned to his cell by the keeper McPherson. Dr. Blair tells his nurse that this man had been a scientist until a female patient died on the operating table. The nurse opines that Dr. Blair needs a rest and Blair mentions his friends Lamont Cranston and Margo Lane are coming for a visit. Suddenly there's a gunshot and Dr. Blair and the nurse discover they're locked inside his office. The insane patient (later named Griswold) can be heard laughing in the hall.
On Suspense, the keeper is named Caffrey and there's an added exchange where he brings the insane patient to see Dr. Morrissey. All the exposition about who the patient is (Kettler in this version) occurs between Morriseey and Caffrey instead of Morrissey and the nurse. Kettler enters and demands to see the male patient he had been operating on, a man named Benham. Kettler is convinced Benham is hidden somewhere in the asylum. Although the content of their exchange is very different, it leads to a conversation between Morrissey and his nurse that is mostly the same as the prior version. Morrissey mentions his friends Leslie and Claire Winton will be visiting him. The nurse also mentions she put some new bandage samples into his coat pocket (which become important later). Then there's a scream and a gunshot. Caffrey tries to get into the office but when Morrissey opens the door, Caffrey is near-dying and warns him Kettler is coming with the other patients. Kettler exclaims, "tables turn!"
Both scripts go to a musical transition as the scene changes. Both scripts open at a train station as the couples arrive in Gaelsbury/Calston. Mention should be made that the character of Leslie Winton will be the equivalent of Lamont Cranston in the Suspense version; he's played by John Gibson, who portrays Leslie as a very milquetoast type of character. Anyway, it's established that Margo/Claire has a headache that's bothering them. In the Shadow version, Lamont and Margo are pestered by a vendor and they agree to buy a jackknife for Margo's nephew (the jackknife is kind of a substitute for the bandages in Suspense). In both scripts, the couples are met by a man from the sanitarium - Tarfu/Kato, who speaks in a deep voice and limited vocabulary. Strangely, the descriptions of Tarfu and Kato are different - Lamont describes Tarfu as West Indian and 7 feet tall; Kato's nationality isn't given but he's guessed to be 8 feet tall!
Another musical transition as scenes change. The couples arrive at the sanitarium as Tarfu/Kato tells them to wait. They're visited by a man who warns them that the inmates are running the asylum; he's a famous musician (Sigmund Arnold on the Shadow, Arturo Alvarez on Suspense). The two scripts are much the same as the couples assume the musician is one of the patients. Dr. Griswold/Kettler then arrives and has Tarfu/Kato return the musician to his cell. Interestingly, in the first script he's called "patient number 8" but in the second he's "patient number 10." Dr. Griswold/Kettler introduces himself to the couples and claims that Dr. Blair/Morrissey is away on an emergency case, leaving him in charge of the sanitarium. When Margo/Claire mentions her headache that interests the doctor, who insists he can treat her case and invites Lamont/Leslie to enjoy some drinks or cigarettes in the office.
The Shadow then has a short scene that has no equivalent on Suspense in which supporting character Commissioner Weston receives a call from Dr. Blair who tries to inform Weston of the takeover that's going on at Gaelsbury. And that's the entirety of Weston's influence on this episode, which makes me wonder why this scene was even used.
Returning to the sanitarium, we have near-identical scenes in which Lamont/Leslie discover there are no drinks or cigarettes in the office. Turning on the radio they hear a broadcast mentioning Arnold/Alvarez's concert has been cancelled, causing Lamont/Leslie to realize the musician they met was the real person. Just as they try to confront the doctor they instead run into Tarfu/Kato, who informs them that Margo/Claire is going to receive a special operation. Lamont/Leslie object and the doctor enters and is quite put out when Lamont/Leslie "demands" to see her. Tarfu/Kato knocks out Lamont/Leslie from behind and the doctor gloats over his fallen body.
I should mention at this point that the Shadow episode is half-over and at the commercial break, yet the Suspense program, which has no commercials, is 2/3rds through their script!
Lamont/Leslie find themselves sealed in a room with Dr. Blair/Morrissey. There's some exposition as Blair/Morrissey explains what happened. We also learn Blair had his leg broken after being caught telephoning Commissioner Weston (no such injury was performed on Morrissey). It's after the big exposition scenes that the scripts diverge quite a bit. On the Shadow, Lamont remembers he still has a jackknife in his pocket. Lamont gives the knife to Dr. Blair and he waves it around at Tarfu, fascinating his simple mind as a diversion while Lamont escapes the basement.
Lamont escapes the sanitarium by climbing over the wall but is spotted by a pair of Irish cops who are passing by. Lamont tries to explain the situation to them but they assume he's an escaped mental patient and lead him back inside. Dr. Griswold even shows off Arnold to the policemen; when Lamont correctly identifies Arnold, the policemen believe the doctor's story, doubting a famous musician would be in the sanitarium. Griswold claims he doesn't want the responsibility of holding Lamont any longer and tells the police to take him away (apparently it's that easy! the police go along with this!). Fortunately, while leaving the facility they find Tarfu menacing Dr. Blair. The police drive off Tarfu with their bullets and apologize to Lamont for how they treated him.
Now, on Suspense Leslie gets the idea to masquerade as Benham, Kettler's deceased patient. Morrissey covers Leslie's face with bandages so that he won't be immediately recognized. In both scripts, Lamont/Leslie interrupt the procedures on Margo/Claire's headaches but the procedures and circumstances are quite different; Griswold wants to use insulin on Margo while Kettler wants to cut Claire's head open. Lamont appears to Griswold as the Shadow, claiming to be the ghost of Cagliostro to play on his mind, while Leslie enters the room in bandages claiming to be Benham.
