Radio Sound Effects

In 1989, my wife and I found ourselves as founding members of G.R.A.C.I.E., the Golden Radio Association of Cincinnati-Imaginative Entertainment. This was a group of 8 folks of varying age who would travel around locally doing re-creations of old-time radio shows at various venues such as retirement homes and bowling tournament banquets. It was as part of this short-lived organization that I got to direct a re-creation. Knowing nothing about how these things were done back in the day, we made up our own ways to do sound effects. I still think our method for gunshots was effective. We squeezed a dozen or so balloons tightly into a small box. Then we drove a nail into a paddle-ball style wooden paddle. When the gunshot was cued, the sound effects guy simply banged as many balloons as needed with the nail. BANG! BANG! BANG! Hey, it worked!
Anyway, from the 1940 book RADIO DIRECTING, here are some shots of how it was really done in the old days. I later got to work with veteran sound effects men like the great Barney Beck at the radio cons and saw first hand this amazing lost art in action. One of the best compliments ever given me after acting in a radio re-creation was when Barney told me "Kid, you were born 40 years too late. You missed your calling and it don’t exist anymore." Sigh.

Stanley and His Monster

STANLEY AND HIS MONSTER has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. DC’s funny sixties series began as a backup in the long-running FOX AND CROW comic but soon took over the title and the book itself. Lisping little Stanley (the lisp was later eliminated) was lonely and wanted a pet. One day he brought home this monster he happened to meet and named him Spot or as Stanley called him, Thpot. Later, and briefly, his name became Massachusetts or…well, you get the joke. Eventually the series became a bit crowded with Stanley hiding not only his "dog" in his room but also a small Irish leprechaun, a German troll and the ghost of Napoleon Bonaparte. His parents were, of course, oblivious. In later issues his babysitter Marcia somehow managed to ever see the truth also.
Created and written by Arnold Drake, some of these were quite amusing and the dialect humor well done. The art was mostly by the wonderful Bob Oksner (meaning that Marcia was a babe!), along with Win Mortimer, Joe Orlando and the occasionally credited inker Tex Blaisdell. Apparently, however, the powers that be underestimated the continuing appeal of the FOX AND CROW series, however, because the book didn’t last long without them in spite of a cameo appearance by Jerry Lewis and the origin of Superhulk! A dozen years later at least one all new (or more than likely leftover) story appeared in a SUGAR AND SPIKE BEST OF DC digest comic. More than a decade later, the series would be revived in a mini-series in which Phil Foglio and Chuck Fiala reimagined the whole concept as a kind of spoof SANDMAN tie-in with Spot a real, if kinda wimpy, demon from Hell. Another decade passed and no less than Kevin Smith would revive the boy and his "dog" in his acclaimed QUIVER storyline in GREEN ARROW. This time, we were really in the grim and gritty, however and it was as if the innocence of those early issues back in 1965-1968 never even existed. Luckily, they did and through the magic of the back issue market they still do. These books are actually kind of hard to find but I highly recommend them.

Just Passing By

As you know, I generally live in the past. For those of you living a bit closer to the present day, however, might I recommend checking out the temporary return of Klaus Kinski, Jr.s lamented blog The By-Pass Control. As you may recall, KKJr was one of my cohorts in the ill-fated Bubblegumfink Squad experiment and recently closed his own blog of mostly musical posts. The outpouring of sadness and good wishes has prompted him to do his first post-closing post, though, and the results are a treasure trove of B-sides from a band I must admit is after my time. I had to look them up here: Greetings from the White Stripes. Let's hope that, like Jack Benny, this will be the first of many "farewell specials" from Klaus.

The Shadow Strikes

Here's a nifty little treat for radio buffs that must have gone right over the heads of the average comic book reader in 1990. In issue number seven of THE SHADOW STRIKES, one of several attempts by DC since the 1970's to bring the pulp hero to the comics, Gerard Jones (later author of MEN OF TOMORROW) allows the title character a run-in with his OTR self in the person of Orson Welles (who in real life didn't originate the role but WAS one of its better known stars). Well, Grover Mills actually but then even that's a reference to the New Jersey town in Welles' legendary WAR OF THE WORLDS. The plot deals with the flamboyant actor-producer-director coming up with a radio series based on the exploits of the Shadow. When the Shadow hears about it, he pays its star a visit with a cease and desist warning only to be drawn into a chase with some criminals. The Welles character utilizes his radio shtick to trick the villains and the dark avenger realizes that having a radio show in which he seems to have even more powers than he has might be of some value to him. There are in-jokes galore for the radio and film buff and the issue ends with a three page history of the radio series by its biggest fan, radio expert and sometime DC colorist Anthony Tollin(who, of course, colored this issue also!). Jones' stories are always backed up with a wealth of knowledge and the art is passable, changing as it does from Rick Magyar to Frank Springer's scratchier style about two-thirds of the way through. This is dollar box stuff but well worth it for the comics fan, the old-time radio buff or particularly the OTR loving comics fan like me!

