Celebrating Jim Starlin on the Marvel Appendix!

It's Jim Starlin's birthday today and to celebrate, I wrote up a number of characters and items he co-created on the Marvel Appendix. Happy birthday, Mr. Starlin!

Barry Starr (Spider-Man character)
Laura Warmer (horror character)
Unisphere (Thanos device)
Thanos-Thralls (Thanos’ army of lackeys)
Captain Styx (Thanos-Thralls)
Sally (friend of the Cat)
Madame Renour (Nick Fury character)
Tony McKay (Fu Manchu character)
Rudolph Kriss (vampire, Dracula character)
Glagg (Rock Troll)
Anti-Gravity Chamber (Space Phantom’s device)

Halloween Radio Recap #2: The Mysterious Traveler

"This is The Mysterious Traveler, inviting you to join me on another journey into the realm of the strange and the terrifying; I hope you will enjoy the trip, that it will thrill you a little and chill you a little. So, settle back, get a good grip on your nerves, and be comfortable... if you can..."

The Mysterious Traveler was a half-hour horror/mystery anthology program that was heard over Mutual from December 5, 1943 to September 16, 1952. Maurice Tarplin was the titular Mysterious Traveler, a man who would greet the listener from his seat aboard a train, then narrate a story. There are early episodes where he took a part in the dramas, probably because Mutual didn't have a huge budget; but mostly, he kept to his role as a horror host.

The Mysterious Traveler was different from the other horror hosts in that he didn't enter cackling like Old Nancy in The Witch's Tale or the Hermit in The Hermit's Cave, nor with the puns of Raymond on Inner Sanctum Mysteries. Tarplin made the Traveler sound somewhat menacing, but he was extremely restrained next to the rest of his siblings.

When I first got on the internet, I found many OTR fans complaining about Inner Sanctum Mysteries and it's "cop-out" endings. They were referring to the lack of the supernatural on that program; Inner Sanctum Mysteries seldom committed to the supernatural. If that's what you want from a horror program, then The Mysterious Traveler would seem to be the program you really want, because there are plenty of episodes that embrace the supernatural head-on.

...I wrote "would seem to be," though, because that's not true of every episode of The Mysterious Traveler. For example, sometimes there are ghosts; in other episodes, the ghosts are fakes. But still further, not every episode of The Mysterious Traveler was a horror story - there are science fiction stories, mystery stories and crime stories. You can't always be certain what you'll get when you tune in.

The most talked-up episode of The Mysterious Traveler is "Behind the Locked Door" (November 6, 1951), in which a young man tells his fiancee about his expedition underground and the weird creatures he met there; it is indeed a very good episode. I'm also fond of (links to the Internet Archive files):

• "The Queen of the Cats" (July 2, 1944): A woman with a supernatural connection to cats haunts her lover.
• "Death Comes for Adolf Hitler" (March 24, 1945): Hitler takes an ill-advised submarine ride.
• "Death Is the Visitor" (August 18, 1946): A man tries to get rid of his mother-in-law for good.
• "If You Believe" (December 29, 1946): A scientist's experiments in protoplasm are hyped up as a menace by the media.
• "New Year's Nightmare" (January 5, 1947): After a drunken New Year's, a man discovers he lived an entire year under another alias.
• "The Woman in Black" (March 9, 1947): A reporter trails a woman in black who appears at the time of murders.
• "The Locomotive Ghost" (July 6, 1947): A killer is haunted by a ghostly train.
• "The Man the Insects Hated" (July 27, 1947): Exactly what it claims to be.
• "Murder Is My Business" (June 8, 1948): A radio writer wants to kill his producer.
• "Death Has a Cold Breath" (March 29, 1949): A talent agent plots his client's murder.
• "S.O.S." (May 2, 1950): A heist with a surprising finish.
• "Strange New World" (February 19, 1952): Giant radioactive crabs; 'nuff said?

The series was primarily written by Robert A. Arthur and David Kogan. They'd previously created the horror anthology Dark Destiny for Mutual in 1942, but only 1 episode of that show has survived. They also created the Mutual syndicated show The Sealed Book in 1945, which recycled scripts from The Mysterious Traveler but had to trim a few minutes to fit the shorter timeslot; we can compare some programs that exist in both The Mysterious Traveler and The Sealed Book formats and it does show The Sealed Book to be inferior, as the material they trimmed really enhanced the The Mysterious Traveler's scripts.

Robert A. Arthur had a lengthy career in radio and later television and he was never one to let a perfectly good script lie idle. He and Kogan also created the 15-minute show The Strange Dr. Weird in 1945 with Maurice Tarplin also as the host. I've long assumed stories heard on The Strange Dr. Weird were condensed from The Mysterious Traveler scripts but I've yet to prove it; anyway, Arthur went on gamely recycling The Mysterious Traveler into the latter-day of Suspense's radio run. The duo also wrote for Murder by Experts and ABC Mystery Time.

