The Once and Future Riot is a recent piece of comics journalism by Joe Sacco, published last year. Sacco is best-known for his work Palestine; given his areas of interest, I think if Sacco shows up in your hometown, your hometown has got some issues.
For this book, Sacco went to Muzaffarnagar, India, where a riot erupted between Hindus and Muslims. But as Sacco finds in interviewing the people there, the precise details as to how the violence started and who suffered change depending on who's telling the story (which Sacco presents with his usual skepticism).
The moment I found most fascinating came when Sacco visited a camp of Muslim refugees who had fled after the riot and had yet to return home, despite government assurances that it was safe. One of the refugees spoke passionately about his former Hindu neighbours and the good will that had existed between them. Another refugee responded with the armor-piercing question, "Why are you here, if you have a house there?"
The book does not paint a pretty picture of India but I came away affected by many scenes such as the one I described. It's another fine piece of work by Sacco.
"Many things were changed during the war; the face of the Earth was altered and the people of the Earth changed. Before the war, Frank Race was an attorney, but he traded his law books for the cloak and dagger of the O.S.S., and when it was over, his former life was over too; adventure had become his business: The Adventures of Frank Race!"
The Adventures of Frank Race was a syndicated program that ran from May 1, 1950 to February 19, 1950. It starred Tom Collins as Frank Race and Tony Barrett as Mark Donovan, Frank's sidekick. It was written and director by Buckley Angel and Joel Murcott (writer on Suspense, Escape and Tales of the Texas Rangers). Ivan Ditmars (of Escape) supplied the music.
Post-World War II, there seemed to be a sub-genre of radio programs about men back from the service who were trying to assert their new position in society by taking on odd jobs and, inevitably, solving mysteries; Let George Do It, Box 13, I Fly Anything and the Adventures of Christopher London are all examples of this type.
In the case of Frank Race, he worked as an insurance investigator (Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar was already on the air). The sidekick, Donovan, was present to supply muscle when Frank needed, but otherwise he was written as a complete lunkhead (although he did supply Frank with someone to explain the plot to). The supporting roles were filled with familiar voices like Bill Johnstone, Jack Kruschen, Frank Lovejoy, William Conrad and Virginia Gregg.
The production quality of the Adventures of Frank Race was pretty high - they're professional and polished. Unfortunately, despite all the talent working on them, I don't find the stories memorable. It's an okay program, but given the premise and talent, it should have at least as good as, say, the Amazing Mr. Malone. So far as I'm concerned, it's just okay.
You can hear the Old Time Radio Researchers' collection of the Adventures of Frank Race episodes with the YouTube playlist below:
Well, it's time for another in my recurring series on adaptations of the radio series Suspense that appeared in Marvel comics of the late 40s and early 50s but weren't credited to Suspense - even though Marvel had an arrangement with CBS to publish a Suspense comic book from 1949-1953.
Like most of the other stories I've found, this is an adaptation of a John Dickson Carr story originally written for Suspense - in fact, it's the most famous of all of Carr's Suspense plays - "Cabin B-13," first performed on Suspense March 16, 1943; in 1948, Carr had a series on CBS called Cabin B-13.
Our uncredited adaptation is from Girl Comics#7 (March, 1951) and it's called "If a Girl Be Mad." From the title, you might think Girl Comics was one of the many Marvel romance books of the era; actually, it was an unusual anthology book that featured stories from pretty much every genre, simply geared towards a female audience.
As in the original radio play the protagonist is a woman named Meg. She and her recently-wed husband are taking a voyage aboard a ship. He shows her to their cabin on B deck, number 13. Just a few minutes later, both he and the cabin disappear. The ship's doctor helps Meg and determines her husband was really the ship's first officer and had contrived a seriously, ridiculously complicated plan to murder her.
All of Carr's original story is intact - a few characters have different names (while the ship's doctor isn't named at all), but the fact that the cabin is still B-13 demonstrates Marvel wasn't working too hard to conceal the story's origins. So, maybe this story was supposed to be printed in Suspense but was somehow shifted to Girl Comics.
I've always had some fondness for the "Cabin B-13" radio play even though, like so much of Carr's fiction, I find it daft; the husband's entire plan of "disappearing" is to hide on a ship where everyone knows who he is! The only reason he seems to "disappear" is that Meg keeps insisting she came aboard with her husband and all the literal-minded crewmen say they never saw her husband; none of them knew the ship's first officer had been married, so if just one of them had said, "I didn't see your husband, you were with the ship's first officer" his brilliant plan would have fallen apart then and there.
Back in 2006 I managed a comic book project called Marvel Westerns: Outlaw Files; this blog wasn't up back then to promote it.
My books didn't often receive reviews from online critics, with the exception of Hannibal Tabu at Comic Book Resources. I was pleasantly surprised however, to find Marvel Westerns: Outlaw Files received a positive review in a print resource - the Comic Buyer's Guide!
Thank you, Comic Buyer's Guide! I don't write comics now, but I'm always surprised and pleased to see positive criticism of my work!
Bright Star was a comedy/drama that starred Irene Dunne and Fred MacMurray; at the top of each episode announcer Harry Von Zell would introduce the series as "The Irene Dunne-Fred MacMurray Show," before giving the program's actual title, Bright Star. It was a syndicated program from Ziv syndication, and heard from October 23, 1952 to October 15, 1953; like most first-run syndicated radio programs (such as Ziv's Bold Venture) there were 52 episodes, totalling one full calendar year.
The series featured Irene Dunne as Susan Armstrong, editor of the Hillsdale Morning Star in the small town of Hillsdale. Fred MacMurray was George Harvey, the paper's top reporter, who had a knack of getting himself into trouble by tackling stories that were too big for him. The series was very gentle and homey; there were occasional sparks between Susan and George, but they were usually at odds with each other about what was best for the paper (somewhat like His Girl Friday).