On the Shadow, Griswold tries to flee the sanitarium and, in fear, shoots Tarfu with his gun; Tarfu stabs Griswold to death with the jackknife. On Suspense, Kettler realizes Leslie isn't Benham and is about to stab him when a sudden shot rings out; it turns out Claire stole Kettler's pistol and shot him with it.
Both close with Dr. Blair/Morrissey enjoying a quiet evening with Lamont/Leslie and Margo/Claire, listening to the music of Arnold/Alvarez while they recap how the plot was foiled thanks to their quick thinking. And as a closing line, Margo/Claire notes: "My headache-- it's completely gone!"
If you'd like to hear and compare these episodes for yourself, here you go:
This week I'm doing something instead of my usual Radio Recaps. I'm going to look at three radio plays that were heard on the radio adventure series the Shadow but were also heard on other programs without the Shadow - hence, the Shadow without a Shadow!
Our first examples are the Arch Oboler scripts "Nobody Died" (first heard on Lights Out December 9, 1936) and the Shadow version "Fountain of Death" (from November 27, 1938). Because the Shadow version came second it means that Oboler had to add the hero to his script from whole cloth - there was no hero in "Nobody Died."
In "Nobody Died" we open on an old woman calling for Dr. Miller. The two men attending to this 84-year old woman are soon joined by the female physician Dr. Miller who goes alone to see the woman, Adelina.
Whereas "Fountain of Death" begins in a motorcar as Lamont explains to Margo they're going to meet Dr. Anna Marla. It soon transitions to the two greeting the female physician Dr. Marla, who explains there's a 95-year old woman in the next room named Mrs. Cronin. Dr. Marla, Lamont and Margo go to see the woman together.
From there the two are very similar as Dr. Miller/Marla speaks to the old woman and promises to help her. Dr. Miller/Marla injects the woman with a serum which causes her to grow younger. While in the Lights Out version Dr. Miller created her formula while testing on mice to cure cancer, in the Shadow Dr. Marla was trying to cure aging itself - but the exposition is very similar. In both, the youthened woman makes the same exclamations as she realizes she's young again.
Both scripts then have a musical transition to indicate the passage of time. In Lights Out one of the two men from the opening scene is revealed to be the mayor and brings "His Excellency" (later named Joseph Brown) to meet with Dr. Miller. Brown investigates Dr. Miller's laboratory and when she refuses to explain how she youthened the old woman, Brown forces her to inject the mayor with her formula, despite her objections that she doesn't completely understand the formula yet. The mayor becomes a young man
In the Shadow, three days after the injection Dr. Marla is confronted by Gorlan, who is someone she recognizes from her home country.
Then the two reach a similar point as Brown/Gorlan muses how the formula could create an "invincible" army of young men. Dr. Miller/Marla objects "you cannot make men young to kill-- make them young to live!"
In the Lights Out version, Brown sends an underling to take the woman's notebook from her; a gunshot is heard, suggesting the underling has shot Dr. Miller to death. In the Shadow, Gorlan wants Dr. Marla to hand him a vial of the formula so that he can replicate it; when she refuses, he shoots her himself. In both versions, Brown/Gorlan declares the doctor has committed suicide.
But the Shadow has to add another scene before we continue -- after all, Lamont is the hero of this version! Lamont arrives at Dr. Marla's lab and finds her dying; she tells him Gorlan has the formula and he vows he'll track him down. After a commercial break, Lamont is trying to find Gorlan but none of his sources have ever heard of the man. Lamont gets so excited that he starts to flub a line but very quickly corrects himself! Fortunately for Lamont he's telephoned by Tom Brady, the foreign correspondent of the Examiner. Brady tells Lamont he saw Gorlan booking a trip at a travel agency. Lamont assumes Gorlan is going to skip the country aboard a boat but Margo notes that due to a strike there are no ships sailing. Lamont finally realizes Gorlan is going to take a clipper ship back to Europe.
After a musical transition, Margo and Lamont arrive at the clipper ship and Lamont boards the craft. A steward directs Lamont to Gorlan's cabin.
Back in the Lights Out original, Brown arranges for the military to begin receiving the formula. Brown intends to overthrow his country's true leader (strongly implied as Hitler) as he schemes with his top general. Having tested the formula on 50 of his men, Brown finally injects himself with the formula, becoming younger and stronger. Just then he's visited by the other villager from the opening who has brought Adelina with him. The man reveals the formula has caused Adelina's mind continue to grow younger, leaving her very simple-minded. Brown is agitated as he begins to realize the implications for him, given the extremely large dose he took.
In the Shadow, Lamont invisibly enters Gorlan's cabin and mentally tricks him into revealing where he's hidden the formula. The Shadow confronts Gorlan and demands he give him the formula. Although Gorlan can't see him, he feels certain he can shoot the Shadow with his gun, given the cabin isn't that large. The Shadow points out a stray bullet could hit the gasoline. Realizing the truth, Gorlan reveals he already analyzed the formula and memorized it. Gorlan offers an alliance with the Shadow and suggests they drink a toast of wine to celebrate their partnership. The Shadow refuses but Gorlan drinks his wine. The Shadow notes that Gorlan drugged his glass with the rejuvenation formula but he switched the two glasses, forcing Gorlan to drink the formula.
Now, in the Lights Out version, Brown is overwhelmed by the effects of the formula, growing younger and younger (replaced by younger actors) until he's an infant (and possibly youthens out of existence- hence the title, "Nobody Died").