The Mysterious Traveler had a comic book that lasted just one issue in 1948; I blogged about it here. It ran its own pulp magazine for six issues in 1951-1952. Later, Charlton published a comic that lasted from 1956-1959 and featured a lot of early work by Steve Ditko; Ditko published his own reprint of those stories in 2016, which I blogged about here. There were also two Mysterious Traveler comics by Moonstone in 2003 and 2004 that were by Trevor Von Eeden; I blogged about those too.

Despite the show's 9-year run, there are presently only 69 episodes in circulation. It's also unlikely more will turn up, given most Mutual shows vanished into the ether. For that reason, do treasure the fact we have The Sealed Book to supplement The Mysterious Traveler!

You'll find the Old Time Radio Research Group's YouTube playlist of The Mysterious Traveler below:

Next Thursday: Lights Out!

"If there ever was a downfall, then it was entirely of your own doing!" The Giant: Orson Welles, the Artist and the Shadow review

The Giant: Orson Welles, the Artist and the Shadow is a graphic novel by Youssef Daoudi, published in English last year by First Second. It's a biography of Welles that focuses on his years in Hollywood. Much of the framing around the story is set in the 1970s while Welles was shooting The Other Side of the Wind.

There's a fun sequence near the end where Orson's shadow comes to life - explicitly reminding Orson how he used to portray the Shadow on the radio - and has a conversation about Orson's career. Orson's shadow basically argues that Orson has no reason to complain about how his career turned out. Orson's shadow parrots many criticisms made about Welles over the decades - Daoudi uses the shadow as a means of making these external remarks appear internal.

Since this blog is often concerned with old-time radio, I have to caution fans of The Shadow that the book doesn't actually spend more than a moment on that series; "the Shadow" appears in the book's title primarily due to the conversation between Orson and his shadow. Still, there is a fun homage to the Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" in which a Martian tripod knocks Orson's cigar from his mouth, enraging him.

This is certainly a book for Orson Welles fans, who benefit from having a fuller understanding of his life and the events The Giant: Orson Welles, the Artist and the Shadow only has time to allude to. There are some very clever ideas in how Daoudi chose to tell Orson's life story, particularly the use of the quote which ends the book. The book is very critical of Welles, but we fans of Welles are also his harshest critics, so I have no hesitation in recommending this book.

Halloween Radio Recap #1: The Haunting Hour!

Every Thursday this October, I'm going to write a recap on an old-time radio horror program as we gear up for Halloween!

"No, stay where you are; Do not break the stillness of this moment; for this is a time of mystery, a time when imagination is free and moves forward swiftly, silently... This is: The Haunting Hour!

When I first bought John Dunning's book On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio in 1998, one of the first things I did was look up each of the horror programs I enjoyed so I could learn more about them. I was a bit annoyed that there was nothing in his book about The Haunting Hour; it was one of the first horror anthology programs I ever heard, but no one seemed to know anything about it; who produced, directed or starred in it? When did it air?

Thanks to the sorely-missed Digital Deli website, I finally got some answers. They identified it as an NBC syndicated program produced in Philadelphia. It was produced by Herbert Wood and featured Rosa Rio on the organ and music by Tilden Brown. Berry Kroeger was the show's narrator and it drew from familiar voices like Frank Lovejoy and Jackson Beck. According to the Deli, it ran for 52 episodes from June 8, 1945 to May 26, 1946.

In some ways the show reminds me of the Weird Circle, which was also from NBC syndication (1943-1945); I even wonder if The Haunting Hour were in some sense a continuation of that program - they featured many of the same actors. There's one episode of The Haunting Hour called "Revenge" that's inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Annabel Lee" which reminded me of how the Weird Circle's stories were inspired by the works of Poe and others (although they usually made drastic changes to the original texts).

It's not entirely accurate for me to call The Haunting Hour a horror program because, taken as a whole, it was simply a mystery anthology. The word "haunting" invites you to think of an underlying supernatural menace to the stories, but the supernatural seldom looms that large. Some stories are simply detective tales; others are crime stories which delve more into suspense than mystery.

When The Haunting Hour was at it's best, it was pretty good; I highly recommend the episode "The Uptown Express," which concerns a woman who suddenly finds herself living five years into her future. I also recommend "Breakdown," about a woman who seems to be losing her grip on sanity.

The most interesting story to me is "Ptolemy's Grave," about a woman haunted by a mummy whose face resembles her husband. Amazingly, this is a story I knew from a 1943 comic book adaptation! I blogged about it before at this link; but when it appeared in Super-Magician Comics, it was introduced as an adaptation from Inner Sanctum Mysteries. I'm left wondering if this episode of The Haunting Hour recycled a script from Inner Sanctum Mysteries and if so, are other stories on The Haunting Hour recycled scripts?

The Old-Time Radio Researchers have 40 episodes of The Haunting Hour at this link.

Next Thursday: The Mysterious Traveler!

