Radio Recap: Front Page Drama

Front Page Drama was a 15-minute program produced by the General Broadcasting Company as a supplement to the Hearst magazine publication the American Weekly, which was itself a supplement to the Heart Sunday newspapers. A supplement to a supplement! Each episode featured a brief drama inspired by an article found in the American Weekly; sometimes a single article would inspire multiple episodes. Hearst syndicated this series themselves (another Hearst program I've covered is The Club Car Special). It appears the series aired from April 27, 1933 to June 27, 1942, then again from September 3, 1950 to March 28, 1954.

The kind of stories dramatized on Front Page Drama often had a crime or mystery bend to them; there was also a lot of supernatural content, such as ghost stories. I kind of like "the Christmas Eve Ghost," (December 24, 1933) about a visit from a ghost at Christmas time; I usually listen to it every Christmas.

Many episodes circa 1935 used the piece Omphale's Spinning Wheel as the show's opening theme - soon after it was used as the theme for the Shadow. In fact, it sounds like the same recorded performance was used on both shows; perhaps a classical music scholar out there can track down the specific version?

Another odd connection to the Shadow is a public service drama heard on the April 4, 1941 episode in which the voice which tells the audience to avoid causing forest fires sounds a lot like the Shadow - my guess is they used the same microphone filter as heard on that series.

The cast usually went uncredited but I'm sure Walter Tetley played many of the children heard on the series and I think I heard Verna Felton too. The RadioGold Index credits Gale Gordon as one of the recurring performers in the 30s and Gerald Mohr in the 40s. Ralph Clarke Wentworth was the first announcer, later John Martin. In the 50s episodes, I recognized Raymond Edward Johnson's voice.

The 1950s version tends to veer more strongly into stories of romance than the show's earlier run - I have a feeling it was intended as daytime fare to compete with soap operas.

I find the show's greatest shortcoming (beyond the dodgy quality of majority of the recordings) is the reliance on dialogue with minimal sound effects, a common problem I have with 1930s radio drama. The sound effects are very slight on Front Page Drama and that makes even a 15-minute show a bit of a chore to listen to.

Still, I find the series fascinating because it's an early radio drama that we have a lot of examples of - hundreds of episodes! - yet has been barely indexed and categorized. I imagine there will be some great scholarship done on this series in the future when someone becomes interested enough to explore it.

You'll find 352 episodes of Front Page Drama at the Old Time Radio Researchers Library at this link.