Whereas in the Shadow, the Shadow suggests that Gorlan is growing younger. Gorlan goes insane with terror and jumps out of the clipper to his death. In a wrap-up scene, Lamont explains to Margo that he stole the sample of the formula and instead poured a stimulant into Gorlan's wine that caused him to think he was getting younger. Lamont decided to destroy the sample of the formula so that no one could use the formula for evil.
Here are the two episodes in case you'd like to compare them for yourself:
The detective program Rogue's Gallery started under the banner of "Bandwagon Mysteries" as it was a summer subsitute for the Fitch Bandwagon. It ran on NBC from September 27, 1945 until September 22, 1946 with Dick Powell as the titular hero, Richard Rogue. At the time, Powell was changing his image from a "juvenile" leading man (as he'd been since the start of his career in film) to that of a tough guy, taking on the role of Philip Marlowe in 1944's Murder My Sweet to prove he could play other types of characters. Rogue's Gallery helped continue that new trend.
Rogue's Gallery is not a very hard-boiled detective show, however. There's a certain lightness in Powell's voice that seldom goes away and a lightness in the detective stories that keep it from being too serious. Rogue's Gallery is mostly good fun.
The most distinctive factor of Rogue's Gallery is that Richard Rogue would usually get hit on the head once per episode, resulting in a dream sequence in which Richard would visit "Cloud Eight" and encounter his other self, Eugor (Peter Leeds), a cackling imp. Early on in the series, Eugor would often appear around the half-way mark and provide some exposition to remind Richard how he wound up in the situation he was in. As the show progressed, however, they played around with the format; one episode closed with Eugor complaining that Rogue wasn't knocked out - the following week Richard was knocked out about one minute into the drama! In another episode, Richard met Eugor's girlfriend at Cloud Eight instead of Eugor; that led to other episodes where Eugor and his girlfriend both greeted Richard and one where the girlfriend's father was forcing Eugor to marry her.
The Eugor scenes are more than a humorous diversion - they indicate that circa 1945, the trope of a detective getting hit on the head from behind was horribly cliche. What's amazing is that even post-Rogue's Gallery, so many detective shows continued to use that tropes; shows like the Adventures of Philip Marlowe and the Man from Homicide usually deployed a bludgeon to their hero's head once per episode!
Anyway, the Eugor scenes set Rogue's Gallery apart as they sound nothing like what you'd hear on any other detective series (and there were certainly plenty of competing detective shows on the air during its original run). As late as 1951, you can hear an episode of Mickey Rooney's the Hardy Family where Andy Hardy performs a Eugor impression as part of a private eye parody.
After a year in the role, Dick Powell exited the series; after a stab at playing Johnny Dollar in the pilot episode of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, he found a home on Richard Diamond, Private Detective which aired from 1949-1953, initially on NBC. The two shows invite many comparisons: Richard Diamond had no Eugor equivalent but overall had a larger supporting cast; while Richard Rogue had his girlfriend Betty Callahan (Lurene Tuttle), a newspaper reporter who was often involved in his investigations, Richard Diamond dated the wealthy socialite Helen Asher (Virginia Gregg) who almost never got involved in his cases; while Richard Rogue occasionally showed off Dick Powell's marvelous singing voice, it was enshrined on Richard Diamond as every episode featured at least one ditty sung by Powell; while Rogue's Gallery was pretty easy-going, Richard Diamond, Private Detective tended to be even more humorous (although some episodes steered strongly into hard boiled material).
The series soldiered on without Powell; Barry Sullivan (best-rembered for the Unexpected became Richard Rogue for a summer series from June 8-September 28, 1947; then it made one last stab on ABC with Chester Morris (best-known as Boston Blackie) and Paul Stewart as Rogue from November 29, 1950-November 21, 1951. We have only one complete Rogue's Gallery from the Sullivan era (plus 2 fragments) and one episode from the ABC run with Stewart as Rogue. Although Eugor was gone, the series was otherwise the same with Sullivan as the lead, his patter was just as quippy as before. The Paul Stewart version comes across as much more hard-boiled than Powell or Sullivan, probably because Stewart wasn't as laid-back a performer; Eugor can be heard in the Stewart episode but he's no longer on "Cloud Eight," he's instead presented as the voice of Rogue's conscience.
Rogue's Gallery had been written by Ray Buffum up until Powell's departure. Buffum had previously written for A Man Called Jordan; after Powell left, he went on to contribute to the Casebook of Gregory Hood.
In some instances, we only have a rehearsal version of certain episodes of Rogue's Gallery. These sound very close to the broadcast versions but, well... check out the episode "Lady with a Gun" (June 30, 1946) sometime - Dick Powell flubs a line at around the 22:00 mark and emits an expletive you never hear on OTR!
Of all the old-time radio horror programs, Dark Fantasy certainly stands apart. It's a series I learned of relatively late; around 1997 I bought a set of cassettes from Radio Spirits called "Old-Time Radio's Greatest Mysteries" which included 3 episodes of Dark Fantasy. I always enjoy finding another example of OTR horror and I was surprised that I'd heard nothing of it before - my local radio station QR77 never played a single episode; I had never heard it on Yesterday USA; John Dunning did not give the series an entry in his book On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old Time Radio.
Dark Fantasy was the brainchild of a writer named Scott Bishop. He was apparently a prolific author, although I've never found evidence of it. A press release for the launch of Dark Fantasy asserted he was "father of hundreds of mystery novels," yet I haven't seen any of them in bibliographies of pulp novels. An episode of Dark Fantasy titled "House of Bread" featured Bishop himself as the lead character, who is told by his publisher his books are "selling like peanuts at a circus." Mere wishful thinking? Ego-stroking? Did Bishop publish his fiction under a psuedonym? Perhaps one day I'll know.