Superman's Most Imaginative Imaginary Story

SUPERMAN #s 192 and 194 (with a pre-scheduled 80 Page Giant of reprints in between)appeared in late 1966 and featured an issue and a half of what was for years my favorite "imaginary story."
Drawn by Curt Swan and an unknown inker (GCD says probably George Klein but it sure looks like Pete Costanza in spots to me) the story is probably by Otto Binder. Don’t let the cover fool you. This is ultimately a tragic story. "Clark Kent’s Super-Brat" on the cover becomes simply his "Super-son" inside although part one is entitled "The Brat of Steel" for no apparent reason as Clark, Jr. isn’t particularly bratty at any point. In the beginning, Supes runs afoul of a rare hybrid kryptonite that cause him to slowly lose his powers and then his memory. The world comes to mourn the Man of Steel and Clark at long last makes some headway with Lois lane. The two are married and move into Clark’s old apartment. Even as Lois is moving in, Clark tells her he has to leave for Tibet to follow up a lead on the missing superhero. Ultimately he is stranded there for years and ends up with a long beard tilling the crops at a lamasery. When he finally is rescued, Clark returns home to find he has a surprisingly super son (born "a few months after you left America" says Lois. Hmmmm….Remember, they had JUST come back from their honeymoon! The scandal!). Note the near obligatory Bat-plug. Lois theorizes that Junior drank some super potion among Clark’s Superman souvenirs and Kent buys this. After only a couple of pages more, Clark is off for two more years, this time as a foreign correspondent! He returns one panel later as we see this is just an excuse to have his son age a bit. Here we have the bizarre exchange where Clark asks him what’s on one page in a certain encyclopedia volume, he answers for a different volume number then tells Clark his answer is actually in a THIRD volume!! AND KENT AGAIN BUYS THIS WITHOUT QUESTION. HAH!
By the end of the issue, Clark has helped piece together a documentary about the Man of Steel and all of the other DC heroes attend the premiere, prompting Batman and Superwoman(sic) to break the fourth wall and tell the readers they were keeping quiet to see how Clark got out of his mess! Bizarre! Apparently neither the writer nor the editor even realized that most of the rest of the JLA knew Superman’s identity in their own book, too. The issue ends after even more time has passed and Clark is sitting alone watching his documentary on the late show when suddenly one of Superman’s hidden robots responds to a command from his master on film and bursts forth out of his secret closet causing Clark’s memory to return at long last! Continued next ish!
Next issue being titled, "The Death of Lois Lane" is a giveaway that this will not be more light-hearted hi-jinks with the new Superboy. No, here we have an aging well Lex Luthor kidnapping Clark and Lois, finding out Clark’s secret identity before he even tells his wife, then programming her to kill Clark. She tries to shoot her still-powerless husband while he’s driving and he dives out of the car letting her plunge to her death over a mountainside! Then things get really tricky as Luthor takes control of the super robots in an effort to trick Junior into murdering his own father! This is getting sick! He convinces Clark that he and Lois had had an affair BEFORE she and Clark were wed. Yeah right! That lecherous @#!!!
Finally, by pure accident, mind you, Luthor’s plan goes awry and the super robot (now disguised as Clark) decides to pull a Judge Dredd on ol’ Lexy and just blows him away! Of course, in the best Comics Code tradition, he then has to self-destruct, also, leaving father and son to carve the memorial that we’ve already seen on the cover, all of this leaving 9 empty pages in this issue which are rounded out with a fifties reprint.
Y’know, when you look at it like that, maybe I should choose another favorite. After all, as Alan Moore reminded us many years later, aren’t they ALL really imaginary?

