Subject: [removed] Digest V2006 #292
From: [removed]@[removed]
Date: 10/26/2006 1:24 PM

To: [removed]@[removed]

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

                                The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                                  Volume 2006 : Issue 292
                             A Part of the [removed]!
                                 [removed]
                                     ISSN: 1533-9289

                                     Today's Topics:

      fred allen and topical humor          [ <wgaryw@[removed]; ]
      10-26 births/deaths                   [ Ronald Sayles <bogusotr@[removed] ]
      Re: Social destiny of Radio           [ Rick Keating <pkeating89@[removed]; ]
      What's funny?                         [ John Mayer <mayer@[removed]; ]
      Max Wylie's RADIO WRITING             [ jameshburns@[removed] (Jim Burns) ]
      Re: OTR "Comedies, Versus Dramas"     [ jameshburns@[removed] (Jim Burns) ]
      Big Band Remotes                      [ DR <swl2010@[removed]; ]
      Those recurring quiz questions        [ <otrbuff@[removed]; ]
      Re: Who's on First                    [ Cnorth6311@[removed] ]
      Re: Letterman and Allen               [ Dixonhayes@[removed] ]
      Re: War of the Worlds                 [ Dixonhayes@[removed] ]
      Groucho                               [ Illoman <illoman@[removed]; ]
      X Minus One                           [ "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@hotm ]
      Old Time Radio presentations wanted   [ "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@hotm ]

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

    Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 01:36:47 -0400
    From: <wgaryw@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  fred allen and topical humor

    well, i've resisted jumping in on the fred allen discussion, because so many
    others have pointed out already what i would have said myself:  (1) that
    personal opinions as to what's funny and what isn't should really be
    expressed as such, and not as statements of fact, (2) that fred allen's humor
    was generally more intellectual than most radio comedy (though certainly not
    always), and perhaps because of that, somewhat less accessible, and (3) that
    many, many others disagree with ron's opinion that his show was not funny
    (obviously, myself included).

    i'm only 34 years old, but got into OTR when i was around 12 years old, and
    fred allen was one of the first comedians i fell in love with.  in fact, my
    typing in all lowercase is a 20 year old habit in hommage to [removed], begun
    after i read a copy of the wonderful "fred allen's letters".  i wrote a lot
    of letters back then, in the days before e-mail, and somehow thought that
    they would be as funny as [removed]'s letters if i didn't use capitals.  how
    wrongheaded that was. . . but the habit persists.

    in any event, i did decide to jump in because i take serious umbrage, and
    have for a long time, at the characterization of fred allen as an overly
    topical comedian.  this is the prevailing viewpoint, and it will probably
    never change, but in my opinion, this is simply not true.  want to hear a
    topical comedy show?  try any bob hope program.  my goodness, 30% of the
    jokes, particularly from his monologues,  are utterly incomprehensible today,
    even to those who lived through the era, or those such as myself who "get"
    most of the topical humor on other programs from immerision in recordings and
    old films from the 30's and 40's.

    if for no other reason than censorship, fred allen *couldn't* make overtly
    political jokes on his programs.  most of the political jokes are on the
    level of puns on the names of politicians, jokes about general political
    incompetence (always non-specifric, or he would never have been allowed to
    broadcast them), and special interest items taken from newspapers.

    now, how familiar do you really need to be with current events in 1940 to
    relate to an allen newsreel on "the coldest winter you ever experienced"?
    yes, this was inspired by a particularly cold winter, but the humor that
    follows requires no specific knowledge of the era at all.  how about the
    brilliant sketches from the "allen's alley" years?  do you need to have heard
    a morning husband-and-wife program to laugh out loud at allen's brilliant
    spoof with tallulah bankhead?  or the "brooklyn pinafore" gilbert and
    sullivan takeoff with leo durocher?  or, one of my favorites but more
    obscure, the hysterical "mr. mob buster" sketch with monty woolley as an
    incompetent police officer trying to catch "charlie the chicken"?

    the point is even clearer when talking about the hour long programs from the
    30s and early 40s.  there are usually 4 segments to these shows, and usually
    2 of them have virtually no topical humor at all.  the segments varied over
    the years, but examples of those that do not rely on topical humor are the
    "people you didn't expect to meet" segment, "the average man's round table",
    the amateur contests, the celebrity guest spots, the banter portions with
    portland, kenny baker and al goodman from 1940-42, and on and on and on.

    the most topical humor on allen's programs, to my ears, are just the first
    couple of minutes of the 30 minute programs where he banters with portland.
    some very topical jokes there.  but to characterize the program as basically
    topical and dated, inaccessible to all but those who are knowledgeable about
    the current events at the time, is, in my view, a patently unfair and
    distorted view of his humor.  i don't understand how anyone who has listened
    to at least a few hours of his broadcasts could see his shows this way.

    to each his own.  i'm forever grateful that so much of allen's broadcast
    history survives and is still appreciated by so many listeners today, giving
    lie to his oft-quoted line that a radio comedian is on a "treadmill to
    obvlion", playing to the echoes of "forgotten laughter".  the posts by so
    many here in the digest attest to the fact that his humor is not dead, and
    the laughter, far from forgotten, continues to this day. and that includes
    folks such as myself, who were born 20 years after fred allen died.

    respectfully,
    w. gary wetstein

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

    Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 01:37:00 -0400
    From: Ronald Sayles <bogusotr@[removed];
    To: Olde Tyme Radio Digest Digest <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  10-26 births/deaths

    October 26th births

    10-26-1876 - [removed] Warner - London, England - d. 12-21-1958
    actor: "Hollywood Hotel"; "Lux Radio Theatre"
    10-26-1888 - Pat Barnes - Sharon, PA - d. 6-9-1969
    emcee: "The Pat Barnes and Barbara Show"
    10-26-1899 - Rudolph Wickel - d. 3-xx-1971
    contestant: "Truth or Consequences"
    10-26-1904 - Igor Gorin - Ukraine, Russia - d. 3-24-1982
    singer: "The Voice of Firestone"
    10-26-1907 - Tony Pastor - Middletown, CT - d. 10-31-1969
    bandleader: "Tony Pastor and His Orchestra"
    10-26-1910 - Clarence Hartzell - Huntington, WV - d. 3-5-1988
    actor: Uncle Fletcher "Vic and Sade"; Pappy Yokum "Li'l AAbner"; "Ben
    Withers "Lum and Abner"
    10-26-1911 - Mahalia Jackson - New Orleans, LA - d. 1-27-1972
    gospel singer: (The Angel of Peace) "Mahalia Jackson Show"
    10-26-1912 - Donald Siegel - Chicago, IL - d. 4-20-1991
    film director: "Bud's Bandwagon"
    10-26-1913 - Charlie Barnet - NYC - d. 9-4-1991
    bandleader: "Fitch Bandwagon"; "Saturday Night Swing Session"
    10-26-1914 - Jackie Coogan - Los Angeles, CA - d. 3-1-1984
    actor: Ernest Botch "Forever Ernest"
    10-26-1918 - Ivor Francis - Toronto, Canada - d. 10-22-1986
    actor: "Secret Missions"; "The Chase"
    10-26-1920 - Eleanor Rella - d. 6-19-2003
    actor: Billie Devere "Myrt and Marge"

    October 26th deaths

    02-23-1909 - Anthony Ross - NYC - d. 10-26-1955
    actor: Danny Clover "Broadway Is My Beat"; Broadway Columnist "Mr.
    Broadway"
    03-08-1902 - Louise Beavers - Cincinnati, OH - d. 10-26-1962
    actor: Beulah "Beulah"; "Screen Guild Theatre"
    04-24-1910 - Albert Zugsmith - Atlantic City, NJ - d. 10-26-1993
    film producer/director: "Bud's Bandwagon"
    05-03-1897 - Larry Puck - d. 10-26-1969
    producer: "Arthur Godfrey Time" Was one of Godfrey's many firings
    06-10-1895 - Hattie McDaniel - Wichita, KS - d. 10-26-1952
    actor: Beulah "Beulah"; Mammy "Maxwell House Showboat"
    xx-xx-1905 - Paul Rhymer - Bloomington, IL - d. 10-26-1964
    writer: "Vic and Sade"

    Ron Sayles
    Milwaukee, Wisconsin

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

    Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 01:37:17 -0400
    From: Rick Keating <pkeating89@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: Social destiny of Radio

    The article about radio that Bill Harker quoted-
    especially the predictions about radio's future-
    reminded me of Edward Bellamy's 1887 novel _Looking
    Backward_. It describes the Utopian future society of
    the year 2000 and an 1887 man's encounter with it. One
    of the technologies of that society centers on the
    telephone, which was just 10 years old at the time the
    novel was written. Like the radio article's theory
    that people would tune their sets to a specific area
    of interest, _Looking Backward_ postulated that people
    would call in to, say a Beethoven concert. Or perhaps
    the concert hall would call "subscribers." It's been
    awhile since I've read the book.

    At any rate, it's interesting that just as _Looking
    Backward_ predicted certain aspects of radio- such as
    being able to listen to a variety of music in one's
    own home through a signal sent through the air; the
    1924 radio article predicted certain aspects of
    cable/satellite TV, where you can choose movies, news,
    sports, cartoons, etc. In both cases, the predictions
    came true (to a degree) in technologies that did not
    yet exist.

    You know what this means, don't you? Whatever
    predictions people are making about the Internet's
    future will come true for an as yet to be invented
    technology.

    Maybe we'll finally get those flying cars they
    promised us way back when.

    Rick

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

    Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 02:21:56 -0400
    From: John Mayer <mayer@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  What's funny?

    Sam Bliss expressed the opinion that OTR humor does not hold up as
    well as drama, and <kclarke5@[removed]; wrote:

>     I agree, preferences for OTR are subjective and shouldn't be opened
>     to a vote.  They are, after all, just individual opinions which are
>     different across the board.  There are no right or wrong answers to
>     which OTR programs were the best or worst.

    But there does appear to be a pretty broad consensus that, generally,
    old comedies no longer strike us as funny or even amusing. One need
    not go back as far as OTR; try watching an episode of _Gilligan's
    Island_ or _Beverly Hillbillies_ or _The Munsters_ on Nick at Night
    and try to imagine adult Americans running a nation by day and
    chuckling at these once primetime shows at night. And yet some old
    comedy TV shows do hold up, for whatever reason: _I Love Lucy_, say,
    or _The Andy Griffith  Show_. Yet the show that spun off _The Andy
    Griffith Show_, _The Danny Thomas Show_, is all but forgotten. These
    shows are often amusing, but they have another, less definable
    quality that endears them to us, qualities that make them a permanent
    part of American culture.

    When I was co-hosting a radio show in Knoxville I aired OTR to a
    mostly young audience largely unfamiliar with audio drama. As Charlie
    has often pointed out, there was plenty of dreck in OTR, too, but I
    never had trouble finding OTR dramas I felt would remain entertaining
    50 years after their first airing. But I felt uncomfortable creating
    a misimpression of the narrowness of the legacy of radio drama, so on
    rare occasions I did play a comedy. I always regretted it. Even a
    show that might have seemed funny to me previewing it in my home
    suddenly became, even to me, leaden and pointless when suddenly
    broadcast to an audience that I knew did not have my frame of
    reference. (In all fairness, though, many modern attempts at sketch
    and situation audio comedy were not very funny, either.)

    It's not just that the points of reference, the topicality, of old
    comedies has lost its significance for modern audiences, either; the
    very nature of what's considered funny continues to evolve or devolve
    - change, anyhow. In the early days of radio, when the US was still
    largely agrarian, families were more isolated and there were far
    fewer sources of entertainment, listeners did not demand belly
    laughs, just the occasional fond chuckle. We welcomed Fibber McGee
    and Molly - whom even then I didn't find very funny - into our homes
    as much for their company as for their wit. The Great Gildersleeve
    was an eccentric uncle whom it was fun to [removed] briefly.

    Yet not ALL humor of bygone days has lost its punch. There are still
    amusing moments in some of Shakespeare's plays, _The Importance of
    Being Ernest_ is still good for a few laughs, and some OTR still
    seems funny to me, if not quite as rib-tickling as The Simpsons. Even
    my own tastes change, so I might not think so  now, but I used to
    think that _Duffy's Tavern_ and _Baby Snooks_ held up pretty well,
    along with _Jack Benny_ and a few others. _The Bickersons_, too,
    though I don't think I'd care for a steady diet of them. Why some OTR
    shows can make a young listener of today laugh while others just
    produce a shrug is a conundrum I'd be very curioius to see addressed.

