Radio Recap: Shorty Bell

Shorty Bell was a short-lived but somewhat fascinating radio program. It aired as a sustained program on CBS March 28 to June 27, 1948. It starred Mickey Rooney and was overseen by director William N. Robson (who left the series Escape to helm this program). It was a newspaper drama created by two journalists - Frederick Hazlitt Brennan and Richard Carroll - and was introduced as a "novel for radio."

The series was meant to be something of a prime-time soap opera drama, following the ongoing trials of Shorty Bell (Rooney), a short newspaper truck driver whose great ambition is to become a journalist. By the end of the debut episode, Shorty gets his first chance to prove himself to the publisher. Presumably the intent was to follow Shorty as he rose the ranks at the newspaper and proved himself as a writer. Certainly journalism is a great source for adventure and drama on radio.

Now, unfortunately, we only have four episodes of Shorty Bell and I don't quite what happened between the first episode and the next surviving episode (dated June 13, 3 months after the debut) but clearly the show was being retooled. Although Robson remained the director (he's even heard as himself on the June 13 episode), Brennan and Carroll were gone, replaced with writer Walter Newman (who also wrote for Robson on Escape). The tone of the June 13 episode is entirely different; Shorty Bell is now a sitcom with a studio audience!

The sitcom version of Shorty Bell follows the same character and situation introduced months earlier, but now it's played for laughs. Rooney is now accompanied by familiar sitcom voices like Alan Reed and Dink Trout (both veterans of CBS' Life of Riley) and the studio audience sound as though they were imported from a broadcast of Archie; they were clearly young and very loud and laughed especially loud when someone flubbed a line of dialogue.

The next surviving episodes are from June 20 and 27 and the tone has shifted back to drama (although a studio audience can be heard on the 27th). Whereas the June 13 episode departed from the series' premise for a typical sitcom plot about Shorty's novel being picked up for a dog hero movie, the other episodes are back to following Shorty's gradual ascent at the ranks at the newspaper. But clearly the series wasn't working because the episode of the 27th was the final broadcast. Rooney hung around to host a new program, Hollywood Showcase (a talent scout program) and Robson went back to Escape.

Shorty Bell had a very promising start; what went wrong? Rooney was a popular star, although by 1948 he was trying to change his image. Maybe audiences didn't respond to him in a dramatic role, so they tried to win them over with more comedy. I think if the series had stuck to its guns and kept to the original idea of a "radio novel" it still would have flopped, but the remaining fragments would be more valuable.

You can hear the four remaining episodes of Shorty Bell at the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Group Library.