This week's Radio Corner show was a needle in a haystack. 

Though Art Linkletter's House Party was on the air for 24 years, it seems that nobody saved any of the episodes. 

I searched everywhere, and just as I was about to give up, I found the website of the granddaughter of a radio engineer who had recorded an episode of House Party in 1947.  The photo is the label of that recording.

And here's the show, just for you.

Nightwatch was the first true-life, real-time radio police procedural.  Reporter Don Reed rode with Culver City, California cop Don Perkins on the night shift. 

Reed's tape recorder saved for posterity the drama of Officer Reed's exploits.

The show ran just one year near the end of the old-time radio era, from April 1954 to April 1955.  This episode, Three Time Loser and Shotgun Boy, aired on August 7, 1954.

Will Rogers Junior was much like his father - down-home, folksy, and always spouting gems of country wisdom.  

And Rogers of the Gazette was the perfect program for him. 

Rogers played a small-town newspaper editor who was constantly called upon to solve the problems in his community. 

With Georgia Ellis (radio's Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke) as his assistant Maggie Button, and Gunsmoke's Chester, Parley Baer, as the local doctor, there are several voices in this show you'll recognize. 

This episode also features Howard McNear, Gunsmoke's Doc Adams and Andy Griffith's Floyd the Barber.

From July 8, 1953, this is Newspaper Being Taken Over.

Peg Lynch is a national treasure.  She's still going strong at 95, and as funny as ever.

She assures us that she comes from a family of good genetic stock, her grandmothers living well into their 100s.  Speaking of one of them, Peg says: "She collected three war pensions.  Civil War, Spanish-American War, and World War I.  And I think she was a drummer boy in the Revolutionary War."

Peg performed last week at the Old-Time Radio Convention in Cincinnati.  She was a national radio fixture from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, first writing and starring in Ethel and Albert, then writing and starring in The Couple Next Door (same show, new name).  She wrote nearly 800 shows over two decades. 

Peg and her late partner, Alan Bunce, played a married couple who talked with each other.  A simple concept, and absolutely hilarious.  But rather than me talk about it, let's just listen to it.

Here are two 15-minute shows:  Ethel and Albert, More Storage Space, from June 4, 1945, and The Couple Next Door, Barking Test for Brownie, from May 7, 1959.

Rin Tin Tin is known as the Dog That Saved Warner Brothers.  There are still rumors that he beat out Emil Jannings for the 1929 Oscar for Best Actor, but the Academy was too embarrassed to give the Oscar to a dog. 

Be that as it may, Rin Tin Tin ruled Hollywood from the late 1920s into the Depression.  He was discovered as an orphan pup by American soldier Lee Duncan somewhere along the French-German border in 1918.  When he died in 1932, news bulletins broke into radio programming around the world to report that Rin Tin Tin had passed away.

Rin Tin Tin enjoyed a second round of fame in the 1950s, when he became the star of a television series.  For most of 1955, Rin Tin Tin was also on the radio again. 

This episode, The Ambassador, first aired on November 13, 1955.

How much do you know about old-time radio? 

Match wits with the experts at the Cincinnati Old-Time Radio Convention!  This week's show was recorded at last year's convention, and it consists of the questions and answers from the 2011 Old-Time Radio Trivia Bowl. 

This year's convention is Friday and Saturday of this week - April 13 and 14, 2012. 

We need contestants for this year's contest, and if you're coming to the convention, I urge you to play the game!  Grab three partners - there are four players to a team - and put your heads together to answer the old-time radio questions. 

This is a photo of last year's winners.  Take a look - don't you think YOU could beat these guys?  C'mon, give it a try!

Complete rules are at http://CincyOTR.info. 

If you make it to the convention, please look me up.  I'd love to meet you!

Bill Stern was the Walter Winchell of sports commentary. 

His stories were outrageous, dramatic, exciting, and often false. 

But he was so interesting to listen to that most listeners forgave him his exaggerating. 

Stern was on the air from 1937 until 1956, and the sensationalist broadcasters of today could learn a lot from listening to old tapes of Bill Stern. 

Here are two of his shows.  The first, from December 7, 1945, features boxing legend Joe Louis.  The second, from February 18, 1949, has New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel as guest.

Take It or Leave It was a quiz show that doubled the prize with each correct answer.  First you won a dollar, then two, then four, and on up to the top prize of $64.00. 

When the show went to television, it worked the same way, but the top prize was a thousand times more - hence the show name, The $64,000 Question.

The radio show was on the air from 1940 to 1952, and over the years it had several well-known hosts, including Phil Baker, Eddie Cantor, Garry Moore, and Jack Paar.

This episode, which first aired on November 8, 1942, featured special guest Jack Benny.

Red Ryder was a juvenile western that for a time rivaled and even topped The Lone Ranger in the Hooper ratings. 

First a series of short stories, then a newspaper comic strip, Red Ryder was so popular in the early 1940s that it spawned a series of movies and a comic book. 

Red Ryder was responsible for tons of branded merchandising items, including the Daisy Red Ryder BB rifle made famous in the movie A Christmas Story.

The radio series was on the air from 1942 to 1951.

Red Ryder was called "Red" because he had red hair and wore a red shirt.  He had a sidekick called Buckskin and a native American juvenile partner named Little Beaver. 

This episode, The Law Comes to Stovepipe, first aired on January 12, 1943.

Red Skelton began working in show biz when he was ten years old. 

He did vaudeville and burlesque, and he made his first radio appearance in 1937. 

He soon had his own show, and he was on the air with his own program (first radio, then TV) for 32 years.

In this episode, from January 8, 1950, Red is required to take a physical for CBS.

There were a lot of quiz shows on old-time radio, but none were quite like Author, Author. 

Famous authors, led by Ellery Queen, had to create a story that made sense out of a nonsense situation that was thrown at them. 

Ellery Queen was really two people - a pair of cousins named Manfred Lee and Frederic Dannay. 

This is the pilot episode, and the host here is humorist-poet Ogden Nash.  When the show was picked up for the regular schedule three months later, the host was humorist S.J. Perelman.

This pilot episode, The $2,001 Watch, was originally broadcast on January 4, 1939.

Yukon 2-8208!

Old-time radio aficianados know that as the phone number for Candy Matson, San Francisco's female private eye. 

Created by Monty Masters and starring his wife Natalie Parks in the title role, Candy Matson ran on radio for three years, from 1949 to 1951.

This episode, Devil in the Deep Freeze, was originally broadcast on November 10, 1949.

A Reminder:  The Cincinnati Old-Time Radio Convention is almost here!  For all fans of old-time radio, the show will be held Friday and Saturday, April 13 and 14.  Come meet Bob Hastings, star of radio's Archie, and Lt. Elroy Carpenter on McHale's Navy.  Complete details at http://CincyOTR.info.

The Old Gold Comedy Theater was a short run (just one season, 1944-45) program that attempted to turn 90-minute movie comedies into 30-minute radio comedies. 

The show was not as successful as it should have been, lasting just one season, 1944-45. 

The host, Harold Lloyd, had been a movie star in the silent era, and was perhaps thought to be no longer relevant. 

And the shows had to move very fast and leave out a lot to finish in just 30 minutes. 

Still, the program was able to draw many of the biggest box office stars of the time, from Lucille Ball To Edward G. Robinson to June Allyson to Dick Powell.

