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	  	         === Last Update 1/17/95  ====





	    [removed]   Volume 96 : Issue 241


Articles in this issue of [removed]:

	 CBS Radio Mystery Theater
	 Harry Nile/Harry Lime
	 Question regarding Jack Benny program
	 Early Tape Recorders
	 Letter From Lee Moore
	 Introducing OTR to SOs and Others
	 Jack Benny for newcomers to otr
	 Re: Black Mass (fwd)
	 Re: "wholesomeness" and OTR
	 More on early taping

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

Date: Mon, 8 Jul 96 10:29:44 CDT
From: serag@[removed] (Sera_Gene)
To: otr@[removed]
Subject: CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Message-Id: <[removed]@[removed]>

I am desperately looking for copies or transcripts of this program from the 70's.  If you have any info I'd greatly appreciate it.  It was hosted by EG Marshall.  I haven't heard any of it in about 20 years, but my memories of it were that it was somewhat like the twilight zone.  
Thanks
Gene

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

Date: 08 Jul 96 11:28:13 EDT
From: Alan Chapman <[removed]@[removed]>
To: OTR Digest <[removed]@[removed]>
Subject: Harry Nile/Harry Lime
Message-ID: <[removed]@[removed]>

Re: Ken Pilectic's review of the REPS Showcase

>Harry Lime is an ongoing detective series that until recently has only
>been heard in the Pacific Northwest.  

I could be wrong, but I think you mean THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY NILE -- Harry
Lime was the THE THIRD MAN of radio/movie past.

REPS sounds like it was a good program -- thanks for the review.

--- Alan

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

Date: Mon, 8 Jul 1996 14:23:24 -0700 (PDT)
From: Rob Spencer <rspencer@[removed]>
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Question regarding Jack Benny program
Message-ID: <[removed]@netcom9>

KNX 1070 AM, the CBS O&O in Los Angeles, plays an hour of OTR nightly, two
shows each night on a regular weekly schedule.  One of the shows is the
Jack Benny program.  I have noticed that at the end of every show he says
something like, "Well, we're running a little late tonight, so goodnight." 
Each week, exactly the same thing.  Does anyone know why?  I suspect the
syndicator simply stuck this short ending on every episode to maximize ad
time, but of course that's just a guess. 

Thanks,

Rob Spencer

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

Date: Mon, 8 Jul 1996 16:56:02 -0700 (PDT)
From: roy547@[removed] (Roy Trumbull)
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Early Tape Recorders
Message-Id: <[removed]@[removed]>

The Rangetone recorder was actuallu sold but suffered from wow and
flutter. There was at least one other company that tried to make
an American Magnetophone. Audio Tape published an annual directory
of the available tape recorders during the 1950s. I still have
two of them.
An early player in the professional field was Bert Berlant whose
first recorder was a flatbed model that you could fry eggs on. He
went to a vertical model with a long horizontal tape path and
a handle that swung to close the magnetic shields around the
tape head gaps and activate the mechanism. He made a professional
version called the Berlant and a semi-pro version called the
Concertone. The first was a dark green and the latter was beige.
As luck would have it, I worked for Bert in 1961 several years
after he'd gone through bankrupcy and started a language lab
firm called Berlant Automonitor. I asked him what the difference
was between the Berlant and the Concertone. He told me it was
the tolerance of the cast parts. The new owners of the company
tossed the dies used for those parts so that was the end of
those machines.
I think the earliest home machine was the Brush Soundmirror.
It fed the tape off the reel down a central top to bottom path
down through rollers and passed the heads and wound up on the
takeup reel oxide out. It recorded one track down the center of
the tape. Early on there were a number of threading schemes and
Scotch sold tape that was wound oxide in and oxide out to accomdate
them. That business was pretty much settled in favor of oxide
in by the late 50s.

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

Date: Mon, 8 Jul 1996 20:47:59 -0400
From: Udmacon@[removed]
To: BGRASS-L@[removed]
cc: cwolfe@[removed], NVROSE@[removed], [removed]@[removed],
        ER_AS@[removed] (er_as002337795)
Subject: Letter From Lee Moore
Message-ID: <960708204757_151539832@[removed]>

I just received this letter from WWVA's beloved Coffee Drinkin' Night Hawk
(WWVA Wheeling Jamboree singer and all night deejay for 25 years) dated June
29th:

Hello there Bill: "Thanks" for all the help you have given me in the past and
present. I'm in a nursing home now. Not too pleasant, but it's the best I can
do now. I can't seem to get my legs, knees and feet working just right. As
soon as I get situated here I'll try to make you a new tape. 

