Radio Recap: Hollywood Spotlight

"The Hollywood Spotlight! Presenting an all-star revue from the entertainment center of the world-- Hollywood!"

Hollywood Spotlight was a syndicated 15-minute program comprised primarily of musical numbers with occasional comedy interludes. Each episode opened and closed with about 2 minutes of the ditty "Rose Room," which was probably where local advertisements were intended to be inserted.

I'm not normally one for musical programs but I made an exception for this one because the featured band on Hollywood Spotlight was led by Phil Harris! This was a year before Harris would come aboard the Jack Benny Program. Although Hollywood Spotlight didn't afford him many opportunities to banter, it is interesting to hear these early examples of him on the radio. Certainly his voice was different - he hadn't yet been transformed into the ignorant slob Benny's writers invented and his southern drawl is much stronger.

Also of interest is that Don Wilson appears on some episodes as an m.c. Wilson was already Benny's commercial spokesman at that time - I'm left to wonder if Wilson's encounters with Harris led to Harris joining Benny's show?

The comedy sketches on Hollywood Spotlight are generally performed by Bob Burns. His backwoods rural humour really isn't to my liking (especially when he dons "blackface" and performs as "Brother Athsma"). Each time he performed a routine, I couldn't help but think that a much more talented comedy performer was in the same room-- heck, by 1935 Harris had already starred in his own Academy Award-winning comedy short (So This Is Harris), he could've handled a few minutes of comedic banter.

There are also a variety of other singers on the show, including the Five Jones Boys and Clarence Muse; there's also the female vocalist Leah Ray, who sings a few solos (and duets with Phil Harris).

The songs themselves are, um, of their time. Ditties like "Underneath the Harlem Moon" and "That's Why Darkies Were Born" have pretty racist lyrics. On the other hand, Phil sings "Minnie the Mermaid," which he'd end up repeating many, many times over the years, up to 20 years later on the Phil Harris/Alice Faye Show.

The Old Time Radio Researchers have a YouTube playlist of Hollywood Spotlight!

Radio Recap: The Club Car Special

"The Club Car Special is based on the march of events and city life section of the Hearst Sunday newspapers throughout the country. This section is devoted to the cartoons and writings of America's foremost humorists: O. O. McIntyre, Will Rogers, George Ade, Sam Hellman, Arthur 'Bugs' Baer, Milt Gross, Damon Runyon and many others. So let's climb on board the Club Car Special right now just for a lark and a laugh!"

Okay, here's a real oddity. The Club Car Special was a 15-minute syndicated program heard on NBC in 1934. It was produced by Hearst syndication and drew from content in Hearst's newspapers. It's just one of many Hearst radio programs designed to promote its publications (ie, Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim, Front Page Drama) but this one is different because it relayed comedic segments from Hearst's publications. This included some really talented creators - Milt Gross, Will Rogers, Damon Runyon - which means this series merits a look if you're a fan of those names.

Each episode features several comedy routines with a variety of performers. Even single-panel cartoons are dramatized, which require a bit of padding, naturally. They also dramatize Milt Gross's comics, which is a rare and unusual experience.

Each sketch is introduced by a train porter calling out the next creative person's name ("All aboard, Club Car Special! Next stop, Will Rogers! All aboard!") although the creators themselves were impersonated. Each sketch ends with a 'wah-wah' trombone and a small chorus of voices fake-laughing which, frankly, does a lot to make this series sound unfunny. Just to further impede your enjoyment, the fake laughter is always immediately followed by the porter calling out the next sketch. Even if you do find something amusing in the sketch, the show refuses to give you time to pause and enjoy it.

I did find the humourous boxing stories written by Arthur 'Bugs' Baer were pretty amusing but it looks as though very little of his work was ever anthologized-- shy of digging up the original newspapers, I don't think he can be read now.

Ultimately, I cannot recommend the Club Car Special unless you're a fan of the creators whose works were being read on the air. Even then, I think you'll find that these very funny jokes were told with the least funny delivery that was possible for 1934.

