Radio Recap: Dark Fantasy

Of all the old-time radio horror programs, Dark Fantasy certainly stands apart. It's a series I learned of relatively late; around 1997 I bought a set of cassettes from Radio Spirits called "Old-Time Radio's Greatest Mysteries" which included 3 episodes of Dark Fantasy. I always enjoy finding another example of OTR horror and I was surprised that I'd heard nothing of it before - my local radio station QR77 never played a single episode; I had never heard it on Yesterday USA; John Dunning did not give the series an entry in his book On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old Time Radio.

Dark Fantasy was the brainchild of a writer named Scott Bishop. He was apparently a prolific author, although I've never found evidence of it. A press release for the launch of Dark Fantasy asserted he was "father of hundreds of mystery novels," yet I haven't seen any of them in bibliographies of pulp novels. An episode of Dark Fantasy titled "House of Bread" featured Bishop himself as the lead character, who is told by his publisher his books are "selling like peanuts at a circus." Mere wishful thinking? Ego-stroking? Did Bishop publish his fiction under a psuedonym? Perhaps one day I'll know.

Understanding who Bishop is and where he came from might help explain why Dark Fantasy is the series that it is. It should be noted that it aired from November 14, 1941 to June 26, 1942 over WKY, an NBC affiliate in Oklahoma City - thus, the series wasn't heard nation-wide. Airing when it did, the most obvious influences on Dark Fantasy would have been programs like the Witch's Tale and Lights Out.

How can I describe this series? I suppose you can divide Dark Fantasy into two types of episodes if you want to grossly oversimplify:

1. Episodes with consistent tones.
2. Episodes with inconsistent tones.

Those of the former are productions with very even plots. Characters and situations are introduced, a complication appears, something weird happens (usually something supernatural although occasionally sci-fi in origin) and the story ends. For example there's the episode "Resolution, 1841" in which four friends get together over the holidays; they banter together, mention is made that one woman has some financial troubles; later, one of them is possessed by the ghost of the woman's grandfather and he reveals where he hid a fortune.

In the latter, scenes lurch from one to the next with no sense of momentum. The weird things that occur are given next-to-zero build-up. For example there's the episode "The Cup of Gold" in which a golfer is killed; a woman who is supposedly responsible for the murder doesn't recall doing it; then some incense is lit and teleports the woman and her accuser to the planet Vento; a resident of Vento explains the woman is a reincarnation of a woman from Vento and she killed the golfer because they were enemies in previous lives. But when I type it like that I make it sound much more coherant than it is to hear.

Dark Fantasy was low budget; sound effects were usually limited, even small things like footsteps and doors closing were often omitted. Consequently, much of the show seems to be characters exchanging dialogue in a void - there's seldom a sense of place or atmosphere and those elements are so important in horror. Most of the drama is put over through dialogue and that becomes wearying, especially with the sotto voce style Bishop seemed to prefer from his actors. Whereas in the Witch's Tale or Lights Out characters would often scream their dialogue to convey terror, Dark Fantasy performers tend to lower their voices into whispers, as though in quiet awe of whatever was happening. It is extremely ineffective.

Dark Fantasy is camp, but not in the way Inner Sanctum Mysteries is - there's no sense that Scott Bishop meant his program to be intentionally over-the-top, even when he penned "Spawn of the Subhuman," a story about a gorilla given the voice of an opera singer by a mad scientist. Dark Fantasy took itself quite seriously, like Lights Out, but there's nothing deeper going on- while Arch Oboler liked his Lights Out stories to serve as commentaries about the world around himself (especially as commentaries on fascism), I have no idea what Scott Bishop valued nor abhorred. The man liked to write horror stories and NBC was willing to pay him for those stories.

If you want horror, Dark Fantasy does sometimes come through; "the Demon Tree" and "the Headless Dead" are both stories with a big supernatural threat tied to a plot that flows very evenly; you might get a kick out of them. Other stories are extremely pulpy, such as the sci-fi tale "Men Call Me Mad" about a visit to a micro-world, or the African adventure tale "The Thing from the Darkness."

Old Time Radio Researchers have a YouTube playlist of Dark Fantasy.