25 Years of the Marvel Appendix - wrap-up!

Today the Marvel Appendix wraps up it's 25-year celebration! I wound up covering nearly 400 characters for the event! As I promised at the start of September, I won't link to all of them, but there are a number I'd like to highlight...

Here are a few of the characters I profiled who had been the stars of their own (obscure) features: Arrowhead (western hero); Buzz Brand (war hero); Battleship Burke (naval hero); Billy Buckskin (frontier hero); Captain Daring (sci-fi hero); Captain Strong (Foreign Legion hero); Captain Terror (super hero); Blaze Carson (western hero); Combat Casey (war hero); Combat Kelly (war hero); Rick Davis (spy hero); Dave Dean (1930s deep sea diving hero); Sgt. Dix (war hero); the Falcon (Burgess) (super hero); Fighting Yank (war hero); Flying Flame (aviation hero); Flash Foster (football hero); Don Gorman (aviation hero); Gunsmoke Kid (western hero); Red Hawkins (western hero); Rex Hart (western hero); Jeep Jones (humorous war hero); Jungle Boy (jungle hero); Kid from Dodge City (western hero); Kid from Texas (western hero); Magar the Mystic (magician hero); Molly Manton (romance heroine); Monako (magician hero); Barney Mullen (naval hero); Cookie Novak (Combat Kelly's sidekick); Rusty (Defender's sidekick); Sailor Sweeney (naval hero); Rocky Steele (boxing hero); Sam Storm (war hero); the Thunderer (Carstairs) (super hero); Waku (jungle hero)

Here's some profiles I put in some decent research to create: ARCH-E-5912 (Planet Hulk); Blur (D.P.7); Cat People (Tigra characters); Sally Clark (Wyatt Earp cast member); Queen Esther (Bible); Joe Grogan (My Girl Pearl cab driver); Phil Kane (Yellow Claw); Komodo (Avengers: The Initiative cast); the Manatelli Brothers (tumblers and war heroes); Manchuria Mary (communist agent); Monolith (2001: A Space Odyssey); General Olga (communist agent); Powersurge (Avengers character); Raiders (Iron Man foes); Slippery Sam (My Friend Irma character); Peter Spalding (Machine Man character); Star Sphere (Galactus' vehicle); Queen Ursula (American Ace foe); Daniel J. Whittier (Semper Fi character)

And here's profiles of things I just think are neat: Captain Sin (captain of El Cazador); Cool Breeze (G.I. Joe); Dark Angel (Shang-Chi character); Deviant Raiding Craft (very cool vehicle); Preston Dudley (Mountie spoof); Johannes Fliet (Casey, Crime Photographer foe); Aloysius P. Jamesley (Christopher Priest expy); Phanto Band (Blackstone the Magician foes); Prowlers (Wakandan robots); Ricochet Mobile (very silly vehicle); Victor-101 (Halo); Philip Nelson Voigt (Ultimates character); Larry Windham (Suspense); Zero/One (Red Hulk foe)

Originally I just wanted to get in a few dozen profiles for the event; I wound up writing so many and became so deeply involved that I wound up reactivating my responsibilities as an editor for the Marvel Appendix. It feels good to be back with my old Appendix friends and no doubt I'll wind up profiling many more obscure Marvel characters in the years to come. Happy 25th anniversary, you wonderful old website!

Radio Recap: The Adventures of Jungle Jim

The Adventures of Jungle Jim was the 15-minute weekly syndicated program that replaced Flash Gordon in Hearst Syndication. It proved much more successful (under whatever terms Hearst considered successful) and ran from November 2, 1935 until July 31, 1954. Alex Raymond's Jungle Jim was the "topper" to his Flash Gordon on the Sunday comics page (meaning his adventures appeared on the top of the page above Flash Gordon; toppers were sometimes omitted in newspapers whose page size was smaller than the standard).

The role of Jungle Jim was played by a few people, with Matt Crowley apparently holding the role the longest (Gerald Mohr played Jim for a few weeks). Jim Bradley was a big game hunter, but the series seldom featured him hunting big game; instead, Jim would be hired out by governments to use his wilderness skills to investigate strange goings-on around in jungle climes, usually in Asia. Accompanying Jim was Kolu (Juano Hernandez), an Indian guide-- though he spoke in the type of speech radio usually gave to American Indians.

The initial storyline where Jim investigates the "Bat Woman" cult, which proves to be led by the criminal Shanghai Lil (Franc Hale), is a pretty darn good adventure serial. Shanghai Lil would turn out to be an undercover good guy who would renounce her criminal past and accompanied Jim on many of his adventures - a sort-of Burma to his Pat Ryan. But to complicate matters, Jim also wound up with his female sidekick Kitty St. John, who would make Lil jealous.