You can hear the 10 surviving episodes of Club Car Special on this YouTube playlist created by the Old Time Radio Researchers.

Radio Recap: On Stage

On Stage, also known as "Cathy and Elliott Lewis on Stage," was a latter-day CBS radio program that aired from January 1, 1953 until September 30, 1954. The series was a dramatic anthology featuring the husband-wife team of Cathy and Elliott Lewis. The two of them were something of a power couple in radio; they'd both been busy radio actors who appeared in all sorts of comedies and dramas before being married. By the time of On Stage, Cathy had become a comedy star in the radio and TV versions of My Friend Irma and while Elliott was still appearing in the radio comedy the Phil Harris/Alice Faye Show he was becoming better known as a writer, producer and director, producing such shows as Suspense, Crime Classics, Broadway Is My Beat, the Line-Up and Pursuit.

On Stage was a dramatic anthology series; sometimes the episodes were comedies, sometimes romantic dramas, sometimes a thriller, sometimes a bit of experimental radio. As something of a hodge-podge of content, I'm sure the series itself won't be to every person's taste but it did possess quality; Elliott and Cathy were top performers and they brought with them many of the best actors they'd been collaborating with at CBS along with top-notch sound effects and original music.

Most of On Stage featured original scripts by the likes of Morton Fine and David Friedkin (who worked on every show Elliott produced) and E. Jack Neuman. Neuman's scripts included "Eddie," a disturbing story in which Elliott portrayed a happy-go-lucky stalker who refused to be spurned by Cathy and "Heartbreak," in which Elliott portrayed a man who suffered a heart attack and the difficulty his wife had in dealing with him.

Outside of original scripts, the series adapted Frank R. Stockton's "the Lady or the Tiger" and Anton Chekhov's "the Bear," plus a reinterpretation of Ernest Thayer's poem "Casey at the Bat" and Voltaire's novel "Candide." A few episodes of On Stage were later redone on Suspense, including "Beyruth by Sunrise," "Heavens to Betsy" and "the Cellar Door."

I find the series was weakest when it attempted comedy; despite Elliott and Cathy's lengthy credits in that genre, I find the debut episode "String Bowtie" to be a rather unfunny attempt at screwball comedy. The gentler comedy of "the Man of Independent Mind" about an average Joe who decides to become the strongest man in the world in order to prove his greatness or "Canary Yellow" about a father who objects to his son playing a bird in a school play were much better fits for the Lewises.

Sadly, Cathy and Elliott Lewis divorced in 1958, four years after the series ended. This makes it particularly rough to hear episodes of On Stage where they played quarrelling couples - which they did now and then. If On Stage was meant to draw them closer together then it failed - it sounds like by the end of the series run their marriage was already crumbling.

You can hear all the surviving episodes of On Stage in this YouTube playlist created by the Old Time Radio Researchers.

Radio Recap: The Black Flame of the Amazon

The Black Flame of the Amazon was a 15-minute syndicated radio adventure serial from 1938 starring real-life explorer Harold Noice, who portrayed a fictionalized version of himself on the series. In the series, Harold went on adventures in the Amazon jungles of Brazil alongside his Portuguese friend Pedro and a pair of precocious kids named Jimmy and Jean.

Initially this is a pretty standard juvenile adventure serial, complete with the villains Butch Grogan and Limey Scroggins who want a map to the treasure of the Incas. But about half-way through the series, the heroes escape from the villains and spend quite a lot of episodes just bumming around the jungle, talking to each other. It becomes something of a slice-of-life domestic soap opera instead of an adventure serial! In fact, there's a span of about 5 episodes where the kids are going to be left behind by Noice and so they plan to play a prank on him. Mostly, they talk about their plan, over and over; then Noice figures our the kids are planning something; then, back to the kids, still planning. An adventure serial that just might lull you to sleep.