Radio Recap: Encore Theater

Encore Theater was a dramatic anthology that featured half-hour adaptations of popular films. Yes, it's another one of those. Lux Radio Theater proved a popular series could be established on film dramatizations and eventually the likes of Academy Award Theater, Screen Directors Playhouse and MGM Theater of the Air followed in its wake.

Encore Theater aired in the summer of 1946 over CBS at the same time they were broadcasting Academy Award Theater and Lux Radio Theater! Clearly they were striking while the iron was hot!

Many of the films adapted on Encore Theater are very familiar - I think every single one had been previously adapted as a one-hour program on Lux Radio Theater. In fact, the first episode was "Magnificient Obsession," which was adapted for radio on at least seven other occasions!

But there's a special reason why they adapted "Magnificent Obsession" - Encore Theater was sponsored by the pharmaceutical company Schenley Laboratories and "Magnificent Obsession" is a story about a physician. Nearly every episode adapted a movie that related in some way to medicine, from "Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet" to "Yellowjack."

Encore Theater didn't have as many big stars as the other programs I've mentioned; in fact, a lot of the big stars who showed up were also the sort of Hollywood names you'd hear on an episode of Suspense: Ronald Colman, Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Paul Lukas, Robert Taylor. And being a CBS program that also meant the stars were supported by the finest of radio's professionals - Cathy Lewis, Elliott Lewis, Howard Duff, Lurene Tuttle, Gerald Mohr, etc.

You can hear the surviving episodes of Encore Theater on this YouTube playlist created by the Old Time Radio Researchers.

Radio Recap: Mystery in the Air

One of my absolute favourite radio series is the short-lived mystery/horror anthology program Mystery in the Air, starring Peter Lorre. It was an NBC summer 1947 replacement series sponsored by Camel cigarettes while their usual clients Abbott and Costello took a break.

Now, there was also a 1945 summer series Camel produced called Mystery in the Air and a lot of radio logs treat the two as the same show. Scholarship performed by the Digital Deli determined they were very different shows - the 1945 program was a detective show starring Jackson Beck as detective Stonewall Scott.

Lorre's Mystery in the Air lasted just 13 episodes; the first five are now lost programs: "The Tell Tale Heart," "Leiningen vs. the Ants," "the Touch of Your Hand," "the Interruption" and "Nobody Loves Me." Those are definitely some tantalizing titles - "Nobody Loves Me" was also performed by Lorre on Suspense, which we still have; and Lorre's "Leiningen vs. the Ants" aired half a year before the first adaptation performed on Escape; one wonders if they used the same script on Escape.

But let's consider the remaining 8 episodes:

1. "The Marvelous Barastro" (by Ben Hecht) in which Lorre portrays a famous magician who married a blind woman, then encountered another magician who was determined to learn Barastro's tricks and destroy his happiness.
2. "The Lodger" (by Marie Belloc Lowndes) in which Lorre is the man believed to be a serial killer dubbed 'the Avenger'; however, he's not the point-of-view character as that role falls to Agnes Moorehead as the landlady.
3. "The Horla" (by Guy de Maupassant) in which Lorre portrays the hapless man who becomes haunted by an invisible presence.
4. "Beyond Good and Evil" (by Ben Hecht) in which Lorre portrays an escaped criminal who masquerades as the new minister to a small town, challenging his own sense of right and wrong.
5. "The Mask of Medusa" (by Nelson S. Bond) in which Lorre portrays an escaped criminal who hides in a wax museum where the statues are very much alive.
6. "The Queen of Spades" (by Alexander Pushkin) in which Lorre portrays a gambler who learns the secret to win every time at cards.
7. "The Black Cat" (by Edgar Allan Poe) in which Lorre portrays the brute who murders a cat and soon becomes a killer.
8. "Crime and Punishment" (by Fyodor Dostoevsky) explicitly an adaptation of the 1935 motion picture, with Lorre reprising his role as the murderer, Raskolnikov.

The adaptations take some liberties - for instance, there isn't a single radio adaptation of "The Lodger" that uses the novel's ending and Mystery in the Air came up with its own as other shows did; "the Mask of Medusa" is a fairly brief short story and Mystery in the Air adapted it all by the 15-minute mark - their expansion is very good.

