The Good Old Days of Radio Show

This time on The Good Old Days of Radio Show, we’re looking at another rare take on Daphne du Maurier’s The Birds. This is an hour-long version from 1953, a year earlier than the Escape version we presented last week. The story here follows John Waite (played in this version by Herbert Marshall), a writer living with his family on the Dover coast, as the birds go from being a minor annoyance to a terrifying, organized threat that forces the family to barricade themselves inside their home. 

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On this episode we bring you “More Monsters” with an early radio adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s classic short story The Birds. Long before Alfred Hitchcock turned it into a famous film, the story was produced on the radio series Escape, starring British actor Ben Wright. John sets the stage with some background on the show and the tricky business of preserving old recordings. The story is a chilling tale of a family on the English coast facing wave after wave of birds that seem to be growing more aggressive and more organized than anyone could have imagined.

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Today we’re featuring two skits with Fanny Brice as “Baby Snooks,” where Snooks drives “Daddy” (played brilliantly by radio veteran Hanley Stafford) up the wall with forged report cards and phony camp emergencies. In between, you’ll hear Red Skelton as “Junior the Mean Widdle Kid.” Unlike Fanny Brice, Skelton didn’t sound much like a kid, which was part of the uniqueness of the character. These rare recordings, taken from original master discs and dating back to 1942, showcase the early days of two unforgettable radio brats at their mischievous best.

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What if a monster could come to life just because enough people believed in it? That’s the unique premise behind today’s episode of The Mysterious Traveler, titled If You Believe, first aired on December 29, 1946. Our More Monsters host, John Tefteller, sets the scene for this strange tale of Professor Jonathan Davis, a solitary scientist working quietly to create artificial life. But when slick newspaper reporter Dan Duncan spins the story into headlines about a man building a monster, public imagination runs wild, and in a chilling twist, their belief actually turns Davis’s harmless protoplasmic experiment into a grotesque, living creature.

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Today’s show takes us to September 24, 1950, for an episode of The Jack Kirkwood Show, a fast-paced satirical comedy that aired on the Mutual Radio Network. Kirkwood is not very well remembered, but his crazy humor is in the vein of Stan Freberg or Henry Morgan. This episode is packed with sketches, musical numbers, and recurring bits like “Mad House Theater” and “Poet’s Nook,” all built around Kirkwood’s wordplay, sly observations, and quick back-and-forth with his cast, including Connie Haines, Wally Brown, and Lillian Leigh. 

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This time monsters are lurking in the deep. This episode of Quiet, Please from 1948 is a haunting tale with a twist. It centers on a Greek doctor who calmly confesses to murdering people he swears are fish-like Atlanteans living among us in secret and plotting to wipe out the surface world. In his account, he describes traveling to the sunken city of Atlantis. We also take a look at the story’s eerie sea dwellers and other works in pop culture, from H.G. Wells’ Into the Abyss to Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water.

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A visit with George and Gracie today. We go back to the spring of 1943 for a full episode of The Burns and Allen Show, the beloved comedy series. This time, Gracie has cooked up a plan to play a “One-Finger Concerto” with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, much to George’s horror. Along the way there’s a running gag about Gracie’s “friend,” who turns out to be none other than her pet duck, Herman, voiced by Clarence Nash (yes, the voice of Donald Duck himself). You’ll also hear those wonderfully period ads for Vims Vitamins and Swan Soap. Host John Tefteller rounds things out with historical notes on the episode, from Whiteman’s controversial “King of Jazz” title to the star power behind the mic.

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Today’s creature feature is Revolt of the Worms, written by Arch Oboler and first broadcast on October 13, 1942, as part of the Lights Out series. It’s the tale of a chemist (played by Lou Merrill, a regular on the series) whose attempt to grow giant roses goes horribly wrong, resulting in monstrously large worms. The version you’ll hear comes from Oboler’s later revival series The Devil and Mr. O, where he reused some of his best Lights Out scripts. In this episode of More Monsters, we dig into the story’s themes of scientific overreach and environmental fallout, and touch on Oboler’s famously tight grip on his copyrights.

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Today we have The Judy Canova Show from October 19, 1945, brought to you by Colgate-Palmolive. Judy was one of radio’s great “hillbilly comedy” stars, backed by a top-notch cast that included Mel Blanc and Verna Felton, and writers like Fred Fox. In this episode, Judy sets her sights on Brentwood high society by entering her decidedly unconventional dog in a fancy dog show. Along the way there are musical numbers, lots of jokes, and those classic ads for Colgate Tooth Powder and Palmolive Soap. We wrap things up with a few thoughts on the show’s place in radio history and where some of its stars went from there.

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Today on “More Monsters” we’re tuning in to a 1947 episode of Mystery in the Air, starring the incomparable Peter Lorre, master of “the creep.” This week’s story is The Horla, adapted from Guy de Maupassant’s classic tale of a Frenchman slowly losing his grip on reality thanks to an invisible presence. Lorre had a reputation for his intense performances on this series. During one episode he supposedly threw his script. To calm you down, you’ll also hear a few vintage ads for Camel cigarettes and Prince Albert pipe tobacco.

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