Understanding who Bishop is and where he came from might help explain why Dark Fantasy is the series that it is. It should be noted that it aired from November 14, 1941 to June 26, 1942 over WKY, an NBC affiliate in Oklahoma City - thus, the series wasn't heard nation-wide. Airing when it did, the most obvious influences on Dark Fantasy would have been programs like the Witch's Tale and Lights Out.
How can I describe this series? I suppose you can divide Dark Fantasy into two types of episodes if you want to grossly oversimplify:
Episodes with consistent tones.
Episodes with inconsistent tones.
Those of the former are productions with very even plots. Characters and situations are introduced, a complication appears, something weird happens (usually something supernatural although occasionally sci-fi in origin) and the story ends. For example there's the episode "Resolution, 1841" in which four friends get together over the holidays; they banter together, mention is made that one woman has some financial troubles; later, one of them is possessed by the ghost of the woman's grandfather and he reveals where he hid a fortune.
In the latter, scenes lurch from one to the next with no sense of momentum. The weird things that occur are given next-to-zero build-up. For example there's the episode "The Cup of Gold" in which a golfer is killed; a woman who is supposedly responsible for the murder doesn't recall doing it; then some incense is lit and teleports the woman and her accuser to the planet Vento; a resident of Vento explains the woman is a reincarnation of a woman from Vento and she killed the golfer because they were enemies in previous lives. But when I type it like that I make it sound much more coherant than it is to hear.
Dark Fantasy was low budget; sound effects were usually limited, even small things like footsteps and doors closing were often omitted. Consequently, much of the show seems to be characters exchanging dialogue in a void - there's seldom a sense of place or atmosphere and those elements are so important in horror. Most of the drama is put over through dialogue and that becomes wearying, especially with the sotto voce style Bishop seemed to prefer from his actors. Whereas in the Witch's Tale or Lights Out characters would often scream their dialogue to convey terror, Dark Fantasy performers tend to lower their voices into whispers, as though in quiet awe of whatever was happening. It is extremely ineffective.
Dark Fantasy is camp, but not in the way Inner Sanctum Mysteries is - there's no sense that Scott Bishop meant his program to be intentionally over-the-top, even when he penned "Spawn of the Subhuman," a story about a gorilla given the voice of an opera singer by a mad scientist. Dark Fantasy took itself quite seriously, like Lights Out, but there's nothing deeper going on- while Arch Oboler liked his Lights Out stories to serve as commentaries about the world around himself (especially as commentaries on fascism), I have no idea what Scott Bishop valued nor abhorred. The man liked to write horror stories and NBC was willing to pay him for those stories.
If you want horror, Dark Fantasy does sometimes come through; "the Demon Tree" and "the Headless Dead" are both stories with a big supernatural threat tied to a plot that flows very evenly; you might get a kick out of them. Other stories are extremely pulpy, such as the sci-fi tale "Men Call Me Mad" about a visit to a micro-world, or the African adventure tale "The Thing from the Darkness."
Encore Theater was a dramatic anthology that featured half-hour adaptations of popular films. Yes, it's another one of those. Lux Radio Theater proved a popular series could be established on film dramatizations and eventually the likes of Academy Award Theater, Screen Directors Playhouse and MGM Theater of the Air followed in its wake.
Encore Theater aired in the summer of 1946 over CBS at the same time they were broadcasting Academy Award Theater and Lux Radio Theater! Clearly they were striking while the iron was hot!
Many of the films adapted on Encore Theater are very familiar - I think every single one had been previously adapted as a one-hour program on Lux Radio Theater. In fact, the first episode was "Magnificient Obsession," which was adapted for radio on at least seven other occasions!
But there's a special reason why they adapted "Magnificent Obsession" - Encore Theater was sponsored by the pharmaceutical company Schenley Laboratories and "Magnificent Obsession" is a story about a physician. Nearly every episode adapted a movie that related in some way to medicine, from "Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet" to "Yellowjack."
Encore Theater didn't have as many big stars as the other programs I've mentioned; in fact, a lot of the big stars who showed up were also the sort of Hollywood names you'd hear on an episode of Suspense: Ronald Colman, Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Paul Lukas, Robert Taylor. And being a CBS program that also meant the stars were supported by the finest of radio's professionals - Cathy Lewis, Elliott Lewis, Howard Duff, Lurene Tuttle, Gerald Mohr, etc.
One of my absolute favourite radio series is the short-lived mystery/horror anthology program Mystery in the Air, starring Peter Lorre. It was an NBC summer 1947 replacement series sponsored by Camel cigarettes while their usual clients Abbott and Costello took a break.
Now, there was also a 1945 summer series Camel produced called Mystery in the Air and a lot of radio logs treat the two as the same show. Scholarship performed by the Digital Deli determined they were very different shows - the 1945 program was a detective show starring Jackson Beck as detective Stonewall Scott.
Lorre's Mystery in the Air lasted just 13 episodes; the first five are now lost programs: "The Tell Tale Heart," "Leiningen vs. the Ants," "the Touch of Your Hand," "the Interruption" and "Nobody Loves Me." Those are definitely some tantalizing titles - "Nobody Loves Me" was also performed by Lorre on Suspense, which we still have; and Lorre's "Leiningen vs. the Ants" aired half a year before the first adaptation performed on Escape; one wonders if they used the same script on Escape.
But let's consider the remaining 8 episodes:
"The Marvelous Barastro" (by Ben Hecht) in which Lorre portrays a famous magician who married a blind woman, then encountered another magician who was determined to learn Barastro's tricks and destroy his happiness.
