Radio America

The Life of Riley, an early U.S. television sitcom filmed in Hollywood, was broadcast on NBC from 1949-50 and from 1953-58. Although the program had a loyal audience from its years on network radio (1943-1951), its first season on television, in which Jackie Gleason was cast in the title role, failed to generate high ratings. William Bendix portrayed Riley in the second version and the series was much more successful, among the top twenty-five most watched programs from 1953-55. Syndicated in 1977, the series was telecast on many cable systems.

Father Knows Best, a family comedy of the 1950s, is perhaps more important for what it has come to represent than for what it actually was. In essence, the series was one of a slew of middle-class family sitcoms in which moms were moms, kids were kids, and fathers knew best. Today, many critics view it, at best, as high camp fun, and, at worst, as part of what critic David Marc once labeled the "Aryan melodramas" of the 1950s and 1960s.

another one of abbott and costellos talk radio shows

Penned in the wake of America's entry into World War One, How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm? (After They've Seen Paree) was written by Joe Young and Sam M. Lewis with music by Walter Donaldson, and was published in 1918. A huge popular success at the time the song was performed by a great many artists in the immediate post-war years.

Address to the American People on Civil Rights. Oval Office, Washington, DC.

Caspar makes friends with a little fox. Animation by Myron Waldman, Morey Reden and Nick Tafuri. Scenics by Anto Loeb.

Story by Bill Turner and Larry Reilly. Music by Winston Sharples. Narrator is Frank Gallop. Produced in 1948.

Director: I. Sparber

Production Company: Paramount Pictures & Famous Studios Productions

Audio/Visual: sound, color

wo classic episodes of the famous Western television series THE LONE RANGERS are featured on this collection. In the first, "The Wooden Rifle," the Lone Ranger and his loyal companion Tonto must figure out the mysterious case of a child's rifle and a dead man in the heart of Nevada's cattle country. In "The Sheriff of Smoke Tree," a young cowpuncher must step in as the sheriff of the Smoke Tree mining camp, as it is too small to have a real leader.

Plot Summary for

Disorder in the Court (1936)

The stooges are witnesses at a trial where their friend, a dancer at a nightclub where they are musicians, is accused of murder. The stooges manage to disrupt the proceedings but save the day when they discover the real murderer's identity.

Bugs Bunny is wanted "dead or alive" by the Mounted Police, led by Elmer Fudd.

Animation by Manuel Perez, story by Michael Maltese, supervising producer I. Freeleng. Produced in 1942.

Director: Carl W. Stalling

Producer: Leon Schlesinger

Production Company: Warner Brothers & Vitaphone Corporation

Audio/Visual: sound, color

Keywords: bugs bunny; merrie melodies; elmer fudd

Arguably the most consistently inventive of all the Tom and Jerry cartoons, Rocketeers doesn't let up for a second, from a telescope that wants to rebel and an octopus band next to fishing skeletons.

Certainly not a children's cartoon, while it begins with the duo wanting to travel in space, it ends with them after far more libidinous pursuits. As the entire townsfolk jump in the sea in the hope of some mermaid... er, tail?... it must also be acknowledged the homo-erotic segment where T & J get so close they're literally singing with the same mouth. On the same lines, the Mae West caricature (a mandatory inclusion for cartoons of the period, it seems) also talks in a man's voice.