This episode, Brewster's Millions, is about a man who must give away a million dollars in 30 days, or lose an inheritance of 30 million dollars. 

It aired on March 18, 1945.

The Falcon was a private detective who first appeared in a short story, and it was so popular that it spawned 16 Falcon movies in the 1940s. 

The radio version was on the air from 1943 to 1954. 

Over the course of its run, five different actors played the Falcon:  Berry Kroeger, James Meighan, Les Tremayne, Les Damon, and George Petrie.

This episode, The Case of the Puzzling Pinup, was broadcast on November 19, 1950.

Roy Rogers was the King of the Cowboys (after Gene Autry relinquished the throne), and Dale Evans was Queen of the West. 

Together they rode the happy trails on Trigger and Buttermilk.

Where the Lone Ranger had silver bullets, Roy and Dale had a German shepherd  named Bullet. 

And where Gene Autry had a comic sidekick named Frog, Roy had a comic sidekick named Pat Brady. 

Roy's radio show was on the air from 1944 to 1955.  This episode, Ed Bailey's Bad Luck, originally aired on October 12, 1951. 

Blondie was the most popular comic strip in America in the early 1930s, and in 1938 it became a movie series, with 28 films made and released in just the next 12 years. 

Blondie and Dagwood were played by the same actors in the movies and on the radio.  Penny Singleton was a redhead who had to dye her hair blonde for the part, and Arthur Lake played Dagwood.

The radio series began in 1939 and ran until 1950. 

This episode, The Entertainment Committee, ran on April 8, 1940.

Elliott and Cathy Lewis were two of the most talented radio actors who ever lived.  They were equally at home doing comedy and drama.

They appeared in thousands of radio shows, and in 1953 they starred in their own weekly radio theater. 

This show, Cathy and Elliott Lewis On Stage, showcased their talents for a year and a half, but it was created near the end of the radio era, and the explosion of television took away much of its luster. 

This is the premiere episode, from New Year's Day, 1953.  It's a fun story about a man who posed for a perfume ad, and found himself lusted after by the entire female population.  Sheldon Leonard (the smooth-talking "tout" on the Jack Benny Program) is hilarious in this show, The String Bow Tie.

Most of our shows are episodes of popular, well-remembered old-time radio shows.  This one is different - it's the pilot episode of a show that was not picked up as a regular series. 

It had two names:  The announcer calls it The Adventures of Max Chandler, but old-time radio fans call it The Whisper Men. 

Karl Swenson starred as Max Chandler, a spy-fighting radio commentator.  Karl was best known in radio as Lorenzo Jones in the series of the same name, and in television he played Lars Hanson on Little House on the Prairie.  He was also Eddie Haskell's father in Leave It to Beaver.

This episode of The The Whisper Men was broadcast on the Mutual network on October 20, 1945.

Double or Nothing was a quiz show that ran for 14 years.  Over that time there were four hosts:  Walter Compton, John Reed King, and Todd Russell, and Walter O'Keefe.

Prizes were small, but the emcees were interesting enough that the program always drew a good audience. 

John Reed King, the host of this episode, was a World War II news correspondent for CBS before he moved to the Mutual Network and took over Double or Nothing.

This episode, from August 12, 1945, is unique in that early in the show it has a incorrect war bulletin.  A newsman breaks into the program to announce that Japan has agreed to sign the surrender papers agreeing to the Allies terms.  But later in the show another bulletin interrupts, stating that the first bulletin was in error and that Japan had made no such announcement.  (The actual announcement came three days later.)

Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, was the longest-running radio detective show of all time.  In the 18 years it was on the air, it aired 1,690 episodes. 

Mr. Keen began in 1937 as a three-a-week serial, and in December 1943 it became a half-hour stand-alone show. 

Mr. Keen was played by Bennett Kilpack, and his dimwitted partner, Jim Clancy, was played by Mike Kelly.

This episode, The Case of the Leaping Dog, first aired on April 13, 1944.

Of all the teen sitcoms that aired during the golden days of radio, none was more popular than The Aldrich Family. 

Henry began as a minor character in a 1938 Broadway play, then moved to radio first as a one-time skit on the Rudy Vallee show, then as a weekly feature on the Kate Smith Show, then as the summer replacement for Jack Benny, and finally as its own stand-alone show in 1939.

Besides its radio success, Henry Aldrich has his own comic book, television series, and 11 Paramount movies. 

Ezra Stone played Henry (with time out as a soldier during World War II), and Jackie Kelk was his best friend Homer Brown. 

This episode, Girl Trouble, originally aired on October 17, 1939.

The old-time radio program Gang Busters is famous for adding a phrase to the Dictionary of American Slang:  "Coming on like Gang Busters."  And indeed, the program had one of the wildest openings of all, with windows breaking, guns firing, and sirens screaming.

Gang Busters was created by Phillips H. Lord.  The show dramatized police cases, both famous and obscure.  FBI director J. Edgar Hoover begrudgingly promoted the show even though he wished it were not on the air. 

At the end of each episode, the description of a wanted suspect was broadcast, and over the 22 years that the program was on the air, it was responsible for the identification and capture of hundreds of suspected criminals.

This episode, The Case of the Unknown Killer, was first heard on June 9, 1944.

Many of the great authors who prospered during the Golden Age of Science Fiction were represented on the radio show X-1.  Its early shows were adaptations of stories appearing in Astounding Science Fiction magazine, and most of its later stories were from Galaxy Science Fiction magazine.

Poul Andersen, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Robert Bloch, Theodore Sturgeon, and Ray Bradbury all had stories dramatized on the show. 

This episode was written by Ray Bradbury.  It originally appeared in The Saturday Evening Post on September 23, 1950, under the title The World the Children Made.  It aired as an X-1 episode entitled The Veldt on August 4, 1955.

I might add that this version has a happier ending than does the original story.

Hopalong Cassidy was a national phenomenon in 1950. 

He was on television, in movies, in comic books, and in newspaper comic strips.

His image was on over a hundred products, from T-shirts to lunchboxes to toy guns to flashlights to pajamas. 

This episode of the Hopalong Cassidy radio show , The Mystery of Skull Mountain, originally aired on January 22, 1950.

Ann Sothern is probably best remembered for her role as Susie McNamara in the TV series Private Secretary. 

But before that, she had starred in 11 movies about Maisie, a burlesque dancer who got herself into fixes that would have stymied even Lucille Ball. 

Maisie became a radio series in 1947, with Ann Sothern reprising her movie role. 

This episode of Maisie, Department Store Clerk, was broadcast on November 24, 1949.

In the course of his radio career, Dick Powell played two detectives named Richard.  He is most famous as Richard Diamond, but before that he was Richard Rogue. 

Richard Rogue had a gimmick.  Whenever he was knocked unconscious (that is, in every episode), his alter ego Eugor spoke to him, giving him a clue as to how to proceed with the case. 

This episode of Rogue's Gallery, The Pat Flynn Case, first aired on June 6, 1946.

John Charles Daly is best known for hosting What's My Line in the early days of television, but before that he was a CBS newsman who anchored a unique radio program that went back in time. 

The show was called You Are There, and in it the CBS News department covered historical events live, like the landing of the Pilgrims, the assassination of President Lincoln, and in this episode, the battle of the Alamo. 

Originally broadcast on August 18, 1947.