The Black Flame of the Amazon has many of the problems found in "jungle adventure" tales of its era; to be generous, such stories are very patronizing towards indigenous peoples; or, put bluntly, they get racist. Such as when Harold Noice lectures the kids as to why they need to investigate the absence of a white man from his trading post:

Harold: "This is now a part of our business. We whites, no matter what part of the world, we're in, must never forget that we are white."
Jimmy: "You mean there's been a crime committed here?"
Harold: "Yes, Jimmy, against a white man."
Jimmy: "Then there's got to be punishment of some kind!"
Harold: "That's secondary, Jimmy. A white man made his residence here. We have to find out what happened-- find that white man. That's the white man's law in the jungle."
Jimmy: "Swell, Mr. Noice, that's swell! And we're white!"

Harold Noice's acting is stiff, but acceptable; Pedro sounds like Alan Reed, but I'm not positive it's him; the actors playing Jimmy and Jean are frequently terrible, often delivering their dialogue with a woodness that sounds like no child I ever met.

You can hear all the surviving episodes of the Black Flame of the Amazon in this YouTube playlist created by the Old Time Radio Researchers.

Radio Recap: Hollywood's Open House

"Just sit back and relax; you'll be royally entertained, for it's time for Hollywood's Open House."

Hollywood's Open House was a syndicated half-hour radio series hosted by Jim Ameche (Don Ameche's brother). It was something of a smorgasboard of entertainment from Hollywood - first a little music and comedy, followed by a brief dramatization of a popular film, play or short story (sometimes just a single scene excerpted from the source).

The series was meant to advertise Motion Picture Magazine, so the various entertainment capsules are reflective of how the magazine must have summarized its stories. What's odd is that while the show used a number of Hollywood stars as guests on the program is that they also employed impersonators! The earliest surviving episode recreates a Bob Hope/Bing Crosby routine with both men impersonated. They sound pretty good at matching both men's speed and pronunciation, though overall they're fairly obvious imitators. I guess they couldn't license an audio clip?

RadioGoldindex speculates that although the episodes are dated from 1947-1948 the series could have been produced as many as 3-4 years earlier! I don't know about that math - perhaps 3-4 months earlier, they certainly don't sound like wartime radio productions.

On the other hand, Hollywood's Open House wasn't quite in vogue with post-war radio, at least not to my ears. I think programs that mixed comedy, music and drama made sense in 1930s radio when much of what could be done was still being learned and the number of programs on the air was somewhat limited. But post-war, radio was booming; if you wanted comedy, there were so many comedy shows; likewise music shows; likewise dramatic anthologies. I think audiences were more interested in a show that devoted its full runtime to a single genre.

Stories they adapted included Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" (with Peter Lorre!), Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace" and "A Piece of String." They also ran a parody of Ernest Hemingway's "the Killers" titled "the Exterminators" (October 21, 1948).

The comedy guests are a mixed bag; Bert Lahr is always good; Lucille Balls turns up, but only to perform in a dramatic role (she was probably trying to branch out her career); Jackie Gleason appears in the aforementioned "Killers" parody and does a terrific stand-up routine in another episode (November 11, 1948).

I'm currently reviewing a number of radio variety shows and what I have to say for Hollywood's Open House goes for most of them - if you're a fan of one of the stars heard on the program, you'll want to hear the segments where they appear - but you might not be interested in the rest of the show.

You can hear what remains of Hollywood's Open House at the Old Time Radio Researchers' Library.

Why Does Darkseid Lounge?

Over a decade ago on the blog, I looked at Action Comics #593 (1987), a team-up story starring Superman and Mister Miracle written and drawn by John Byrne. As I noted in that review, this was one of the earliest comic books that I read.

