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Underground > Radio & Music >

Old Time Radio Drama

  
 
Chiropteran
16:56 / 31.01.07
I was a little surprised not to find an existing thread on radio drama, but I guess it's up to me.

Lately, as anyone who knows me can attest (with a weary eyeroll), I've been tiresomely fanboying about the old-time radio serials Adventures By Morse and Speed Gibson of the International Secret Police. Seriously, this stuff is great! And more and more shows are becoming available as mp3s, decades worth of weekly (or daily) broadcasts lovingly archived by the proud geeks of yesteryear. There are shows for every taste (assuming an underlying taste for radio), and many of them remain as exciting and affecting as when they were first broadcast.

I can't be the only one out there listening to this stuff - come along and share your favorite shows! With links, if possible.

First up: Adventures By Morse (52 ep., 1944-45)

Private detective (and sometime Military Intelligence agent) Capt. Joe Friday and his sidekick Skip Turner investigate crime, as you might expect. But what crime! Graverobbing fiends, kidnappers, werewolves, hidden Nazi bases! The show also has a unique pacing device built into its schedule: its 52-week run is broken into alternating 10-episode and 3-episode serials, allowing the writers to mix up the pace.

If you like high adventure, etc., you can download the full series at the Internet Archive (which hosts many other OTR shows as well).

Next up: Speed Gibson of the International Secret Police (178 fifteen-minute ep., 1938-40)

Suffering whangdoodles! Talk about adventure! Speed Gibson is the 15-year-old nephew of Clint Barlowe, ace operator of the International Secret Police. Together they zip around the world to do battle with mad criminal mastermind The Octopus (who does his best in every episode to out-Lugosi Lugosi). The whole thing gets a little "gee-whiz" now and then - it was aimed at the juvenile market - but it's managed to hold my interest and excitement for a good 40 (nonconsecutive) hours, and it's not over yet. And who can resist a good ol' Death Ray Machine? Not me, that's who...not.

Once again, you can find all 178 white-knuckle episodes at the Internet Archive. Each episode is only between 2-3M, so the whole series doesn't take up much harddrive space.

Now, the disclaimer: it should be expected that the entertainment of an era will reflect the biases and attitudes of that era, and old time radio is no different. Orientalism and Colonialism are a big part of the adventure genre, as is casual sexism of the scream-and-faint, "the jungle is no place to take a woman" sort. There are exceptions, of course, but they tend to stand out as just that. Let the listener be the best judge of their own tolerance for this sort of thing.

So, who's with me? Check out these shows or suggest some of your own. Don't let me fanboy alone!
 
 
Feverfew
18:50 / 31.01.07
Technically, you're not alone. I just haven't had time to listen to much Dragnet yet.
 
 
grant
19:15 / 31.01.07
Oh, man.

WHY do you do this to me, when I'm trying to find files to *DELETE* to make room?

Why?

Tell me that archive has Johnny Dollar, the Man with the Action-Packed Expense Account.

I love that show.
 
 
Chiropteran
19:34 / 31.01.07
grant, I do it because someone has to: ...Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar

The good news, if you're running short of space, is that you can stream them from the archive. Or download/delete an episode at a time.
 
 
Chiropteran
19:57 / 31.01.07
Feverfew, I haven't heard the radio run of Dragnet, but I loved the TV show as a kid. I'm reading the Wikipedia article on it, and it sounds terrific - real radio-lover's radio ("While most radio shows used one or two sound effects experts, Dragnet needed five; a script clocking in at just under 30 minutes could require up to 300 separate effects."). Once again, the archive comes through (this doesn't look like the complete run, but it's a start).
 
 
Feverfew
17:44 / 01.02.07
I've downloaded all of the episodes available on archive - it's just finding time to listen to them all!

It's incredibly atmospheric, though, considering the materials available, so it comes recommended.
 
 
Chiropteran
18:15 / 02.02.07
Well, that's that. I just finished listening to the final episode of Speed Gibson, and I'm wondering what comes next. I've heard that Terry and the Pirates is in a similar vein - anyone here heard it?
 
 
Chiropteran
13:44 / 05.02.07
I just realized that I misnamed the ABM detective as Capt. Joe Friday - he's actually Bart Friday, Joe being, of course, from Dragnet.

Meanwhile, I've started another series: Bold Venture. Bogart and Bacall (!!!) star as hotel owner/boat pilot Slate Shannon and his "ward" Sailor Duval in this adventure series set in Cuba (we're in To Have and Have Not territory, here). The quality of the writing is a little uneven: sometimes it gets that Bogie & Bacall banter just right, but it occasionally borders on self-parody through gratuitous quipping. Still, the leads are mighty voice talents, and they manage to pull it off most of the time. The plots, so far, are pretty standard adventure stuff - mobsters, treasure hunters, islands owned by eccentric homicidal recluses, etc.

