Comedy from Golden Age of Radio/20 Cs

Rating:
Summary: AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HOME AUDIO
Review: Abbott & Costello, the Aldrich Family, Amos 'n' Andy, the Bickersons, Bob Hope, Burns & Allen, Charlie McCarthy, Duffy's Tavern, Fibber & Molly, Fred Allen, the Great Gildersleeve, Jack Benny, the Life of Riley, Lum & Abner, Milton Berle (!), Lucille Ball's My Favorite Husband, Our Miss Brooks, Ozzie & Harriet, Phil Harris & Alice Faye, and Red Skelton in shows unavailable to the general public for decades! The perfect complement for Old Time Radio's Greatest Shows, also available from Amazon.com. Twenty cassettes, thirty hours.

Rating:
Summary: Well done
Review: This an excellent collection from Radio Spirits, currently the best old-time radio distributors on the market. It is fun to revisit old favorites (like Fibber McGee, Great Gildersleeve), be introduced to new favorites (My Favorite Husband, the progenitor of I Love Lucy), and be wary of those that didn't impress me at all (The Aldrich Family, The Milton Berle Show).

Having three shows each for all the 20 different programs is a wonderful way to sample and get a feel for a show without being inundated by any one particular program. On the other hand, collections like the one picked by Walter Cronkite only give you one broadcast upon which to form an opinion.

But what was most interesting was the selection of shows themselves. I had only heard two specific broadcasts before and I've been listening for years. And where else can you find such nuggets as:

1. Pre-stardom Doris Day singing on the Bob Hope Show.
2. Orson Welles bickering with Charlie McCarthy.
3. The Jack Benny Program done entirely by kids.

Anyone who is into old radio comedies should get a kick out of this collection. Yes, it is near being prohibitively expensive (especially with many files available on Web sites or in trading groups), but for a collection of this magnitude, one can hardly go wrong.