Here's an excerpt from my review:

Mr. Miracle enters his house with his diminuative aide Oberon at his side; however, instead of finding his wife Barda waiting for him, Mr. Miracle is greeted by Darkseid, sitting in an armchair sipping wine. Seriously, I wouldn't kid you. Even though Keith Giffen's Ambush Bug mocked the idea of Darkseid's ubiquity in DC Comics all the way back in 1985, it seems no one got the memo as Darkseid would continue to make appearances like this up to present times. Darkseid sipping wine in Mr. Miracle's living room is about as menacing as Darkseid serving Ambush Bug a hamburger in Ambush Bug#2. Ah well; in 1987, I knew of Darkseid through the Super Powers figures and Super Friends cartoon show, so at least he was a familiar face.

Above you can see the image of Darkseid calmly sipping wine while lounging in Mister Miracle's living room, and below is the final page of Ambush Bug #1 (1985) by Robert Loren Fleming and Keith Giffen. This was the start of a running gag in the four-issue Ambush Bug mini-series as each issue would conclude with Ambush Bug encountering Darkseid in some mundane locale, but the succeeding issue would completely ignore that scene. Finally, at the end of Ambush Bug #4, Ambush Bug reveals that the "Darkseid" in his stories was just an inflatable dummy. He says to the deflated dummy, "Thanks, pal. You bought me an extra fifty thousand sales in the comic shops!"

This trope of Darkseid lounging around in a mundane location instead of unleashing his power to destroy his enemies-- that's become a well-worn trope in DC comics. And I suppose my reaction in the above review came out that way because I was used to a post-Jack Kirby Darkseid. Post-Kirby, Darkseid was no longer the arch-enemy of the New Gods-- now he was basically everyone's arch-enemy, from Superman to the Suicide Squad, from Mary Marvel to the Legion of Super-Heroes. Writers still seemed to understand that he was a villain who needed to show restraint (or else he'd simply wipe most of Earth's heroes out of existence), and thus the many images of Darkseid lounging. This was particularly apparent in the 1987 Legends crossover, which resulted in Darkseid appearing in many, many comics within a six-month span, but mostly he appeared only to plot and scheme rather than take action.

What I didn't appreciate about Darkseid was that Kirby had pretty definite ideas about how to play his arch-villain; after a few cameos in Kirby's Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen stories, Darkseid made his big debut in New Gods #1 (1971), which also introduced Darkseid's true opponent, Orion. Orion spent the entirety of issue #1 battling his way through Darkseid's armies on Apokalips only to learn Darkseid was on Earth. The issue ends with Orion heading to Earth, where Darkseid promises on the last page, "I hear you, Orion! The battle begins!"

But New Gods #2 opens up with Orion entering an apartment where he simply finds Darkseid lounging, waiting for him, as seen above (and it does look like Giffen drew directly from this image for the end of Ambush Bug #1). There is no physical confrontation with Darkseid in that issue; although Orion continues to oppose all of Darkseid's schemes, New Gods was cancelled before the promised showdown with Orion and Darkseid could occur. So, Fleming and Giffen weren't just making light of Darkseid's ability to add sales when they used him in Ambush Bug - they were also poking fun at how, from their perspective, the promised fight between Orion and Darkseid kept being put off.

I should note that Giffen was also the artist of a Legion of Super-Heroes story titled "the Great Darkness Saga," written by Paul Levitz (Legion of Super-Heroes #290-294, 1982). It was a lengthy storyline where the antagonist was ultimately revealed to be Darkseid, still alive in the 31st century; in the climax, Orion suddenly appears and they have the epic battle that fanboys had been asking for since 1971. It's basically fan-fiction, Levitz and Giffen trying to write their own ending to Kirby's New Gods. Many fans call it "the greatest Legion of Super-Heroes story!" That's how lame the Legion are, I guess... their best story is a stealth New Gods comic.

