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

      Please Read Information Boilerplate at the End of This Digest
                          Last Updated 10-28-96

otr Digest				Volume 96 : Issue 448

Table Of Contents: 

	 RE:  I beg to contend: Pat Novak; Jack Webb
	 L is for Lanky
	 Re: Tizzie Lish
	 A Cop on Every Corner
	 JACK WEBB AND POLITICS
	 Kandy Tooth Caper/Sam Spade
	 Sam Spade AND Philip Marlowe on Suspense
	 Cliff Edwards CD
	 earliest Lone Ranger
	 Re: Spade and Marlowe (and Jack Webb)
	 Sold "American" Reply

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

Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 19:17:32 -0800
From: Dean Allchin <dallchin@[removed]>
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: RE:  I beg to contend: Pat Novak; Jack Webb
Message-Id: <[removed]@[removed]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Whoa there, somebody laying into "Pat Novak for Hire"?

My Web-Page-in-Progress will go a long way to showing just why this
well-written radio play is one of the best.

I transcribed a page or so of PN for an aunt of mine, and she agreed with
the Mr. Henley:  too many similes and quasi-similes.  It's a matter of
taste, really, but I can see how the listener can lose track of Mr. Novak's
thoughts when Patsy is always making a quick detour to one of his favourite
figures of speech.  But PN is much more than its similes, much more than
"like an old lady with a snootfull" or "like the sky after a storm;" it's
about a special kind of life lived out in short bursts, with little time for
leftist intellectualism and emotion.  George Cole called it Radio
Noir--perfect! Can you imagine Pat Novak doing business in the middle of the
day? I mean real business? He seems to rent boats and "kick around a few
scruples" during business hours but the real Pat Novak comes out when the
sun goes down (Jocko would be sleeping in the daytime anyway).

You see (hear, rather, but PN is so visual somehow) some strange things on
PN:  Inspector Hellman beating up on Mr. Novak and saying, "I can do all of
that I want," one of Mr. Novak's smokey paramours saying, "I could eat you
Patsy," Patsy mocking an effeminate laundry clerk by observing, "he was the
kind of guy who gets a bottle of hand lotion for his birthday" or some dry
bigotry when a ship's captain asks him, "You a Polack, Novak?"  But I prefer
the kind of black and white, in-your-face kind of hard talk that Patsy doles
out to both friend and foe.  "That's the trouble with close friends," he
says, "you give 'em the shirt off your back so they can see where to put in
the knife."  Listen to how he summarizes a double-crossing close friend of
his who has just been shot up by the police, and with his dying breath is
trying to apologize to Patsy:  "You're a small time bum, Sam, and you're
better off dead."  Man, that's the kind of talk you don't hear anywhere
today, let alone on radio.

The writers didn't need a nest full of similes to pump up the rapid fire
conversation between Pat Novak and his women or Pat Novak and Inspector
Hellman.  The writing could only carry Mssrs. Jack Webb, Raymond Burr, and
Tudor Owen so far.  Their delivery could be hardly overstated.  I heard an
earlier PN that had cheezy organ music and which displayed a lacklustre
performance by Jack Webb, and that's when the super-abundant similes seemed
out of place.  Scrap the actors, and seemingly flawed writing will be
accentuated.

But you add up everything, the great noirish orchestrations, the actors and
actresses, the writing, the quick dialogue, the philosophical stylings of
Jocko Madigan and the salient observations of its star, and you will find a
top-notch radio series.  Let me parody a commercial for Goodyear Tires, one
heard up our way in the Pacific Northwest: "Pat Novak, for Hire:
overwritten with too many similes? Get over it."

Sincerely

Dean Allchin
(with a web page in progress) 



 

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

Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 16:38:37 -0400
From: "Stephen Moore" <moores@[removed]>
To: <[removed]@[removed]>
Subject: L is for Lanky
Message-ID: <[removed]@[removed]>

Please excuse this post if it has been covered before.

Does anyone in the world have any copies of L is for Lanky which was on CBC
(Canadian Broadcasting Corperation) during and after World War II?

I contacted the CBC archives, and they have only one partial very noisey
piece of one program, but no complete shows.

L is for Lanky was a show about a Lancaster Bomber and crew, and took place
much of the time on the bomber during missions.  I don't know more than
that unfortunately, and would enjoy any comments on this digest.

Would anyone know if it was ever played in England on the BBC?

It seems odd that the show was not transcibed at the time.

Thanks.

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

Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 16:00:41 -0500
From: Udmacon@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: Tizzie Lish
Message-ID: <961119160040_140008233@[removed]>

..was a man in drag who gave absolutely hilarious diatribes on the "Al Pearce
Gang". I saw him on the shortlived TV Pearce show. He/she would fish for
compliments about her "beauty" and get absolutely furious when the audience
didn't (or wouldn't) respond. 

