Radio Recap: On Stage

On Stage, also known as "Cathy and Elliott Lewis on Stage," was a latter-day CBS radio program that aired from January 1, 1953 until September 30, 1954. The series was a dramatic anthology featuring the husband-wife team of Cathy and Elliott Lewis. The two of them were something of a power couple in radio; they'd both been busy radio actors who appeared in all sorts of comedies and dramas before being married. By the time of On Stage, Cathy had become a comedy star in the radio and TV versions of My Friend Irma and while Elliott was still appearing in the radio comedy the Phil Harris/Alice Faye Show he was becoming better known as a writer, producer and director, producing such shows as Suspense, Crime Classics, Broadway Is My Beat, the Line-Up and Pursuit.

On Stage was a dramatic anthology series; sometimes the episodes were comedies, sometimes romantic dramas, sometimes a thriller, sometimes a bit of experimental radio. As something of a hodge-podge of content, I'm sure the series itself won't be to every person's taste but it did possess quality; Elliott and Cathy were top performers and they brought with them many of the best actors they'd been collaborating with at CBS along with top-notch sound effects and original music.

Most of On Stage featured original scripts by the likes of Morton Fine and David Friedkin (who worked on every show Elliott produced) and E. Jack Neuman. Neuman's scripts included "Eddie," a disturbing story in which Elliott portrayed a happy-go-lucky stalker who refused to be spurned by Cathy and "Heartbreak," in which Elliott portrayed a man who suffered a heart attack and the difficulty his wife had in dealing with him.

Outside of original scripts, the series adapted Frank R. Stockton's "the Lady or the Tiger" and Anton Chekhov's "the Bear," plus a reinterpretation of Ernest Thayer's poem "Casey at the Bat" and Voltaire's novel "Candide." A few episodes of On Stage were later redone on Suspense, including "Beyruth by Sunrise," "Heavens to Betsy" and "the Cellar Door."

I find the series was weakest when it attempted comedy; despite Elliott and Cathy's lengthy credits in that genre, I find the debut episode "String Bowtie" to be a rather unfunny attempt at screwball comedy. The gentler comedy of "the Man of Independent Mind" about an average Joe who decides to become the strongest man in the world in order to prove his greatness or "Canary Yellow" about a father who objects to his son playing a bird in a school play were much better fits for the Lewises.

Sadly, Cathy and Elliott Lewis divorced in 1958, four years after the series ended. This makes it particularly rough to hear episodes of On Stage where they played quarrelling couples - which they did now and then. If On Stage was meant to draw them closer together then it failed - it sounds like by the end of the series run their marriage was already crumbling.

You can hear all the surviving episodes of On Stage in this YouTube playlist created by the Old Time Radio Researchers.