I’m finishing up a project right now for the First Generation Radio Archives, so blogging may be a little light the next day or so (or I may use the time-shifting device available with RadioUserLand—but don’t worry, I’ll only use it for good and not evil). I thank you in advance for your patience.

Oh, by the way—I got a nifty book in the mail yesterday from Hamilton Books entitled Blacklisted: The Film Lover’s Guide to the Hollywood Blacklist that promises to be really great reading. It’s a reference encyclopedia listing close to 900 films that individuals (directors, stars, writers, producers, etc.) affected by Hollywood’s witch hunt in the 40s and 50s worked on, and it’s got everything from Abbott & Costello films to B-western oaters. I’ve seen a few OTR comedy writers, like Mac Benoff (blacklisted) and Abe Burrows (friendly witness), mentioned in the book, too (I gave it an introductory skim).
12:16:04 PM    comment []  trackback []  

“And now for something completely different…”

I was rummaging through a box of computer-related junk a day or two ago, searching for a computer-related manual, when I happened upon a couple of CDs without labels. The curious side of me put one of them in the CD-ROM drive, and I was delighted to find that it was filled with some radio episodes of the classic BBC comedy Dad’s Army. For those of you not familiar with the series, Dad’s Army (1968-76) is a sitcom about Britain’s Home Guard, consisting of a group of men either too old or unfit to fight in the regular forces. Instead, they band together to head off the Nazi Menace during World War II. It’s one of Britain’s all-time popular comedy shows, recently named in the Top Ten Best Sitcoms of all time (it placed #4) as chosen by the viewing public.

Now, I’m sure you’re probably saying “Well, what does this have to do with old-time radio?” Well, nothing really—and yet, in a small way, it does. When I was a young tadpole, some of my earliest exposure to OTR was listening to rebroadcasts of the BBC Radio classic The Goon Show (starring Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers, and Spike Milligan) over WOUB in Athens, Ohio, Tuesday nights at 9:30pm. I found the show fascinating, sort of an aural equivalent to Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which I had also just discovered at that time (I have often observed that had it not been for Python, Rocky & Bullwinkle and Warner Brothers cartoons I probably would have grown up a halfway normal adult. But, that’s the road less traveled…); of course, I didn’t learn until much later that the members of the Python troupe had all been influenced by the Goons, rather than vice versa.

So, although Dad’s Army (which ran on radio from 1973-76) is kind of what we call NTR (new-time radio), it springs from a classic radio comedy tradition. One thing I admire about the British is that they never let radio die. Here in this country, with the exception of public radio, it’s all shock jocks and venomous talk shows and thirty minutes of commercial-free music. But the BBC still does radio drama and comedy, and continues to do it very well. Many of the shows that have been dubbed “Britcoms” were later adapted by the Beeb as radio comedies: Yes, Minister, As Time Goes By, One Foot in the Grave and To the Manor Born, to cite a few examples. The other unlabeled CD contained a wealth of episodes from another classic British television comedy, Steptoe & Son (1962-74)—which starred Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H. Corbett as a father-and-son team of “rag-and-bone” merchants. (You’re probably more familiar with the American version of this series, Sanford and Son, starring Redd Foxx and Demond Wilson in one of the most popular sitcoms of the 1970s.)

I’m really getting a kick out of listening to these superb radio comedy shows, by the way—I just put a couple on in the mornings while I type out my latest blog entry and I have to say, the similarities between them and classic OTR comedy are indeed striking. I’m not sure of their origin (though I probably downloaded them off a newsgroup a long time ago) and some of the shows are pretty poor, sound quality-wise. But I think when I get some extra cash together I might invest in some better quality recordings. According to Amazon.co.uk, Dad’s Army has been released in three CD collections of each “series” (the British definition of “season”) and Steptoe & Son has been released on both audio cassette and CD as well.
12:13:40 PM    comment []  trackback []