Before Casey Kasem's American Top 40 Countdown, there was Your Hit Parade.  America tuned in every Saturday night, from 1935 until 1953, to find out what song was Number One. 

Each week, Your Hit Parade featured the top seven songs, performed not by the hit artists, but by the stable of singers who appeared on the show every week. 

Several regular performers on the show became stars, including Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Dinah Shore, and Gisele MacKenzie.

See how many songs you remember from this episode, with Frank Sinatra, which originally aired on December 30, 1944.

Cabin B13 was one of those fondly-remembered radio programs for which no recorded episodes survived.  Or so it was thought, until tapes of three of the shows were unearthed. 

Cabin B13 was the cabin of the ship's doctor on a luxury cruise liner, and the doctor was the narrator of the stories.  He was played by Arnold Moss, a Broadway actor who also appeared in movies and even a Star Trek episode.

This is the premiere episode of Cabin B13, and it originally aired on July 5, 1948.

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century was the first radio science fiction series.  It was based on the comic strip which started in 1929, and the radio version was on the air for fifteen years, from 1932 to 1947. 

Several actors played Buck over the years, and the program went from fifteen minutes to a half hour and then back to fifteen minutes. 

On this show, you'll hear the very first episode and, fifteen years later, the very last episode.

From April 5, 1932, and from March 28, 1947, here is Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

The Adventures of Ellery Queen was a fun detective radio show, because the audience was given a chance to solve the crime before Ellery fingered the culprit. 

Near the end of each episode, Ellery would stop the show to announce that he had the necessary clues to solve the mystery, and he then invited the listening audience to name the villain. 

He often had famous guests in the studio who were challenged to figure out the clues.  After guesses were made, the program began again and revealed the criminal.

This episode, The Adventure of the World Series Crime, originally aired on September 30, 1943.

Victor Jory played an evil plantation overseer in Gone With the Wind.  He played Lamont Cranston and the Shadow in the movie serial The Shadow.  And he was in over 150 movies. 

He was also the lead actor in each episode of the radio series Dangerously Yours, playing a different character every week.

In this June 1944 pilot episode, Masquerade, Jory plays an espionage agent in a one-on-one battle of wits with another spy - who happens to be female, and beautiful.

NBC had a hit radio series with A Date With Judy (see show 52), and CBS wanted a similar program.  They found a series of humorous stories about a precocious teenage girl in Good Housekeeping magazine, and CBS adapted the stories for radio.

The result was Meet Corliss Archer, which aired from 1943 to 1956.  The legendary Janet Waldo was Corliss, and 40 years later she was still playing teenage girls, including Judy Jetson on the TV series The Jetsons.

Corliss had a boyfriend, Dexter, played by Sam Edwards, a famous character actor who many years later played the banker on Little House on the Prairie.

The radio series was so popular that it spawned a book, a comic book, a Broadway play, and a television series.

This episode of Meet Corliss Archer, Rival Boyfriend, originally aired on June 23, 1946.

Sad Sack is chiefly remembered as the star of a comic book, but he was also the star of a 1957 movie (he was played by Jerry Lewis!) and a 1946 summer replacement radio series (in Frank Sinatra's time slot).

On the radio, Herb Vigran played the Sad Sack and Jim Backus was his roommate (in the radio series, Sad Sack was a veteran, World War II being over by the time the series was on the air).

This is the first episode of the series, Sad Sack Returns Home From the Army, from June 12, 1946.

Can You Top This? was a joke show in which listeners sent in jokes, and the three resident comics tried to top those jokes. 

It ran from 1940 to 1954, and it was so popular that it spawned two books of jokes from the show, and it attracted upwards of 3,000 letters per week at the height of its popularity.

The jokemasters were Senator Edward Ford (not a real senator, but the creator and owner of the show), Harry Hirshfield, a popular cartoonist of the day, and ex-vaudevillian Joe Laurie, Jr. 

This episode was originally heard on December 5, 1947.

Great news!

It is now possible to get automatic downloads of new In the Old-Time Radio Corner shows as they are posted, without getting my other shows on treasure hunting and softball. 

Go to http://danhughes.libsyn.com/rss/oldtimeradio and subscribe only to the old-time radio podcasts.

Tales of the Texas Rangers was on the air from 1950 to 1952 as a radio show, and from 1955 to 1957 as a TV show.  It was an adult show on radio, and a kids' show on television. 

The radio version starred film star Joel McCrea as Texas Ranger Jayce Pearson, and it was rather like a western version of Dragnet.  McCrea used modern police procedural methods to solve Texas crimes.

This episode, White Elephant, first aired on July 15, 1950.

In 1943, a little-known author named Frederick Collins wrote a best-selling book called The FBI in Peace and War. 

A year later, CBS radio turned the book into a weekly series starring Martin Blaine as FBI field agent Sheppard. 

The program remained one of the best-rated crime shows on radio until it went off the air near the end of the old-time radio era, in 1958. 

This episode, Unfinished Business, aired on August 2, 1951. 

Dennis Day had TWO radio shows, and Jack Benny had only one.  Dennis often kidded Jack about that on the Jack Benny Program. 

This is the second show Dennis had - A Day in the Life of Dennis Day.  It ran from 1946 to 1951. 

In his own show, Dennis played the same naive young innocent that he played on the Benny show.  He had a girlfriend named Mildred whose parents couldn't stand him, and he had a boss named Mr. Willoughby, played by the great John Brown.

This episode, Second Job, originally aired on October 22, 1947.

Did you ever hear Bill Cosby's routine about being terrified by a horror show on the radio when he was a kid, about a giant chicken heart? 

Well, that show was a real episode of Lights Out, a program that offered horror and the supernatural every Wednesday night. 

Lights Out was created by Wyliss Cooper (top photo) in 1934, and taken over by Arch Obeler (bottom photo) in 1936. 

This episode, Cat Wife, is one of the most popular shows of the series, and it was repeated several times.  This version stars Boris Karloff, and it originally aired on April 6, 1938.

Remember Ted Baxter's girlfriend (and later, his wife) Georgette on the Mary Tyler Moore Show?  See if you don't think her character might have been based on Irma from this old-time radio show, My Friend Irma. 

This show was so popular in its day that it also gave us a newspaper comic strip, a comic book, two movies, and a television series.

My Friend Irma was on the radio from 1947 to 1954.  This episode, Irma's Inheritance, first aired on April 5, 1948.

Who's buried in Grant's Tomb? 

That question originated on the old-time radio show It Pays to Be Ignorant, which ran for nine years, from 1942 to 1951. 

Easy questions were presented to a team of idiots, who mangled their answers until nobody quite knew what was happening. 

Host Tom Howard (on the right in the photo) tried to moderate the three contestants, (left to right) Harry McNaughton, Lulu McConnell, and George Shelton. 

This episode was first broadcast on July 14, 1944.

WXYZ radio in Detroit was the home of three classic juvenile radio shows - The Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet, and Challenge of the Yukon.

Challenge of the Yukon ran on radio from 1947 to 1955, and then on TV from 1955 to 1958.

It was set in the Alaskan Gold Rush of the 1890s, and the show featured a dog named King.  At first he was a husky, but somewhere along the way he became a malamute.  He was the lead dog for Sergeant William Preston, the star human of the show.

This episode, The Fraud, was originally broadcast on September 18, 1947. 

Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts was on the radio from 1946 to 1956, and on television from 1948 to 1958.

Some of the stars discovered by the show were Patsy Cline, Pat Boone, Tony Bennett, Jonathan Winters, Wally Cox, and Connie Francis. 

But Arthur missed the biggest star of all, a singer who auditioned for the show, but was not picked to appear - and that was Elvis Presley. 

A future star appears in this episode from April 18, 1949 - comedian Lenny Bruce.

Though Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were most famous for their baseball skit Who's On First, they actually did several other routines written with that same basic formula, where Lou misunderstands what Bud is trying to tell him. 

This show has one such skit, about the Hertz U-drive company.

Actress Veronica Lake is the guest in this episode from December 2, 1943.

Many of our In the Radio Corner shows are the first show of a series.  This time, we're giving you the last show of a series.

Murder and Mr. Malone ran on ABC and then NBC for four years, from 1947 to 1951.  A television version aired in 1951 and 1952. 

John J. Malone was a criminal lawyer.  He was created by Craig Rice, a female mystery novelist who appeared on the cover of Time Magazine in 1946, but has since been mostly forgotten. 

Malone was first played by Frank Lovejoy (better known as Nightbeat's Randy Stone), then Gene Raymond (Broadway and movie actor; husband of Jeanette MacDonald), and finally George Petri. 

Petri was in television for over half a century, with recurring roles in shows ranging from The Honeymooners to Dallas to Mad About You.  He also played Eddie Haskell's father on Leave It To Beaver.

This final episode, Haste Maketh Waste, was broadcast on July 13, 1951.

Here is one of the all-time classic old-time radio broadcasts.  Actress Jan Miner delivers a masterful virtually-solo half-hour performance as a frantic wife trying to save her husband (via telephone) from execution.

The show was the premiere episode of NBC's Radio City Playhouse, which ran for just a year and a half but was universally praised for its strong writing (many famous authors wrote especially for the show) and its excellent acting.

This episode, Long Distance, was originally broadcast on July 3, 1948.

Gene Autry was 21 when he began singing on the radio, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

A year later he signed a recording contract with Columbia records, and he moved to WLS in Chicago, where he was on the National Barn Dance for four years. 

He made his first movie in 1934, and his radio show, Gene Autry's Melody Ranch, aired from 1940 to 1956. 

This episode, Cattlemen's Money Stolen, was originally broadcast on June 9, 1951.

(And by the way - that's not a lighter in the picture, that's the flashlight I describe in the show.)

Himan Brown envisioned a creaking door as an introduction to a spooky radio series.  He created the series, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, but he couldn't

get the sound he wanted from a door.  So he used a creaking chair, and that's what you hear at the beginning of each episode of Inner Sanctum.

The early episodes were hosted by a ghoul named Raymond, who was full of morbid jokes and ghastly puns. 

This episode, The Man From Yesterday, originally aired on December 21,1941.

The New Adventures of Michael Shayne was one of several incarnations of the radio version of the famous detective series. 

In the 1948-1949 run, Jeffrey Chandler starred as Shayne, and Dragnet's Jack Webb worked on the series as an uncredited script advisor. 

This episode, The Hate That Killed, originally ran on August 27, 1948.

Beyond Tomorrow was the first adult science fiction series on radio - maybe.  Some sources say three episodes aired on CBS in April 1950, but other sources say the programs were  recorded and scheduled, but never aired. 

The series was hosted by John W. Campbell Jr, perhaps the most influential person in the development of science fiction from the late 1930s through the 1960s.  Campbell was the editor of Astounding Science Fiction magazine (which later became Analog) all those years, and he directed his authors with a strong hand.  He insisted on specific themes for his magazine, and he directed authors to change endings if he didn't like what they had written.

This episode, a western-science fiction story called Incident at Switchpath, was written by Theodore Sturgeon.  The magazine version was named The Sky is Full of Ships, but they changed the title for radio because they were afraid the words "ships" might be heard as something else.

From April 11, 1950, here is Beyond Tomorrow and Incident at Switchpath.

Have Gun, Will Travel was on television for over a year before a radio version was created.  John Dehner, who had just finished a year as Englishman J.B. Kendall in Frontier Gentleman, was chosen to play the radio version of Paladin.

Paladin was a gun for hire, but somehow he always managed to fight for the good.  A good guy dressed all in black - not a common sight on the western scene.

This episode,  Death of a Young Gunfighter, originally aired on March 15, 1959.

The photo shows radio's Paladin, John Dehner, with TV's Paladin, Richard Boone.

People Are Funny hit the air in 1943, with Art Baker as host. 

Baker was fired and replaced by Art Linkletter, ostensibly because Linkletter would work for less money. 

The show was a hit with Linkletter, and it stayed on the radio for seventeen years,  from 1943 to 1960.  The TV version was on the air from 1954 to 1961. 

The show generally followed this formula:  Send an audience member out on the street at the beginning of the show to do a stunt, then do several on-stage stunts with other audience members, and finally bring back the first audience member to relate his or her experience outside the studio.

This episode is from January 13, 1952.

A Date With Judy was on the air for a full decade, from 1941 to 1950. 

It was so popular that it spawned a movie starring Jane Powell and Elizabeth Taylor, a TV series which ran from 1951 to 1953, and a comic book which was issued from 1947 to 1960. 

The show was similar to Henry Aldrich and Archie, but its star was a teenage girl rather than a teenage boy.

This episode, A New Dress for the Dance, originally aired on May 18, 1946.

Pictured are Judy (Louise Erickson) and her boyfriend Oogie (Dick Crenna).

Mr. and Mrs. North began as a series of magazine stories, then was expanded into a mystery novel (actually 26 of them), then a Broadway play, then a radio series, and finally a TV series.

This is the pilot episode of the radio show.  Mr. and Mrs. North were a happily-married couple, a bit on the eccentric side, who happened to be adept

at solving crimes.  It starred Carl Eastman and Peggy Conklin (who also played Pam in the Broadway show).

The roles of Jerry and Pam were given to Joseph Curtin and Alice Frost after the pilot was picked up by NBC.  (The show moved to CBS in 1947, hence the CBS mic flag in this photo of Joseph and Alice).

This episode, Picnic, originally aired on NBC on December 30, 1942.

P.S.  Visit the Cincinnati Old-Time Radio Discussion Board at http://cincyotr.info.

Rather than play an episode from an old-time radio series this week, we present all the questions and answers from the First Annual Old-Time Radio Trivia Bowl, recorded at the Cincinnati Old-Time Radio and Nostalgia Convention on May 7, 2010. 

I've edited out dead air and spaces between questions and answers, so the show moves along quickly.  If you'd like to play the game, get your paper and pencil, and keep your finger on the pause button as you write your answers.

In the photo, last year's winning team, the Tom Mix Ralston Straightshooters (left to right, Jim Widner, Jack French, Meredith Granger, Randy Larson).

Visit the Cincinnati Old-Time Radio Discussion Board:  http://cincyotr.info.

In 1938, Superman first appeared in Action Comics #1, a comic book that has reportedly sold for as high as one and a half million dollars. 

In 1939, Superman became a daily comic strip.

And in 1940, Superman took to the air with a three-afternoons-a-week radio show. 