After Pearl Harbor, the show rapidly changed as Jim started fighting German and Japanese foes; he joined the Marines and was sent back to the States to ferret out undercover foreign agents (because when your speciality is hunting and tracking in Asia, obviously your greatest usefulness in World War II is to hang around stateside as a secret agent). By spring of 1942, the show's format was radically reinvented as, instead of the show's accustomed rhythm of lengthy adventures, it tended to feature Jim battling enemy agents and wrapping it all up within his 15 minutes; there were still some continued adventures, but typically they fell into no more than 2-part stories. My suspicion is that the radio show had stopped adapting the comic strip around this time. This version of The Adventures of Jungle Jim is an interesting change to witness, but it's inferior to what came before.

Because there are no shows from 1943 available I don't know when the series changed, but by 1944 Jim and Kolu (a new actor playing Kolu) were back in Asia, going on guerrilla missions against the Japanese in Malaya, which makes a lot more sense for their particular skills. They led an "Allied" team with members hailing from India, Australia, the Soviet Union and China, which meant the actors portraying those characters could use a variety of dialects.

After the war, the series shifted back into what it had been before; Shanghai Lil returned and joined Jim and Kolu on globe-trotting adventures that seemed to be based around Latin America.

Although the show didn't like to credit anyone (including Alex Raymond!) recognizable voices include Gale Gordon (who'd previously been Flash Gordon), Hanley Stafford and Elliot Lewis. The show's theme was taken from the William Tell Overture (a different part of the Overture than that used on the Lone Ranger). Up to 1942 the theme was played with a band, then it shifted to an organ.

Alex Raymond left Jungle Jim and Flash Gordon in 1944; the strip continued with John Mayo and Paul Norris and even spawned a series of movies starring Johnny Weissmuller, but the comic strip, movies and radio show ended in 1954; Weissmuller kept going with a TV show that only lasted 1955-1956. As I noted yesterday, Flash Gordon has transcended his humble origins and enjoys occasional revivals; Raymond's Flash Gordon is considered one of the greatest comic strips of all time. Jungle Jim, by contrast, is a historical artifact; today, it's mostly brought up when discussing Flash Gordon, not for its own merits. Flash Gordon had the last laugh.

The Old-Time Radio Researchers Library has 526 episodes of The Adventures of Jungle Jim; it's pretty much complete up into 1942, then gets a little spottier in later years. A clear sign that this series needs more love is that the OTRR Library files are badly missorted and misidentified. You can view their files at this link.

Radio Recap: Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon (also called the Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon) was a 15-minute weekly juvenile adventure serial syndicated by Hearst from April 27 to October 26, 1935. It starred Gale Gordon (of all people!) as Flash Gordon and was adapted directly from Alex Raymond's famous comic strip - although Raymond received no credit in the dramas. It was apparently produced by Himan Brown, best-known for Inner Sanctum Mysteries and The CBS Mystery Theater.

The Hearst syndicate apparently released Flash Gordon on discs with Front Page Drama on the reverse. Both were designed to get listeners to buy a Hearst publication - in this instance, the Hearst's colour funnies, the Comic Weekly.

At this point I've covered Hearst's Front Page Drama and Club Car Special and they all demonstrate a kind of literal-mindedness on their part; they didn't want Flash Gordon to simply promote the comic strip, they wanted each drama to represent that week's installment of the comic strip. But first, they had to get the radio audience caught up with the strip's goings-on.

Consequently, the first 4 episodes of Flash Gordon quickly summarize everything that had happened in the comic strip up until that point. Thus, the episodes move at a dizzying pace with intense, dramatic moments simply glanced over and given absolutely no time to land. Yes, it moves fast, but there's no time spent on characters or the environment, just one peril after another.

Once the show was all caught up, from then on it moved at a more able pace, dramatizing the events of that week's installment of the comic strip. It's pretty amazing that there was a time in comics history that a single page of comic art could spawn a 15-minute drama every week!

Although the Flash Gordon comic strip lasted up until 2003 (recently revived with new strips by Dan Schkade since 2023), something clearly went wrong behind-the-scenes of the program because it was discontinued after 6 months. Maybe there was a prejudice against science fiction, because the series shifted to a different Alex Raymond series, Jungle Jim, which was then the "topper" strip above Flash Gordon. Jungle Jim continued as a weekly adaptation of the comic strip (well past Raymond's exit) up to 1954.

The closing weeks of Flash Gordon are a delightful mess. Abruptly, Flash's love interest Dale Arden demands they quit their adventures and go back to Earth at the end of the 23rd episode. In the 24th episode, the series is suddenly called The Adventures of Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim. There is no Jungle Jim in that episode, as Flash, Dale and Dr. Zarkov fly back to Earth. In the 25th episode, the action shifts entirely to Jungle Jim and appears to reference events going on in the Jungle Jim comic strip at the time. Finally, in the 26th episode, Flash, Dale and Dr. Zarkov meet Jungle Jim; Flash and Dale get married, then depart, never to be spoken of again. The following week, Jungle Jim took over. What a bizarre transition!