"The Great Darkness Saga" happened early enough in Darkseid's post-Kirby history that it seems to have been extremely influential. Yet I also wonder how much the version of Darkseid seen in that story - the cosmic powerhouse who goes fist-to-fist with the entire Legion of Super-Heroes - owes to Thanos. Thanos was, after all, created by Jim Starlin in 1973 as what he admitted to as a being directly inspired by Darkseid. For Thanos' early appearances, he was quite a bit like Darkseid - he employed a number of lieutenants to do his dirty work and mostly plotted and schemed. It wasn't until he obtained the Cosmic Cube during Starlin's Captain Marvel stories that he ceased being on the sidelines and instead directly engaged the heroes (I wrote a 10-part history of Starlin's Thanos; here's part 1, where I discussed those early comics). I'd say that Starlin's Thanos stepped out from Darkseid's shadow when he reappeared in Warlock as Warlock's ally against the Magus. Although Thanos' quest to win the love of Death could be compared to Darkseid's quest for the Anti-Life Equation, Thanos' subtlety and guile in those Warlock stories is very unlike Darkseid's single-minded approach.

Post-"Great Darkness Saga," DC reprinted Kirby's New Gods stories in 1984 as a prestige-format series. In the final issue, Kirby finally wrote and drew the conclusion to Orion and Darkseid's unresolved fight. To put it mildly, it's not what fans like Levitz and Giffen anticipated. In fact, there is once again, no fight. Orion pursues Darkseid, but Darkseid continually beats a strategic retreat rather than engage in combat. Finally, Darkseid leads Orion into an ambush; a squad of Parademons blast Orion's body full of bullets and he drops out of sight, seemingly dead; the end.

And this isn't a course-correction on Kirby's part, it's consistent with all of his Darkseid stories in the 1970s. Although Darkseid deployed plenty of lieutenants against his enemies, his own interest was simply the Anti-Life Equation. He would indulge his lieutenants if he thought their plans might bring him the equation (or at least inconvenience his enemies so they wouldn't interfere with him) but Darkseid didn't use power for power's sake. I think any of the confrontations Kirby wrote between Darkseid and Desaad would be instructive; Desaad would inflict pain on his enemies because he enjoyed the sensation; Darkseid, however, was not a sadist and expressed annoyance at Desaad for placing his sadism above his actual goal - the Anti-Life Equation. Outside of flashbacks, the only characters Darkseid killed with his own power in Kirby's stories were his lieutenants when he felt they'd gone too far off-track - and then Kirby gave him the power to resurrect his lieutenants in his graphic novel Hunger Dogs (1985), albeit the resurrected lieutenants were mere shades of their former selves.

I submit, then, it's possible that the Darkseid of "the Great Darkness Saga" is a combination of Levitz and Giffen's fanboyish wish for a Darkseid who fights, drawn from Starlin's Thanos. Kirby's Darkseid was not Starlin's Thanos; he had plenty of raw power, but next to no interest in unleashing it. Perhaps a true "final" New Gods story in which Darkseid obtained the Anti-Life Equation would bring the character to a point where he would unleash his full power. But that's not Kirby's Darkseid; without the Anti-Life Equation, what is there for Darkseid to do, but... lounge.

Radio Recap: Soldiers of the Press

Soldiers of the Press was a 15-minute syndicated program that aired during the greater part of the USA's time in World War II, starting in February 1943 and lasting 'til August 1945. The series features dramatized accounts of events witnessed by journalists that had something to do with the conflict.

Apparently all of the journalists "heard" on the series were actually professional actors. Although the journalists responsible for the news stories were given credit for their work, it seems none of them appeared as themselves in the dramas. Which is fair enough, since journalists aren't professional actors. It is a bit of a missed opportunity in some cases, as the journalists covered included names like Walter Cronkite. The actual performers aren't credited but I swear I heard voices like Bill Johnstone and Raymond Massey.

The stories recounted on Soldiers of the Press give one a pretty good view of the different locales and theaters of operations during the war; some are recounted from the perspectives of journalists who were overseas when the US entered the war and how they suffered in internment camps. There are naval operations, aerial operations and more. It's bit jingoistic, but what would you expect from a wartime program?

The Old Time Radio Researchers have their collection of Soldiers of the Press in this YouTube playlist.