OLD TIME RADIO: DIARY OF AN OBSESSION

Some time ago I wrote an article in these pages called "Private Radio," which briefly described my lifelong love-affair with programs from the Golden Age of Radio. Since I dislike heating up yesterday's soup, I shan't bore you with a recount of how I came to discover OTR when I was a very young boy, courtesy of my father; but I would like to discuss why I love it, and examine, if briefly and inadequately, my favorite programs from the era. I would also like to touch, briefly, on the similarities between OTR and reading, a subject nobody ever seems to talk about.

The Golden Age of Radio lasted roughly from the late 1920s, when radios started to become household items, to the early 1950s, when television began to push radio steadily toward its present-day, marginalized status -- something you may happen to listen to while driving. During that period, along with news broadcasts and music, there were innumerable scripted shows: comedies, soap operas, plays, children's programs, Westerns, variety shows, detective stories, superhero stories, horror stories, etc., etc. As today, a great deal of what was produced in that period was utter crap: some of it was enjoyablecrap, but crap it was, even by the standards of the day. However, and also as today, there was a great deal of truly quality programming, which, when viewed through today's lens, is not only entertaining in its own right, but provides us with a fascinating time-capsule of times gone by.

I suppose I have at least 1,000 episodes of various shows in my personal MP3 library, with access to 60,000 more via the Old Time Radio Researcher's Library. What keeps drawing me back to this dusty, half-forgotten medium? The answers are surprisingly simple. First and foremost, a good old radio program, or even a good-bad old radio program, requires the listener to use their imagination even as they listen. In this it is unlike almost all other forms of entertainment save reading. Television and film, for example, are reactive mediums; when we are fully immersed in them, we cease to think at all: only our emotions are engaged. But radio programs ignite the imagination, because all we get is dialog and background noise; it is up to the reader to describe the characters and the scenery. Anyone whose imagination is sufficiently honed by reading can take to OTR provided they find the right program.

Second, OTR writers had numerous restrictions upon them: censorship is not too strong a word. And because this was so, because their characters couldn't swear, sex was almost completely avoided except by use of James Bond-like double entendres and sly insinuations (and even these had to be checked and double-checked by Standards & Practices and were only grudgingly allowed), because hot-button topics had to be avoided, these writers were forced to rise to great heights to deliver quality entertainment. Granted, many of them failed to do this; but those that did produced great stories and often, absolutely priceless dialog of the sort you rarely see nowadays, in this horribly glib, imitative, shallow-minded era. Lastly, because OTR was very much a product of its day, it is as good a means as any to study the past -- attitudes, mores, prejudices, prevailing wisdom.

My favorite shows are as follows. This list is not exclusive, nor is it in precise order of affection, but it ought to give you a good picture of both what I most enjoy (to date) and the diversity of programming which was available:

1. THE SHADOW. This popular series ran from 1937 to 1954, and gave birth to several classic lines, such as "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" Straddling the line between detective and superhero, The Shadow was about a wealthy amateur detective named Lamont Cranston who learns the secret of invisibility while traveling in "the Orient" and uses this power to fight crime back here in good old America. The Shadow ran so long the main character was played by no less than five men, of whom the first was a 22 year-old Orson Welles. The Shadow/Cranston was accompanied by his doting assistant, confident, and chaste romantic interest, Margo Lane, who was forever getting kidnapped, terrorized and nearly killed by a whole slew of psychopathic killers, enemy spies, mad scientists, bloodthirsty gangsters and the occasional flat-out monster. At its best, The Shadow was imaginative, atmospheric, periodically witty and consistently brutal, underscoring in blood its mantra that "crime does not pay." Indeed, The Shadow was often incredibly violent: I remember people being shot, hanged, stabbed, electrocuted, burned with acid, run over by cars, thrown off airplanes, ripped apart by wolves, strangled, drained of blood, devoured by crocodiles, drowned (after being whipped!), gassed, and thrown into volcanoes. The violence, however, was always used to underscore the futility of crime. The show's moral compass feels terribly outdated nowadays, but it is not ambiguous. That's kind of refreshing.