Of course, time has been kinder to Flash Gordon than to Jungle Jim. The Alex Raymond years of Jungle Jim have their devotees, but the rest of his considerable media presence has been forgotten; Flash Gordon, however, not only still has his comic strip but featured in a well-remembered campy 1980 feature film; every now and then he pops up in cartoons, TV shows or comic books as well.

You can hear the entirety of Flash Gordon at the Old Time Radio Researchers' Library.

Tomorrow I'll write about Flash Gordon's successor, Jungle Jim.

Missing Episodes of the Whistler

One thing that I wish the OTR community was better at celebrating is circulating news when missing episodes of popular shows are discovered. I've been online for almost 30 years and the amount of OTR that's freely circulating today is much greater than when I used a dial-up modem to download shows; episodes that were confidently listed as "lost" have been found and circulating for many years. And whenever that happens, I think we OTR fans should get the word out to each other, because there is no single comprehensive authority on what's out there.

To that end, as a huge fan of the Whistler I was very pleased to notice at the fan page the Whistler Files that no less than 3 previously-lost episodes of the Whistler have been found and released by fans this year - "The Havana Lee," "No Questions Asked" and "The Croupier's Wife." There are links on the Files' main page to where you can find those episodes. If you, like me, want to hear every episode of the Whistler, well, happily there are a few more out there now.

Radio Recap: The Damon Runyon Theatre

The Damon Runyon Theatre was a half-hour syndicated program from 1949-1950 which adapted stories from the works of author Damon Runyon (who had died in 1946). It was produced by Mayfair, Alan Ladd's production company (although Ladd never appeared on the show). Mayfair also made Ladd's Box 13. It was directed by Richard Sanville of Box 13, Escape and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.

John Brown served as the program's narrator, Broadway; Broadway wasn't the narrator in all of the Runyon stories when they were first printed, but it didn't seem to take much effort to simply have Broadway encounter the protagonist of another story then listen as they narrated their tale to him. The stories always had a humorous edge, especially while Broadway was narrating with his Runyon patter (such as the phrase "more than somewhat"). Most of the stories were about big city living and the various classes of criminals but the series also adapted Runyon's World War II stories. Some tales were simply funny, some were heartwarming, some were true hardboiled crime thrillers and a few were tearjerkers.

Other familiar voices in the terrific cast included Jack Webb, William Conrad, Hans Conreid, Gerald Mohr, Ed Begley, Willard Waterman, Frank Lovejoy, Alan Reed, Jeff Chandler, Joseph Kearns, Sara Berner and Sheldon Leonard.

I rather agree with John Dunning's view in On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio: "In an era when radio emphasis was on Hollywood stars in film adaptations, The Damon Runyon Theater,/B> was like a cool breeze." This program was my introduction to Damon Runyon's writing and I certainly enjoyed delving into Runyon's fiction. Runyon is mostly remembered today for the Guys and Dolls musical that was inspired by his work but those who know his stories like them a lot; having read the short story collection of Guys and Dolls I'm immensely grateful to The Damon Runyon Theatre for exposing me to his writing.

My favourite episode is "Tobias the Terrible" but I also give high marks to "Little Miss Marker," "The Lemon Drop Kid," "For a Pal," "Butch Minds the Baby," "That Ever-Lovin' Wife of Hymie's," "Dark Dolores" and "Dream Street Rose." (Note that one story they didn't adapt to The Damon Runyon Theatre is "Three Wise Guys," which was instead adapted on the Whistler, complete with John Brown!).

You can hear the Old-Time Radio Researchers' collection of all 52 episodes of The Damon Runyon Theatre at this link on the Internet Archive.

New Video: The Angola Mural Projects

Here's a video of my wife and I introducing the murals we created in Angola:

Radio Recap: Our Miss Brooks

Our Miss Brooks was an extremely successful old-time radio situation comedy that lasted well into the latter days of scripted radio drama, lasting on CBS from July 19, 1948 til June 30, 1957 (I strongly suspect the last season was repeat broadcasts). It started out with Palmolive Soap and Lustre Creme Shampoo as its sponsors. It was produced by Larry Berns and directed and written by Al Lewis.

The show starred Eve Arden as Connie Brooks, the English teacher at Madison High School. The show emphasized how difficult it was to make ends meet on a teacher's salary. She forever hoped to be promoted to head of the English department, but the goal was always just out of reach; she also hoped for Mr. Boynton to marry her, only to be disappointed.

Gale Gordon was Osgood Conklin, the principal of Madison. Gordon, of course, could be terrifically bombastic when his characters would explode in anger, and he seemed to know that Conklin's anger was at its funniest when set to a slow burn. There was a particular knack he had to deliver increasingly histrionic dialogue until suddenly halting and, switching to a calm, mellow voice, would ask Miss Brooks to verify whatever the episode's misunderstanding had been, then hit his top.

Jeff Chandler was Philip Boynton, the bashful biology teacher; Chandler was a legitimate Hollywood heart throb and a radio tough guy who'd played the hardboiled Michael Shayne. His performance as the stammering, awkward Mr. Boynton was a departure for him and really showed off his range.