Lee

I'm in a wheel chair also. [removed]

His handwriting is fine! PLEASE send him greetings, c/o Box 134, Wynantskill
NY 12198!

BILL KNOWLTON, "BLUEGRASS RAMBLE", WCNY-FM: SYRACUSE, UTICA, WATERTOWN NY
(since 1973)

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

Date: Mon, 8 Jul 1996 22:45:10 -0400
From: PDKinder@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Introducing OTR to SOs and Others
Message-ID: <960708224456_352874041@[removed]>

Laura's right about starting people off with a Benny program.

Better to start them off with the Fred Allen/Benny "King for a Day" available
from AIC.  I've never played that for anyone who didn't fall of their chair
in hysterics.  A few Allen's Alleys, the intro from a late Gunsmoke ("It
makes a man watchful [pause] and a little lonely") and they're hooked.  The
second "Brooklyn Pinafore" (Allen & Leo Durocher), also available from AIC,
produces positive results w/males.

I've given several friends the AIC Benny tapes that run in order of
presentation.  That seems very effective, given the reactions I've gotten.
 Once people get the rhythm of the shoes and a sense of the shticks, they get
hooked.

Kids, I find, love "Our Miss Brooks" (I thought it would be too dated, but
no), Gunsmoke, and Dragnet.  To my surprise, the sci-fi shows are too dated
for kids, though they come round when they have some background.  

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

Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1996 00:40:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: "'A. Joseph Ross'" <lawyer@[removed]>
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Jack Benny for newcomers to otr
Message-Id: <[removed]@[removed]>

> Date: Sun, 7 Jul 1996 03:52:59 -0400
> From: JackBenny@[removed]
> To: [removed]@[removed]
> Subject: Re: Introducing OTR to SOs
> Message-ID: <960707035258_428916051@[removed]>
> 
> And I'll probably get flamed for this, but I'll say it anyhow.  I would
> actually NOT recommend starting off with a Jack Benny program.  Because, you
> know, I've been in the company of the non-Benny-initiated and listening to
> shows.  ...

Well, I've tried out Jack Benny on the uninitiated, and they've liked it
fine.  It may depend on the show.  I used the "Your Money or Your Life"
show.

======================================================================
A. Joseph Ross, [removed]                                      617/367-0468
15 Court Square                                   lawyer@[removed]
Boston, MA 02108-2573                    [removed]~lawyer/
======================================================================

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

Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1996 00:50:09 -0400 (EDT)
From: MAX SCHMID <mschmid@[removed]>
To: airwavesOTR <[removed]@[removed]>
Subject: Re: Black Mass (fwd)
Message-ID: <[removed]@[removed]>

	As it seems to be a slow time for the digest, and because this 
ties in loosely with the talk of early tape recording, I am sending this 
along for a look at radio drama production at "people's (low budget but 
highly motivated) radio".  I hope it's not deemed too long.  -Max

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 28 Jun 96 10:22:52 EDT
From: John Whiting <[removed]@[removed]>

BLACK MASS

Max Schmid of WBAI has blown my non-existent cover as a participant 
in KPFA's Black Mass and has asked me to jot down a few notes. Always 
happy to wallow in nostalgia, here goes.

Black Mass was born in 1963, the brain-child of Jack Nessel, who was the 
Drama & Literature Director at KPFA in Berkeley, the first voluntarily 
listener-sponsored non-commercial FM station in the world. (The BBC was 
compulsorily supported by a government-imposed  license system.) Jack 
suggested the idea to Erik Bauersfeld, who taught aesthetics and philosophy 
at the California School of Fine Art, and had recently begun to do readings 
of classic and modern literature for the station. Erik was not wildly 
enthusiastic, but thought that it might be interesting to search out some 
of the best stories of the supernatural by first-rate authors who did not 
normally write within that genre. Obligation soon became obsession.

I was the station's Production Director at the time and had already produced 
some rather elaborate radio dramas. Jack, already a friend before he joined 
the station, was aware of my childhood fondness for horror stories and 
suggested that I collaborate with Erik. Thus was born one of the most 
fruitful creative relationships in my life and, to this day,  one of my 
closest friendships.

A working pattern quickly evolved which thenceforth never varied. Erik 
would edit the stories to a workable length and, when resources permitted, 
adapt the dialog to a dramatic format. I would then record him reading the 
text in the studio, with or without other actors, and he would take the 
tapes away to edit, which he did himself, often piecing them together word 
by word from almost infinite retakes.

Once the text was assembled, we would reserve a night in the main studio 
to put the program together with music and sound effects. Sometimes these 
were plotted in advance in great detail, sometimes not. Usually I would have 
a chance to hear the voice track before the production session.

Because of extreme demands on studio time, each adaptation was begun in 
the early evening, after the news had gone out, and carried on until it 
was completed, usually some time in the wee small hours. The most remarkable 
aspect of this collaboration was that we soon discovered that, when it came 
to radio production, we had a single brain between us. When Erik made a 
suggestion, I immediately saw that it was the obvious way to proceed; when 
I suggested a sonic framework, Erik would declare that it was exactly what 
he had had in mind. At the end of the session, we never left the studio 
with a tape which either of us would have been unhappy to put his exclusive 
name to. The happiest moment of all were between about 2 and 4 [removed], when 
he retired to Eric's apartment in the Berkeley hills and quietly drank our 
way into oblivion on Erik's excellent Tanquerey-based gimlets, knowing in 
our hearts that we had produced yet another masterpiece.

Having spent years working with multi-track recorders, I'm convinced that 
the character of those productions owed much to the fact that we had only 
four mono tape recorders and two turntables to work with. Long sequences 
which could not be edited together had to be assembled live as we went 
along, with sequences of cues spliced together on several machines ready 
to be dropped in as needed. Nor did we have the crews of technicians which 
were available to the BBC and the networks - if it couldn't be done with 
two pairs of hands, we had to think of something else. Such disciplines 
are perhaps analogous to the constraints placed upon the composer of a 
string quartet, and an indication of why this austere genre has always 
been held in such high esteem.

One thing that Erik and I were agreed on was that the text was sacred: 
no story was to be altered in plot, in substance, or in diction. We were 
convinced that "too close to the original" was a compliment, not a 
criticism. One great freedom which this gave us was that our radio dramas 
were allowed to move seamlessly from dialog to monologue, in and out of 
the head of the narrator. To this day I have rarely heard text treated 
with such freedom and flexibility: the conventions of radio, television 
and film all demand that dialog be created out of nothing to convey inner 
realities which become stilted and superficial as soon as they are forced 
into the straight jacket of conversation. 

This discipline led to what I still believe to be one of the best radio 
dramatic productions I've ever heard: Gogol's "Diary of a Madman". The 
action takes place entirely inside the head of the protagonist, slipping 
back and forth between inner monologue and a sequence of dialogues which 
may themselves be mere inventions. To compound the paradox, Erik split the 
schizophrenic personality of the narrator between two actors - himself and 
Bernard Mayes - so that monologue became dialogue and dialogue monologue. 
Like the narrator, immersed in fantasy, you were never quite certain where 
you were.

Winding like vines around these fragments was a musical sound track 
assembled by Charles Shere, KPFA's Music Director. (Charles has gone on 
to become not only a fine composer, but also the author of important books 
on several of America's most interesting composers, as well as a director 
of Chez Pannise, Berkeley's great restaurant.) Long before "sampling", this 
music was a closely interwoven tapestry of fragments from familiar and 
half-familiar compositions, echoing the confused eclecticism of the 
narrator's own brain.

[Footnote: One of the most uncanny experiences I've had in a theatre was 
hearing Nicol Williamson present "Diary of a Madman" as a one-man show on 
a London stage. For most of the play, his voice quality and inflection 
matched so precisely those of Erik Bauersfeld that they could almost have 
been intercut without detection. Only at the end, when the narrator goes 
totally mad, did Williamson strike out in a direction which showed, sadly, 
that Erik had understood the work far better.]

