Old Time Radio, Part 2

My interest in old-time radio and radio dramas waned in my college years. There just wasn't anything going on in my world. But when the Batman craze of 1989 came along, a couple of different items came to my attention and sparked my imagination. First, there were some cassette tapes adapting comic book stories that came out. The associated comic books came with them, and the tapes served to add an audio soundtrack. The first one I bought was an adaptation of the Untold Legends of the Batman. It was like the old Power Records, but there was no album cover.

As the next decade progressed, DC, Marvel, and even Disney kept putting out audio dramas. Stories like "Superman Lives!" as well as the "Complete Knightfall Saga," along with the Rocketeer were all adapted to audio dramas. Later on, we would even see one for "Kingdom Come." But the real fun came in 1994, when the theatrical version of "The Shadow" was released.

As I wrote about here and here, I loved the Shadow, on radio, in the movies, and in the pulps. But when the Alec Baldwin version came out, the radio shows made a huge comeback. A company called Radio Spirits started releasing audio cassettes and CDs of the old radio shows and I bought several sets of them. Then with the advent of the mp3 file format and the Internet, old-time radio was everywhere. Streaming sites popped up, and suddenly the world of old-time radio was no longer restricted to small gatherings with tape exchanges. Suddenly you could buy hundreds of episodes of long-forgotten shows on CD for pennies and listen to them on a computer.

When the deluge began, I started doing research on this. My limited exposure to War of the Worlds, the Lone Ranger, the Shadow, and Superman, suddenly expanded. I started listening to Fibber McGee and Molly, Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello, The Saint, The Whistler, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, Dragnet, Gunsmoke, The Green Hornet, and more. I found books on the subject, and read the history. The more I learned, the more I loved it. I started making connections

One of Jack Benny's supporting cast was lecherous bandleader Phil Harris, a bawdy southerner who constantly kept Benny, whom he called "Jackson," on his toes. The first time I heard the voice, I just about jumped out of my chair. It was Baloo the Bear from Disney's "The Jungle Book!" Not only was the voice the same, but the character was very much the same, a jazzy, hedonistic fun-loving guy who could sing scat. Amazing! Then, when listening to another episode, the unmistakable tones of Mel Blanc appeared in a voice similar to Speedy Gonzales. Then it hit me. The mice in "The Mouse that Jack Built," a 1959 Warner Brothers cartoon, were the characters from this same Jack Benny radio program! When I saw the cartoon as a kid, I had no idea that Jack Benny was a radio star! On the Fred Allen show, I caught Foghorn Leghorn in the form of Senator Claghorn. Then the floodgates came open. Many cartoons, whether on television or feature films, featured radio performers of old, many doing the same characters or voices that they were famous for decades before.

It wasn't only voices and characters that were brought back for cartoons. When Mr. Whoopee's closet would open on Tennessee Tuxedo and everything would fall out, I thought it was hilarious. Imagine my surprise when I was listening to Fibber McGee and Molly from decades before and heard the same thing happen!

Just this past year I was rummaging through stuff in my basement and found cassette recordings of a role-playing game session from 1988. As I thought more about it this past week, I realized just what we were doing. The gamemaster describes the action and plays the part of the characters not portrayed by the players. The players describe their action verbally and act out their characters' roles, often using voices not their own. We're not dressing up and acting things out (like LARPers do), but we are doing radio drama. There are a few static images and figures on a map to keep track of where everyone is, but otherwise everything is done by voice and description. They called radio "The Theater of the Mind." I think it's still alive and well. It's just taken a new form.

Old Time Radio, Part 1

When I was a kid, I spent some weekends with my mother's youngest brother Mike and his family. I still remember the first time I heard an old time radio show. My cousin Peter had a reel-to-reel recording of War of the Worlds, by the Mercury Radio Theater on the Air. I had never heard of radio drama before, so we listened to it. I remember sitting transfixed while the drama played. My mind conjured images of the Martian invaders and their three-legged war machines. After that, we listened to the Lone Ranger, who was my dad's favorite hero. The episode he played for me was the origin of the Lone Ranger, and again I was fascinated. The story of how the masked man came to be unfolded and I was hooked for life. I happened to have a cassette recorder that I had received for Christmas that year, and recorded both shows to take back home.

When I was a much younger boy, I had always enjoyed comedy albums. Bill Cosby, the Smothers Brothers, and Homer & Jethro were among my favorites. Bill Cosby, in his "Wonderfulness" album, used his old time radio experiences to great effect in his "Chicken Heart" routine. He also references the Green Hornet and Lone Ranger in the go-carts routine. Suddenly, these references began to make sense.

I soon started seeking out radio drama, but there was really nowhere to turn. There were the nighttime shorts on local radio featuring Chicken Man, the White Winged Weekend Warrior, but it was tongue-in-cheek. Once I saw that there was a Superman radio show from ads placed on the back of Kellogg's Corn Flakes for a record giveaway, I was really interested! I never had a chance of getting those records, of course, but that didn't stop me from looking longingly at it every morning during breakfast.