At the time, Irene Dunne was coming off some hard times in film; Bright Star must have been an attempt to keep her name in the public; MacMurray, though, was doing just fine in his career, with plenty of big films (and a TV series, My Three Sons) still in his future.
Bright Star drew from radio's best performers to make up their supporting cast, with names like Sheldon Leonard, Howard McNear, Larry Thor, Hans Conreid and Betty Lou Gerson. Harry Von Zell was the announcer.
Unfortunately, Bright Star's cast also included Sammy the office boy (an uncredited role), the only other person newspaper staff. Sammy had one of those radio teenager voices that tried to emulate Henry Aldrich of the Aldrich Family. The usually sounded like he was holding his nose to make his voice sound higher; he also had a very annoying horselaugh (trying to sound like Richard Crenna's snicker from Our Miss Brooks). Since Sammy is in every episode, he brings down the entire series.
The Old Time Radio Researchers Library has 33 out of 52 episodes of Bright Star. As a syndicated show, I wouldn't be surprised if more episodes turned up. You can hear them through the YouTube playlist below:
The Old Gold Comedy Theatre (or, as it was announced on air, "Comedy Theatre") was an anthology series heard on NBC Blue from October 29, 1944 to June 10, 1945. Like many 1940s anthologies (like Academy Award Theater, Lux Radio Theater and Screen Directors' Playhouse) it featured adaptations of popular films, truncated to fit a half-hour timeslot.
What makes The Old Gold Comedy Theatre stand apart is that it only featured adaptations of comedy films and it was hosted by the legendary Hollywood silent film comedian Harold Lloyd, who hadn't been involved in radio until the series launched (it's listed on some websites as Harold Lloyd Comedy Theatre). Lloyd would appear at the intro, half-way point (participating in the commercial) and at the close, engaging in banter with the program's guest stars. They even adapted one of his films, "The Milky Way" (February 18, 1945).
Many of the adapted films were popular choices on radio, like "Bachelor Mother," "My Favorite Wife" and "June Moon" but there are some great less-common comedy stories like "The Lady Eve" and "Vivacious Lady." My personal favourite is "True to Life" (November 12, 1944) with Dick Powell.
You can hear the Old Time Radio Researchers' collection of Old Gold Comedy Theatre episodes with the YouTube playlist below:
Exploring Tomorrow was a latter-day half-hour science fiction program heard on Mutual from December 4, 1957 to June 13, 1958, just as the program X Minus One was wrapping up at NBC. Like X Minus One's predecesor, Dimension X, it was affiliated with the magazine Astounding Science Fiction; unlike Dimension X, it featured active collaboration with the magazine as editor John W. Campbell hosted every episode (which he'd previously done for the short-lived Beyond Tomorrow)!
Exploring Tomorrow has two faults; radio being what it was at the time, it's a very truncated series (episodes tend to run about 15-18 minutes) so the drama is sped through very quickly. The other is the aforementioned Campbell. He considered himself the gatekeeper of science fiction, the tastemaker of the genre, but the man had no talent for dramatics. His unprofessional murmured introductions and outros (while "As Time Goes By" played in the background) really bring down Exploring Tomorrow; as an east coast Mutual program, the actual performances came from the same sort of east coast talent heard on shows like the Mysterious Traveler such as Larry Haines, Mason Adams, Maurice Tarplin, and Lawson Zerbe.
Stories on Exploring Tomorrow came from Astounding and included authors like Robert Silverberg, Isaac Asimov, Gordon Dickson, Philip K. Dick, Murray Leinster and Poul Anderson. Unlike X Minus One, there were no original stories.
X Minus One often had a very whimsical tone, particularly in its stories adapted from Robert Sheckley and the original scripts by Ernest Kinoy. Exploring Tomorrow, being so closely associated with Campbell, had that same Campbellian starchiness. There's precious little light-hearted content - Exploring Tomorrow took itself very seriously. There were even some barbed references to inhuman aliens called "Kinoys" in the episode "The Decision!" Campbell was unkind to people he saw as "outsiders" to the genre (such as Kinoy) dabbling in science fiction and all evidence suggests the majority of science fiction prose writers of the 50s were likewise very hostile towards radio and television people writing in the genre. Note the advertisement above, from an issue of Astounding, with its contempt towards "1930s style BEM's and ray-guns-cum-spaceships!"
Of interest is that Exploring Tomorrow featured its own adaptation of Tom Godwin's "Cold Equations," which did, after all, originate in Astounding. It's a very good adaptation, although I prefer the performances in the X Minus One version.
The first time I heard Exploring Tomorrow it was presented on my local radio station (QR77) as an episode of X Minus One, even though it still had Campbell's mumbled speeches (I didn't know what to make of Campbell's intro and outro - I assumed it was some disc jockey who talked over the original X Minus One intro and outro). The episode was "The Convict" and I wondered then why it sounded so unlike every other X Minus One I'd heard! On the other hand, "The First Men on the Moon" (January 22, 1958) featured a rocket blast that reused the introduction heard on X Minus One! Someone in the sound booth was having fun.
I do like the episode "The Mimic" (by Robert Silverberg) about an extraterrestrial who absorbs other people into its collective - it's a pretty good horror story.
Exploring Tomorrow's brief radio run had nothing to do with quality and everything to do with the diminishing stature of radio drama; when Mutual cancelled the series, it was nothing personal - they were also cancelling the entirety of their dramatic fare on radio!
You can hear the Old Time Radio Researchers' collection of Exploring Tomorrow episodes with the YouTube playlist below:
