Breaking Walls

May 1st, 1835.

It’s a cold and rainy Moving Day. Every renter in New York is out on the street looking for lodging. Most of the city’s quarter-million live below Houston Street in buildings four stories or smaller, but construction is booming.

New people are pouring onto New York’s dangerously overcrowded streets by the thousands. Rich and poor, many come to earn an honest living. Others for more nefarious reasons.

And it’s the perfect place to begin.

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Coming soon to your favorite podcast app, Burning Gotham—a new scripted audio fiction series about the fastest growing city in the world, and the opportunists who shaped it. To find out more, please subscribe to this audio feed or go to BurningGotham.com.

The American Broadcasting Company was never able to overtake NBC or CBS in ratings or revenue during the Golden Age of Radio. But by 1964, the only network dramatic radio airing was part of vignettes on NBC’s Monitor.

That spring, ABC announced they were launching a new show. They hired former NBC writer Jack Wilson as story editor and assigned the series to directors Warren Sommerville and Frederick Bell. Edward Byron, creator of Mr. District Attorney was brought in to advise.

The new series would be a weekday half-hour anthology called Theater Five in honor of its broadcast time in the New York market.

Theater Five premiered on August 3rd with a play called “Hit and Run.” This episode, "April Snowfall" aired on March 5th, 1965 and starred Elliott Reid and Bryna Raeburn.

On August 14th, 1982 actress Peggy Webber was part of a SPERDVAC (http://sperdvac.com/) event featuring some of the great radio character actors from the Golden Age of Radio. The panel, which also included Parley Baer, Harry Bartell, John Dehner, Virginia Gregg, and Vic Perrin, spoke of their memories of Orson Welles.

In this clip, Peggy Webber tells a funny Orson Welles story about last minute script edits while live on the air.

In November of 1972, Vincent Price was a guest on WTIC's The Golden Age of Radio, with hosts Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran (Full interview here - https://goldenage-wtic.org/gaor-32.html). Price lauded radio's power as a medium and spoke happily of his past and (then) present radio drama work. He also provided good insight on how to get started in acting while going to college.

In 1976 Orson Welles was a guest of Johnny Carson's on the Tonight Show for a segment on Orson's life and career (full segment here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meikuHb6024). The duo focused more on the radio days than anything else.

For CBS's 50th anniversary celebration in 1977, CBS anchors Doug Edwards and Charles Osgood spoke about on-air flubs. Mr. Edwards told a great story about a time he got Edward R. Murrow to lose his composure.

On March 24th, 1940 Jack Benny was guest-star for a dramatic role on Orson Welles' Campbell Playhouse over CBS airwaves.

The story they chose was "June Moon," a play by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner, based on the Lardner short story "Some Like Them Cold," about a love affair that loses steam before it ever gets started.

At the center of June Moon is Fred Stevens, a young aspiring lyricist who journeys from Schenectady to New York City, where he hopes to make a name for himself in the world of song publishing and night clubs. On the train he meets dental assistant Edna Baker, and the two embark upon a friendship that evolves into love for her and fondness for him. While struggling to become a Tin Pan Alley notable, Fred takes a shine to his composer partner Paul's glamorous, gold-digging sister-in-law Eileen. The two men sell a song to a music publisher and it develops into a hit. Ultimately, revelations about Eileen's true character help return Fred to his senses and Edna, whom he realizes he truly loves.

The cast included Orson Welles (Candy Butcher), Jack Benny (Fred Stevens), Benny Rubin (Maxie Schwartz), Gus Schilling (Paul Sears), Bea Benaderet (Lucille Sears) and Virginia Gordon (Edna Baker). Lee Patrick reprised her Broadway role as Eileen. Ernest Chappell was the announcer.

"June Moon" was Orson Welles penultimate episode with The Campbell Playhouse. He would leave the series after March 31st to focus on the production of his first feature film, Citizen Kane.

In this hilarious excerpt from the April 11th, 1943 episode of The Jack Benny Program, Jack has been sick with pneumonia the previous weeks and Orson Welles has been guest-host. Jack is feeling well enough to come back to the show, but Welles isn't quite ready to give up the gig.

Jack flubs Orson's name after Dennis' song and hilarity ensues.

Bold Venture was a syndicated radio series starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall that aired in 1951-52. Morton Fine and David Friedkin scripted the taped series for Bogart's Santana Productions.

Beginning in March 1951, the Frederic W. Ziv Company syndicated 78 episodes via electrical transcription. Some sources have claimed that the 78 episodes include reruns, and that there were only around 30 episodes but more than 50 shows have now come to light. Heard on 423 stations, the 30-minute series earned $5,000 weekly for Bogart and Bacall. 57 episodes are now known to exist, some are known by more than one title which can make it appear that there are more.

This is the debut episode, "Deadly Merchandise."

In the fall of 1953, thanks to From Here to Eternity, Frank Sinatra's star was again on the rise. He was, however, in need of a pay day. NBC radio presented two new opportunities for Frank.

On October 6th, 1953, at Radio City West on Sunset and Vine, Frank Sinatra taped the first episode of a new detective series called Rocky Fortune. The show premiered that Tuesday evening at 9:30.

Sinatra played the title character. It was hard-boiled in the vein of Pat Novak, For Hire.

Each week Fortune went out on a new job assignment from the Gridley Employment Agency. Over the show’s twenty-five week run, Rocky would find work as a process server, museum tour guide, oyster shucker, cabbie, bodyguard, the social director for a Catskills resort, and even Santa Claus.

He chased skirts, got himself knocked out, helped kids in need, and somehow always managed to come through relatively unscathed.