2. THE LINEUP. This gritty police procedural ran for only three years, from 1950 - 1953, but what a three years those were. Starring Bill Johnstone, one of the five men who also played The Shadow, it follows a detective squad in a "great American city" (a nameless hybrid of New York, Los Angeles, and many others) as they pursue murderers, thieves, drug dealers, racketeers, bank robbers, mad bombers, fraudsters and assorted other hoodlums. What always strikes me about The Lineup is a) the quality and realism of the dialog, which is written a very naturalistic style, with interruptions, stumbles, casual conversation, etc., while simultaneously being as punchy as the hardboiled gab you'd get in a Film Noir movie, and b) the surprisingly unglamorous way much of the investigative procedure is handled. Yes, there are fights and shoot-outs and even car chases, but mostly the cops are depicted actually running down leads, consulting notes, arguing with each other, pathologists and forensic experts, getting heartburn from bad diner food, sweating in uncomfortable summertime stake outs, talking sports, planning vacations, you name it. They even occasionally rough up suspects a little and deny them right to counsel, which isn't pretty, but is very realistic, especially for the period. The Lineup's humor is skewering, its drama very heavy: the show depicts grief in very stark and realistic terms, and almost revels in its depictions of the effects of crime on ordinary people, whether it is violent or financial. I've spent almost ten years in law enforcement and I'd put this up near the top of police/forensic procedural shows I have ever encountered.

3. ESCAPE. "Tired of the everyday grind? Ever dream of a life of romantic adventure? Want to get away from it all? We offer you... Escape! Escape! Designed to free you from the four walls of today for a half-hour of high adventure!" Though most people would categorize Escape as the less-successful kid brother of the much more famous show, Suspense (see below), I truly believe Escape is the better of the two. As the name implies, Escape (1947 - 1954) was a flexible format adventure-suspense show in which the protagonist was invariably placed in a life-threatening bind and had to, well, escape it. Because the premise was so open-sided, stories could be hard-boiled, adventurous, supernatural, horror-themed...anything went, and many great short stories and novels were adapted into plays, by authors as diverse as Jack London, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ray Badbury. To give some examples: "Three Skeleton Key" (starring Vincent Price) was about a remote lighthouse overrun by carniverous rats. "Lenningen vs. The Ants" was about a South American plantation owner defending his land against a massive army ant invasion. "Earth Abides" was a two-part post-apocalyptic epic, "John Jock Todd" about a dockworker struggling to cope with a tyrannically cruel overseer, "The Scarlet Plague" about a world-ending disease, and "Evening Primrose" was a deeply disturbing tale about mannequins which come alive after the store closes. Many of these stories were brilliantly written, most were brilliantly acted, and a few ("Blood Bath" for example) were so over the top in their depictions of South American, South Pacific or African adventures gone wrong, that they rose to the level of art.

4 & 5. MERCURY THEATER ON THE AIR/THE CAMPBELL PLAYHOUSE Orson Welles' Mercury Theater on Broadway rocketed him to fame and fortune while still in his early-mid 20s; ever the avant-garde, he delved deeply into the medium of radio as well. His theater troupe, which included such luminaries as Ray Collins (later famous for his role as Tragg on "Perry Mason") and Agnes Moorehead (four Academy Award nominations), is best remembered for producing the adapation of H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds" which wrought havoc in 1938, but also made masterful adaptations of "Dracula," "A Tale of Two Cities, " "Julius Caesar" and "The Count of Monte Cristo." It later became The Campbell Playhouse, and added "Les Misérables," "The Magnificent Ambersons," "Beau Geste," "The Citadel," "The Glass Key" and others to its laurels. Wells' was the sort of performer whose voice can hypnotize, seduce, infuriate, or beat the listener into submission depending upon his whims, and by bullying his excellent cast along with him, he produced hour-long dramas which are worthy companions to the great works of literature than spawned them.

6. FRONTIER GENTLEMAN. Westerns were a very popular genre on radio, but Frontier Gentleman was cut from a different strip of cowhide. Running for only a single season in 1958, it nevertheless produced no less than 41 episodes starring John Dehner as J.B. Kendall, a former British cavalry officer now working as a newspaper correspondent for a London Times, on assignment in the American West in the post Civil War era. Wikipedia describes it aptly as "grittier, more realistic, and clearly intended for an older audience. Adult westerns [like this] were less the descendants of their juvenile predecessors than they were cousins of western feature films such as Shane (1953) and High Noon (1952)." Kendall, though first and foremost a newspaperman, was not shy about using his fists or his guns if absolutely necessary, but what he really wanted was good copy, and boy did he get it, encountering a wide range of scoundrels, gunslingers, corrupt sheriffs, embittered Indians, struggling homesteaders, and cynical salloon-keepers (including some of the female persuasion). This show was not afraid of thoughtful silences that seemed to summon up the emptiness of the West, nor of delving into some of the more morally complex aspects of what went into taming it. Kendall is occasionally appalled by the cruelty and greed he encounters, and while some stories are comic and others uplifting, there are a few hewn with tragedy and loss. When Kendall departs for England in the forty-first and final show, one gets the sense he will greatly miss it, but also that it has marked him forever in ways he does not entirely like. This was one Western meant for the grown-ups.

