Radio America

SILENT OLD MOViE JUST SIT BACK AND ENJOY

The spunky Helen (Helen Holmes) is our hero as a telegraph operator at a remote location along a railroad. She dashes to the rescue when a train engine goes out of control.

Unknown to many, including me, Jimmy Stewart loved radio drama and appeared in almost as many radio broadcasts as he did movies and stage plays. His radio career spanned over seven decades, starting with Yellow Jack in 1934 and ending with his last performance in a Thanksgiving special, which aired on November 22, 1990. He was best known for his appearances in the Lux Radio Theatre, which first broadcast in 1937. Lux Radio Theatre, a CBS showcase, played to a weekly audience of over 36 million people. Hosted by Cecil B. DeMille, programs consisted of feature length films compressed into one-hour radio plays. Stewart starred in such classics as Destry Rides Again, It’s a Wonderful Life, Winchester ’73 and the Philadelphia Story, to name a few.

Many fine actors of the British stage and screen were involved, such as Robert Morley, Harry Andrews, Muriel Forbes and Daphne Maddox. Music was by the renown British organist and arranger, Sidney Torch, and featured in some shows the Campbell Singers. Harry Alan Towers produced and directed.

The show was a Towers of London syndicated show, and was broadcast in America in various markets through the years, including WRVR-FM, Riverside Radio, in New York City.

A fine addition to the dramatic radio library, done in the grand manner of English dramatic excellence

Chet Lauck and Norris Goff were the creators of Lum & Abner. Chet was born on February 2, 1902 in Aleene, Arkansas and Norris was born in Cove, Arkansas on May 30, 1906. Both had moved to Mena with their families by 1911. They lived only a few blocks apart and grew up together. They were both very talented comedians and by 1931 had become local "Amos and Andy" imitators. They were scheduled to perform on a local charity program in Hot Springs, Arkansas on April 26, 1931. At the last minute they decided to appear as two old-time Arkansas philosophers with the names "Lum Eddards" and "Abner Peabody". Thus was formed a team that was to delight radio audiences for the next 25 years. Just three months later on July 27, 1931 "Lum & Abner" made its' national radio debut on the NBC radio network from Chicago with the Quaker Oats Company as their first sponsor. This was to continue, with different sponsors and networks, for nearly 25 years. They also performed their routines on vaudeville stages throughout the country. By 1933 they had introduced the "Jot "Em Down Store" to their audiences and this would become the focal point of most of the programs. By 1940, Chet and Norris were on their way to Hollywood to make the first of seven motion pictures. In 1948 the radio format was changed from a 15-minute show to a thirty minute program. The new shows used special guest stars, a live orchestra, and a studio audience. This was quite a change from the original shows and was not as well received by the listening audience. By 1953 television was the new rage in America. Chet and Norris considered trying the new medium and a pilot show was taped. However, Norris' health problems were just too much to allow him to stand rigors of performing on early tv. So Chet and Norris decided to retire those "two loveable old characters from Pine Ridge". Another era of the golden age of radio came to an end. They had performed over 5,000 live radio programs and entertained countless millions of fans. For the next ten years or so Chet and Norris each made several appearances on various tv programs but never again revived the Lum & Abner show. Norris "Tuffy" Goff (Abner) passed away on June 12, 1978 and Chester "Chet" Lauck (Lum) joined him on February 21, 1980. Gone but definitely NOT forgotten!

These famous words, and the sinister laugh that followed, have become part of Americana, forever embodying the special magic of radio drama and mystery. The adventures of The Shadow have thrilled millions for more than 70 years, demonstrating that "crime does not pay" on radio and movie screens, in pulp magazines, Big Little Books, comics and hardcover and paperback books

Jeff Chandler played the original "Chad Remington"

Reed Hadley later replaced Chandler and is shows in the film THE HALF BREED (1952)

Chad Remington was a two fisted lawyer in the town of Dos Rios. Chad's sidekick, Cherokee O'Bannon, played by Wade Crosby, who performed his role in a W.C. Fields dialect. Mr. Chandler remained in the lead role for the first 23 shows and was replaced by Reed Hadley who played Remington until the end of the series.

One of the most respected shows of early radio, Death Valley Days was well written and endured throughout the decades. Ruth Cornwall Woodman was asked to write the show in 1930. Though she knew nothing of the desert and its people, New York Vassar graduate Ruth undertook the project with enthusiasm. When the show began in 1930, many of the areas she was writing about were still quite rough in nature, with many roads but mostly mere trails. Each year Ruth would spend several months traveling through the desert to explore ghosttowns, saloons, backpacking just outside Death Valley, and interviewing old timers. She would talk to gas station men, bartenders, and small town newspapermen. She did her research well, pouring over old newspapers and visiting old west museums, scouring the west for anything that would inspire a good story. The result of all this hard work was rewarding - a highly successful show that lasted over two decades, and later became a television show with Ronald Regan as the host. Death Valley Days presents stories of the old west, with realism and drama virtually unmatched by other westerns of the day.

During a period that was to last twenty years, the Nelson Family--Ozzie, his wife Harriet Hilliard, and their two sons, David and Ricky--were regarded as the preeminent icon of the ideal nuclear family. From his bandleading days of the mid-1930s through his reign, a generation later, as the bumbling patriarch of television's best known family, Ozzie Nelson was able to conflate, reduce and transform the professional activities of his family's personal reality into a fictional domestic banality.

The Goldbergs is a situation-comedy series about a family living, learning, and loving in a Jewish ghetto of the Bronx, to some it's an East Coast variety of One Man's Family. It is considered to be one of the first popular radio comedies based on the lives of a working-class Jewish family. Gertrude Berg wrote The Goldbergs, as a loosely based autobiography on her life as a wife and mother in New York. To gain insight into the tribulations of her characters Berg researched incognito in the Bronx among the tenements and poor conditions of family in poverty. In 1951, The Goldbergs became a feature film with the production of Molly.

This Academy Award winning documentary was filmed while the attack on Midway Island was underway and director John Ford was injured during filming. The film covers the Japanese attack of American ships at Midway atoll which resulted in the pivotal naval battle of the war in the Pacific. Comprised mostly of authentic footage from the battle, it is dramatically narrated by Henry Fonda. "Behind every cloud, there may be an enemy," he intones as American fighter pilots search the sky. The rest of the film mocks Emporer Tojo of Japan and portrays him as ruthless, bombing hospitals and churches as he tries to conquer the Pacific.