Sailor and Shannon are apparently supposed to be "ward" and "guardian," but the dialogue makes it clear that their true relationship is a little more late-night. I was also pleasantly surprised to hear the voice of Speed Gibson's Clint Barlowe (Howard McNear, later Doc Adams on TV's Gunsmoke) make a brief appearance in the first episode I listened to, as a shady lawyer ("I will lie, Miss Duval."); I don't know yet if he will be a recurring character.
 
 
Benny the Ball
14:16 / 05.02.07
resonance fm, ran the old The Shadow serials a while ago - the Orson Welles ones - anyone catch them, or have you heard them before? Are they any good?
 
 
Hieronymus
16:14 / 05.02.07
Is there a source for the old Green Hornet radio serials?
 
 
Jack Fear
16:26 / 05.02.07
53 episodes, streaming RealAudio, here.

OTR.net is an amazing resource.
 
 
Chiropteran
16:40 / 05.02.07
Hieronymous: here's your Green Hornet. I can't vouch for quality or completeness, but it's a start.

As for The Shadow, I haven't heard much, but pretty much anything Orson Welles got up to on the radio is worth a listen, if only for his voice.

Speaking of Orson Welles, fans of The Third Man may be interested in the follow-up radio series The Lives of Harry Lime, featuring Mr. Welles in the title role (and writing at least some of the episodes). The 52-ish episode series is first-rate theater of crime and duplicity. Ol' Harry Lime drifts from port to port, job to job, sometimes losing but more often winning. Lime isn't (yet?) the obscenity he represents in the film - more of a rascal than a monster, and with an occasional honorable streak that does him no good. You can still see in him the man that Holly gave his heart to (*cough*), and Welles plays that smug charm right up to the hilt and twists it. Highly recommended.

The site where I downloaded the series doesn't host it anymore, but I'll poke around and post the link when I find it again.
 
 
Chiropteran
16:42 / 05.02.07
(Oops, cross-post on the Green Hornet.)
 
 
Chiropteran
16:51 / 05.02.07
Following Jack Fear's lead, you can stream The Lives of Harry Lime at OTR.net. If I come across downloadable mp3s, I'll let you know.
 
 
GogMickGog
18:32 / 05.02.07

Sweet Lord, it's The Shadow
 
 
Benny the Ball
20:05 / 05.02.07
Go, Mick, Go!!! That's the rest of my week sorted out then.
 
 
Tsuga
22:17 / 05.02.07
God, I'm surprised at the number of people here into these. When we got rid of our tv, we got Sirius radio, and it has a channel full of this stuff, Dragnet, The Shadow, Johnny Dollar and Harry Lime, Boston Blackie, Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, all kinds. My wife really got into listening to these all the time in her studio, I thought it was strange at first. But they are kind of fun. I think the thread should perhaps be titled "Old Time Radio Melodrama", since that would probably be more accurate. There is something transporting about the simplicity of the formula, and what is sometimes done within it. I'm amazed at the amount of innuendo in some programs. You also have to get past the total unflinching sexism, racism, classism, jingoism, and ethnocentric xenophobia. But it is somewhat easier to forgive, or at least understand, being a product of the times. Every now and then someone slips in some enlightened liberalism, which is really interesting.
 
 
Chiropteran
16:06 / 02.03.07
I've been thinking of putting together an Old Time Radio (+Music) podcasty thing (or, since I'm not messing with the whole xml deal, just a semi-regular downloadable program). A little adventure, a little horror, a little mystery, mostly short episodes and maybe a longer Feature, tied together with some sorta musical interlude. Nothing too fancy.

Would anybody here be interested in downloading and listening to such a thing? Any suggestions or particular things you'd like to hear? Got a favorite free non-YSI file storage service to recommend (like SaveFile, Rapidshare, etc.)?
 
 
Chiropteran
13:14 / 08.03.07
"It's very interesting, poison gas and all."

Terry and the Pirates is picking up. It took a bit to get going - the surviving episodes start at ep. 41, so the listener is dropped into the story with no exposition or character introduction, and the first half-dozen episodes are spent in the back of an army truck stranded in a blizzard, so not much really happens for a while (this is a warning, not a spoiler).

Now that they've been rescued, though, the story is starting to thaw out, too. Not as action-packed as Speed Gibson, but I can see where the comparison comes from (in fact, they're clearly based on the same template, though they differ in execution).

[As usual for the Far East Adventure genre, watch out for some broad (if not malicious) caricatures of Chinese voices and customs, and brace yourself for the inevitable anti-Japanese propaganda - this is WWII radio.]
 
  
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