Who played Superman on the radio?  It was a closely-guarded secret until 1946, when Clayton Collyer was identified as the voice of the Man of Steel.  Collyer is better known to early television enthusiasts as Bud Collyer, host of game shows like Beat the Clock and To Tell the Truth.

This episode, The Mystery of the Mechanical Monster, first aired on December 10, 1949.

In the photo:  Jackson Beck, the announcer whose never-to-be-forgotten words "Faster than a speeding bullet!  More powerful than a locomotive!" began each episode; Clayton Collyer; and Joan Alexander, who played Lois Lane.

Wild Bill Hickok (Guy Madison) and his rotund sidekick Jingles Jones (Andy Devine) rode across our radio dials - and television screens - from 1951 to 1956 (radio) and 1951-1958 (television). 

Guy Madison (real name Robert Moseley) was on leave from the Coast Guard in 1944 when he was "discovered" and cast in a small movie part.  His good looks got him several roles, but his lack of acting ability kept him from being a star until he was cast as Wild Bill Hickok.

This was a cowboy show for kids, with lots of shooting and yelling and simple plots of bad guys vs. good guys.

Our episode is Six-Gun Serenade, from December 1, 1954.

The Jack Benny Show is probably the most-often named Favorite Show of All Time amongst old-time radio fans. 

I chose this episode not because of its content, but because I own the actual script that Jack edited (in pencil) and read from when this particular show was originally broadcast (on October 7, 1945). 

I have posted the first three pages of the script at http://danhughes.net/radio/jackscript.htm, so you can read along as you listen to the program.

See if you don't think the changes Jack made to the script make the show even funnier.

The photo is of my daughter Karen in her JACK JACK JACK (on the front) BENNY BENNY BENNY (on the back) shirt, with Jack Benny impersonator Eddie Carroll. 

For more photos of Karen with OTR celebrities, visit http://danhughes.net/khugged.htm, and for more Jack Benny photos visit http://danhughes.net/waukegan.htm.

ALSO - A reminder that the 2011 Cincinnati Old-Time Radio Convention is on May 13 and 14. Admission is just $10 -  Check it out.

The Great Gildersleeve was a spinoff of Fibber McGee and Molly.  Hal Peary was introduced as the character in 1939, and in 1941 Gildy got his own show. 

His exasperating pre-teen nephew Leroy, was played by Walter Tetley, who was actually 26 when the show began.  His niece Marjorie was  played by several different actresses, starting with Lurene Tuttle, who was replaced by Louise Erickson and then Mary Lee Robb.

Gildersleeve was blustery but lovable, the water commissioner of Summerville.  He was constantly in and out of romances, and several regular characters, including Druggist Richard Q. Peavey and Judge Horace Hooker, added to the fun.

This episode is an audition show that never made the air.  Three months later, it was rewritten and used as the first episode of the new series.

The Archie comic book was also a radio show in the late 1940s, starring Bob Hastings (later Lt. Elroy Carpenter on McHale's Navy, and bartender Tommy Kelsey on Archie Bunker's Place) as Archie. 

In the photo, left to right:  Alice Yourman as Archie's mom, Harlan "Hal" Stone as Jughead, Bob Hastings as Archie, Gloria Mann as Veronica, Arthur Kohl as Archie's dad, and Rosemary Rice as Betty.

With a live studio audience composed mostly of boisterous children, the show was pretty noisy, to say the least.

This episode, The New TV, first aired on May 21, 1949.

NOTE:  Archie and Betty (Bob Hastings and Rosemary Rice) will both be at the Old-Time Radio Convention in Cincinnati on Friday, May 13, and Saturday, May 14, appearing in old-time radio re-creations. 

All attendees are invited to audition for parts in the shows, so you might get to act with the stars!  More info at http://CincyOTR.info. 

The Cincinnati convention is more informal than most, with the stars mixing with the audience.   If you're able to come, look me up and say hello!

Casey, Crime Photographer ran from 1943 to 1950, then again in 1954-55, on the CBS radio network. 

Jack Casey took crime pictures for the Morning Express, and his adventures turned him into a reluctant detective. 

Staats Cotsworth, who played Casey for most of the show's run, started in radio in 1937 as an actor in the soap opera Pepper Young's Family, and he was still going strong in 1974, when he appeared often on the CBS Mystery Theater.  He also appeared in guest roles on various television shows in the 1950s and 1960s. 

This episode, Acquitted, about a policeman with a temper that often gets him into trouble, first aired on July 3, 1947.

Let George Do It was a one-of-a-kind radio show.  It started as a funny mystery/detective show, and over the years it evolved into a more hard-boiled private eye program.

Bob Bailey, best-known for his later work as Johnny Dollar, starred as George Valentine, a returning World War II veteran.  Valentine had saved up a little money, and he used it to open a business where he would do things other people needed done but didn't want to do themselves. 

The show was quirky and fun to listen to.  George was a happy-go-lucky optimist who seemed to enjoy life, no matter what.

This is the pilot episode, The First Visitor.  It aired on September 20, 1946.

Duffy's Tavern was one of the most popular radio shows of the 1940s.  The title character, Duffy, never appeared on the show. 

Each episode began with Archie (Ed Gardner), the manager of the tavern, answering the phone and talking to owner Duffy.  You only heard Archie's side of the conversation. 

Miss Duffy, the owner's daughter, was a wacky dame played by several different actresses over the run of the show. 

Eddie was a smart-aleck waiter who always talked back to his boss. 

And Finnegan was an easy-talking lush who was later copied by Frank Fontaine when he played Crazy Guggenheim on the Jackie Gleason show.

Duffy's Tavern was tried on TV, but it did not work, mainly because Ed Gardner could not learn his lines.  He worked fine with a script in his hands, but you can't do that on television.

This episode of Duffy's Tavern is called "Archie Wants to Patent Electricity," and it first aired on February 23, 1949.

This crime drama was on the air for five years, from 1949 to 1954.  Detective Danny Clover was a Manhattan native who knew his neighborhood, and his people. 

Larry Thor starred as Danny Clover, and the producer and director was the legendary Elliott Lewis, who was also an excellent actor equally at home in comedy (he was Remley on the Phil Harris-Alice Fay Show) and drama (he played the captain of the Scarlett Queen and often appeared in shows like Suspense).

Listen carefully and you'll hear the distinct voice of Howard McNear (Andy Griffith's Floyd the Barber) in this episode.

From May 12, 1950, this is The Marcia Dean Murder Case.

The Whistler was one of those shows that delighted in surprising us with a trick ending, sometimes even a double trick ending.  Think Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, and even farther back to O.Henry's stories. 

The title character, The Whistler, was a mysterious apparition who narrated the program but never had an active part in it.  He talked to the other characters, though they couldn't hear them, which was just as well, because what he had to say was never pleasant.  His snide, mocking attitude was a big hit with listeners.

The Whistler began as a west coast-only program, and it was sponsored by Signal Gasoline, a company that existed only in California and a few other western states. 

To many old-time radio listeners, Signal Gasoline will always be associated with The Whistler.

This episode, The Gentle Way, was first heard on June 23, 1947.

Frontier Gentleman ran only one season, in 1958, near the end of the old-time radio era. 

John Dehner, who played Paladin in the radio version of Have Gun, Will Travel, also played the Frontier Gentleman, J.B. Kendall. 

Kendall was a British newspaper reporter covering the American west for the London Times. 

He was good with a gun, and he often ran into famous people, like Wild Bill Hickok and General Custer. 

