Jack French reports on the Old-Time Radio Digest that the hunt for the Missing Massachusetts Man is still going on. I have this feeling that Jack will end up confronting this guy on top of a water tower at an abandoned amusement park, but sometimes those are the lengths one must go to in order to keep OTR alive. He commented that actress Shirley Eggleston described the individual she gave the airchecks to as "a heavy set guy," prompting him to crack "that description would fit 40% of the attendees to any FOTR (Friends of Old-Time Radio) convention."

Barbara J. Watkins also mentioned that Sidney Miller (who has appeared in a few of these Suspense programs I've been reviewing) passed away and that the obituary was in the January 13 edition of the Los Angeles Times. RIP, Sidney. (Apparently the L.A. Times does not have a link online.)

BearManor Media will be publishing a sequel to its entertaining It's That Time Again! The New Stories of Old Time Radio, titled (what else?) It's That Time Again, Volume 2. I guess the best way to describe these two books is that they consist of fan fiction (or fanfics) written about various shows from Radio's Golden Age. Volume 2 is edited by the one-and-only Jim Harmon, who's contributed two stories based on Sherlock Holmes and The Avenger, but there are also new stories about Vic and Sade, The Whistler, Nightbeat, My Friend Irma and many, many more. I bought the first book last year and enjoyed it tremendously, so when I found out about the sequel I rushed right over to the website and pre-ordered a copy.

Another book I pre-ordered is from "Missing Massachusetts Man" chaser Jack French, whose book on female detectives of OTR, Private Eyelashes, will be due out February 14--you can order this as well at BearManor Media. From the advance publicity, it sounds like a must-have for any OTR fan's library, detailing the history of many shows that have not been fortunate to survive the ravages of time for us to enjoy today.

I've also added a couple of new links, one of which is one of the best OTR websites that I have visited in a long time: The Digital Deli Online. Its detailed history of the Armed Forces Radio/Television Service alone makes it worth the price of admission (well...it would be if they charged admission). I also added a link to Shawn Wells' OTR Shop-The Remastered Discs. I bought some CDs from him a week ago, and am extremely pleased; he had an uncirculated Duffy's Tavern and a couple of Jack Carson shows that I had to have.
9:15:13 PM    comment []  trackback []  

”Pleasant dreeeeeaaaaammmmmsssss…hmmmmm…?”

Of all the many celebrated sound effects from the Golden Age of Radio, several remain in the memory even after that wonderful medium’s demise: the wicked laugh of The Shadow, the haunting warbling of The Whistler, the legendary overstuffed closet at 79 Wistful Vista. But perhaps the granddaddy of them all is the haunting sound of the celebrated creaking door from…Inner Sanctum.

Inner Sanctum (or to use the official title, Inner Sanctum Mysteries) was a popular radio horror melodrama much in the same mold as Lights Out, though Sanctum definitely lasted much longer than the Wyllis Cooper/Arch Oboler fright fest. It was created by savvy producer-director Himan Brown, whose radio resume included The Adventures of The Thin Man and Grand Central Station, and was put together after consulting with publishers Street & Smith, whose popular Inner Sanctum Mystery novels (first published in 1930) provided the inspiration for the program. Brown was able to secure a sponsor in Carter’s Little Liver Pills and Sanctum debuted over the Blue Network January 7, 1941. The program would open to ominous organ music—three bars in a low register, then a sharp sting—and then the announcement: Inner Sanctum Mysteries! A doorknob would then turn, and a rusted door-hinge would swing slooowly, creating a vivid atmosphere of terror and doom. Brown once remarked, “I’m gonna make that door a star,” and he was as good as his word.

The first host of Inner Sanctum introduced himself only as Raymond (in real life, actor Raymond Edward Johnson), and though he apparently had no last name, I’ve always speculated that it might be “O’Dell.” (Raymond was given to same sort of gallows humor possessed by “Digger” O’Dell, the friendly undertaker of Life of Riley fame.) Raymond spoke in a sepulchral voice and rattled off the most atrocious, gruesome puns—and yet, somehow it all seemed to work; an intriguing combination of horror and humor, with the stories always played straight, no matter how farfetched they might be. Raymond left the program in May 1945 and was replaced by Paul McGrath, who was a bit more light-hearted than his predecessor.

In its early years, Inner Sanctum was able to attract a goodly number of big-name stars—Peter Lorre, Claude Rains, Raymond Massey, Paul Lukas, etc. Horror icon Boris Karloff appeared on the show so often (nearly twenty times from 1941-42) that he could very well have been considered a regular. Of course, many of the shows from those early days featured not only originals but many classics from the horror genre, among them The Fall of the House of Usher and The Tell Tale Heart. By 1943, the guest appearances had tapered off, but the program still had a respectable repertory company of professional New York radio actors: Everett Sloane, Lesley Woods, Larry Haines, Santos Ortega—even a young Richard Widmark.

The stories on Inner Sanctum were frequently over-the-top, with plots hinging often on the wildest of happenstance and improbability. It didn’t seem to matter much then, and fifty years later, it still doesn’t. Sanctum was essentially the equivalent of a spook house amusement park ride, or a ghost story told around the campfire—never to be taken too seriously. Today, even if the show’s power to thrill and chill seems greatly diminished, it has a refreshing camp quality that never fails to entertain.