    Like many here, I was never a big fan of Fred Allen's humor, either;
    but as least one trace of his comedy remains with us even in the
    media of today, in the form of Foghorn Leghorn.

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

    Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 07:47:22 -0400
    From: jameshburns@[removed] (Jim Burns)
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Max Wylie's RADIO WRITING

    Over at the old used bookstore, I picked up a copy of RADIO WRITING, by
    Max Wylie, in the bargain [removed]

    Published in 1939, with a bunch of short, broadcasted scripts, included,
    I figured it would be a fun curiosity.

    But, otherwise, did those of you in the know
    here, find the book any good?

    Best, Jim

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

    Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 07:47:35 -0400
    From: jameshburns@[removed] (Jim Burns)
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: OTR "Comedies, Versus Dramas"

    And just remember, as Halloween is just around the corner, that old-time
    radio comedies also offer the benefit, of being able to hear dead
    people, [removed]

    Heh, heh, heh

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

    Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 07:48:05 -0400
    From: DR <swl2010@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Big Band Remotes

    Travis:

    I can't help you with baseball broadcasts but here are some ways to
    obtain big band broadcasts:

    Internet Archive has a couple of pages of live remotes in MP3 format,
    public domain for free download:

    [removed]

    [removed]

    Bill Sparks and otrcat (type each term seperately in Google and get the
    web address that way) has big band remotes on MP3 - you have to browse.
    Much of the recordings probably comes from newsgroups - I have neither
    the time or patience to go searching and downloading so five bucks a CD
    for me is a nice trade-off.  The quality of each recording goes from
    excfellent to horrible depending on the source but generally ok.

    Do [removed] (or [removed]) searches for your favorite artists.
    There are thousands of CD's transferred from transcriptions of big band
    remotes for literally every imaginable band (although a lot of them
    contain the into, outro and music with the patter and commercials edited
    out, however, you can find complete broadcasts).

    If you like Glenn Miller "The Chesterfield Shows" is  two CD collection
    of broadcasts with Miller and the Andrew Sisters transfered from
    transcriptions and pretty decent quality.  BMG is the label.

    Hope this helps.

    Trans-O

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

    Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 07:48:37 -0400
    From: <otrbuff@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Those recurring quiz questions

>     Does anyone have any information on "Quiz Kids"?

>     Also, I've heard of an OTR program called "Professor Quiz", but have

    yet
    to be able to locate any information on it

    Kenneth Clarke poses some excellent questions about quiz shows on this
    forum.  Frequently.  And has done so for years.

    As modestly as I can say it, I fail to get it why somebody that intrigued by
    the genre wouldn't order one of the two major resources on the topic that
    answer in detail virtually every question raised.  Surely longtime list
    members know about these resources.  Once more, for the "newbies":

    Quiz Craze:  America's Infatuation with Game Shows, by Thomas A. DeLong
    (Praeger, 1991)

    The Great Radio Audience Participation Shows, by Jim Cox (McFarland, 2001)

    Jim Cox

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

    Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 07:49:09 -0400
    From: Cnorth6311@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: Who's on First

    I watched the Studio 60 episode Monday night, and one of the topics was
    Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First" routine. Since we have been talking
    about
    comedy, and programs that do, and do not hold up over time, there is a sketch
    that is funny even today. As a matter of fact, I laugh out loud each time I
    listen to it, even though I have heard it probably a hundred times, and know
    what's coming next. Talk about great comedy. Does anyone know who originally
    wrote that skit? How old it is? Was it done on stage in vaudeville before  A&C
    did it on their radio show? Now, here is the kicker. I don't  particularly
    care for them on their radio show. I prefer my dose of A&C  on the silver
    screen. For me at least, it's a case of "sight gags" not being  funny on radio.

    It's the Tomato, Tomahto thing for me again. You pays your money, you gets
    your choice.

    Charlie

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

    Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 10:06:43 -0400
    From: Dixonhayes@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: Letterman and Allen
    X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from multipart/alternative
    X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: Alternative section used was text/plain

    In a message dated 10/25/06 11:19:32 PM Central Daylight Time,
    [removed]@[removed] writes:

>     Thirty years from now, who will be lining up to buy retrospective DVDs of
>     monologues by Jay Leno, David Letterman, [removed]

    I would definitely snap up what I can of Letterman, especially his 1980s
    show.  He reminded me a lot of Fred Allen and Henry Morgan, especially when he
    needled the NBC executives.  I'm sure Fred would've appreciated Dave a lot
    (and I
    think Morgan actually lived to appear on his show).

