New Show - "Fibber McGee & Molly" and "The Strange Dr. Weird"

This week on the Old Time Radio Express, we listen to The Fibber McGee and Molly Program from January 2, 1945, as well as The Strange Dr. Weird, and the program, "The Man Who Talked With Death".

There are so many great aspects of the Fibber Mc Gee and Molly show that it was impossible to pick one episode that hit all the highlights.  This episode does a great job of showing the brilliance of some of the joke-writing and how the middle Johnson's Wax commercial is neatly incorporated, but there are so many other F&M standards that this episode doesn't have....the characters of the Old Timer and Wallace Wimple (actor Bill Thompson was fighting in WWII during this broadcast), the famous closet gag, some of Molly's more famous catchphrases ("T'aint funny, McGee!"), Fibber's rapid alliteration jokes, and many more.  I guess that's good - we've got a lot to listen to and talk about in the future.

The Strange Doctor Weird is, essentially, The Mysterious Traveler condensed into a 15 minute program.  My preference is The Mysterious Traveler, simply because so much more can be developed in 30 minutes than 15.  But like a novelist adept at writing short stories with a punch, Robert A. Arthur and David Kogan succeeded in both long-form and short-form radio.

Show #10 - Gunsmoke & X Minus One

This week on the Old Time Radio Express we listen to a couple of the great programs from the sunset of the golden age of radio - Gunsmoke and X Minus One.   We start with Gunsmoke and the tale "Blood Money".  Gunsmoke was dubbed radio's "adult" western - with the term "adult" meaning simply that it was directed more towards the grown-ups than the Hopalong Cassidys and Lone Rangers of the western genre.

Indeed, when I was younger and first listened to Gunsmoke, I didn't appreciate it.  The resolutions to the shows were unsatisfying, if there were any at all.  Often, Marshal Dillon and the rest of Dodge City were left at the end of the show no better off than they were at the beginning.  As someone who was used to the Lone Ranger forcing a confession out of the bad hombres and then riding off into the sunset with a "Hi-Yo Silver, away!", Gunsmoke was a sea change.

The older I got, though, and realized that life doesn't always wrap things up in a bow, the more I appreciated Gunsmoke, and today it ranks as one of my favorite old time radio shows.

X Minus One, on the other hand, has always been one of my favorites.  I can still remember the tagline for "Knock", the first X Minus One program that I heard:  "The last man on Earth sat alone in a room.  There was a knock at the door".  How can you not be intrigued by a teaser like that?

Like Gunsmoke, X Minus One was consistently high quality.  X Minus One used its science fiction status to its benefit, as it was able to subtly address heavy topics such as racism, genocide and colonialism that other programs could not.  This particular X Minus One stories - "Cold Equations" - is one of the more famous tales.

Show #9 - "The Burns & Allen Show" and "The Easy Aces"

January 10th's program was an ode to two of the three most famous ditzy radio comediennes - Gracie Allen and Jane Ace.  (For the record, the other was Marie Wilson as Irma in "My Friend Irma"). 

Gracie's husband, George Burns, is probably now the most remembered of the pair, as he outlived Gracie by some 32 years, dying in 1996.  During the days of "The Burns & Allen Show", however, Gracie was seen as just as famous and funny (and maybe even moreso) as George.

Jane Ace, like Gracie, was an airhead, and a queen of malapropisms.  Hers are more subtle.  Listen for instance, as she slips in "running around like a chicken with its hair cut off".   Without a studio audience to cue laughter at home, one had to know when to laugh themselves. 

I think modern day audiences, so used to having the laugh track and the studio audiences, will either love or hate "The Easy Aces", and programs that relied on subtle humor like "Bob & Ray" and "Lum & Abner".   To an ear accustomed to studio audience laughter, though, the programs may seem talky, and not funny.  But listen, and I think you'll enjoy...