Many of these stories were heard on other radio shows (Suspense adapted both of the Ben Hect stories - Mystery in the Air used the same scripts). However, some are very seldom heard on the radio, such as "the Horla." "The Horla" was the first episode of Mystery in the Air I heard and it won me over immediately because of Lorre's intense performance as his character grows increasingly unhinged across the half-hour, until the show ends with him breaking character to assure the audience he's not really insane! This episode made me fascinated with Guy de Maupassant's fiction; I later read all of his short stories. I also recently reviewed a graphic novel adaptation of this story, le Horla.

I like all 8 episodes; "the Queen of Spades" is a terrific supernatural tale and "the Black Cat" came across very well. Perhaps "the Lodger" is the least interesting but only because the emphasis on Moorehead's point-of-view reduces the amount of time for Lorre to be heard.

Lorre was a terrific actor whose abilities seemed to be taken for granted by Hollywood for much of his career. Mystery in the Air demonstrated he was as capable as Boris Karloff in headlining his own anthology series; too bad the summer series didn't result in a regular radio series. He did later host Nightmare but hosting isn't the same as leading the production.

I should also mention that the cast of Mystery in the Air included announcer Henry Morgan -- no, not the star of the Henry Morgan Show. This is the same performer who would later make his professional name "Harry Morgan," serving as Joe Friday's sidekick in the 1960s Dragnet TV show and performing as Colonel Potter on M*A*S*H. It's interesting to hear him back in the 40s - his voice never seemed to age.

Here's a YouTube playlist created by a fan of the remaining episodes of Mystery in the Air.

Radio Recap: Bob and Ray

I've written more than 100 of my Radio Recaps so far yet scarcely any have been about comedy programs. To be fair, as much of an old-time radio fan that I am, I was very slow to come around to radio comedy. Even today, there's just a small handful of comedy shows that I genuinely like, a much large list of shows I mostly like (with certain quantifiers) and a nearly as large list of shows that I don't like hearing at all.

It's not simply that comedy is subjective -- all art is. But comedy is also topical; even if the comedy doesn't rely on commentary on then-current events, it tends to use slang and cultural references that are very soon minor historical footnotes.

The comedy of Bob and Ray (performed by Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding) is, I think, somewhere between of-its-time and timeless. They satirized trends in entertainment - especially satirizing radio shows of the time (such as their parody of the soap opera Mary Noble, Backstage Wife in their recurring sketches "Myra Backstage, Noble Wife" or the One Man's Family as "One Feller's Family"). But a lot of their comedy comes from two men simply having a conversation and trying to surprise or one-up each other.

I really didn't get Bob and Ray the first time I heard it. My local radio station never broadcast Bob and Ray as part of "Those Old Radio Shows," so I only heard it when I began listening to Yesterday USA in my late 'teens. The first time I heard an episode the rebroadcaster made a big deal about the series. Listening to that episode, it didn't seem like much of a big deal. It was a late 40s iteration of their program and they sounded like a couple of disc jockeys (which is how they started) bantering with each other. Their voices were so casual they were nearly mumbling - it required a lot of my attention to follow what they were saying and after that, I wasn't so sure that it was worth my time listening to more of them.

What changed my mind was John Dunning's book On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. Dunning's entry on Bob and Ray made the series sound very funny - I was especially interested in hearing some of the parodies Dunning described, such as the Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy juvenile adventure serial parody, "Jack Headstrong, the All-American American." I'd heard plenty of Jack Armstrong episodes on Yesterday USA and I'd never enjoyed it; I thought that program was ripe for parody and, indeed, it's some of Bob and Ray's best material. The opening of "Jack Headstrong" in which Bob and Ray yell "Jack Headstrong!" at each other, dragging it out so long that (to me) it becomes funnier and funnier always placed me in the right frame of mind.

Of course, around the same time I was learning to appreciate Bob and Ray, I was also getting into improv comedy, thanks to discovering Whose Line Is It Anyway? Dunning had explained that although the series had a script, Bob and Ray would frequently veer off-script. Sometimes they'd try to confuse each other, sometimes the producers in the studio would introduce a sudden noise and see if they could incorporate it into their act. It's probably not to every taste, but once I knew what Bob and Ray was about, I was in.