Buxton's "Big Broadcast" says Tizzie was played by Bill Comstock, and that Ms
Lish gave out recipes that were ridiculous. She would also wait until you got
a pencil so you could write down the recipe. "Hello Folksies!" was her
greeting.

By the way, Bob & Ray did a brilliant takeoff on the Gaelic dimbulb cop
sidekick in their "Mr. Trace, Keener than Most Persons." Ray Goulding managed
to inject "Saints Pre-SARVE us" at every turn in the "plot".

BILL KNOWLTON

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

Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 16:32:26 -0500
From: Bigkids@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: A Cop on Every Corner
Message-ID: <961119163225_1682691390@[removed]>

Yes, I think that Jack Webb speech about "a cop on every corner, and one in
every living room" was vintage Webb. And the line about, Why would anybody
object, if he wasn't doing anything wrong?, is of course the standard line
used in every police state and by every authoritarian regime that disdains
the Right of Privacy.

Hey, they might be doing something "we" don't like.

They might be *saying* something we don't like!

They might be *thinking* something that we don't like ! ! !

No, thank you!

(Might I add, they might be reading books that we don't like, listening to
OTR tapes that we don't like, etc.)

In fact, we certainly do need cops and I think we should do more to support
them. There really are bad guys out there, and as bad as the
crime/fear/violence situation is, it would be far worse without them.

So -- to bring this back to OTR, thank you very much -- we do need the "Joe
Fridays" of the world. But I think it would be a lot better for us all if
those "Joe Fridays" underwent some very serious attitude adjustment. And if
we started applying our social and economic resources to preventing people
from falling into a "life of crime" instead of letting them become gangsters,
then catching them and locking them up.

Heck, it would even be more cost-effective!

There are a hell of a lot of humane, decent, *good* cops out there. I know
some of them, and they are indeed, real heroes. Hey, I just finished writing
a book about them -- it will be out next autumn. "The Radio Red Killer," St.
Martin's Press. 

Mark your calendars.

Those good cops are not the ones who beat up motorists. They are not the ones
who commit perjury at murder trials. Just as there are a lot of decent,
patriotic soldiers out there. They are not the ones who rape female recruits
and threaten to kill them if they blow the whistle.

Whoops -- there I go, getting political again.

What's the penalty? As against, for example, spitting in the face of an
umpire?

Dick Lupoff

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

Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 13:54:53 -0800 (PST)
From: Brian Copeland <copie@[removed]>
To: [removed]@[removed]
Cc: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: JACK WEBB AND POLITICS
Message-Id: <[removed]@[removed]>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

if you want to see irony in webb's life, look at what just happened to 
his daughter stacy.

she was an alcoholic, like webb (funny since he was mister antidrug), and 
killed herself in a car crash about a month ago. she was driving drunk, 
three times the legal limit.

on top of killing herself, she also killed the highway patrol officer who 
was driving the patrol car she plowed into.

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

Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 17:05:52 -0500 (EST)
From: JROZGONYI <JROZGONYI@[removed]>
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Kandy Tooth Caper/Sam Spade
Message-id: <7052051719111996/A13577/LIBER/11AB9C422600*@MHS>
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Having recently listened to this Suspense episode for the 
first time, I have to say that I clearly thought that 
Sydney Greenstreet was NOT in the cast, but rather someone
was doing a pretty good (but not that good) impression.
Also, I found the story to be too much of a rip-off
of "Maltese Falcon" -- as if someone had diagrammed the
plot of MF and then set out to change the basic
elements but keep the essential structure.  Which isn't
to say I didn't like it -- it would just be very difficult
for it to compare to a (1) a novel written by Dashiell
Hammett  and (2) a screenplay written by John Huston.
It don't get too much better than that in the 20th century
popular writing world.

Jay Rozgonyi
JROZGONYI@[removed]

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

Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 15:20:34 -0700
From: Chet Cox <CHCOX@[removed]>
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Sam Spade AND Philip Marlowe on Suspense
Message-Id: <[removed]@[removed]>

Our talkin' about that Suspense episode (1/10/48, "the Kandy Tooth," one
of the hour-long episodes) gave me a craving to bring it to work today
for my listening pleasure.  Surprisingly, I'd forgotten that Philip Marlowe
makes a cameo in this story, when Sam calls him to verify a potential
client's story.  Dunno who plays Marlowe (maybe the end credits will
tell), but it's a nice cross-over.

So, again, a recommendation for this episode, and here are some of the
reasons:

- a direct sequel to *the Maltese Falcon* (find out if Sam's healed from his
experience with Bridget, learn the true fate of Caspar Gutman, Joe Cairo,
and whatever happened to Wilmer anyway?)

- cross-over with Philip Marlowe

- directed by Mr Spear, my favorite Suspense mucky-muck, who was
also directing *Sam Spade* at the time

- stars the leads from the *Sam Spade* show

- One Swell Show; you'll like it not quite as much as *tMF*

- Great Autolite commercials by Harlow Wilcox

(any other reasons?)

