Radio Stars: Too Late to Be Early...Or Vice Versa

[happyfilmluvguy]

As many performers have gone through over their careers, as they grow old, or as their acts do, the world starts to change, and so do they. With each coming year, a radio program goes through numerous changes, including a change of pace, a change of actors, and many times, change of material and the writers.

As a performer, you have to keep up with your audience, as you are their slave. You want them to love you, even if you don't say it outloud. Radio stars came and gone, but the many who stayed, had to change many of their ways, and bring in new material into the coming years. Some of this same material, as well as the cast, either kept or lost many of it's listeners.

The Lone Ranger was just not the same as it was in it's early years, though Jack Benny and his gang have never sounded funnier since they started cheering us with their gags and stories. What program, actor, year(s), etc have kept you wanting more? Were they better in their later years, or were they in their old?
To the performer, it's never too late to be early, or too early to be late.

 

[happyfilmluvguy]

I've always enjoyed the Jack Benny Program's later years, between 1943 and the 1950's. It sounded like they had a lot more fun and the show had progressed to it's highest point, and it seemed more complete to me then when some of the earlier members and situations were about.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've always preferred Fred Allen's earlier full-hour programs (1934-42) to his later (1942-49) half-hour shows. The later programs always seem rushed to me, like they've had to be ruthlessly cut down to fit into the time slot -- while the hour shows have a much more relaxed feel, and Allen has much more time to improvise thru the comedy, which was always his greatest strength.

Generally speaking, I also think that any program that began as a fifteen minute serial was not improved by going to a half-hour weekly format. This invariably changed the entire mood and feel of the program, and never for the better.

 

[Sunny]

The best example that comes to mind is Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. The show began as a regular 30-minute program in the late 1940s. It went through 3 or 4 different Johnny Dollars before Bob Bailey made the role his own. Sometime in the 1950s (1953?) it went to a 15-minute 5-part weekday serial, more than doubling the airtime for each story. This format is excellent, both for the quality of writing and story/character development, and for the opportunity it gave Johnny - I mean Bob. See, he owned that role!

The very latest run of the show, into the 1960s, went back to the 30-minute format. Sadly, the increased amount of advertising cut the show from about 27 minutes to barely 22. The feel is very rushed, and the plots suffer even more. Johnny (see, did it again!) does his best, but there's simply not much there to work with. It's sad for the stories to be so brief and scarcely-developed, after a decade of such excellence.

 

[Fletch]

I gotta say, Bob & Ray jumped the shark sometime in the 70s. I think it was when they appeared on Saturday Night Live singing "Do You Think I'm Sexy." It was like being trapped in a terrible dream.

 

[52Styleline]

Fibber McGee and Molly was a half hour show from its beginnings in the 30's through the early 50's. At the end, instead of a half hour each week, the show went to 15 minutes daily M-F. They also got rid of most of the supporting cast. These short shows told a story in five days and they had their moments, but they were a pale shadow of the shows of the 40's and early 50's.

 

[happyfilmluvguy]

More responses please.

 

[Sunny]

I thought of another: The Adventures of Sam Spade.

The radio Sam Spade was an entirely different creature from the original Sam Spade of The Maltese Falcon. For the most part, the show was a cleverly-written spoof of the whole private eye tough-guy genre. Howard Duff played Sam with a lot of energy, glibness, and an immense amount of humor. He'd deliver some pretty zany commentary and outrageously egotistical self-aggrandisement at break-neck speed, a laugh in his voice the whole time. The show was not solely a spoof, either; the plots were quite decent and more than a few episodes were pretty serious. Duff handled it all with flair.

After about a year and a half Duff was replaced by Steven Dunn (I'm probably mis-spelling that); the show may have changed networks as well. I don't recall if the writers changed. The plots themselves did not suffer, but Spade's dialogue and running commentary were no longer good, fun spoof; they were over-the-top and ludicrous. Dunn sounded like he was trying to simultaneously imitate and surpass Duff's Spade. He had so much energy he sounded like he was nearly airborne. If Duff had a line praising his own (Spade's) "classic profile," he delivered it as if he thought it was humorously ironical. If Dunn had the same line, he'd deliver it as if he actually believed it! He comes across cocky and arrogant, especially in the scenes with Effie, played by Lurene Tuttle. Her rapport with Duff was one of the best parts of the old series; with Dunn, it's just cartoonish.

I don't want to come down too hard on Dunn, but it's a jar when one's accustomed to Howard Duff's Sam. Dunn was fully capable of many roles. I don't know if it was the writing and/or the direction that turned his Sam Spade into a caricature. All I know is that it is, and I can rarely stand to listen to the later episodes.

 

[Fletch]

Funny thing. The great bulk of surviving OTR, especially what anyone actually listens to for pleasure, dates from the TV era.

Maybe we'd have a better opinion of radio as a medium today if more of the early stuff, from radio's primacy days, had survived. Instead we get a medium that knows it's playing catch-up, and is vainly trying to soup up old formulas, but the heart isn't there.

Or am I being unkind? Lizzie, you'd be a better judge than I...