7. SUSPENSE. One of the longest-running programs in radio history (1940 - 1962), Suspense broadcast nearly 1,000 episodes and was called "radio's outstanding theater of thrills." Stories were introduced by "The Man in Black" and usually featured protagonists who were thrust suddenly and unexpectedly into life-threatening situations from which they had to escape, though they were by no means always totally sympathetic people or successful in their efforts. Lives turned on mistaken identities, old wrongs, impulsive crimes, simple misunderstandings or, in some cases, minor mistakes such as forgetting a wallet or taking the wrong suitcase. Many of these people were of purely ordinary or unremarkable character, adding to the tension by making them relatable. The show also adapted famous stories like "Donovan's Brain," "Sorry, Wrong Number," "The Most Dangerous Game," "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "In a Lonely Place," showing that the rigid formula actually possessed a certain flexibility. Some of these stories are shocking and unforgettable: "Flesh Peddler" (starring DeForest Kelley) is a good example of how suspense and horror can dance smoothly together, and one can clearly see the influence of such storytelling on Rod Serling and his "Twilight Zone." Nearly all of this show's episodes survive and are well worth listening to, they provide superb accompaniment, especially on night drives.

8. SHERLOCK HOLMES. (1939 - 1950) Until Jeremy Brett came along in 1985 to make the role always and forever his own, Basil Rathbone was Sherlock Holmes in the minds of millions, including yours truly. He starred in many Holmes movies, some good and some bad, but also recorded a large number of radio dramas playing the immortal detective. Together with his redoubtable co-star Nigel Bruce, who played Watson, he took the listener through adaptations of Conan-Doyle's tales, but also on stories inspired by random throwaway lines from the original Holmes stories ("Holmes solved the mystery by discovering the depth the parsley sunk into the butter on a hot day"), and many completely original scripts. Rathbone, a debonair veteran of WW1 in real life, played Holmes with a certain wry wit rather than as an ice-blooded sleuthound, fundamentally a little more human than Conan-Doyle envisioned him, but without betraying Conan-Doyle's vision of Holmes as a man apart, requiring only Watson as friend, confidant, foil and legman. I actually prefer the radio dramas to the movies, which were partially contemporized to the 40s and often little more than "Holmes vs. Nazi spies:" these are more true to the source material.

9. THE WHISTLER. I...am the Whistler, and I know many things, for I walk by night. I know many strange tales, many secrets hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows. Yes... I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak! From 1942 - 1955, this mysterious and sneering narrator chronicled the clever crimes and nefarious schemes of men and women, often brilliant in character, which nonetheless came to shipwreck, usually because of some small mistake or ironic happenstance. Like "Columbo," the show was not about who did it but why they did, how they did it, and how they very nearly got away with it, if not for that pesky little devil of a detail. Although the formula can get a little tiresome, the stories are almost always very well written and cleverly plotted, and justice -- if only in a cruelly ironic fashion -- is generally served.

10. INNER SANCTUM MYSTERIES. From 1941 to 1952, this series scared the hell out of kids like my mom, who weren't supposed to be listening to it, just like I wasn't supposed to be watching "Friday the 13th" movies when I was supposed to be studying geometry. The narrator, identified only as "Raymond," was a sort of Crypt Keeper type who spewed bad puns and tacky gallows humor over equally terrible organ music before introducing each episode: the episodes themselves were not funny at all, and walked a bloody line between horror and suspense, crime and supernatural, featuring such plots as "a hearse-driver is hired by a murderess to dispose of her husband's body, and it doesn't go well" or "a woman home alone [or broken down on the roadside] is terrorized by an escaped criminal." Some of the stories had supernatural themes, while others were on the sci-fi end of the spectrum (an immortality formula that goes wrong) but all stuck to the basic premise of "scare the audience at any cost and spare no one" -- in one episode, Raymond himself was the victim (!). While happy endings were not by any means unheard-of, even these characters had to suffer through all sorts of terror and tension to earn their lives back.

This is not by any means all-inclusive; I could a tale unfold about Light's Outr, NBC University Theater, The Green Hornet, or the lengthy and highly imaginative adaptation of Dr. Jekyyl & Mr. Hyde, but this remains a good sampling of some of the better shows. It is certain that my passion for OTR heats and cools at regular intervals; there are years when I listen only occasionally to an episode here or there while hiking or driving, and there are others when I burn through half a dozen or more a day for weeks or months on end. Hell, when I was temping in Los Angeles, I used to burn through the better portion of what you could load on an iPod in a single shift. The point is simply that Old Time Radio is a resource that is always there for me, always ready to provide me with entertainment, and always capable of instructing me, the storyteller, with better ways to tell the story. In the age of the podcast, the YouTube video and the free download, it is certainly worth your time to explore this older but no less, and in some cases, far more enthralling medium.