"The Lodger" (by Marie Belloc Lowndes) in which Lorre is the man believed to be a serial killer dubbed 'the Avenger'; however, he's not the point-of-view character as that role falls to Agnes Moorehead as the landlady.
"The Horla" (by Guy de Maupassant) in which Lorre portrays the hapless man who becomes haunted by an invisible presence.
"Beyond Good and Evil" (by Ben Hecht) in which Lorre portrays an escaped criminal who masquerades as the new minister to a small town, challenging his own sense of right and wrong.
"The Mask of Medusa" (by Nelson S. Bond) in which Lorre portrays an escaped criminal who hides in a wax museum where the statues are very much alive.
"The Queen of Spades" (by Alexander Pushkin) in which Lorre portrays a gambler who learns the secret to win every time at cards.
"The Black Cat" (by Edgar Allan Poe) in which Lorre portrays the brute who murders a cat and soon becomes a killer.
"Crime and Punishment" (by Fyodor Dostoevsky) explicitly an adaptation of the 1935 motion picture, with Lorre reprising his role as the murderer, Raskolnikov.
The adaptations take some liberties - for instance, there isn't a single radio adaptation of "The Lodger" that uses the novel's ending and Mystery in the Air came up with its own as other shows did; "the Mask of Medusa" is a fairly brief short story and Mystery in the Air adapted it all by the 15-minute mark - their expansion is very good.
Many of these stories were heard on other radio shows (Suspense adapted both of the Ben Hect stories - Mystery in the Air used the same scripts). However, some are very seldom heard on the radio, such as "the Horla." "The Horla" was the first episode of Mystery in the Air I heard and it won me over immediately because of Lorre's intense performance as his character grows increasingly unhinged across the half-hour, until the show ends with him breaking character to assure the audience he's not really insane! This episode made me fascinated with Guy de Maupassant's fiction; I later read all of his short stories. I also recently reviewed a graphic novel adaptation of this story, le Horla.
I like all 8 episodes; "the Queen of Spades" is a terrific supernatural tale and "the Black Cat" came across very well. Perhaps "the Lodger" is the least interesting but only because the emphasis on Moorehead's point-of-view reduces the amount of time for Lorre to be heard.
Lorre was a terrific actor whose abilities seemed to be taken for granted by Hollywood for much of his career. Mystery in the Air demonstrated he was as capable as Boris Karloff in headlining his own anthology series; too bad the summer series didn't result in a regular radio series. He did later host Nightmare but hosting isn't the same as leading the production.
I should also mention that the cast of Mystery in the Air included announcer Henry Morgan -- no, not the star of the Henry Morgan Show. This is the same performer who would later make his professional name "Harry Morgan," serving as Joe Friday's sidekick in the 1960s Dragnet TV show and performing as Colonel Potter on M*A*S*H. It's interesting to hear him back in the 40s - his voice never seemed to age.
Here's a YouTube playlist created by a fan of the remaining episodes of Mystery in the Air.
I've written more than 100 of my Radio Recaps so far yet scarcely any have been about comedy programs. To be fair, as much of an old-time radio fan that I am, I was very slow to come around to radio comedy. Even today, there's just a small handful of comedy shows that I genuinely like, a much large list of shows I mostly like (with certain quantifiers) and a nearly as large list of shows that I don't like hearing at all.
It's not simply that comedy is subjective -- all art is. But comedy is also topical; even if the comedy doesn't rely on commentary on then-current events, it tends to use slang and cultural references that are very soon minor historical footnotes.
The comedy of Bob and Ray (performed by Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding) is, I think, somewhere between of-its-time and timeless. They satirized trends in entertainment - especially satirizing radio shows of the time (such as their parody of the soap opera Mary Noble, Backstage Wife in their recurring sketches "Myra Backstage, Noble Wife" or the One Man's Family as "One Feller's Family"). But a lot of their comedy comes from two men simply having a conversation and trying to surprise or one-up each other.
I really didn't get Bob and Ray the first time I heard it. My local radio station never broadcast Bob and Ray as part of "Those Old Radio Shows," so I only heard it when I began listening to Yesterday USA in my late 'teens. The first time I heard an episode the rebroadcaster made a big deal about the series. Listening to that episode, it didn't seem like much of a big deal. It was a late 40s iteration of their program and they sounded like a couple of disc jockeys (which is how they started) bantering with each other. Their voices were so casual they were nearly mumbling - it required a lot of my attention to follow what they were saying and after that, I wasn't so sure that it was worth my time listening to more of them.
What changed my mind was John Dunning's book On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. Dunning's entry on Bob and Ray made the series sound very funny - I was especially interested in hearing some of the parodies Dunning described, such as the Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy juvenile adventure serial parody, "Jack Headstrong, the All-American American." I'd heard plenty of Jack Armstrong episodes on Yesterday USA and I'd never enjoyed it; I thought that program was ripe for parody and, indeed, it's some of Bob and Ray's best material. The opening of "Jack Headstrong" in which Bob and Ray yell "Jack Headstrong!" at each other, dragging it out so long that (to me) it becomes funnier and funnier always placed me in the right frame of mind.
Of course, around the same time I was learning to appreciate Bob and Ray, I was also getting into improv comedy, thanks to discovering Whose Line Is It Anyway? Dunning had explained that although the series had a script, Bob and Ray would frequently veer off-script. Sometimes they'd try to confuse each other, sometimes the producers in the studio would introduce a sudden noise and see if they could incorporate it into their act. It's probably not to every taste, but once I knew what Bob and Ray was about, I was in.
