Subject: [removed] Digest V01 #79
From: <[removed]@[removed]>
Date: 3/9/2001 9:10 PM

To: <[removed]@[removed];

    ------------------------------

                          The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                             Volume 01 : Issue 79
                       A Part of the [removed]!
                               ISSN: 1533-9289

                               Today's Topics:

     More little people inside the radio  [Bill Jaker <bilj@[removed];      ]
     Unshackled                           ["Ron Vanover" <vanoverr@[removed];  ]
     Fu Manchu plots                      ["J. Randolph Cox" <cox@[removed]]
     OTR ECONOMICS                        ["Owens Pomeroy" <opomeroy@[removed]; ]
     Re: TV "as" Radio                    [GEORGE WAGNER <gwagneroldtimeradio@]
     Re: Radio, TV, and Literalism        [Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed]]
     Cincinnati Covnention                ["Bob Burchett" <haradio@[removed]]
     Today in Radio History               [Joe Mackey <wmackey@[removed]]
     Re: TV *as* Radio                    [John Francis MacEachern <johnfmac@m]
     Radio Logs                           ["Art Department" <wolowicz@[removed]]
     little people in the radio           [Tyrone Settlemier <settlet@[removed];]
     OTR in Sacramento                    ["Matt Votisek" <mattvotisek@hotmail]
     Help Needed                          ["Stewart Wright" <stewwright@worldn]
     A Dark and Stormy [removed]           [Larry Groebe <lgroebe@[removed]; ]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 22:40:44 -0500
    From: Bill Jaker <bilj@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  More little people inside the radio

    By the way, did you think there were little people inside the radio
    doing their stuff like I did when I was little?

    This appears to have been a fairly universal impression for kids during
    the Golden Age of Radio.  We had an RCA console model that was taller
    than I was, and if I couldn’t hear something well enough I’d press my
    ear against the dial – not the speaker, which was hidden behind its
    grille cloth, but the glowing orange dial which, after all, is what
    brought in the program.

    I did indeed crawl inside the radio trying to see the people I could
    hear, probably motivated by Uncle Don telling a listener that he’d find
    his birthday present “behind the radio, where I am”.  Since I didn’t see
    him right away I could only assume that Uncle Don wasn’t there because
    it wasn’t my birthday.  But on another occasion I sneaked a peek and
    looking toward the loudspeaker I swore I could see someone!

    Then one day my mother took my sister and me to see a real radio show,
    “Daily Dilemmas” on WOR/Mutual, from one of the Mutual auditorium
    studios in Manhattan (probably the Longacre Theater).  I remember this
    well because Mom was picked as a contestant and won the day’s top prize.
    I also got to see people talking into microphones that sent their voices
    out on the air.  Now I understood how they did “Daily Dilemmas”.  But I
    couldn’t figure out where the rest of the programs came from, and for a
    long time I believed that if there was no studio audience then the other
    shows on WOR must originate from the seats in the auditorium.  I could
    picture John Gambling and Martha Deane and Ed & Pegeen Fitzgerald and
    The Answer Man scattered throughout the hall, passing the microphone
    around till they had to get up and make way for the next studio
    audience.

    --Bill Jaker
    (Oh yes, sometimes we did listen to the radio during dinner).

    ------------------------------

    Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 01:14:38 -0500
    From: "Ron Vanover" <vanoverr@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Unshackled

    To those who expressed interest in the radio drama Unshackled, I have placed
    ten episodes on the web.  They can be downloaded at [removed].
    I will leave these programs in place for a week or so.  If interest exists
    for additional programs, drop me a line and I'll rotate the shows until my
    entire collection has been made available.

    I trust discussing this long-running radio drama doesn't take us too far
    from our shared love of oldtime radio.

    Ron Vanover

    ------------------------------

    Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 01:14:40 -0500
    From: "J. Randolph Cox" <cox@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Fu Manchu plots

    I should correct Bob fells on the title of the final Fu Manchu novel,
    published in 1959. It was not Fu Manchu for President, but Emperor Fu
    Manchu. There was an earlier novel called President Fu Manchu -- published
    in 1936.

