Boxcars711 Old Time Radio

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Boxcars711 Old Time Radio Pod - Escape "Figure A Dame" (12-20-49) Oct 18, 2007

Show notes

ESCAPE opened with the gripping voice of William Conrad booming out over the airwaves: "Tired of the everyday grind? Ever dream of a life of romantic adventure? Want to get away from it all? We offer you - ESCAPE!". Moussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain", the show's theme, assisted Conrad in creating the right opening atmosphere. (The actual series of questions used in the opening varied from week to week, frequently to match the goings-on of the times.) Over its long run, narriators included William Conrad, Paul Frees, Jack Webb, John Dehner, Jay Novello, Joan Banks, Stacy Harris, Georgia Ellis, Ben Wright and Will Geer. The show featured spine-tingling tales from such masters as Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allen Poe. It was produced by William N. Robeson, and featured many seasoned radio actors. ESCAPE was heard on CBS from July 1947 to September 1954. First Show: July 7, 1947 Last Show: Sep 23, 1954. There were two pilot shows before it's first run. The first pilot was OUT OF THIS WORLD: "Dead of Night" on February 28, 1947. This show was repeated as ESCAPE: "Dead of Night" on March 21.

Boxcars711 Old Time Radio Pod - You Bet Your Life "Secret Word Is HAND" (1-02-52) Oct 18, 2007

Show notes

THE SECRET WORD IS "HAND"Groucho Marx matches wits with the American public in four episodes of this classic game show. Starting on the radio in 1947, You Bet Your Life made its television debut in 1950 and aired for 11 years with Groucho as host and emcee. Sponsored rather conspicuously by the Dodge DeSoto car manufacturers, the show featured two contestants working as a team to answer questions for cash prizes. Another mainstay of these question and answer segments was the paper mache duck that would descend from the ceiling with one hundred dollars in tow whenever a player uttered the "secret word." The quiz show aspect of "You Bet Your Life" was always secondary, to the clever back-and-forth between host and contestant, which found Groucho at his funniest. It's in these interview segments that "You Bet Your Life" truly makes its mark as one of early television's greatest programs. Directed by: Robert Dwan.

Boxcars711 Old Time Radio Pod - Author's Playhouse "At Midnight On The 31st Of March" (3-31-43) Oct 18, 2007

Show notes

Authorâs Playhouse - Famous stories by celebrated authors: among them, Elementals (Stephen Vincent Benet), The Piano (William Saroyan), and The Snow Goose (Paul Gallico).March 5, 1941 till June 4, 1945, NBC; Blue Network until mid-October 1941, then the Red Network. Many briefly held 30m timeslots, including Sundays at 11:30, 1941-42; Wednesdays at 11:30, 1942-44; Mondays at 11:30, 1944-45. Sponsor was Philip Morris, 1942-43. Cast: John Hodiak, Fern Persons, Arthur Kohl, Laurette Fillbrandt, Kathryn Card, Bob Jellison, Nelson Olmsted, Marvin Miller, Olan Soule, Les Tremayne, Clarence Hartzell, Curley Bradley, etc. Orchestra: Rex Maupin, Roy Shield, J6seph Gallicchio. Creator: Wynn Wright. Directors: Norman Felton, Fred Weihe, Homer Heck, etc.

Boxcars711 Old Time Radio Pod - Danger With Granger "The FBI And The Scientist" (1957) Oct 17, 2007

Show notes

Danger With Granger arrived too late in the Golden Age of Radio to have any real impact on the listening public. Mutual aired this show, starting in 1956, on Monday nights at 8:30 pm. It was a half hour show that featured a private eye in New York City, STEVE GRANGER. His two primary companions were Cal Hendrix, a reporter who served as an all-purpose source of criminal info, and Jake Rankin, a police detective with whom he had a grudging rivalry. The writing on the show seemed to incorporate most of the standard cliche's of the P.I. world. Granger, who was both the star and the first-person narrator of the show (not an uncommon practice with radio gumshoes), never saw a woman, instead "he gave the doll the once-over." He didn't kick with his foot, he "lifted a size 10." Instead of paying cash, he "forked over numbered lettuce. "The mysteries he solved were fairly reasonable, and while he was a tough guy who roughed up lesser mortals, he seemed to get knocked unconscious at least once in every program. A total of 28 episodes survived and are in trading currency.

Boxcars711 Old Time Radio Pod - Favorite Story "Ben-Hur" (9-04-48) Oct 17, 2007

Show notes

FAVORITE STORY aired from September 1947 through December of 1949 hosted by Ronald Colman. This is an excellent dramatic series of great stories from classic literature brought to radio. It's popularity was so high and with such well done stories, it was rebroadcasted for many years.THIS EPISODE:Ben-Hur is a 1959 epic film directed by William Wyler, and is the most popular live-action version of Lew Wallace's novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880). It premiered at Loews Theater in New York City on November 18, 1959. The film went on to win eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, a feat equaled only by Titanic (1997) and The Lord of the Rings.