Richard Crenna was Walter Denton, a helpful student with a piercing nasal voice; Walter thought of himself as a loquacious and erudite young scholar but he would frequently mangle his English, much to Connie's annoyance; he also had a habit of eating up Mrs. Davis' food. Walter would drive Connie to Madison each morning and frequently he would be the one to bring up the episode's particular problem.

Jane Morgan was Margaret Davis, Connie's scatterbrained landlady; she frequently would begin stories about her absent-minded sister Angela, only to forget her own anecdote mid-story.

Gloria McMillan was Harriet Conklin, the principal's daughter and girlfriend to Walter; she was simply a nice girl, but would sometimes unwittingly exacerbate the episode's problem, especially if she thought she was "helping" Miss Brooks.

Other recurring characters included Stretch Snodgrass (Leonard Smith), Madison's star basketball player but also the dimmest character in the school; Miss Enright (Mary Jane Croft), Connie's rival English teacher both for the position as head of the English department and in dating Mr. Boynton; Jacque Monet (Gerald Mohr), the school's French teacher; custodian Mr. Jensen (Bob Jellison), who took his grammar very seriously (such as objecting to the phrase "pick up" when the object in question is above Connie's head); Mrs. Conklin (Virginia Gordon) occasionally appeared; and Mr. Stone (Joseph Kearns), the school's superintendant, who seemed to visit Madison only when things were especially chaotic. There was an appreciable amount of lore as well, such as Madison's rivalry with Clay City High, as their principal Jason Brill was a rival to Mr. Conklin who would sometimes try to lure Madison's faculty to his school; Jason Brill did appear in a few episodes (played by Frank Nelson in one) but he was usually more spoken of than he was present.

CBS ran three auditions before finally launching the series. The 1st audition starred Shirley Booth as the series had originally been intended as a vehicle for her, but she fell out with the producers; the 2nd audition (which we don't have) starred Joan Blondell; finally, Eve Arden was cast in the 3rd audition. The first actual episode was also drawn from the same script as the audition scripts. Beyond the change in lead the role, there are interesting differences between the 3 versions we have of the first script. In the 1st audition, Mr. Conklin was the new President of the school board, rather than the principal. In the 3rd audition, Mr. Conklin was the new principal (but played by Joe Forte) and Jeff Chandler and Richard Crenna took over the roles of Mr. Boynton and Walter Denton; Gale Gordon didn't become Osgood Conklin until the 2nd broadcast episode (which is also when Gloria McMillan debuted as Harriet). It's also interesting that in all the version of the audition script, Walter's mother is set up as an important character on the school board, but she was mostly out-of-focus in the series proper.

I found it interesting that early on, it's established Mrs. Davis went to school with Mr. Conklin; I'd noticed that he always referred to her as "Margaret," but she was portrayed as being much older than he was; anyway, it's only in those early episodes that their past is mentioned. It's also interesting that early on, Mr. Stone was introduced as a former wartime comrade of Mr. Conklin's. Although Mr. Conklin's status as a veteran remained an important part of his character (his style of calling out "dismissed!" at Miss Brooks, for instance), he and Mr. Stone's character bond seemed to disappear and Mr. Stone seemed forever suspicious of Conklin, rather than the guardedly favourable impression he had of Conklin early on.

The series was set around the school, but seldom depicted scenes in the classroom. Usually, scenes were set at Mrs. Davis' home, in Mr. Conklin's office, in Mr. Boynton's biology lab or in the school cafeteria. The series' economy of locations is unusual for a radio series and suggests that from early on, Larry Berns and Al Lewis were thinking how they might adapt their stories to television; the TV series ran from 1952-1956, then ended with a theatrical Our Miss Brooks in which Connie finally got engaged to Mr. Boynton.

Our Miss Brooks let Eve Arden demonstrate she was an extremely capable lead performer, when for most of her career she'd been someone's sidekick (as on the Danny Kaye Show, for instance). Much like Marie Wilson on My Friend Irma, Eve Arden was known, but not a star; Our Miss Brooks became the work she remains best-known for.

The biggest change the show endured during its run was the loss of Jeff Chandler, who was replaced with Robert Rockwell in 1953. Rockwell likewise portrayed Mr. Boynton on the TV series. In fact, the TV version did an excellent job of retaining the radio cast: Eve Arden, the indispensable Gale Gordon, Richard Crenna, Gloria McMillan, Jane Morgan, Joseph Kearns, Virginia Gordon, Mary Jane Croft, even Leonard Smith - all appeared on the small screen.