The series ran on basically every network under all kinds of names. Their earliest days were as Matinee with Bob and Ray (1946-1951); then they went to network radio as Bob and Ray Present the National Broadcasting Company (1951-1953); they appeared as a segment on NBC's news show Monitor (1955-1959); Bob and Ray on Mutual (1955-1957); Bob and Ray Present the CBS Radio Network (1959-1960); decades later they popped up on NPR as the Bob and Ray Public Radio Show (1983-1987).
They portrayed every voice on their show; this meant adopting all kinds of unusual accents and speaking patterns, as well as Ray's surprisingly good falsetto which he used to portray all the female characters.
Outside of radio, they were on NBC television in 1951; we have a few episodes available to us on YouTube and although it's primitive TV, they were gamely doing a lot of their improv and adapting their characters over from radio. My favourite TV sketch is the "Frankenstein Brothers Suit" sketch:
They enjoyed a big revival in the 1970s with their stage show Bob and Ray: The Two and Only, which revisited a lot of the characters from their radio show. That also lead to a few books of their routines, which are all right as a read, but their jokes are much funnier with the two men delivering them.
A lot of the comedy on Bob and Ray is, like that "Jack Headstrong" gag, based on repetition. Many of their recurring sketches were essentially the same gag each time, such as Ray's character Webley Webster, who would introduce a dramatization of some great book that, for some reason, would turn out to be a seagoing adventure program in which a captain assaults his first mate (for me, some of the humour comes from anticipating what imagined slight will cause the captain to assault the first mate).
The Old Time Radio Researchers have 429 different Bob and Ray episodes in their library.
This is Ray Goulding reminding you to write if you get work...
...and Bob Elliott reminding you to hang by your thumbs.
A Salute to the Law has been indexed online as "the Nick Harris Program" but the Old Time Radio Researchers insist a Salute to the Law is the more accurate title of this series. They also say that this program ran from 1923 until 1942 which would make it the earliest radio program I've featured in my Radio Recaps!
What we do have of the program is dated 1934-1940. It was a 15-minute syndicated show introduced by Nick Harris, a real-life private detective. Harris would present stories that were supposedly drawn from true cases, although it's always hard to know for certain with programs such as these.
A Salute to the Law, then, was a crime program. Each episode dramatized a case, sometimes from the perspective of the law, other times from the perspective of the perpetrator. It was never, however, sympathetic to lawbreakers. Indeed, one episode opens with Harris going on a virtual tirade against the release of repeat offenders, closing his speech with a call for repeat offenders to be jailed for life.
The show sounds a lot like one of its contemporaries, Police Reporter, especially when it dramatizes scenes of murder. There's one particular episode titled "the Female Ogre" about a horrific series of murders committed by a woman that sounds just as sensationalistic as anything on Police Reporter. It's early radio and often primitive - not as nuanced as even Calling All Cars, much less Dragnet or 21st Precinct.
"The Scarlet Queen, the proudest ship to plough the seas, bound for uncharted adventure! Every week a complete entry in the log and every week a league further in the strange Voyage of the Scarlet Queen!"
The Voyage of the Scarlet Queen was a radio adventure series that aired on Mutual from July 3, 1947 to February 14, 1948. The titular Scarlet Queen was a ketch under the command of Philip Carney (Elliott Lewis), aided by his first mate Red Gallagher (Ed Max). It was written by Gil Doud and Bob Tallman, produced by James Burton.
As the series involves a ship at sail it should be noted that this was not a historical program - it was set in contemporary times, with nearly every episode set somewhere in the Pacific, particularly at Asian ports of call.
Unusually for a non-juvenile adventure series, the Voyage of the Scarlet Queen had some continuity between episodes. The series kicked off with Carney in San Francisco, receiving an assignment from a Chinese man named Ku Chei Kang which promises to lead Carney to a fortune - however there's a rival group led by a man named Constantino who want the fortune for themselves. Constantino's people kill Carney's first mate in the first episode, resulting in Red Gallagher joining the crew; Gallagher is himself one of Constantino's agents but by the end of the pilot had swapped sides to serve faithfully under Carney's command. Interestingly, there was still a bit of friction for the first few episodes as Gallagher's allegiance to Carney was tested; but eventually the search for Kang's fortune was wrapped up, yet the series kept going with a variety of done-in-one episodes before it was cancelled. The final episode brought up Kang again, a fitting conclusion to the series.
In the audition, Lewis was Red Gallagher - Howard Duff had the role of Philip Carney. By the time it became a series, Duff was busy with the Adventures of Sam Spade, which must be why Lewis was promoted to the lead role. Listening to the audition (which was redone for the broadcast version) it is a big distracting to hear Duff as Carney as the role is played straight with none of Duff's usual sarcasm. For that matter, it's a bit hard to accept Lewis in the role of the tough and brawny Gallagher; the recasting definitely served to the show's benefit. In 1950 an attempt was made to recreate the series as the Log of the Black Parrot with Elliott Lewis again in the lead and Gil Doud writing alongside producer Antony Ellis but this time the pilot did not lead to a series.
Lead writer Gil Doud was a busy writer whose work appeared in One Out of Seven, the Adventures of Sam Spade, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, Pursuit, Escape, Suspense, Gunsmoke and Fort Laramie. His Escape credits include the episode "Port Royal," which was also set at sea (I rather like that episode). Co-writer Bob Tallman also wrote a few episodes of Escape, Suspense and the Adventures of Sam Spade.
The Voyage of the Scarlet Queen is a series I tried repeatedly to listen to over the last 2 decades yet something always held me back - I couldn't account for it. Gil Doud's writing, Elliott Lewis' acting, sea-going adventure - heck, those elements make it sound like a spin-off from Escape, right? But it wasn't until I resolved to write up the series on this blog that I made a determined effort at listening to the entire series.