Boxcars711 Old Time Radio Pod - Columbia Workshop "Private Throgg" (5-29-39) Oct 17, 2007

Show notes

Broadcast from 1936 through to 1947 with just an occasional break. Revived again from January 1956 to September 1957 as CBS Radio Workshop with pretty much the same format. This was drama with a difference. Columbia Workshop was not everybodyâs cup of tea and in terms of audience popularity it was always noted that it was never a strong contender for the title âRadios Top Rated Drama Seriesâ and yet it was always considered to be the drama program that led the way in radio standards. Columbia was the first to experiment with what radio drama was all about, introducing new techniques never before used in over the airwaves drama and because it received little encouragement from established writers, actors, etc., it was only by breaking new ground with new ideas and new techniques from writers who were not versed in the old ways that it was going to survive. Unlike theater drama which required scenery to stage the settings of a play. Radio drama relied only on the imagination of the listener to interpret the scene.

Boxcars711 Old Time Radio Pod - Our Miss Brooks "Foreign Teachers" (2-07-54) Oct 16, 2007

Show notes

Our Miss Brooks, an American situation comedy, began as a radio hit in 1948 and migrated to television in 1952, becoming one of the earlier hits of the so-called Golden Age of Television, and making a star out of Eve Arden (1908-1990) as comely, wisecracking, but humane high school English teacher Connie Brooks. The show hooked around Connie's daily relationships with Madison High School students, colleagues, and pompous principal Osgood Conklin (Gale Gordon), not to mention favourite student Walter Denton (future television and Rambo co-star Richard Crenna, who fashioned a higher-pitched voice to play the role) and biology teacher Philip Boynton ( Jeff Chandler), the latter Connie's all-but-unrequited love interest, who saw science everywhere and little else anywhere.

Boxcars711 Old Time Radio Pod - Hallmark Playhouse "Mrs Parkington" (10-21-48) Oct 16, 2007

Show notes

Series Description: THE HALLMARK PLAYHOUSE was heard over CBS stations Thursday evenings. This drama anthology of 30-minute shows was sponsored by, of course, Hallmark Greeting Cards. It was preceded by the RADIO READER'S DIGEST, which ran from September 13, 1942 thorugh June 3, 1948. Hallmark sponsored the RADIO READER'S DIGEST from January 13, 1946 to it's end. On Feb. 8, 1953, the series name and format was changed. It was now called THE HALLMARK HALL OF FAME and presented biographal sketches of famous persons, past and present. The new format was used until the end of the 1955 season. The exception to the new format was the broadcast each Christmas season of "A Christmas Carol". Like other dramatic series of this time, this one made use of major screen actors in the productions. James Hilton, author of "Random Harvest", "Lost Horizon" and "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" plus others, served as host and Narrator. Dee Engelbach produced and directed the shows. Jean Holloway was the writer. Sound Effects were by Harry Essman and Gene Twombly. Musical conductor was Lyn Murray. The show's theme was "Dream of Olwne" by Charles Williams. THIS EPISODE:Hallmark Playhouse. October 21, 1948. CBS net. "Mrs. Parkington". Sponsored by: Hallmark Cards. A woman rises from poverty in Nevada to a position of power and wealth in New York. Louis Bromfield (writer), Rosalind Russell, James Hilton (host). 1/2 hour.

Boxcars711 Old Time Radio Pod - Blair Of The Mounties "2 Episodes From 1938" (4-18-38 and 4-25-38) Oct 16, 2007

Show notes

TWO EPISODES: "The Train Wreckers Mystery" (4-18-38) and "The Case Of Leftenant Ralston" (4-25-38)Blair of the Mounties is the story of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police -- a fictional series based on the work of the Northwest Mounted Police before the World War I. It was a fifteen minute weekly serial heard every Monday for 36 weeks beginning January 31st, 1938 and running through the 3rd of October of 1938. It may have been on the air as early as 1935, although thereâs no actual proof of this. Little is known of the series other than it followed the exploits of Sgt. Blair of the Northwest Mounted Police. and probably was the inspiration for Trendell, Campbell and Muir's Challenge of the Yukon. The series was written by Colonel Rhys Davies, who also played the Colonel Blair in the series. Jack Abbot played the Constable. Jack French, one of OTRâs best researchers says this about the series: âBlair is not restricted to Canada, as other Mounties, as we find him, in a few cases, in Great Britain, solving cases. Overall the series is amateurishly written, with the actor playing Blair coming accros as a bit stuffy.â

Boxcars711 Old Time Radio Pod - Sears Radio Theater "Flight of the Starbird" (3-30-79) Oct 15, 2007

Show notes

The series premiered on Monday 02/05/79 and offered a different genre each weekday night. Each genre was hosted by a different celebrity. The program was produced on Paramount's Stage F in Hollywood. These first 130 programs were broadcast over a six month period and then rebroadcast over the following six months. From 02/14/80 to 12/19/81 this series was heard again, this time over Mutual, as The Mutual Radio Theater. This was clearly one of the last big attempts to produce radio programming, with many of radioâs best talents, the way radio was heard in its âgolden days.â Despite budget and talent, it just wasnât to be.

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