The Old-Time Radio Researchers have a YouTube playlist with 188 videos (the first 4 are biographies of the cast):

Lubango Vlog: Full CEML Succession Video

I finally had time to upload the full 90+ minute version of my Uncle Steve's succession ceremony at CEML from last month:

Radio Recap: Stars Over Hollywood

Stars Over Hollywood was a half-hour Saturday daytime program heard on CBS from May 31, 1941 to September 25, 1954. It featured stories from all sorts of different genres, most of them radio originals; the attraction was that it featured a big-name Hollywood stars in the lead roles; stars like Vincent Price, Jessica Tandy, William Demarest, David Niven, Ronald Reagan, Lionel Barrymore, Angela Lansbury and Edmund Gwenn. Art Ballinger was the program's host and it was sponsored by Carnation Milk for most of its run.

Paul Pierce (Wild Bill Hickok) was the show's initial producer-director; Hans Conreid directed and acted in many episodes. Ivan Ditmars (of The Adventures of Frank Race, The Diary of Fate, Escape, Frontier Town, The Whistler) supplied music. Apparently a young Rod Serling wrote for this series, but it appears none of his episodes have survived.

According to John Dunning in On the Air, Stars Over Hollywood challenged presumptions in radio that Saturday daytime could draw in listeners; apparently the success of this series caused the networks to start investing money on more daytime Saturday programming than they had previously.

Most of the stories were original scripts, although they did run adaptations of "A Christmas Carol" twice (with Edmund Gwenn as Scrooge). Although the stories featured a host of different genres from comedy to crime, because it was aimed at the housewife demographic it mostly centered itself on relationships - so, romantic dramas or romantic comedies. The two best romantic comedies I've heard are "The Perfect Mate" (December 1, 1951) with a computer matchmaking service.

The best episode of the series by far is also the earliest surviving recording- "Southern Hospitality" (April 18, 1942), with Phil Harris as himself (or, rather, Phil Harris as the person he portrayed on the Jack Benny Program). It concerned Phil being mistaken for a wealthy heir in North Carolina. What helps the episode stand out (besides Phil's vivacious personality) is that his sidekick in the story was Elliott Lewis, several years before he became his sidekick on the Phil Harris/Alice Faye Show!

There are 84 episodes of Stars Over Hollywood in the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library.

25 Years of the Marvel Appendix!

The Marvel Appendix website is celebrating 25 years since its launch! As one of the site's first contributors I created hundreds of new profiles to celebrate the anniversary. They'll be slowly released all through September and I won't post about all of them here, but here's which profiles of mine are available today:

Alpha-Tron (Hydra weapon)

Boswell Boliver (time traveler)

Bull Barton (Kid Colt foe)

Crusher (wrestler, sparred against Captain America)

Deacon (Captain America foe)

The Desert Hawk (Sgt. Fury ally)

John (robot, sci-fi character)

John Warden (S.H.I.E.L.D. psychic)

Josh Kittling (Spider-Man ally)

Manuel (Captain Savage ally)

Marion (Iron Man love interest)

Molecular Condenser (Stilt-Man weapon)

Molecule Ray (The Leader's weapon)

Sen-Yu (Dr. Strange ally, fellow mystic)

Sidney Blake (sci-fi character)

Sonic Shark (anti-Silver Surfer weapon)

Zantor (Atlantean villain)

Radio Recap: Daredevils of Hollywood

"From Hollywood, the motion picture capital of the world, we bring you the thrilling, true life experiences of those men behind the scenes, those daring unsung heroes whose breathtaking adventures on the screen have thrilled millions, whose daily jobs bring them face-to-face with death, those men who comprise the strangest fraternity on earth, the suicide squad, the movie stuntmen, the Daredevils of Hollywood!"

Daredevils of Hollywood was a 15-minute syndicated program that ran from April 25 to July 22, 1938. The series celebrated the profession of Hollywood stuntmen, with each episode focussing on a particular stuntman.

The show would open with a dramatic performance of a stunt, then switch to an interview between Kurt Foreman and the stuntman. The only one of the stuntmen featured on the show who's known today is Yakima Canutt, but the other stuntmen featured were Bob Rose, Cliff Lyons, Ione Reed, Slim Talbot, Matt Gillman, Bob Clark, Frank McGrath, Kansas Mooring, Cecil Kellogg, Eileen Goodwin, Ken Cooper Frank Clark and Gordon Carvette.

I wonder, though, whether the actual stuntmen were being interviewed on the show-- listening carefully to Yakima Canutt, I'd swear that was radio veteran Lou Merrill.

To me, the most interesting tidbit from these programs was during Foreman's interview with Cliff Lyons:

Lyons: "...A few extras will do easy things such as falling down stairs or rolling down a cliff; we call those 'bumps' men.
Foreman: "Tell me, Cliff, what's the difference between a stuntman and a 'bumps' man?"
Lyons: "Well, when a 'bumps' man makes a mistake, he breaks an arm or a leg, but when a stuntman misses, it's curtains."

Frank Nelson narrated most of the events in the dramatic portions; other familiar voices included Hanley Stafford and Joseph Kearns.