The show had humor, drama, and excitement, and was one of the best adult westerns old-time radio had to offer.

This episode, Honky Tonkers, first aired on February 16, 1958.

Just four characters - husband Victor Gook, wife Sade Gook, stepson Rush Gook, and beyond-insane Uncle Fletcher - were the only people who appeared on this 15-minute-a-day, five-day-a-week program.

Each show took place in the Gook house, "halfway up in the next block."  They talked.  And talked.  And we laughed.  Until the tears streamed down our faces. 

There was no studio audience, no laugh track, just these four strange people carrying on bizarre conversations. 

Vic, who was super-serious about his kitchenware job and his lodge.  Sade, the sane wife who almost kept the show grounded.  Rush, the eager and excitable young high school student.  And Uncle Fletcher, a confused visitor from another galaxy.

The writer of this marvelous show, Paul Rhymer, had a rare talent for humor perhaps not seen since Mark Twain. 

Often the engineers had to duck their heads below the studio window, they were laughing so hard.  They were afraid that if the actors saw them, they wouldn't be able to keep a straight face as they read their insane lines so matter-of-factly.

Vic and Sade is an acquired taste.  At first you just shake your head in wonder, but after a few episodes you begin to catch on.  I urge you to find more of these shows and give them a listen.  You won't regret it.

This show consists of three clips from Vic and Sade episodes originally broadcast in 1940 and 1941.

And now, let's drop in on radio's home folks, Vic and Sade.

Jack Webb was a radio comedian, if you can imagine that, working as a disc jockey in San Francisco in 1945. 

In 1946 he created and starred in a radio series called Pat Novak for Hire, then he did Johnny Modero:  Pier 23.

And in 1949, Dragnet.  Webb wanted it to be as true-to-life as possible, so he rode with police detectives and took classes at the police academy.  He knew more about being a policeman than many of the actual cops.

When Jack Webb died in late 1982, the Los Angeles Police Department honored him by flying its flag at half-mast.

Here's Jack Webb and Dragnet, and The Big Grab, which was aired on June 29th, 1950.

Until the 1950s, most radio science fiction stories were aimed at children.  Shows like Superman,  Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon were regular afternoon fare for the kids.

But science fiction magazines for adults were going strong in the early 1950’s.  Titles like Fantasy and Science Fiction, Astounding Science Fiction, Fantastic Universe, and Amazing Science Fiction were popular. 

Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Isaac Asimov, and many more legendary authors wrote for the pulp science fiction magazines.

In 1950, the NBC radio network created a new radio series of science fiction for adults, called Dimension X.  It first aired on April 8th, 1950, and it ran until September 29, 1951.  It made a return appearance as X Minus 1 from 1955 to 1958.

This story, Dwellers in Silence, was written by Ray Bradbury, and was a chapter in his novel The Martian Chronicles.  It originally aired on July 19th, 1951.

When popular comedian Red Skelton was drafted, the bandleader of his radio show was offered a chance to create a replacement show.  

And thus was born The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.  

The bandleader, of course, was Ozzie Nelson, and the band's vocalist was his wife Harriet, who had sung professionally under the name Harriet Hilliard.

So virtually overnight, Ozzie and Harriet moved from the world of music to the world of acting.  

Their radio show aired from 1944 to 1954, and the TV version ran from 1952 to 1966.

This episode, Card Tricks, was first broadcast on January 23, 1949.

The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio says:  "The Adventures of Sam Spade remains today the pinnacle of radio private eye broadcasts."

In 1930, author Dashiell Hammett wrote what is perhaps the most famous private detective novel of all time:  The Maltese Falcon.  The book was made into a move twice before the ultimate film version starring Humphrey Bogart was released in 1941.  Bogie made Sam Spade an unforgettable character, the original hard-boiled private eye.

In 1946, ABC radio brought Sam Spade to the airwaves, starring tough-talking Howard Duff as the title character.  The show remained on the air until Duff decided to take a spin on the movies in 1950.

Here's The Farmer’s Daughter Caper, originally broadcast on September 3, 1950.

Fred Allen was a radio humorist whose humor was much more sophisticated than that of most comedians. 

His show first aired in 1932, and its final episode was broadcast in 1949. 

During that time, Fred had a famous feud with fellow comedian Jack Benny, after Fred insulted Jack’s violin skills.  The feud sparked the careers of both entertainers, and continued for years on the air, even though they were great friends in real life.

Fred carried on another feud, too – this one a real one – against the radio censors.  His deleted material wasn’t blue – it was simply insulting to the network executives.  He was often cut off by the censors in mid-sentence. 

Fred was not particularly fond of Hollywood or the people who ran it. Here is one of his famous quotes:  "You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer's heart."

From June 26, 1949, this is Fred Allen's last radio show.

Fred Foy, the announcer on The Lone Ranger radio program whose voice will live forever with the immortal line "Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear," died this week at the age of 89.

Foy also played the Lone Ranger himself in one episode, when Brace Beemer, the radio voice of the Lone Ranger, had laryngitis. 

Here is that episode, Burly Scott's Sacrifice, as it originally aired on March 29, 1954.

The girl in the photo with Fred is my daughter, Karen Hughes, who had the privilege of acting with Fred in several radio re-creations of the Lone Ranger. 

For a short video clip from a re-creation of Burly Scott's Sacrifice, visit http://tinyurl.com/yhe4fez. 

And by the way, I play one of the outlaws - that's me in the dark T-shirt.

He first appeared as a jewel thief in a pulp magazine in 1914, then he showed up in the silent movies, then in the talkies, and then on the radio.  Finally, he had his own TV show in the early 1950s.

I'm talking about Boston Blackie. 

He was played in the movies and initially on the radio by Chester Morris, but Richard Kollmar (husband of Dorothy Kilgallen) took over the radio role the second year and held it until the show went off the air in 1950.

This episode, Murder With an Alibi, originally aired on March 5, 1946. 

Jimmy Stewart is best-remembered for his movie roles in films like It's a Wonderful Life, Harvey, and Rear Window.

But in the fall of 1953, he starred in a radio series.  He played wandering cowboy Britt Ponset, the title character of the western series The Six Shooter. 

Though the series lasted just one year, the writing was excellent and Stewart was at the top of his form.  The plot was simple:  Ponset travelled around the wild west, and each week he had a new adventure. 

Some of the shows were serious, some of them were funny, and some of them were classic stories retold with a western background, like Cinderella and A Christmas Carol.

This episode, Silver Annie, was first broadcast on October 11, 1953.

One of the funniest programs ever to air. 

Phil Harris as a vain, happy-go-lucky bandleader, Elliott Lewis as his scheming guitarist Frankie Remley, Alice Faye as the wife and family anchor, two actresses playing the precocious daughters, and Walter Tetley as the brash, insulting grocery delivery boy.

In this episode, Remley needs a family to seal an inheritance, and so borrows Phil's wife and daughters as his own. 

This show originally aired on December 5, 1948.

The Halls of Ivy ran from 1950 to 1952.  It was a weekly half-hour sitcom set on the campus of Ivy College. 

Ronald Colman starred as William Todhunter Hall, the college president.  Colman’s real-life wife Bonita played his wife Vicky, an ex-star of the English theater. 

One of the regulars you'll recognize is Willard Waterman, who was also the second Great Gildersleeve, as Colman’s friend on the college board of governors.