The series ran on basically every network under all kinds of names. Their earliest days were as Matinee with Bob and Ray (1946-1951); then they went to network radio as Bob and Ray Present the National Broadcasting Company (1951-1953); they appeared as a segment on NBC's news show Monitor (1955-1959); Bob and Ray on Mutual (1955-1957); Bob and Ray Present the CBS Radio Network (1959-1960); decades later they popped up on NPR as the Bob and Ray Public Radio Show (1983-1987).

They portrayed every voice on their show; this meant adopting all kinds of unusual accents and speaking patterns, as well as Ray's surprisingly good falsetto which he used to portray all the female characters.

Outside of radio, they were on NBC television in 1951; we have a few episodes available to us on YouTube and although it's primitive TV, they were gamely doing a lot of their improv and adapting their characters over from radio. My favourite TV sketch is the "Frankenstein Brothers Suit" sketch:

They enjoyed a big revival in the 1970s with their stage show Bob and Ray: The Two and Only, which revisited a lot of the characters from their radio show. That also lead to a few books of their routines, which are all right as a read, but their jokes are much funnier with the two men delivering them.

A lot of the comedy on Bob and Ray is, like that "Jack Headstrong" gag, based on repetition. Many of their recurring sketches were essentially the same gag each time, such as Ray's character Webley Webster, who would introduce a dramatization of some great book that, for some reason, would turn out to be a seagoing adventure program in which a captain assaults his first mate (for me, some of the humour comes from anticipating what imagined slight will cause the captain to assault the first mate).

The Old Time Radio Researchers have 429 different Bob and Ray episodes in their library.

This is Ray Goulding reminding you to write if you get work...

...and Bob Elliott reminding you to hang by your thumbs.

Radio Recap: A Salute to the Law

A Salute to the Law has been indexed online as "the Nick Harris Program" but the Old Time Radio Researchers insist a Salute to the Law is the more accurate title of this series. They also say that this program ran from 1923 until 1942 which would make it the earliest radio program I've featured in my Radio Recaps!

What we do have of the program is dated 1934-1940. It was a 15-minute syndicated show introduced by Nick Harris, a real-life private detective. Harris would present stories that were supposedly drawn from true cases, although it's always hard to know for certain with programs such as these.

A Salute to the Law, then, was a crime program. Each episode dramatized a case, sometimes from the perspective of the law, other times from the perspective of the perpetrator. It was never, however, sympathetic to lawbreakers. Indeed, one episode opens with Harris going on a virtual tirade against the release of repeat offenders, closing his speech with a call for repeat offenders to be jailed for life.

The show sounds a lot like one of its contemporaries, Police Reporter, especially when it dramatizes scenes of murder. There's one particular episode titled "the Female Ogre" about a horrific series of murders committed by a woman that sounds just as sensationalistic as anything on Police Reporter. It's early radio and often primitive - not as nuanced as even Calling All Cars, much less Dragnet or 21st Precinct.

You can hear all the surviving episodes (dated from 1934 up to 1940) of a Salute to the Law in this YouTube playlist created by the Old Time Radio Researchers.

Radio Recap: The Voyage of the Scarlet Queen

"The Scarlet Queen, the proudest ship to plough the seas, bound for uncharted adventure! Every week a complete entry in the log and every week a league further in the strange Voyage of the Scarlet Queen!"

The Voyage of the Scarlet Queen was a radio adventure series that aired on Mutual from July 3, 1947 to February 14, 1948. The titular Scarlet Queen was a ketch under the command of Philip Carney (Elliott Lewis), aided by his first mate Red Gallagher (Ed Max). It was written by Gil Doud and Bob Tallman, produced by James Burton.

As the series involves a ship at sail it should be noted that this was not a historical program - it was set in contemporary times, with nearly every episode set somewhere in the Pacific, particularly at Asian ports of call.