WVXU Presents

Along about 1980, Dr. Jim King at WVXU-FM in Cincinnati turned his weekly old-time radio half hour into a daily block of programming. Every weekday at 11:30AM and 7:30 PM (and later 11:30 PM also), the college public radio station would run episodes of old-time radio series. If I recall correctly, initially the line-up was:
Mondays-THE LIFE OF RILEY
Tuesdays-JACK BENNY
Wednesdays-DUFFY’S TAVERN
Thursdays-FIBBER McGEE AND MOLLY
Fridays-THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE
By that point, I had been mildly interested in old-time radio for nearly a decade but there was simply no place to hear it! This then, proved a godsend for me. I rarely missed a day of listening to these great comedies that I had only heard about before!
THE LIFE OF RILEY was the quintessential dumb husband comedy, a formula repeated still in TV sitcoms. Movie tough guy William Bendix was hilarious as a big lug of a guy who was constantly causing problems at work and at home that were usually sorted out only after he consulted with his friend Digger O’Dell, the friendly undertaker. They were pretty formulaic but had an underlying heart that won me over. The great cast included the later blacklisted John Brown in a dual role as Digger and Riley’s friend Gillis. Paula Winslowe who had doubled for Jean Harlow in her last film SARATOGA was the long-suffering wife and Alan (Fred Flintstone) Reed was the boss.
Jack Benny, of course, I knew from television. I had been a fan of his for as long as I remembered but he had died in 1974 and reruns of his TV series and specials had seemed to die with him. Suddenly, I was able to hear the original radio version that had made his reputation. The great Rochester and all of the wonderful supporting cast members took on a new life to me and this became an absolute favorite of mine!
I had heard of DUFFY’S TAVERN but here it was, all shiny and new with Archie the Manager, Eddie the Waiter, Finnegan and the Mad Russian. I’d get some use out of these guys later on.
FIBBER McGEE AND MOLLY were definitely tied to a formula but the jokes were so funny and the characters so memorable their series nonetheless ran in one form or another for two decades. Nearly every episode featured the happy couple at home with Fibber starting on some new project. They would constantly be interrupted as a parade of neighbors came to the door essentially to do schtick—blustery Mayor LaTrivia, Doc Gamble, Teeny the little girl next door, henpecked Wallace Wimple or the Ol’Timer with his catch phrase "That ain’t the way I heared it!" Inevitably, someone would cause McGee to have to open his hall closet causing everything inside to fall out with a cacophonous sound!
THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE. Him we’ve mentioned before here. This became my favorite radio series. Over the years, WVXU ran and reran several seasons of the Hal Peary years to the point where I practically had them memorized. When they finally stopped running old-time radio shows locally just this past year (in favor of Stan Freberg’s syndicated series WHEN RADIO WAS), Gildy was still running!
After hearing all of these for several years, you can imagine my delight when the book pictured above, GREAT RADIO PERSONALITIES IN HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPHS was released in 1982. Finally I got to see what some of these folks looked like! WVXU soon added another daily half hour and we got long runs of X MINUS ONE, NIGHT BEAT (which became more popular in its afterlife syndication than it had been originally!),THE SHADOW, THE SAINT and more, eventually culminating in a full Saturday evening block of varied OTR programming for the last several years. Unfortunately, even that has now ended but for those shows to have been rerun for so long tells me that I wasn’t the only one to discover them thanks to Dr. King and his little rsdio station that could.

Old-Time Radio Books

In Spring, a young man’s fancy turns to love. If you’re my age in the Cincinnati area, it turns to old-time radio. With the 20th Annual Cincinnati Old-Time Radio and Nostalgia Convention coming up this month, I’ll be posting a number of pieces on OTR leading up to the big weekend. If you aren’t a fan of so-called "old-time radio" it’s probably because that word "old-time" has prejudiced you against it. Dramatic radio, aptly called the theater of the mind, is rapidly becoming a lost art and the only way to preserve this wonderful, unique entertainment medium is by getting more young people interested. That’s what happened with me when a substitute teacher in Junior High one day brought in an LP of THE SHADOW. I’d heard of it but this got me interested. The stories unfold in your head and if they’re well written, your own mind supplies much more realistic detail and special effects than movies or TV ever could. Like everything else, according to Theodore Sturgeon, 90% of everything in OTR was probably drek but that ten percent that wasn’t can be simply amazing! THE SHADOW, THE WHISTLER, ESCAPE, SUSPENSE, GUNSMOKE, YOURS TRULY, JOHNNY DOLLAR, X MINUS ONE and I LOVE A MYSTERY are all legendary for their good writing and great performances. Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, Baby Snooks, Amos ‘n’ Andy, Red Skelton, Martin and Lewis, Abbott and Costello and Bob Hope were all hilarious on radio. There were also such long-running comedy series as THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE, THE ALDRICH FAMILY, DUFFY’S TAVERN, FIBBER McGEE AND MOLLY and YOU BET YOUR LIFE with Groucho Marx. Norman Corwin (subject of this year’s Academy Award-winning Best Documentary), Carlton E. Morse, Himan Brown and Orson Welles himself were among the auteurs whose careers were made in radio. If all of that isn’t enough to get you to try it, we haven’t even discussed THE LONE RANGER, SUPERMAN, THE GREEN HORNET, THE BLUE BEETLE, POPEYE and other familiar heroes.
Seen here are a selection of great books to seek out at your local library, used bookstore or Ebay account. Jim Harmon’s THE GREAT RADIO HEROES and THE GREAT RADIO COMEDIANS were among the first to recall the then still recent glory days and Harmon has worked tirelessly for much of his life to make sure they don’t fade away completely.
THE BIG BROADCAST hit at the beginning of the oft-mentioned nostalgia boom and offered an encyclopedic (if somewhat error-ridden) look at individual shows.
Mystery author John Dunning’s 1977 TUNE IN YESTERDAY took the encyclopedic concept into much more detail and became an oft-pilfered public library reference volume. As with any volume of this type, there were a few errors. Dunning himself took his time but corrected them by literally rewriting the entire book as ON THE AIR-THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF OLD-TIME RADIO, a weighty tome published some twenty-one years later in 1998.
Here are a couple of links to sites where you can find free OTR on the ‘Net: datajunkie, RadioLovers.com - All Shows . If you haven’t discovered it yet, I envy you. A million new worlds are waiting to be unlocked in your mind.