Then there were those great Power Records, which combined a large format comic book with an audio drama, remember those? Featured at right is a Star Trek book and record set that I used to have with cover art by Neal Adams. I used to get these whenever I could, especially when they came out with one for the Six Million Dollar Man. There's a guy who has a whole blog about just these items!

It wasn't until I was in high school that I really got a healthy dose of radio drama. That was when our local NPR station started broadcasting the Star Wars radio show. What's that? You didn't know there was such a thing? Oh, yes. I hurried home each night to listen to it on radio in 1981. It took the Star Wars story and expanded it, filling in gaps where the movie had been edited. There was the usual clumsy expository dialogue that radio has to use to paint the images in your mind, but it used the original sound effects and some actors from the movie, including Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels. The actors who replaced the originals were no slouches, either. Brock Peters took the place of James Earl Jones, for example. You'd be surprised how good it really was!

More on this subject later. This is too much fun!

Better Living through Technology

I am admittedly a tech guy. I don't go all googly-eyed over a new graphics card or game system, but I do love to find new ways to make my quality of life better.

I previously wrote about Old-Time Radio (OTR) here, and I love listening to the old shows through my cathedral-style radio, which has a cassette player in the side. The only problem is that cassettes of OTR shows are expensive and there is a lot of overlap. I don’t know how many copies of “War of the Worlds” I’ve received in OTR sets. Quite often, you can find bargains on these shows in .mp3 format on CD-ROM. You can buy literally hundreds of episodes for $10 or so. Where else are you going to find that kind of entertainment bargain?

The only problem with the .mp3 format is that it wouldn’t play over my cathedral radio. I looked online and couldn’t find an old-style radio with an .mp3 player in it. But a little thought brought something to mind. If they have iPod trasmitters for cars, why couldn’t I use one of those to transmit to the cathedral radio? I checked with the one my wife has for her iPod Shuffle, but its only power source was the power outlet in the car. A little deeper search revealed just the thing. The Belkin F8V3080 TuneCast II Mobile FM Transmitter runs on AAA batteries, and can plug not only into my iPod to play over my radio, but it can be plugged into a computer, a portable CD player, even my XM Radio docking station. I can now listen to virtually all sources of Old-Time Radio through my cathedral radio!

While it has a bit of noise in the transfer as most FM transmitters do, that’s usually not an issue with OTR recordings because they have noise in them anyway. It does nothing to break the illusion that you are listening like they did in the old days.

Now who is going to come up with a battery-powered AM transmitter so fans can listen to these old shows on their actual antique radios? Sounds like I might have to get to work!

The Shadow (1994)

Spoiler Warning: Spoilers for the Shadow (1994) follow below.


I love this movie.

Like all movies, it has its flaws and I'll get to those, but overall, this is one of my favorites. First of all, it's set in the 1930s, which is always a seller for me, but not for the general movie-going population. Just look at the Rocketeer's, The Phantom's, Sky Captain's, and The Shadow's box office returns. The only movies set in this period that seem to do well feature Indiana Jones.

The movie also features one of my favorite old-time radio characters. The Shadow first appeared on radio as the host of a mystery series called Detective Stories, but found his own way in The Shadow Magazine. He was later given his own radio show, which ran from 1937 until 1954. The Shadows who appeared in the pulps and on radio were very different. The Shadow of the pulps used a pair of .45s and dispensed justice with the aid of several agents who owed the Shadow their lives; on radio, the Shadow was able to "cloud men's minds," rendering himself invisible. He was usually only accompanied by Margo Lane and occasionally his driver, Shrevvy. Both characters employed a mysterious and intimidating laugh.

The 1994 movie, starring Alec Baldwin, used an amalgam of the two different Shadows. This one has agents and .45s, but also turns invisible and is accompanied by Margo Lane, played by Penelope Ann Miller.

We are given a back story for the Shadow, who begins the movie as Ying Ko, an opium magnate in Tibet. He is kidnaped and reformed by the Tulku, a mysterious sorceror-type who identifies Ying Ko by his real name, Lamont Cranston. The Tulku reforms Cranston and teaches him the psychic abilities he will need to clean up New York City.

In New York, Cranston (as the Shadow) saves the life of Roy Tam, a metallurgist working at NYU. Tam becomes one of the Shadow's agents. Cranston meets with his Uncle Wainwright (Jonathan Winters, one of my favorite comedians) at the Cobalt Club. Wainwright is the police commissioner who is about to put a task force on the Shadow's trail until Cranston uses strong mental suggestion to hold him off. At the same time professor Reinhardt Lane, Margo Lane's father, played by Ian McKellan, is developing a beryllium sphere, a key component to what Tam calls "an implosive explosive sub-moleclular device," which Cranston renames "an atomic bomb." Professor Lane falls under the mental domination of Shiwan Khan, the last descendant of Genghis Khan, who seems to be bent on taking over the world. Shiwan Khan has the same abilities as the Shadow, which makes him a formidable opponent.