If these reminiscences are of any interest, I'm happy to continue with them. 
They're also useful to me for a history of KPFA which I'm in the process of 
writing.

John Whiting
October Sound
London

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

Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1996 02:00:31 -0400
From: stevecap@[removed] (Steven Capsuto)
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: "wholesomeness" and OTR
Message-Id: <[removed]@[removed]>

Bob Burnam quoth:

>I think the thing about classic radio shows that shouldn't be overlooked is
>that it promoted wholesome family values, but the same cannot be said for
>much of what is being broadcast today.  

Hi, Bob --

Are you just trying to start a lively discussion or are you serious?  Or
both?  (Sometimes it's hard to tell on line without facial/vocal cues.)

The problem is that the media defined "family values" very narrowly.  Family
meant Mom, Dad, Junior and Sis, who all celebrated Christmas and were almost
always white.  Young people living in other types of families (children of
divorced or single parents, gay teenagers, Muslims, Asians, etc. -- all of
whom existed in large numbers in the [removed] even "way back when") were left to
grow up thinking of themselves as freaks, since the mass media would not or
could not reflect their lives.  Americans use the mass media as a mirror to
reflect our society; to look at that picture and never see yourself or your
family can be very unhealthy, especially for kids.

Replies to this posting will surely bandy about the phrases "historical
context" and "necessities of commercial broadcasting," but the fact remains
that the "public airwaves" were serving the needs of a narrowly defined
segment of the public.  Judging from the numerous articles about radio
censorship that appeared in magazines like THE FORUM, COLLIERS, THE AMERICAN
MERCURY, and ACLU publications of the 1930s and 1940s, an awful lot of
people at the time felt betrayed by the broadcast industry.

Radio's "wholesomeness" also meant removing anything resembling social
criticism from most commercial dramas, reducing socially relevant scripts to
pablum.  It meant that LUX RADIO THEATER felt the need to rewrite SHOW BOAT
so that -- instead of criticizing racist laws of the old South (in the scene
where Julie is fired because she's of mixed blood) -- Lux's Julie disappears
because she's an illegal alien from Martinique.  Why bother doing the show
at all?  

"Doing the scene as written would have offended white listeners in the
South," someone will surely reply.  Well, what about offending African
Americans, Latinos, Arab Americans, Native Americans and everyone else the
industry stereotyped or wrote out of existence?  These groups, too, are part
of the historical context, as are married women who chose to make careers
for themselves rather than be homemakers -- another group that radio
pretended didn't exist.

I love OTR, and up to a point I appreciate what you're talking about.  But
there's something to be said for the freedom that the media enjoy today in
presenting many types of lives and addressing many viewpoints.  The downside
is that this freedom leaves the door open for hatemongers to broadcast
half-truths, lies and innuendo.  I think that opening this door of free
speech is worth the tradeoff (and I say this even though I'm often a target
of those hatemongers).

Re: the high quality of the OTR shows we collect and [removed]  
Then, as now, there was a lot of schlock that audiences forgot soon after it
aired.  Drivel like THAT'S MY POP was at least as brain-damaging as the
dopiest 1990s TV show could hope to be.  And what about THE HALL OF FANTASY?
Fun, sure, but not "wholesome family" entertainment by any standard.

There are gems of OTR -- Theater Guild, Our Miss Brooks, I Love a Mystery,
Jack Benny and many others -- but they are the gold nuggets that stood out
from the dross of everyday broadcasting.  I'm glad there are people out
there -- especially you -- who love and care for those glints of gold and
keep them in good shape for future generations.
___
Steven Capsuto, Philadelphia
stevecap@[removed]
WEB page: [removed]~[removed]

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

Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1996 13:58:03 -0400
From: ErikS74342@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: More on early taping
Message-ID: <960709135802_353488854@[removed]>

All the talk of late about the birth of taping reminds me of something I read
two years ago, when The Shadow appeared on screen. One of the many
wire-service stories that appeared said there was a reason so few of the
later episodes of the radio show survived.

They were done on tape, it said -- and once Mutual had aired the show, it
erased the tape and used it again.

It's one of those stories you have to wonder about, of course. But maybe tape
wasn't a complete blessing.

Erik Smith
Kennewick, Wash.

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

    


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---- 
End of [removed] Digest V96 Issue #241