This episode, Student Editorial, was the second show of the series.  It aired on January 13, 1950.

Frank Lovejoy starred as the nighttime beat reporter for the Chicago Star in Nightbeat. 

This episode will be of particular interest to Gunsmoke fans, because the radio actors who played Matt Dillon, Chester, and Miss Kitty all appear as guests.

So with Frank Lovejoy in the lead role and William Conrad, Parley Baer, and Georgia Ellis in supporting roles, here's Nightbeat, from October 13, 1950, and Einer Pierce and His Family.

On radio and in the movies, Basil Rathbone WAS Sherlock Holmes.

He played the part from 1939 to 1946, appearing in hundreds of radio shows and fourteen movies.

Along with Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, here's Basil Rathbone in The Unfortunate Tobacconist, which originally aired on April 30, 1945.

Information Please! was a popular quiz show, on the air from 1938 to 1951. 

Listeners sent in questions to stump the panel.  If the listener's question was used on the air, the listener won a few dollars. 

If the panel couldn't answer the question, the listener won a few more dollars.

Clifton Fadiman was the moderator of the show.  The panel consisted of three regulars who had an immense knowledge of music, sports, literature, popular culture, and several other fields. 

They were joined by a different celebrity panelist every week. 

Some of the celebrities who played the game were Orson Welles, Dorothy Parker, Boris Karloff, and Mike Wallace, when he was still known as Myron Wallace.

From June 20, 1939, here’s Information Please, with guest panelist Gracie Allen.

The Shadow was created in 1930 as the narrator for a radio show that dramatized stories from Detective Story magazine. 

The character became more popular than the shows he introduced, and soon The Shadow magazine was born. 

The Shadow radio show appeared in 1937, with Orson Welles as one of the early Shadows. 

This episode, the Gibbering Things, was originally broadcast on September 26, 1943.

Though at least seven actors played The Saint on the radio over the years, Vincent Price is the Saint to most of us who listened to the show. 

The Saint got his name from his initials - ST, for Simon Templar.  He was a suave, clever, fun-loving and lovable criminal whose targets were pretty much rich bad guys. 

The Saint first appeared in 1928 in a book, moved to the movies in 1938, then to radio in 1940, and finally to television in 1968.

This radio episode, The Corpse Said Ouch, stars Vincent Price and was first aired on August 6, 1950.

How many old-time radio sitcoms do you know of that were also a television series, and a movie?  I'll probably hear from listeners who have other answers, but the one that springs to mind for me is Our Miss Brooks.

Connie Brooks was a high school English teacher who had a crush on Mr. Boynton, the science teacher.  Gale Gordon played the blustery principal, Mr. Osgood Conklin.  And a very young Richard Crenna played the high school student who dated the principal's daughter. 

Incidentally, forty years later, Richard Crenna played Colonel Denton Walters in the movie Hot Shot Part Deux - a reversal of his Our Miss Brooks character, Walter Denton.

This episode, Student Government Day, originally aired on January 16, 1949.

In the late 1950s, radio as a dramatic medium was dying out, giving way to disc jockey formats.

CBS radio tried to hold on a while longer by putting on radio what the public adored on television:  westerns!

This western, Luke Slaughter of Tombstone, perhaps would have been a huge hit twenty years earlier.  It was produced by the same folks who gave us Gunsmoke. 

But, good as it was, it was just too late.

This episode, Tracks Out of Tombstone, was originally broadcast on March 3, 1958.

Richard Diamond on radio and Richard Diamond on TV were two different animals. 

The radio Diamond (Dick Powell) was rather lighthearted and funny, and the television Diamond (David Janssen) was more hardboiled and serious.

Dick Powell himself does the whistling that opens the radio show.  This episode, the Ralph Chase Case, was originally broadcast on May 15, 1949. 

This is the show that evolved into television's I Love Lucy.

Three years before Lucy and Ricky on TV, there were Liz and George on the radio. 

The radio program was called My Favorite Husband, and many of the radio episodes were rewritten for use as scripts on the I Love Lucy TV show.

Lucy played Liz, but George was played by Richard Denning, who was replaced by Lucy's real-life husband, Desi Arnaz, when the show went to television.

So listen now to an early version of I Love Lucy.  Here's Lucille Ball in My Favorite Husband, from August 20, 1948.

Inner Sanctum Mysteries ran from 1941 to 1952, and in those 11 years over 500 shows were broadcast. 

Many old-time listeners refer to it by its signature sound effect, The Creaking Door.  It was hosted by a ghoulish character who enjoyed bad puns.

The show was similar to television’s Twilight Zone, with stories that mixed humor with horror. 

From September 25, 1945, here’s Inner Sanctum, and The Lonely Sleep.

Philip Marlowe was a hardboiled private eye created by hardboiled author Raymond Chandler.

He began in the pulp detective magazines, then moved to the movies and then to radio.

Marlowe was played by film star Van Heflin on the radio, then later by Gerald Mohr.

This is the very first episode of The Adventures of Philip Marlowe.  It originally ran on June 17, 1947 on the NBC radio network.

Gunsmoke was an original concept in radio – a bleak western for adults.   It ran on the radio from 1952 to 1961. 

The program had the perfect cast members – straight-talking Bill Conrad as Marshall Matt Dillon, quirky Parley Baer as Chester, ghoulish Howard McNear as Doc Adams, and Georgia Ellis as Matt’s love interest and saloon girl Kitty Russell.  

They had all done hundreds, perhaps thousands of roles in various radio programs before they were signed for Gunsmoke.  

William Conrad went on to star in television’s Cannon and Jake and the Fat Man, and Parley Baer and Howard McNear both had regular parts in the Andy Griffith Show, with Parley as Mayor Stoner and Howard McNear as Floyd the Barber.

This episode, from July 24, 1960, is called The Imposter.

Before Jack Webb made those four notes “dum da dum dum” forever famous, he starred in a quirky series set at the San Francisco harbor, called Pat Novak for Hire.

The dialog he wrote for Novak was just bizarre – there’s just no other way to describe it.

Listen for yourself, as we give you the April 23, 1949 episode of Pat Novak for Hire. This is called Rita Malloy.

He was the voice of Bugs Bunny.  He was the voice of Porky Pig.  He was the voice of Jack Benny’s perpetually-frustrated violin teacher, and Jack’s parrot, and Jack’s antique Maxwell automobile when it struggled to get started.

Mel Blanc, the man of a thousand voices, had his own radio series that ran for one season on CBS.  Mel played a mousy handyman who ran a fix-it shop with the help of his assistant Zookie, who sounded a lot like Porky Pig. 

Sadly, Mel’s unique talents were wasted in this series.  The writing was weak and the jokes not very funny.  Still, for historical purposes, old-time radio fans should listen to an episode or two of The Mel Blanc Show. 

This one is called The Astrologer, and it was originally broadcast on November 19, 1946.

McCarthyism was rampant in the early 1950s, and radio gave us a weekly series called I Was a Communist for the FBI.  It ran from 1952 to 1954. 

Dana Andrews played the real-life spy who pretended to be a Red so he could infiltrate the Communist Party. 

I Was a Communist for the FBI was an independent syndicated program, not run by any specific network, and it was carried by an astounding 600-plus radio stations. From May 7, 1952, here’s an episode of I Was a Communist for the FBI, called Little Red.