Last night, I took along a CD of Inner Sanctum broadcasts from its last season, a summer run on CBS Radio from June-October 1952. The first of the two broadcasts, “Death For Sale,” is an AFRS rebroadcast from July 13 that features Boris Karloff as Mark Deavers, a man who has conspired with his lover Cora to institute an insurance scam that will net the two of them $50,000. They arrange for a man named Elliott Stans (Everett Sloane) to marry Cora, and then disappear for seven years in order for him to be declared legally dead. The wacky complications ensue when Stans returns before the seven years are up, demanding a bigger slice of the pie. The story is pretty standard, but as a Karloff fan, Boris makes even the weakest material fun.

After that, “No Rest For the Dead,” originally broadcast August 24, 1952 and sponsored by Pearson Pharmaceuticals—an interesting tale about a man named George Denning who makes a bargain with a doctor to sell his brain for the doctor’s experiments, much to the horror of his daughter Grace. She calls the doc’s office to speak with him, and finds out from his nurse that he’s been murdered. It’s fun to listen to, though the ending will make you groan. Both of these scripts had been performed on Inner Sanctum in the 1940s; the CBS summer run consisted mostly of new performances from these old scripts.

To be honest, I never really cared all that much for Inner Sanctum at first; I have a problem with any kind of entertainment that “explains” away anything supernatural with the old “there’s-a-perfectly-rational-explanation” excuse. To illustrate, how many episodes of Scooby Doo, Where Are You? have you watched where the “ghost” turns out to be an image from a movie projector? As a proud member of the seventh-grade Audio/Visual club (better known as the Fraternal Order of Geeks), I can assure you that setting up a projector to do that sort of thing would not even be remotely as easy as it looks. I changed my mind about Inner Sanctum though, sometime last year—and what turned me around was the outstanding history of the program as told by Martin Grams, Jr. in The Official Guide to Inner Sanctum Mysteries: Behind the Creaking Door. It is a book no OTR fan should be without.
11:17:50 AM    comment []  trackback []  

”This is not a pretty story…”

Day 13 of “Twenty Days Well-Calculated to Keep You in Suspense.”

The Treasure Chest of Dan Jose

Don Jose Gasparillas (J. Carrol Naish) is the great-great-grandson of his namesake, better known as the “King of the Pirates”—whose booty of precious gold doubloons has never been found. When a hurricane inadvertently reveals the location of the missing treasure chest, Gasparillas goes off in search of it. But this legendary treasure carries with it an equally legendary curse—one that allegedly resulted in the deaths of both his father and grandfather. Don Jose’s discovery of a dead body amidst the chest of doubloons suggests that there just might be something to that curse after all…

“The Treasure Chest of Don Jose,” originally broadcast on February 4, 1952, was written for Suspense by Christopher Anthony, and features Life With Luigi star J. Carrol Naish in the title role. It’s a very good entry in the series, one that has faint overtones of the 1948 film classic The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Although Naish is terrific in a wonderfully sympathetic performance, I was personally more impressed by Joseph Kearns’ turn as the police chief; he nicely captures the dry, Titus Moody-like demeanor of a native New Englander. Kearns would later team up with actor Edgar Barrier in an encore performance of this tale, broadcast June 26, 1956.

The Wreck of the Old 97

On a cold frosty morning/In the month of September/When the clouds were hangin’ low/Ninety-seven pulled out/Of the Washington station/Like an arrow shot from a bow

“The Wreck of the Old 97,” an interesting dramatic experiment from Suspense’s director-producer Elliott Lewis, was broadcast to a tremendous audience response on March 17, 1952, becoming the most well-received program of the 1951-52 season. It tells in story and song of the historical September 27, 1903 tragic train wreck detailed in the folk ballad “The Ship That Never Returned,” by Henry C. Work. Although Suspense curiously never returned to the story for an encore appearance, guest star Frank Lovejoy (who played the role of the train’s engineer) did stop by the following week’s broadcast (“A Murder of Necessity,” with Robert Young) to thank the listeners for their enthusiastic support.

Lewis, however, did manage to do several other episodes based on folk ballads in the wake of this broadcast’s success, including “Frankie and Johnny” (5/5/52, with Dinah Shore), “The Death of Barbara Allen” (10/20/52, with Anne Baxter), and “My True Love’s Hair (10/19/53, with Jeff Chandler). The balladeer who sings “The Wreck of the Old 97,” Harry Stanton, returned the following year to Suspense to sing “Tom Dooley,” in an episode starring Joseph Cotten (3/30/53) and based on the 1866 folk song.

During Lewis’ stint as producer-director, many of Suspense’s scripts were often based on real-life historical events in addition to the series’ more traditional fiction-based entries. “The Wreck of the Old 97” is an excellent example of how this experimentation worked extremely well; from the top-notch script (from writers Mindred Lord and Christopher Anthony) to the equally fine performances from the episode’s cast (Lovejoy, Junius Matthews, Roy Glenn, Joseph Kearns, Jack Kruschen, Clayton Post, Eddie Firestone, and Herb Butterfield), this show is a true winner in every respect.
9:10:02 AM    comment []  trackback []  

On this date in the Golden Age of Radio

From Those Were the Days:

1939 - The program, Honolulu Bound, was heard on CBS Radio. Phil Baker and the Andrews Sisters were featured on the program.
7:31:24 AM    comment []  trackback []