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think it depends on the genre -- personally, I *prefer* '30s radio to late-40's radio simply because it comes across to me as far less formulaic. There was still a sense of experimentation in the thirties that was for the most part gone by the time the war came along, and there was more of an anything-can-happen quality, especially when it came to variety programs. Listening to surviving Rudy Vallee Hours from the mid-thirties is an amazing cross-section of every form of show biz from those days, from slapstick comedy to heavy heavy drama -- more of a real *variety* than anything radio would be able to do in later years. Not even "The Big Show" in the early 50s was able to attract the wide spectrum of talent that was Vallee's for the asking in the thirties. The cheesy syndicated kiddie serials that OTR folks of the MP3 generation tend to equate with "thirties radio" are a far cry from what the medium actually was.

A lot of thirties radio did survive -- more than most OTR people realize. But because it doesn't have the cozy familiarity of "Gunsmoke" or "Johnny Dollar," it tends to be overlooked except by hard-core specialists. But it's worth looking for -- there's nothing the CBS Radio Workshop did in the 50s that the Columbia Workshop hadn't already done twenty years earlier.

 

[The Wolf]

I prefer radio shows of the 1930s and 1940s. The last show (chronologically) I enjoy is "The Casebook of Gregory Hood" from 1946. I've only heard the early ones but heard that the ones that have someone other than gale gordon as Hood aren't as good.
I agree with 52Styline that Fibber McGee is better when the supporting characters (including, co-incidently, Gale Gordon) were part of the story. Without them t'aint funny, McGee.
fftopic: I find it ironic that Francis X. Bushman had a revialized career as a radio performer considering he couldn't getting acting gigs when talkies came along because of his voice.lol

Sincerely,
the Wolf

 

[Fletch]

Just because studio bosses didn't like his voice didn't mean he had a lousy one. In the studio days one powerful person's word could ruin you. Radio was a whole other ball game (altho I would not have wanted to tangle with a Klauber or a Hummert).

 

[dhermann1]

I think it depends on the genre -- personally, I *prefer* '30s radio to late-40's radio simply because it comes across to me as far less formulaic. There was still a sense of experimentation in the thirties that was for the most part gone by the time the war came along, and there was more of an anything-can-happen quality, especially when it came to variety programs. Listening to surviving Rudy Vallee Hours from the mid-thirties is an amazing cross-section of every form of show biz from those days, from slapstick comedy to heavy heavy drama -- more of a real *variety* than anything radio would be able to do in later years. Not even "The Big Show" in the early 50s was able to attract the wide spectrum of talent that was Vallee's for the asking in the thirties. The cheesy syndicated kiddie serials that OTR folks of the MP3 generation tend to equate with "thirties radio" are a far cry from what the medium actually was.

A lot of thirties radio did survive -- more than most OTR people realize. But because it doesn't have the cozy familiarity of "Gunsmoke" or "Johnny Dollar," it tends to be overlooked except by hard-core specialists. But it's worth looking for -- there's nothing the CBS Radio Workshop did in the 50s that the Columbia Workshop hadn't already done twenty years earlier.

I suspect that by the same token the audiences were a lot less jaded and less sophisticated. A lot of the humor of that era derives from lovingly making fun of the "old fashioned" ways of small town and country folk.

 

[Harp]

I suspect that by the same token the audiences were a lot less jaded and less sophisticated. A lot of the humor of that era derives from lovingly making fun of the "old fashioned" ways of small town and country folk.

...and I suspect that the "less sophisticated" audiences of that time
were actually more sensical rather than less sophisticated. And radio's
spoken word more directly competed with the written word found in
books, newspapers, magazines, and journals. In many respects, past generations
were better grounded educationally and were more familiar with authors, classic
literature, foreign languages, and history than more recent arrivals. My late grandmother
loved radio, but could also read Latin, cite literature and history, and play classical piano.
I believe she was emblematic of her generation, whose taste had better standards.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Don't be too sure of the "less sophisticated" trope -- after all, the likes of Cole Porter, Noel Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Beatrice Lillie, and Josephine Baker were all guests on the Vallee program at one time or another during the thirties. I think the truth of the matter is that American pop culture was far less compartmentalized then -- even a program like the National Barn Dance, as rube-oriented as radio could get, could make a star out of an esoteric personality like the blind comedy-pianist Alec Templeton, who did very clever parodies of the conventions of concert music. Note also the large number of comedy sketches during the thirties by performers ranging from Ed Wynn to Fred Allen revolving around satire of Shakespeare or grand opera: for the comedy to work, the material presupposes the listener has a general familiarity with the source material. All things taken together, I think thirties radio has a rather urbane foundation beneath the corn.

 

[The Reno Kid]

I gotta go with Lizzie and Wolf on this one. I've always preferred the 30s and 40s shows, though I must admit to a certain fondness for Johnny Dollar. I love the earlier Burns & Allen shows. I actually enjoy some of the cheezy kids' serials from the 30s. I'm not sure why but I especially enjoy Jerry at Fair Oaks. Oddly, the programs I seem to enjoy most of all are the news broadcasts from '38-'45. I just can't seem to get enough of them.

 

[Harp]

Oddly, the programs I seem to enjoy most of all are the news broadcasts from '38-'45. I just can't seem to get enough of them.

Amen to this. To follow my last train of thought...radio audiences of
the past were not less sophisticated but quite sensical, and they listened
to radio because broadcasts met their standards. News radio of
that era, personified by Murrow, Trout, Severeid and others established
the professional credentials that television news inherited.