Radio producer-director Norman McDonnell and head writer John Meston gave us two old-time radio western series.  Both were “adult, thinking-man” programs.

One was Gunsmoke. 

The other was Fort Laramie.

Fort Laramie ran for less than a year, from January 1956 to October 1956.  It starred a relatively unknown mostly bit-part actor who had done radio for several years and had been in the movies too. 

The year after he starred in Fort Laramie, his career would skyrocket as he became television’s Perry Mason.

Canada’s Raymond Burr was picked to play Perry Mason over such better-known actors as Jeff Chandler, Fred MacMurray, and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. 

Legend is that Perry Mason author Erle Stanley Gardner said, “THAT’s Perry Mason” when Burr walked in to audition.

Raymond Burr played cavalry Captain Lee Quince in Fort Laramie.  From February 5, 1956, here’s an episode of Fort Laramie called Squaw Man.

Nero Wolfe was a most unlikely detective. 

He was a gourmet and an orchid connoisseur, and he was generally a rather nasty man altogether.

He was so vastly overweight that he seldom left his apartment.

He listened to clients tell their stories, then he sent his assistant Archie Goodwin to do the footwork (and the dirty work).

Archie tracked down the clues, often putting himself in great physical danger, then he turned his findings over to Wolfe, who solved the mystery in the comfort of his easy chair. 

Three actors played Nero Wolfe on the radio.  In this program, we hear the most well-known Nero Wolfe, Sydney Greenstreet.

This episode, Stamped for Murder, was originally broadcast on October 20, 1950.

Fibber McGee and Molly were one of America's best-loved radio couples. Stars Jim and Marion Jordan were married in real life, and their show was on the air from 1935 to 1959.

Their radio show was as popular as The Lone Ranger, Jack Benny, Gunsmoke, and Burns and Allen, but unlike those programs, Fibber McGee and Molly was not able to adapt itself to television. 

Perhaps it failed because it was better heard than seen.  Fibber McGee and Molly was more "sound-oriented" than other radio shows.

For example, Jim Jordan was a wizard at delivering extended alliteration at breakneck speed, and he was also a professional punster.  No picture is required to fully appreciate either of these verbal gymnastic techniques.

Also, the most popular running gag of the show was Fibber McGee's closet.  It was stuffed with junk, and whenever it was opened, you heard everything fall out.  The sound effects man would sweep shelf after shelf of umbrellas and bowling balls and pots and pans to the floor, going on for maybe thirty seconds, and it got funnier all the time.

But in real life, gravity isn't that slow.  The closet crash would last only three seconds or so, and the humor was lost.

And finally, when the TV version was cast, new actors were chosen for the parts of Fibber and Molly.  Like David Letterman said (repeatedly) of Val Kilmer, "That ain't Batman."

This episode, Catching a Train, first aired on February 20, 1945.

Once upon a time there were radio shows - and then television shows - that told a different story every week, with no continuing characters except the host who introduced each story, and with different locations, and even time periods, every week. 

In radio, there was Suspense, and Lights Out, and The Whistler, and Academy Award Theater and Lux Radio Theater and the First Nighter Program. 

In television, there was Playhouse 90 and the Loretta Young Show and Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. 

One of the best radio shows of this type was Escape, which ran on CBS and was hosted by William Conrad and Paul Frees. 

Escape usually took place in some exotic locale, and dramatized someone in a life-or-death situation. 

This episode, The Man Who Stole the Bible, first aired on May 5, 1950.

The Green Hornet (Britt Reid) was the son of the nephew of the Lone Ranger. 

Like the Lone Ranger, he fought crime though law officers thought he was an outlaw. 

And like the Lone Ranger, he had a foreign sidekick (Tonto for the Lone Ranger, Kato - a Philipino - for the Green Hornet).

The program ran from 1936 to 1952, and though several actors played Britt Reid, Al Hodge is best remembered for the role.

This episode, Torpedo on Wheels, originally aired on November 14, 1942.

For every really successful radio western, like The Lone Ranger and Gunsmoke, there were dozens of lesser-known cowboy shows.  

A good example of one of these programs that flew under the radar is Dr. Sixgun, which ran just one year, from 1954 to 1955.

Karl Weber played the gun-toting physician.  Weber was no stranger to radio, or to the medical profession.  He had played a doctor for two years in the radio soap opera The Guiding Light, and he appeared in several movies and tv shows, including Perry Mason, Doctor Kildare, and Maverick.

Dr. Sixgun was narrated by Weber's sidekick, Pablo, who was played by Bill Griffis.  

This episode, "No Guns" Ordinance, originally aired on October 31, 1954.

Nathan Birnbaum married Grace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen in 1926.  For the next 30 years, they were one of the best-loved couples in America. 

Nathan became George Burns and Gracie dropped all those middle names, and Burns and Allen were headliners in vaudeville, radio, and television for almost half a century.  George was in show biz for over 93 years!

Their radio program was one of the top-rates shows for many years.  This episode, Sweeping Into Office, was originally broadcast live from the San Francisco World's Fair on May 29, 1940.

Movie actor Alan Ladd played Dan Holiday, an ex-newspaper reporter who wrote mystery novels. 

To find ideas for his stories, he ran a classified ad:  "Adventure wanted, will go anywhere, do anything.  Write Box 13, Star-Times." 

Each episode began with the reading of a letter responding to this ad, and Halliday was off on another adventure.

The series ran in 1948 and 1949, and Ladd himself was co-writer of some of the scripts. 

This episode, Suicide or Murder, aired on November 7, 1948.

Dark Fantasy was a supernatural anthology, much like the television show, The Twilight Zone.  It didn’t last very long – it was on the air from November 1941 to June 1942 – but it was written by Scott Bishop, who also wrote The Mysterious Traveler, and it was much admired by fans of the genre.

This episode, The Thing From the Sea, originally aired on November 28, 1941.

Westerns were big on radio.  Some were almost "literary" and aimed at adults, like Gunsmoke, Frontier Gentleman, and Have Gun Will Travel.

Others were full of exciting action and more for the kids, like Gene Autry's Melody Ranch, Wild Bill Hickok, and Roy Rogers.

The Cisco Kid definitely fit into the lots-of-action category.  Cisco and his sidekick Pancho got into a new fix every week, and by the end of the show they were back on the trailing, laughing with each other.

The program was on radio from 1942 to 1956, and a television version aired from 1950 to 1956.

This episode, War at Oak Pass, starred Jack Mather as the Cisco Kid, originally aired on July 14, 1953.

It was, simply, the most listened-to radio series of all time.  People planned their activities so as not to miss this show. 

First they were Sam 'n' Henry, but they had to change their names when they switched radio stations.  One of the stars overheard two elderly black men address each other as Famous Amos and Handy Andy, and the new identities were thus created.

This is the first in a weekly series of old-time radio shows.  I have been doing this show for a local (Champaign, Illinois) radio station for the sight-impaired for the past year.  The radio station is on an SCA subcarrier, meaning that you have to have a special radio to listen to it. 

By putting it on the internet as a podcast, anyone can hear it whenever they like.

The first show is a Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator episode, starring William Gargan. 

I am also involved with the annual Cincinnati Old-Time Radio convention.  Please visit our site here:

http://CincyOTR.info

Thank you!

Dan Hughes, http://danhughes.net