Fred Allen and the people you didn’t expect to meet 1939.
Fred Allen was famously a control freak on his radio shows. Although he used a staff of writers, it was just to generate ideas and jokes that would be incorporated into the final script that Fred always wrote personally.
Each minute of those shows were a reflection of Fred, including his frequent on air conversations from many folks from many walks of life.
I, personally, am grateful to Fred for helping me to appreciate the lives lived by folks in that past by allowing those folks to tell their own stories.
I think you will also enjoy those real life stories.
Halloween approaches – the night when the boundaries between the living and the dead, reality and imagination dissolve. Evil witches mount flying brooms. Brain starved Zombies, restless spirits, supernatural spooks, savage monsters and all forms of malevolent miscreants shamble across the earth creating terror among the hapless and tasty human populace.
Above all, Halloween is the best time for scary stories. In that tradition welcome to When Radio Ruled episode 56, Spooky Halloween Special 2022.
The show is going to give you a couple of spine tinglers to get you in the spooky Halloween frame of mind. The first one is entitled “Til Dead” and was originally broadcast February 2, 1943. It is a great example of the Suspense Genre that was so successful throughout the era of old time radio.
The second story is called “The Hitchhiker” and stars Orson Welles. It’s a classic supernatural tale, full of tension and mystery. It was performed by Welles multiple times over the years by popular demand, this performance was broadcast September 2, 1942.
So hang the garlic in the door to keep away the vampires, put a crucifix in your pocket just in case, lock the doors and windows, shut out the lights and brace yourself for When Radio Ruled Spooky Halloween Special 2022.
This podcast is a montage of excerpts from old time radio shows performed live and broadcast June 21 to July 11, 1937.
Starring Cecil B. DeMille, Don Wilson, Phil Harris, Jack Benny, Mary Livingston, Jimmy Wallington, Pinky Tomlin, Don Ameche, Charlie McCarthy, Edgar Bergen, Sonya Hennie, W.C. Fields, Dorothy Lamour, Robert Armbruster, Zasu Pitts, Hoagy Carmichael, and more.
Featured Songs include Mary Livingston with the cast of the Jack Benny Show “The Love Bug”, Pinky Tomlin “As Far As Your Concerned”, The cast of the Charlie McCarthy Show with Hoagy Carmichael, “I love you like my old felt hat”
Before TV 