After Shiwan Khan sends Margo Lane to kill the Shadow, she tries to shoot Lamont Cranston, whom she discovers upon being awakened from her trance, is the Shadow. Together, they set out to defeat the plans of Shiwan Khan and save New York from being held hostage. I won't spoil any more, just in case you haven't seen this gem.

One of the key reasons for my enjoyment of this film is the actors. Alec Baldwin is great, and the scenes in Tibet feature some actors who were very busy in the 80s and 90s. Al Leong (seen at right) is in every good action movie of the period. He was in "Big Trouble in Little China," "Lethal Weapon," "Action Jackson," "Die Hard," "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" (where he played, ironically, Genghis Khan), "Beverly Hills Cop III," "The Replacement Killers," "Godzilla," and "The Scorpion King." How's that for a resume'? Also in the scene are James Hong and Arsenio "Sonny" Trinidad. In the museum scene, you can see Ethan "Neelix" Phillips and ALF's dad, Max Wright. Moe Shrevnitz, the Shadow's driver is played by the inimitable Peter Boyle.

Stealing the show for me was Tim Curry, who played Farley Claymore, Professor Lane's assistant. He has a moment in this movie where, I swear, he was the Joker. He spins around in a circle, firing a Thompson submachine gun and cackling maniacally. I was sold right then and there that Tim Burton had made a mistake casting Jack Nicholson in 1989.

Another great part of this movie was set design. I love art deco, and this movie is chock full of it. From the Cobalt Club to the Hotel Monolith, the classic architecture of New York is extrapolated into the sets.



The Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack is flawless as well. It's mysterious, dark, and has jazz for the club scenes. The Shadow's anthem is heroic and haunting all at the same time.



A selling point for me but perhaps not others is that Neal Adams did the key marketing art. The poster and the toy art was based on this Adams original, which is for sale on his website:


There were a few sour notes in this movie. The Shadow engaging in Spider-Man-like banter while he fights Khan's Monguls rang false to me. After he lands on a bad guy, he quips, "Next time, you get to be on top." That line just didn't seem Shadow-like at all. But there are more than enough really cool scenes to make up for it. My favorite has to be the scene on the bridge where the Shadow saves Roy Tam's life.

We had a surround sound system built into the walls of our house when we had it built in 2000. When the Shadow "appears" invisibly on the bridge, his laugh literally echoes all around the living room. It comes from everywhere and from nowhere. When the bad guy fires a machine gun in every direction trying to hit the Shadow, the bullets and ricochets also bounce all over the room. I show this scene on our DVD player whenever someone visits for the first time, just to show off the surround sound. It's just too cool. Unfortunately, this movie's DVD release was limited to full screen only.

Another reason I love this movie is the way that I saw it in 1994. My buddy Doug and I went to see it at the State Theater in downtown South Bend. The State was one of those old-fashioned theaters where people used to dress up to "go to the pictures" back in the old days. It was opulent and beautiful even then. The atmosphere made the experience that much more enjoyable.

This movie was just built to have sequels made. I wish it had done better at the box office. I also hope that at some point, there is a more elaborate widescreen DVD release with some special features. The current DVD has virtually nothing.

I have also read that Sam Raimi has obtained the rights to make a new Shadow movie. I hope it's better than Spider-Man 3.

The Shadow Knows

While we were doing a graphing activity in class yesterday, I thought I would try something out with my students. I played an .mp3 file of the first episode of The Shadow, featuring Orson Welles (left).

First broadcast on September 26, 1937, "Death House Rescue" is about a man named Paul Gordon, an unemployed husband and father who is on death row and about to be executed for a murder he did not commit. The Shadow, aka Lamont Cranston, agrees to help Paul to clear his name by reading his mind as Paul goes over the details of the crime. Doing so leads the Shadow to the perpetrators of the real crime.

Those of us who are into comic books and similar genres often overlook the power of old-time radio. I firmly believe that the radio audiences of the past are more sophisticated than those of today’s television shows. Radio shows often had more complex plots, more intelligent humor and far better vocabulary. I can’t help but think that people who listened to radio shows developed better language skills by emulating popular radio stars of the time.

Surprisingly, the kids really seemed to enjoy listening to the radio show. Maybe it was because it was better than silence, but I’d like to think that it opened their minds to new possibilities of entertainment. Some of them really got it. One student told me that in your mind you could make the characters look however you wanted them to. He was right!

I personally like to listen to audio cassettes of the shows played on my cathedral-style radio, which has a cassette player built into the side. It gives the illusion that you are listening to the shows as people did in the 30s and 40s. My friends Doug and Laura got one for me when the Shadow movie was released on video back in the mid-1990s. It was a promotional item given to distributors of the video, which makes it even more special to me than one that could have been purchased. It was a gift that I have never forgotten and still appreciate.

There will be much more on old-time radio later!