When Radio Doesn't Work Well: Part 2

So today I'm going to wrap up my thoughts on my least favourite radio programs and disagreeable noises ultimately have the greatest impact.

There are plenty of old radio shows with cheesy or even lousy writing. Any fan who claims The Witch's Tale "still holds up" as a scary program is someone I can't take seriously; it's overwritten, lacking in sound effects and often woodenly performed. But I'm not too bothered by The Witch's Tale - it's a relic of its time and occasionally good campy fun.

I'm also not down with those Carlton E. Morse fans who think I Love a Mystery was the greatest program on radio. It's okay, but I find Morse mostly dull and repetitive; I noticed particularly with his series Adventures by Morse (one of the few fully-intact Morse programs) how much of each multi-part serial is taken up by characters recapping the plot to each other and speculating about what's going on. Sometimes there is no direct menace beyond a character stating, "maybe we can't trust them!" which typically indicates a red herring. Still, overwritten as it is, Morse's shows are carried by their performers.

There are two programs which I think are great illustrations of bad dramatic radio and which get my vote for 'worst of the worst': Rocky Fortune and Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator.

As I stated yesterday, both shows were produced on NBC in the 1950s with tiresome canned music, which doesn't help them. But where the shows really fall down is in the acting department. These are radio programs which cause me to switch off my player when they come up. In the case of these two shows, it isn't because of 'funny voices' or poor writing, rather it's the lead performers.

Rocky Fortune was led by Frank Sinatra. I don't consider myself a Sinatra fan, exactly, but he was normally a pretty adept and energetic performer; in Rocky Fortune, though, he was asleep at the wheel. The intro to the series describes Rocky as "that footloose and fancy free young gentleman" but all of that is contradicted by Sinatra's performance: he sounds tired. Very tired, and possibly bored. You would expect a certain lightness in Sinatra's performance like that of Dick Powell in Richard Diamond, Private Detective, but Sinatra couldn't muster it up. It is painful to hear Sinatra deliver "wise guy" dialogue in a tone which sounds like he just finished a turkey dinner.

Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator was performed by William Gargan. He was a decent film actor, although certainly never a major player. On the radio, however, he's dull. His voice on Barrie Craig is flat, disinterested. I have heard a few episodes of Barrie Craig but I couldn't recap any of the plots afterwards (whereas I could manage that with Rocky Fortune). Gargan's monotone narration obliterates anything of interest from that series; I now switch off my radio when this one appears (and unfortunately my local station, QR77, does play it fairly often). It has my vote for the all-time worst series in old-time radio.

Okay, I've been a little negative for the last two days. Tomorrow I'll share something positive.