    Dixon

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

    Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 10:15:21 -0400
    From: Dixonhayes@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: War of the Worlds
    X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from multipart/alternative
    X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: Alternative section used was text/plain

    In a message dated 10/25/06 11:19:32 PM Central Daylight Time,
    [removed]@[removed] writes:

>     Infamous? I disagree with that characterization:

    Perhaps they weren't referring to the broadcast itself so much as "infamous"
    as they were the "panic" involved around it.  "Orson Welles' 1939 broadcast
    and the panic surrounding it" would be seen by many consultants (and the
    producers/editors mentally enslaved to them) as "too wordy."

    Now I know there's heavy dispute as to how widespread this panic really was,
    but we do know there were isolated incidents.  And I met a man who was a
    teenager answering phones at WHMA radio in Anniston, Alabama that night in
    1938 and
    he says he got a *lot* of calls about it that evening.

    Dixon

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      ***                  as the sender intended.                   ***

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

    Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 11:45:01 -0400
    From: Illoman <illoman@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Groucho

    Bob Davis wrote:

>     My personal
>     favorite comedy is Groucho Marx in You Bet Your Life.
>     His quick, unrehearsed jokes with real people beats
>     anything else I've heard.

    I am a huge Groucho fan, and think he was the best ad libber of all
    time, with Fred Allen a very close second.

    Having said that, much of Groucho's material was written prior to the
    show's airing, based on pre-show interviews with the contestants. A
    screen was erected off camera (when the show went to tv) and a lot of
    the "ad libs" were there for Groucho to read. This is not to say he
    wasn't capable of ad libbing, it's just with the time constraints of
    a radio/tv show having the material prepared was just the better way
    to go.

    Mike

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

    Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 11:53:43 -0400
    From: "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  X Minus One

    I'm sure this has been answered already but the episode Karen Lerner is
    looking for of X Minus One is "Shock Troop" from November 28, 1957.  A
    battle is waged between one organism to another and the twist at the end is
    that the entire story was told from the view point of a human's immune
    system, and they lose the battle as the electric current flowing through the
    man's body is a force to be reckoned with.  Roger De Koven was the narrator
    of that episode.

    X MINUS ONE is a great radio program if one wants to be exposed to 1950s
    science-fiction stories.  Besides the excellent "Tunnel Under the World,"
    there are others worth listening to.  My personal favorite is "The Discovery
    of Orneal Hathaway" about a Nobel Prize winner of the future who gets to
    travel back in time and meet the painter who inspired him to do his good
    deed.

    A plot similar to Karen's request thats ome people may mistake, though it is
    a GREAT episode is "Surface Tention," broadcast August 28, 1956. In that
    episode, scientists discover that the sun is going to explode, and mankind
    is doomed.  In a desperate last-minute attempt to save the human race, they
    shrink a group of humans to sub-microscopic size, and put them in a drop of
    water, figuring since life began with H2O, so should our species.

    Martin Grams Jr.

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

    Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 12:14:07 -0400
    From: "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Old Time Radio presentations wanted

    I am presently working on penciling in ideas for panels and presentations
    for September's Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia COnvention.  I would like to include
    a number of Old-Time Radio-releated events.

    To date the ideas being scheduled are (this isn't all of them, just some of
    them)

    A history of the DuMont network
    Baseball Broadcasts on Network Television
    The history of LASSIE on Radio and TV
    James Bond in Cinema
    Silent Cliffhanger Serials
    Highway Patrol: The Television Series
    Vintage Cartoon Showing
    The Lone Ranger on Radio
    Cultural History of Pulp Magazines
    The History of the Joy Boys (1950s radio celebs, same as Bob and Ray)
    Voice character actors on radio: Daws Butler, June Foray, Freeburg, etc.
    The Adventures of Superman (radio and TV)

    Presentations are open-door policy so if ANYONE wants to do a presentation,
    please e-mail me off-list.  The list grows with submissions so if only TV
    related events are proposed, TV stuff goes.  The more OTR-related events I
    can schedule, the better.

    Martin

    mmargrajr@[removed]

    --------------------------------
    End of [removed] Digest V2006 Issue #292
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