Unusually for a non-juvenile adventure series, the Voyage of the Scarlet Queen had some continuity between episodes. The series kicked off with Carney in San Francisco, receiving an assignment from a Chinese man named Ku Chei Kang which promises to lead Carney to a fortune - however there's a rival group led by a man named Constantino who want the fortune for themselves. Constantino's people kill Carney's first mate in the first episode, resulting in Red Gallagher joining the crew; Gallagher is himself one of Constantino's agents but by the end of the pilot had swapped sides to serve faithfully under Carney's command. Interestingly, there was still a bit of friction for the first few episodes as Gallagher's allegiance to Carney was tested; but eventually the search for Kang's fortune was wrapped up, yet the series kept going with a variety of done-in-one episodes before it was cancelled. The final episode brought up Kang again, a fitting conclusion to the series.

In the audition, Lewis was Red Gallagher - Howard Duff had the role of Philip Carney. By the time it became a series, Duff was busy with the Adventures of Sam Spade, which must be why Lewis was promoted to the lead role. Listening to the audition (which was redone for the broadcast version) it is a big distracting to hear Duff as Carney as the role is played straight with none of Duff's usual sarcasm. For that matter, it's a bit hard to accept Lewis in the role of the tough and brawny Gallagher; the recasting definitely served to the show's benefit. In 1950 an attempt was made to recreate the series as the Log of the Black Parrot with Elliott Lewis again in the lead and Gil Doud writing alongside producer Antony Ellis but this time the pilot did not lead to a series.

Lead writer Gil Doud was a busy writer whose work appeared in One Out of Seven, the Adventures of Sam Spade, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, Pursuit, Escape, Suspense, Gunsmoke and Fort Laramie. His Escape credits include the episode "Port Royal," which was also set at sea (I rather like that episode). Co-writer Bob Tallman also wrote a few episodes of Escape, Suspense and the Adventures of Sam Spade.

The Voyage of the Scarlet Queen is a series I tried repeatedly to listen to over the last 2 decades yet something always held me back - I couldn't account for it. Gil Doud's writing, Elliott Lewis' acting, sea-going adventure - heck, those elements make it sound like a spin-off from Escape, right? But it wasn't until I resolved to write up the series on this blog that I made a determined effort at listening to the entire series.

There are some problems with the show, mainly that it was set primarily in Asia yet the Asian characters were all cast with white men doing bad "yellowface" accents. I like Bill Johnstone and William Conrad a lot but their Voyage of the Scarlet Queen characters are regrettable footnotes in their radio careers. Still, the series was wise enough to cast Barton Yarborough in a few episodes as a Texan, permitting him to act in the accent he did best (his first character was killed off; the series then brought him back as the first character's brother!).

Still, it is a strong series with a lot of good work being done; it's least-offensive when it steps away from the Asian characters as in the pilot and in the episode "The Jewel Thieves and The Straw Filled Dummy" in which Lewis' wife Cathy Lewis held a memorable role as a romantic interest for Carney.

The Voyage of the Scarlet Queen's run is mostly intact, which is unusual for Mutual shows; they were rebroadcast by the Armed Forces, who account for most of the surviving episodes; you can hear the Old Time Radio Researchers' collection in this YouTube playlist!

Radio Recap: Phyl Coe Radio Mysteries

Phyl Coe Radio Mysteries was a syndicated program that aired during September 6-December 20, 1937. It starred Peggy Allenby as the titular detective Phyllis Coe and none other than Bud Collyer (later of the Adventures of Superman) as her sidekick Tom Taylor. It shouldn't surprise you to learn that "Phyl Coe Radio Mysteries" was a big advertising campaign for Philco radios, similar to Majestic's Master of Mystery serving as a lengthy advertisement for Majestic radios.

Yet, Phyl Coe Radio Mysteries had a gimmick - listeners were invited to help solve the mysteries heard in each episode! Although the programs featured a complete drama that always ended with Phyl identifying the criminal, it lacked the typical radio detective scene where they would expound upon the clues which pointed to the criminal's guilt. Philco dealers provided booklets for listeners to gather the clues for themselves, then mail in their own reasoning for what tipped off Phyl to the criminal's identity, with correct responses leading to cash prizes. That's a pretty great gimmick!

The gimmick is the best part of the series; it's of interest that Phyl is an early female protagonist in the radio mystery genre but the stories themselves are very average radio mystery stories. Still, they're very breezy and easy to listen to.

12 of the 16 episodes of Phyl Coe Radio Mysteries can found in the Old-Time Radio Researchers Library.