    Incidentally, Gordon Peyton and I have been in touch because I sent him a
    list of all the books in the series with their dates and offered to read the
    relevant titiles to see how they match the tapes. There's no point in both
    of us doing this, as long as you have them identified so well. I will
    re-shelve my set od the novels and return to other projects -- of which I
    have many.

    Randy Cox

    ------------------------------

    Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 01:53:35 -0500
    From: "Owens Pomeroy" <opomeroy@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  OTR ECONOMICS

        When the CBS Mystery Theater debuted in the 1970's, Hyman Brown, the
    Producer was interviewed in Variety about the show and possible risk in
    launching such a project.  The conversation got around to the cost
    (economics) of the project4ct.  He gave a very (maybe tongue in cheek)
    comparison.  He said the TV series Dallas probably cost in the neighborhood
    of a half-million dollars per episode to produce. He said if you gave him
    the same story to produce for radio, all he would need would be the cast who
    would stand around the mike, a  man,and pre-recorded music, and he could
    bring it in for less than $1500 per episode (1970 prices, that is).
    According to the interview the people who did the CBS Radio Mystery Theater
    agreed to work for scale., so that may be the reason Hyman Brown made that
    statement.

        Of course, at today's prices, it probably could not be done, for less
    than 3 or 4 times the amount back then.

                               -  30  -

    Owens Pomeroy

    ------------------------------

    Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 08:53:13 -0500
    From: GEORGE WAGNER <gwagneroldtimeradio@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: TV "as" Radio

        The story's told about the late Dr. Isaac Asimov
    that he once got into a friendly argument as to which
    was the more important to conveying the story-line of
    a television drama - the video images or the
    soundtrack.
        "The pictures, of course," maintained the Good
    Doctor's opponent.
        So at the start of the next hour Dr. A. tuned into
    a television drama. He turned the sound all the way
    down.
        "Let's view the picture," he said, "until we both
    agree that we've lost the plot."
        This took less than 30 seconds.
        Next the sound was turned up and the picture down.
    Isaac and his friend then followed the plot until the
    end of the hour!

        (I have absolutely no reason to doubt this story.
    Although I myself knew Isaac Asimov only slightly - he
    one sprayed me with his famous "immortality serum"
    [just tap water, alas!] - I heard this tale from one
    of Dr. Ike's close personal friends.)

    George Wagner
    GWAGNEROLDTIMERADIO@[removed]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 09:21:08 -0500
    From: Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Re: Radio, TV, and Literalism

    OTRChris wrote:

>     I agree with you . Television has offered some very interesting programs. The
>     more creative ones offer alternate worlds and experiences that we could never
>     truly experience.  For this reason some people find  the shows silly because
>     they cannot get into this imaginative mode.  Not "real"  enough for them .

    This is a very good point -- and one which can be helpful in
    understanding the problems some modern audiences have with understanding
    the appeal of OTR.

    Over the last twenty-five years or so, television has become increasingly
    literal-minded, a result, perhaps, of the "relevance" movement of the
    early 1970s - the era in which it wasn't enough just to entertain, a show
    also had to present a message. This isn't a flaw in the medium, it's the
    result of a specific cultural trend that affected movies, music, comics,
    and just about every other form of popular entertainment.

    The sort of exaggerated, larger-than-life programs that had thrived
    during the 1960s had no place in this era, even though the veiled social
    messages in "The Beverly Hillbillies," to use one example, strike me as
    being just as potent in their own way as the hit-em-over-the-head
    approach popularized by Norman Lear. But to the avatars of "relevance,"
    there's no place for allegory: everything has to be made painfully clear
    and obvious, and everything has to be taken absolutely literally, with no
    room for layers of interpretation: here is the character, here are his or
    her positions, here is the contrast with this other character, and it's
    all meant to be taken strictly at face value. In skilled hands this sort
    of approach can be effective, but in the hands of a hack, it becomes the
    Hollywood equivalent of a classroom educational film. Didacticism for the
    sake of didacticism. The whole show becomes an excuse for the MOS at the
    end. (That's writer's jargon for the climactic emotional moment at the
    end when the audience goes "awwwwwwww." MO stands for "moment of.")

