Old-Time Radio's 60 All-Time Favorites

Rating:
Summary: Recorded history and lots of fun to boot
Review: Radio Spirits is noted for its fabulous collections of old-time radio shows. Their boxed sets of tapes and CDs are devoted to a single show (Jack Benny) or a single star (Frank Sinatra) or to types of programs such as Science Fiction, Mystery, Westerns, comedy, Christmas shows. Some are based on a theme such as the recent "America at War" in which broadcasts of World War II were frighteningly like those on and just after 9/11/01. However, the beginner might turn to the most recent release: "Old-Time Radio's 60 All-Time Favorites."

Available on 20 tapes with three shows each or on 30 CDs with two shows each, this collection includes several examples of just about every kind of radio show that kept us glued to that box when our imaginations supplied what the video tube was all too soon to give us--to our detriment.

Without trying to list all 60 shows, here are some of those included in this set. For comedy we have Abbott & Costello, Ozzie & Harriet, Bob Hope, "A Date With Judy," "The Great Gildersleeve" ( a serious Easter episode), "Life With Luigi," "Our Miss Brooks," Fred Allen, Red Skelton, and Phil Harris and Alice Faye. It is interesting to note that the most popular of them all, "Amos 'n' Andy," is not included, although separate collections of that hysterically funny show are available.

You like hard-boiled detectives? Try Philip Marlowe, Nero Wolfe, Sam Spade, Boston Blackie, Richard Diamond, the Falcon, and Nick Carter. A little less hard-boiled are Casey, Crime Photographer, and Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons. For mystery with a spooky atmosphere, there are "The Whistler," "Suspense," "Lights Out," and "The Black Museum."

Westerns are your meat? Then ride along with "The Six Shooter," "Have Gun, Will Travel," "Gunsmoke," and "Tales of the Texas Rangers." A little farther north you can hear "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon" getting his man across the snowy terrain.

From the comic strips and the pulps come The Shadow, The Lone Ranger, and The Green Hornet. Science Fiction, their close relative, is represented by "Dimension X" and "X-Minus One," while dramatizations of then-current films ("Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House") afford interesting comparisons as 90 to 120-minute stories have to be condensed into 25 minutes of radio time.

Straight drama is abundant: "Bold Venture" (with Bogart and Bacall, no less), "The First Nighter," "Damon Runyon Theatre," and so on. And the only show that does not fit into any of the above is the fabulous "Your Hit Parade," this one from 1943 with a certain up-comer by the name of Frank Sinatra to croon out the latest hits, including "Speak Low" and "My Ideal."

Adding extra spice to all of the above are the guest stars: Carmen Miranda, Joseph Cotten, Peter Lorrie, Cary Grant, among others. Then, of course, there are the stars themselves: Even Arden, Lucille Ball and Richard Denning, Marie Wilson, J. Carrol Nash, Joel McCrea--and I leave it to you to match those names with the shows in which they starred!

Another bit of fun comes from the commercials--especially those that tell you how good cigarettes are for you--many of which, especially on the comedy shows, were integrated into the scripts. Of course, there will be several references to wartime shortages, rationing stamps, and other items that will need footnotes for younger listeners. All of which, by the way, suggests wonderful lessons a good Social Studies teacher could develop from judicious use of these tapes or CDs.

As always, the book supplied by Radio Spirits is practically worth the price of the set alone. In 64 pages, it gives you a good deal of information about each show and has an illustration for almost all of them.