There are some problems with the show, mainly that it was set primarily in Asia yet the Asian characters were all cast with white men doing bad "yellowface" accents. I like Bill Johnstone and William Conrad a lot but their Voyage of the Scarlet Queen characters are regrettable footnotes in their radio careers. Still, the series was wise enough to cast Barton Yarborough in a few episodes as a Texan, permitting him to act in the accent he did best (his first character was killed off; the series then brought him back as the first character's brother!).
Still, it is a strong series with a lot of good work being done; it's least-offensive when it steps away from the Asian characters as in the pilot and in the episode "The Jewel Thieves and The Straw Filled Dummy" in which Lewis' wife Cathy Lewis held a memorable role as a romantic interest for Carney.
The Voyage of the Scarlet Queen's run is mostly intact, which is unusual for Mutual shows; they were rebroadcast by the Armed Forces, who account for most of the surviving episodes; you can hear the Old Time Radio Researchers' collection in this YouTube playlist!
Phyl Coe Radio Mysteries was a syndicated program that aired during September 6-December 20, 1937. It starred Peggy Allenby as the titular detective Phyllis Coe and none other than Bud Collyer (later of the Adventures of Superman) as her sidekick Tom Taylor. It shouldn't surprise you to learn that "Phyl Coe Radio Mysteries" was a big advertising campaign for Philco radios, similar to Majestic's Master of Mystery serving as a lengthy advertisement for Majestic radios.
Yet, Phyl Coe Radio Mysteries had a gimmick - listeners were invited to help solve the mysteries heard in each episode! Although the programs featured a complete drama that always ended with Phyl identifying the criminal, it lacked the typical radio detective scene where they would expound upon the clues which pointed to the criminal's guilt. Philco dealers provided booklets for listeners to gather the clues for themselves, then mail in their own reasoning for what tipped off Phyl to the criminal's identity, with correct responses leading to cash prizes. That's a pretty great gimmick!
The gimmick is the best part of the series; it's of interest that Phyl is an early female protagonist in the radio mystery genre but the stories themselves are very average radio mystery stories. Still, they're very breezy and easy to listen to.
"Over the minds of mortal men come many shadows; shadows of greed and hate; jealousy and fear. Shadows which fog the minds of men and women which urge them on into their venture in the dark..."
Dark Venture was a mystery anthology program heard over ABC from May 30, 1945 until February 10, 1947. For part of its run it was sponsored by Wildroot Cream Oil. It was produced in ABC's San Francisco studio like other shows of the time such as Pat Novak, for Hire. The series was narrated by John Lake, directed by Leonard Reeg and produced by J. Donald Wilson.
If that last name sounds familiar, it should - J. Donald Wilson was the original producer of the Whistler for CBS and took up Dark Venture after leaving that series. Wilson also produced the 1930s Adventures of Charlie Chan and the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe.
J. Donald Wilson must have had some interest in the idea of getting into the psychology behind crimes, just as the Whistler got inside the heads of each episode's would-be criminal. Dark Venture promoted itself as being interested in secenarios that "solve the outcome by applying psychology." Like the Whistler, there were often surprise endings but the series played pretty fair with the audience, usually relying on a protagonist who lacked a vital piece of information which would lead to his defeat (or, if wrongly accused, vindication).
The series drew from a lot of great California radio talent, with episodes led by the likes of Elliot Lewis, William Conrad, Marvin Miller (who was also the announcer on the Whistler), Howard McNear, Bill Johnstone and Lurene Tuttle. Many episodes were written by Larry Marcus, who also wrote for the Whistler, Suspense and Night Beat.
I rather like Dark Venture - it is, certainly, reminiscent of the Whistler, but that's not a detraction. The focus on characters' psychological torment gives the series a feel that's totally unlike the bulk of mystery/crime anthology shows.
My pick for the best of Dark Venture is "Eclipse," in which Elliot Lewis portrayed an amnesiac man who discovers a small fortune hidden in his clothes and a white-suited man hot on his trail! "The Miser" could have been produced on the Whistler, concerning itself with a clerk who schemes to pocket money from the register following a robbery and the escalating trouble that brings him. "Hideout" is a pretty rote criminal-on-the-run story elevated by William Conrad's terrific performance as the lead character. Easily the least-conventional story is "Ten Dollar Bill," which follows a $10 bill that falls into various hands through both crime and circumstance.
We only have 15 surviving episodes of Dark Venture in circulation, several of them through the Armed Forces' Mystery Playhouse program. Here's a YouTube playlist created by a fan with those 15 episodes.
Once again I am delighted to note that a "lost" episode of Suspense has been found! This time it's the episode from January 3, 1956: "The Eavesdropper." Unlike the last "lost" episode that was found ("The Beetle and Mr. Bottle"), this is a script that was only ever performed once, which makes its discovery all the more terrific!
Now, the premise is a little bit like the Suspense episode "Pigeon in the Cage," in which a man stuck in an elevator became witness to a murder - but this story plays out a bit differently than that episode.
The World's Greatest Short Stories was a 15-minute program heard on NBC 1939-1942. The series starred Nelson Olmsted, who narrated from short stories both contemporary and classical.
This was one of several shows Olmsted created over the decades in which he read from popular literary sources. He was, in his day, an ancestor to audiobooks. The stories he read on the World's Greatest Short Stories were dramatized only through Olmsted's voice and a bit of musical accompaniment. Fortunately, Olmsted's voice carried itself well even in live radio, his voice deftly moving between narration to spoken dialogue, adopting accents where appropriate and moving a falsetto when he had to speak women's dialogue. Olmsted worked in quite a few radio programs as a dramatic performer, including the Chase and X Minus One but he's best-remembered for his readings of short stories such as heard on this program and in his 1940s series Story for Tonight and his 1950s series Sleep No More.