*jeep!
~~~~Chet
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Quote of the day:  "It takes a lot of courage to say always what you
think.
The trouble is, we think things sometimes we ought not to say."  --J.
Golden Kimball

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

Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 15:11:21 -0700
From: rlinsurf <rlinsurf@[removed]>
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Cliff Edwards CD
Message-ID: <[removed]@[removed]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

For those of you who particpated in the discussion about Cliff Edwards 
(Ukelele Ike), the voice of Jimminy Cricket, awhile back, I am pleased
to announce -- finally! -- the release of the CD from Take Two Records,
"The Vintage Recordings Of Cliff Edwards (Ukelele Ike)". Several people
contacted me privately asking to be notified when the CD was to be
released, so I'm sort of doing it en masse here. The CD contains twenty
cuts, four of which are unissued test recordings, never previously heard
by the at-large public; made later in Cliff Edwards' recording career
(his version of "Melancholy Baby" is gorgeous!) The sound quality is
beautiful, crisp and, of course, in glorious digitally re-mastered Mono!

For those of you wanting a copy, you can get one either by e-mailing me
at the above address, e-mailing Jim Bedoian -- yes, I finally got him on
the net! -- at jbedoian@[removed], or by snail mail at

TAKE TWO RECORDS
6105 Barrows Dr.
[removed], Calif. 90048


Jeffrey

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

Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1969 18:00:00 -0600
From: Joe Salerno <jsalerno@[removed]>
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: earliest Lone Ranger
Message-Id: <[removed]@[removed]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I've been listening to some of the earliest surviving Lone Ranger episodes
from the Radio Spirits Volume 4 set. Some as early as March '38, only a few
months after they began recording the series. So now I'm wondering, are
there any programs or fragments extant that predate Jan '38? They would have
been made by individual radio stations or off air by amateurs with home
recording equipment. Anybody know anything?
Joe Salerno
jsalerno@[removed]

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

Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 17:35:52 -0800
From: Dick Lochte <dlock@[removed]>
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: Spade and Marlowe (and Jack Webb)
Message-ID: <[removed]@[removed]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

The SUSPENSE in which Howard Duff played Sam Spade is called "The Candy
Tooth Caper" and it's 60 minutes of satiric sleuthing at its best.  It's
worth noting that the host, Robert Montgomery, played Philip Marlowe in
the film "The Lady in the Lake," though you don't see too much of him.

The business of whether the radio Spade is better than the radio Marlowe
is of course a matter of taste, as everything is. I do think, however,
that if you're a fan of the Chandler books, which are not without humor,
you'll probably like Spade better, because those shows are funnier. In
one introduction, Spade's secretary expresses confusion about the word
"Eureka."  "It's an old Greek expression," Spade tells her, "which is
what I'll be wearing when I arrive at the office to report on 'The Vapio
Cup Caper.'"

Regarding BROADWAY IS MY BEAT, which may be a bit overwritten (just as
Clifford Odetts plays are overwritten), it is still a very effective
dramatic series that just about every tv show featuring quirky cops has
copied from. Although Elliott Lewis guaranteed quality whatever he did,
I think the major forces behind this show were the two writers, Morton
Fine and David Friedkin.

Finally, Jack Webb's sense of humor is a matter of record, as anyone who
has sat through those Johnny Carson Anniversary shows knows quite well.
His eager participation in self-parody seemed to indicate he was a
pretty unpretentious guy.

Dick Lochte

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

Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 20:06:16 -0600
From: "Marvin R. Bensman" <bensmanm@[removed]>
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Sold "American" Reply
Message-id: <l03010601aeb817bbd711@[[removed]]>
Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

>I have to agree with Dick Lupoff. The plagarizing of celebrity images can
>get out of [removed]
>
>8-9 years ago NIKE came out with a ad with the BEATLES song "Revolution"
>
>Shortly after they were sued ny APPLE records (the Beatles label)
>and said
>
>                  "The Beatles DO NOT peddle sneakers nor hosiery!"
>                               -- ---
>
>For what it's [removed] .. .. ..
>
>Tom Barnett

Correction: Michael Jackson bought Beatle catalog from Beatle's Apple Corp.
for millions; then turned around and sold "Revolution" and others for
advertising purposes. Beatles were not happy, but had no legal recourse as
they had sold rights.

************************************************************************
*Professor Marvin R. Bensman, [removed], [removed]                              *
*Department of Communication; Office Phone: (901) 678-3174 or 678-2565 *
*University of Memphis        Fax: (901) 678-4331                      *
*Memphis, TN 38152                                                     *
*E-mail: BensmanM@[removed]                                       *
* To see University of Memphis radio archive look at:                  *
*[removed]~[removed]                  *

************************************************************************



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End of otr Digest V96 Issue #448
********************************