    Radio had much more in common with the television of the 1960s than it
    did with the television of the mid-1970s forward. There are relatively
    few OTR characters who were meant to be taken literally -- for the most
    part, they were deliberately larger than life. While these characters
    incorporated real life character traits, these traits would be amplified
    for radio -- farced beyond the level of reality. The audience *knew* this
    was the case, and played along with the game: everybody knew Jack Benny
    wasn't trying to portray a literal miser, but an extreme caricature of a
    miser. The listeners were in on the gag, and part of the fun came from
    knowing this.  But the more literal-minded the listener today, the less
    likely such characters are to be accepted. It's not unknown for
    literal-minded academic types to go on at length about Benny's
    incorporation of "Jewish stereotypes" in his characterization, totally
    missing the point of what he was trying to do.

    There is hope, however -- over the last decade, some TV programs have
    begun to gradually move away from strict literalism. I happened to see a
    "Seinfeld" rerun a couple nights ago which included a brilliant,
    old-style gag: Kramer installs an old screen door on his apartment, "to
    catch the summer breeze," and decides to turn the hallway into "Front
    Porch Small Town America," complete with a rocking chair, potted plants,
    a flag, and children playing ball in the "street."  This is a genuinely
    surreal bit which could come right out of one of Uncle Fletcher's
    rambling stories in "Vic and Sade," and shows that all is not lost for
    OTR-style writing in modern TV.

    Elizabeth

    ------------------------------

    Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 10:15:00 -0500
    From: "Bob Burchett" <haradio@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Cincinnati Covnention

    The Cincinnati Convention:
    Thursday: Dealers will set up sometime during he day
    Friday:   9:00 Dealers roon opens
              4:00 Casting non-professional re-creation roles
              7:00 Ethel & Albert
                   Peg Lynch & Bob Hastings
                   Boogie Woogie Girls
                   Frontier Town
                   Tyler McVey & Esther Geddes
    Saturday: 9:00 Dealers room opens
              1:30 Ethel & Albert
                   Peg Lynch & Bob Hastings
                   Boogie Woogie Girls
                   The Fatman
              3:00 Raffle drawing
              4:00 Dealers room closes
              5:30 Cocktails
              6:00 Dinner at hotel
              7:00 Request Time with Ed Clute
                   Boogie Woogie Girls
                   Ethel & Albert
                   Casey, Crime Photographer
                   Bob Hastings & Rosemary Rice
    Our hotel rate Is $75. There are other motels close
    to the Radisson with lower rates.
              Radisson 513-771-1720
              Red Roof Inn 513-771-5541
              Signature Inn 513-771-7877
              Comfort Inn 513-771-3400
    If anyone needs anymore information call toll free 1-888-477-9112
    Looks like another great weekend of OTR and nostalgia.
    We always have a large group that comes on Thursday to visit
    with the guest and other collectors. See you April 19,20,21.
    Bob Burchett
              Econo Lodge 513-771-0370

    ------------------------------

    Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 10:53:53 -0500
    From: Joe Mackey <wmackey@[removed];
    To: otr-otrd <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Today in Radio History

       From the AP,
       - In 1996: Comedian George Burns died in Beverly Hills at age 100.

       Thank you George for the joy you brought.
       Joe

    --
    Visit my home page:
    [removed]~[removed]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 10:53:57 -0500
    From: John Francis MacEachern <johnfmac@[removed];
    To: Old Time Radio Digest <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Re: TV *as* Radio

    I too grew up like Elizabeth watching the boob tube;  I
    agree with her wholeheartedly, most TV doesn't require
    pictures.

    Linda Ellerbee, the TV newswoman, in her autobiography wrote
    something to the effect:  "Turn on your TV, go into the next
    room, if you can still understand the entire broadcast, then
    throw out your TV and buy a better radio.  Good TV should
    compel you to watch."