The problem with the series for me is that the radio techniques were still a little too primitive; usually, in the opening re-enactment, when the stuntman's life inevitably ends up in danger, it turns into a series of people yelling and trying to describe what's happening. It doesn't make for good radio.

It's also a little irritating that at each episode's halfway mark, the stuntman will start to describe an anecdote, then get cut-off by Foreman, who promises they'll continue the anecdote after the commercial break. It was a deliberate creative choice to lure listeners into sticking around for the rest of the anecdote, but the interruption is always unwelcome.

The Old-Time Radio Researchers have a YouTube playlist of all 26 episodes of Daredevils of Hollywood.

Jack Kirby’s birthday on the Marvel Appendix!

It's the anniversary of Jack Kirby's birth and I celebrated by writing these profiles about some of his creations for the Marvel Appendix!

Number One (Secret Empire leader)

Agent C (Hydra operative)

Bazooka Drill (S.H.I.E.L.D. device)

John Bronson (agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

Senator Dudley (S.H.I.E.L.D. Executive Council)

Hover-Limousine (Hydra vehicle)

Metronome Unit (S.H.I.E.L.D. devices)

Morpheus Grenade (S.H.I.E.L.D. weapon)

N.A.P. (S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicle)

Porsche 904 (the original S.H.I.E.L.D. flying car)

S.H.I.E.L.D. Marine Division (sea-based S.H.I.E.L.D. squad)

Swamp Buggy (S.H.I.E.L.D. swamp vehicle)

Hydra Undersea Assault Force (Hydra frogman team)

Avengers Helicopter (Avengers aircraft)

Ben Clark (Korean War hero)

Delta Missile (King Arrkam's weapon)

Dreadnought Air-Yacht (Maximus' flagship)

Sea Sled (Inhumans vehicle)

Escape Sub (A.I.M. vehicle)

Hammer Hogan (Rawhide Kid foe)

Magneto's Giant Magnet (I can't wait to tell all my friends; they don't have a magnet this big)

X-Men Jetcopter (X-Men's aircraft)

M'Wabu (Wakandan servant)

The Phantom Whose Touch Means Death (Balder foe; have I mentioned his touch means death?)

Rhamu Rondi (Vision/Aarkus foe)

Shock-Roller (Avengers workout device)

Glenn Stuart (college football star, romance hero)

General von Ritzik (Howling Commandos foe)

X-13 (giant robot)

X-34 (intergalactic starship)

X-35 (X-Model robot)

X-29 (X-Model robot)

X-3 (X-Model robot)

Zarin (Polar Eternals)

Lifters (Makkari's device)

General Greshkov (Eternals character, Celestials foe)

Energy Bomb (Deviant anti-Celestial weapon)

The Delphan Brothers (Eternals, brawlers)

Brain-Mines (Deviant device/weapon)

Mr. Bradford (U.S. government, Eternals ally)

Air Shuttle (Deviant vehicle)

Aginar (Polar Eternal)

Lubango Vlog v.4.6: A Toast to Lubango!

As another visit to Angola winds down, my wife and I toast Lubango in our accustomed fashion.

Lubango Vlog v.4.5: Canadians Still Trying Junk Food in Angola

Yes, it's another vlog about tasting junk food. Join us for a bite!

Radio Recap: The Skippy Hollywood Theatre/Your Movietown Radio Theater

The series known as both The Skippy Hollywood Theatre and Your Movietown Radio Theater was a syndicated program heard from 1941-1949 through Ziv syndication; it then ran on CBS from December 1, 1949 to September 21, 1950. The series offered a variety of familiar names from Hollywood in the starring role of a half-hour drama. I've found that OTR collectors have put episodes from either show title into each other's collections; so be it.

Music was by Del Castillo (Escape) and it was produced, directed and hosted by Les Mitchel, who produced a similar-sounding program I've yet to listen to called The Theatre of Famous Radio Players.

The majority of the stories heard on the program were original dramas, which means if you haven't heard this show before, you'll find plenty of unfamiliar tales. One of the few adaptations I've heard is "Rappaccini's Daughter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The stories are a mixed bag; for example, the episode "Sound of Her Voice" is a comedic supernatural story that riffs on Robert Louis Stevenson's "the Magic Bottle," in which a man obtains a genie but the story's primarily about how annoying the voice of the man's wife is. It's not successful as a comedy. Otherwise, I didn't find this series very remarkable.

The series did have a lot of light, comedic fare. Two that I enjoyed was the romantic comedy "Girl in the Galaxy" with a lovestruck astronomer and "A Book on Rock Gardening," a screwball comedy about children who give their father a thoughtless gift that consumes his life.

There are 42 episodes in the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library collection of The Skippy Hollywood Theatre and 66 episodes of Your Movietown Radio Theater - there's duplication between the two series and at least one misfiled episode from another series.

Blogging from Angola

Just a reminder that my wife and I also blog about our experiences in Angola on our website; at our blog you can learn about the murals we're designing, the inventory we're taking and other observations about Angola. Check it out!