I try not to bore you with too many of my quirky hobbies… but my friend Dale sent me a link to a list by radio historian Elizabeth McLeod of the 100 most significant “moments” in radio. Now, I really really like old time radio (OTR); I’ve probably got 4500 episodes of various broadcasts, most thanks to the great OTR community at The Cobalt Club. Almost all of it is in public domain now (with notable exceptions like The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, any BBC stuff, and anything post-1962), so it's there for the downloading, without having to sweat that certified letter from the RIAA.Many of the broadcasts she mentions are unfortunately lost, or otherwise not available to the OTR web community. But I wanted to talk about some of her entries that I am conversant with:
#98 SHERLOCK HOLMES is indeed made for radio... it’s all exposition and verbal
banter and deduction. I’ve never heard anything prior to Rathbone and Bruce's, which are pretty corny but still entertaining; their American successors don’t fare as well. The really good productions are British; John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson as Holmes & Watson, for goodness’ sake! But the late-90s productions for BBC-4 with Clive Merrison and Michael Williams (later Andrew Sachs) are the defining work; they are beautifully written, elaborately produced, wonderfully performed, and bring these characters so richly to life that it’s sometimes hard to go back and listen to the older stuff.#75
GUNSMOKE is my favorite radio drama... If all you saw was his “Cannon” days, you wouldn’t appreciate what a really really good actor William Conrad was. His Matt Dillon is a marvel of understated complexity, and he did it all with just his voice. Like McLeod’s listing says, this is not a western where the good guys always win and there’s trumpet fanfare at the end. If I was one o’ them cinema historian guys, I’d say that the ‘anti-hero’ and ambiguity of so many late-60’s-early-70’s films goes directly back to the radio version of Gunsmoke. Lots of times Dillon has to choose between bad and worse. Not Ronald Reagan’s America; not Ronald Reagan's kind of western.#69 DRAGNET is of course a blast... It’s really no different than the TV show, except there’s no crazed drug smokin’ hippies turning on by tuning out, man (“is that right, fella?... well, listen up, you forgot one thing...”). Of course, Joe Friday is single and lives with his mom, who calls him “Joseph.” And he stays out on stakeouts with his partner Frank Smith until all hours. And he scoffs every time good old married guy Frank tries to fix him up with a date. But he’s NOT GAY... Clear?!? NOT GAY!!! He’s just beyond all that... he’s... metasexual!
#66 SUPERMAN is about what you’d expect... except (as noted in McLeod) there is this
less-than-subtle message (in the scripts and in the PSAs) about bigotry, intolerance, and hate. It’s truly astonishing. For all the complaints that the right sends up today about the ‘messages’ kids get from Sesame Street, etc., there is no way that this kind of blunt proselytizing would EVER be allowed on a kids program today. I don’t know enough about the history of the show to know what the genesis of this was, but it sounds radically out of place in 1946, and (at the risk of overstatement) it makes the movements of the 60’s more understandable with this as a preface...#53 THE LONE RANGER is, also, about what you’d expect... but with no surprises. Not my favorite, if that’s not heretical to say. It didn’t have the weirdness and camp that makes Superman palatable for an adult. It is however surprising how often the bad guy outsmarts LR and he has to go to plan B…
#51 THE SHADOW with Orson Welles. Welles is always fun to listen to... In several of the episodes I have, young Mr. Welles seems to believe that great acting requires stepping on the last word of your co-star’s lines, usually Margo Lane’s. By the end of the episode, she’s started stepping on his lines (you can hear her frustration) and he’s still on hers and neither of them ever gets to finish a sentence. But great hammy stuff for Welles.#47 LIGHTS OUT, Columbia Workshop, etc.... Some really odd stuff starting to happen here, much more troubling and personal than 99% of TV today. This is the seedbed for Playhouse 90 and Rod Serling and his amazing blend of fantasy and social commentary.
#26 JACK BENNY, FRED ALLEN- Jack is one of my all-
time favorites; my parents told me that when I was little I would never miss an episode of his TV show. He generally plays the straight man, letting the chaos flail around him; his only power is that he controls the money, a fact he never lets his cast forget (and vice versa). It’s really situation comedy. Allen, on the other hand, ran much more of a sketch comedy show, very acerbic and very funny, and very topical, which is why it doesn’t hold up as well, and probably why Allen faded as TV ascended and took Benny along with it.#21 LONDON AFTER DARK. I’ve only heard a couple of these, but if you can get your 21st century ears around the idea that this is real, not a drama, they’re amazing. Play by play descriptions of bombing raids, shelters, life in the blackouts. If the closest thing you’ve come to WW2 is watching war movies, this is the real thing. And if you wondered how England held out so long while waiting for the Americans to come to their senses, you’ll come to understand how damn tough those Brits were.
#8 HINDENBURG DISASTER and #10 WAR OF THE WORLDS: Only 18 months apart, the shocking anguish of the one leading to the incredible-yet-realistic drama of the second. I hope my generation isn’t the last to hear and appreciate these icons to the power and intimate immediacy of radio.
#4 PEARL HARBOR: The halting delivery of a stunned newscaster, breaking in to regular programming; the updates throughout the day describing the extent of the carnage; Roosevelt’s “forever in infamy” speech... This was their 9/11, when nice normal predictable American lives were suddenly dragged into the pain other humans had known for years. And to listen to the newscasts in the weeks and months preceding December 7th, it is stunning to realize that it was no sure thing that we were going to battle Hitler and Tojo; there was a real good chance we were going to try and sit it out. Amazing.McLeod's top 100 list rightfully concludes with #1, D-DAY: I’ve only heard the CBS broadcasts, with Collingwood onboard a landing craft at Normandy. To say there’s a difference between the journalists of that day, and the Anderson Cooper’s of today, goes without saying; the difference centers around the inability to get out of the way of the story.
