The Shadow (Australian Version) - Full Show

Click on the link above to enjoy the full version of "Out of This World" from the Australian version of The Shadow!

Happy Birthday to you...

This week on the OTR Express, we threw an aural birthday bash for one of the show's earliest supporters, my sister Laura.  A day early, we've packaged up some old time radio that we know she'll like (Our Miss Brooks) with a couple of nuggets we hope she'll like (The Shadow (Australian Version) and Mike Nichols & Elaine May).

Our Miss Brooks was, at one point, radio's top rated show, and was one of the few shows that made the transition to television keeping intact the main stars from the radio cast.  More often than not, the lead actor or actress from the radio program would make the leap, but the TV network or director would determine that the rest of the radio cast "didn't look like their characters".  (Which, of course, is ironic, given that radio allowed listeners to create their own visions of characters in their minds.  America would have been deprived of a lot of great radio talent had looks factored in.  But I digress...)

Following Our Miss Brooks we have an Australian broadcast of The Shadow.  Old time radio in other cultures isn't often thought about, but just like each country has their own TV entertainment, so it was with radio.  Similar to TV, some of the best shows from each country are imported or redone to fit locally, and so it was with the very popular American series, The Shadow. 

I will post a link to the full Shadow program shortly.

And finally, a short bit of very dry, educated humor from the comedy team that got its start at (surprise, surprise) the University of Chicago, Mike Nichols and Elaine May.

Happy Birthday, Laura!

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.