Annette Ranald's Blog: Annette's History Reads - Posts Tagged "the-shadow"

If you're wondering why I haven't presented a book review on Monday for awhile, this is the reason. This was a chewy, chewy book to get through. But I wanted to get through it because this was the stuff my grandparents grew up on in the Depression era and some of these catchphrases became standard around our house. "Ain't that something! and "Holy mackerel there, Andy!" also "Tain't fair/funny, McGee," and "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" or "It's a joke, Son!" I thought these little laugh lines were just something old people said. Now I know where they came from.

Hal Erickson's From Radio to the Big Screen: Hollywood Films Featuring Broadcast Personalities and Programs has a central thesis. Many radio programs became so popular that Hollywood just had to cash in on the success, often with disastrous results. Most radio programs were fifteen to thirty minutes long, while a standard movie run was over an hour. Trying to stretch plotlines and trying to bring a visual representation to the characters behind the voices in many people's head's often just didn't mesh. There were a few exceptions, such as when Clayton Moore played Lone Ranger, but they were few and far between.

Although the book has a central topic and Erickson does his best to hammer it home, the layout of this book makes it cumbersome. It's a two-column page for a reason. A one column layout would have been textbook size. The other reason it reads slowly is because he sets out to catalog most of the major radio-to-film efforts one by one. Then, there's the off-side comments, which are funny and in the spirit of the programs, but add for more prose. If you can get through it, it's a laudable effort, but a little bit goes a long way at each sitting.

I could see this book being useful as a guide to a collector, aficionado of these old programs and movies. It would have been nice to have a table of contents of each of the programs up front, that way people interested in Lone Ranger, Fibber McGee and Molly, or The Shadow could flip to the pertinent pages, see whether Hollywood had mangled their show and when. I could see the book being useful in a college-level course discussing the subject. It's not a sit down, cozy up and read book. It will get four stars on Amazon.
From Radio to the Big Screen: Hollywood Films Featuring Broadcast Personalities and Programs