Olmsted had a particular love for the works of Edgar Allan Poe and among the surviving episodes of the World's Greatest Short Stories he narrated several of his tales: "the Raven," "the Case of Monsieur Valdemar" and "the Tell-Tale Heart."
Olmsted had a terrific knack for finding interesting stories to share. Some of episodes of the World's Greatest Short Stories feature favourites of mine like the Poe stories listed above, or the likes of Fitz-James O'Brien's "What Was It?", Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "the Man and the Snake" or Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappacini's Daughter." But several of the stories he presented were previously unknown to me and quite good, especially the story "Quality" by John Galsworthy, the story of an old-fashioned shoemaker who creates quality material but can't compete in a marketplace that values speed above all.
Here's a YouTube playlist of the surviving episodes of the World's Greatest Short Stories, collected by a fan.
MGM Theater of the Air was an hour-long syndicated program which featured adaptations of MGM films. It ran from October 14, 1949 to December 7, 1951.
MGM came very late to radio. At the same time they syndicated MGM Theater of the Air they were also syndicating Crime Does Not Pay, Dr. Kildare, the Hardy Family and the Adventures of Maisie. I've heard from various radio scribes that the studio saw radio as part of their competition and so didn't normally want their stars or film adaptations to appear on radio. This was supposedly radio's loss because MGM was simply the greatest studio.
...Except I don't buy that; I like MGM's films just fine but I personally feel that MGM only obtained a reputation as the finest studio because they invested so much of their public relations money into convincing people that's what they were.
The MGM Theater of the Air kind of proves my point; by the time it entered the scene, Lux Radio Theater had long since established how to successfully adapt feature films into an hour-long radio drama. Lux Radio Theater featured adaptations of most of the greatest films that were made in the 30s, 40s and early 50. By the time of the MGM Theater of the Air they didn't seem to have that much left in their vaults that radio listeners hadn't heard done elsewhere, what with programs such as Screen Directors' Playhouse and Academy Award Theater appearing.
This is not to say that the MGM Theater of the Air is a bad program, just that you won't find the same verve and energy that the other three aforementioned programs had. Host Howard Dietz is an acceptable voice but lacking the hammy performance Cecil B. DeMille gave as host of Lux Radio Theater.
Most of the stories adapted on the MGM Theater of the Air seemed to be stories of marital troubles and drawing room conversations (ie, Riptide, Vacation from Marriage). It's exactly the sort of stiff, stuffy material I associate with MGM.
However, there are a few comedies, with Charles Laughton returning for an adaptation of the Canterville Ghost and Celeste Holm in an amusing version of Slightly Dangerous.
I'm a bit surprised that only 33 episodes of the show's 78-episode run. As it was a syndicated series, I'd imagine that most of the series must still exist in some OTR collector's vault, neglected and unloved. Perhaps one day they'll appear and I might then have to reassess the series, as the missing episodes include an adaptation of the films Escape with William Holden, the Count of Monte Cristo with Jose Ferrer, High Wall with John Payne and the Man in the Iron Mask with Brian Aherne.
"You never know when you may be called upon to testify to an act of violence to which you have become involved quite innocently. Even now, there may be a crime in the making."
One of the earliest old-time radio shows I recall hearing was an episode of the series a Life in Your Hands but I never knew much about it until I decided to revisit it as a Radio Recap. It's basically a courtroom drama program; it was created by Erle Stanley Gardner, who was best-known as the creator of Perry Mason. It was around the same time that he created the series the Adventures of Christopher London. Apparently Gardner was keen on creating radio programs although it doesn't appear that he actually wrote for them himself.
A Life in Your Hands spent it's entire existence as summer replacement program, on two different networks no less! First it ran on the summer of 1949 as a replacement for People Are Funny on NBC; then it reappeared in 1951 as a replacement for the Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet on ABC; finally it came back to NBC for the summer of 1952 to replace Father Knows Best.
A Life in Your Hands featured as its lead character lawyer Jonathan Kegg (portrayed at various times by Ned LeFevre, Carleton KaDell and Lee Bowman). Kegg was an amicus curiae, which, as every episode explained, was a "friend of the court" who worked for neither the defense nor prosecution. Kegg was always involved in criminal cases on the program and would explain that he could afford to work for free as an amicus curiae because of his wealth. There is something reminiscent of Horatio Alger in Kegg's character.
Now, you might be wondering about the "Your" in the series title. Since we have a lead character, you might think it refers to Kegg. Actually, it refers to the listening audience. The narration in a Life in Your Hands would frequently address the listener and ask them if they could recall the details they heard earlier in the drama. The use of Kegg as protagonist seems to me at odds with the narration, which continually tells the listener to put themselves in the shoes of the cases' witnesses or jurors - but really, it doesn't come down to them so much as it does Kegg.
As neither defense or prosecution, Kegg would basically swing at all sides. When a witness made a guarded response he'd impuign their character, even badger them (apparently an amicus curiae isn't bound by the behaviours expected of regular counsel?). But when witnesses are reluctant to speak he could be quite friendly.
We only have a few episodes of a Life in Your Hands and several of them (including the episode I first heard) lack their musical bridges. Well, at least that means I can't complain about the stock NBC filler music! The lack of music suggests the recordings aren't the broadcast versions of those episodes.
Here's a YouTube playlist of surviving episodes of a Life in Your Hands as compiled by a fan.