    Personally, I have my TV wired into my stereo system in such
    a way that I can listen to the audio without having the
    actual tube on.  This is the way I 'hear' most TV shows, of
    course for certain shows and all movies and news events, I
    do sit and watch the boob tube.  However, for the majority
    of my TV "viewing", it's audio, only.  I can still enjoy the
    program while attending to other things.

    Also, when I was still in school, I had a small boombox that
    could receive TV audio.  I had a job as a delivery boy and
    spent many nights making my rounds listening to the TV.

    John Mac

    ------------------------------

    Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 11:55:09 -0500
    From: "Art Department" <wolowicz@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Radio Logs

    Are there any good and web-based repositories for radio logs?  I'm looking
    for Bold Venture as well as Superman and I'm sure I'll need others from time
    to time.

    Thanks!

    Shawn

    ------------------------------

    Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 12:42:56 -0500
    From: Tyrone Settlemier <settlet@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  little people in the radio

    Hope you don't mind a second-hand story.  A friend of mine, from England,
    related that when she was four (in the mid 1940) she was told by a teasing
    uncle that there were little people in the radio.  Later in the day the radio
    was discovered with a piece of bread stuffed inside it, and Gillian just
    getting ready to pour tea inside.  When told the radio wasn't a
    toaster/kitchen/what-are-you-doing? she replied that the little people in the
    radio must be terribly hungry, since she never saw anybody else feeding them.

    Tyrone Settlemier

    settlet@[removed]
    settlet@[removed]
    [removed]~settlet/[removed]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 13:27:04 -0500
    From: "Matt Votisek" <mattvotisek@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  OTR in Sacramento

    To all,

    I am joining the list for a 2nd time now.  A few of you may recognize my
    name because I belonged up until about 2 years ago when things got really
    hectic in my life, but now that I graduated college I finally have some
    extra [removed] am looking forward to reading the daily newsletter again.

    I recently relocated to the Sacramento area, I am wondering if anyone knows
    of any OTR events in my area?  Are there radio stations broadcasting? Any
    OTR clubs? Anything close to this area, maybe not Sacramento?

    Thanks.

    Well were a little late [removed] Folks!

    Matt Votisek
    mattvotisek@[removed]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 18:24:03 -0500
    From: "Stewart Wright" <stewwright@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Help Needed

            I received the following e-mail from Mike Sprague of "The One Man's
    Family Family" organization.  I thought people on the Digest might be able
    to help.

>     >From Mike Sprague

            I'm actively involved in The One Man's Family Family, the club
    devoted to that classic program.  Recently, I was contacted by Malcolm
    Collins, the son of actor Tom Collins.   Mal and his sisters are trying to
    obtain copies of shows on which his father worked to surprise their mother.

    TOM COLLINS SEARCH
            The children of actor Tom Collins are trying to obtain copies of
    shows on which Collins worked in radio.  They want to surprise their mother.
    Some of  them are One Man's Family, The Adventures of Frank Race (the family
    has most of these), Cavalcade of America, The Whistler, The Romance of Helen
    Trent, Aunt Mary, The Gallant Heart, The Greatest of These, I Love a
    Mystery, Dear John, Stars Over Hollywood, The Theater of Famous Radio
    Players and more.

            Please contact Mike Sprague  hrrmikes@[removed]   Box 723,  Bothell,
    WA 98041

    Stewart Wright

    ------------------------------

    Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 19:10:13 -0500
    From: Larry Groebe <lgroebe@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  A Dark and Stormy [removed]

    Anyone out there can help this person?

    -----
    My grandmother memorized a script from the radio.  It goes like this . .

    It was a dark and stormy night when my Nellie went away.
    The old cow died and the hen wouldn't lay.

    I only remember bits and pieces of the rest.  My grandmother died recently
    and I'd like to find the script.  Any ideas?

    Jerri Hardaway
    -----

    Pass any good guesses on to me or the list, and I'll pass them on to Jerri.

    --Larry Groebe
    Old Time Radio Script Library
    [removed]~lgroebe

    --------------------------------
    End of [removed] Digest V01 Issue #79
    ******************************************

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