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After 52 episodes, the last Podcast of Box 13 will be released. It’s been a good run with some of the best writing and acting in radio. While there were a few clunkers such as, “Actor’s Alibi” this was the exception rather than rule.
Holiday’s plan to find mystery plots by receiving letters sent to Box 13 at the Star Times has paid off. It’s attracted all kinds: damsels in distress, criminals looking for unwitting accomplices, and people who were just plain crazy. Below are five of my favorites:
A great mystery where Dan tries to find out what a disabled young man who can’t talk meant by sending him a book of poems by Sir Walter Raleigh. Features Ladd’s fantastic reading voice.
This is a very tense and suspenseful story as Holiday finds himself framed for murder, with the local police hunting for him, along with the real killer. His job is to stay alive. It’s one of Holiday’s cleverest adventures.
Dan Holiday answers a letter from a homeless man, and goes undercover as an indigent as he tries to find out who’s behind the disappearance of several homeless men. The answer is shocking.
Dan Holiday got plenty of crazy letters, but this one took the cake. The letter writer informed Holiday that he would kill him in 4 days and that if he went to the police, he’d kill Holiday sooner. Holiday’s challenge is to find the madman–without finding death.
Dan Holidays follows the instructions in a letter to purchase “the Hang Li” piece. The shop owner gives it to Holiday and insists he not pay for it. It’s a very surprising story, and perhaps the most profound of the series.
And there are many other great episodes, all of which are available on our Box 13 page.
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George is hired to go to Mexico to bring back a fugitive member of a political machine that is promising to tell the truth-for a price. George and Brooksie find themselves on a bus surrounded by characters all headed for the same place-Casa Diablo.
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Regan takes the case of an immigrant shopkeeper who has suffered an arson attempt. Regan suspects a hateful neighbor, as the case becomes a murder investigation.
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Reporter Mike Rivera investigates mass extortion in Chinatown.
Recorded: July 26, 1954
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If you mention Green Acres, people think of the 1965-71 Sitcom starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor. But fifteen years before Green Acres came to TV, it came to radio.
CBS broadcast Granby’s Green Acres as a Summer replacement series. Granby’s Green Acres told the story of John Granby, a Banker who got fed up with city life and took his wife and family to relocate to a farm.
Sound familiar?
The radio Green Acres were written by a 33-year old writer, who would go on to write 150 of the 170 TV episodes of Green Acres.
There were quite a few similarities between the radio and TV versions of Green Acres. Both featured a scatter-brained Mr. Kimball (although the radio Mr. Kimball ran the county store rather than being the County Agent.) Granby also had a farm hand named Eb. The radio show had some good bits that Sommers would dust off for early TV episodes.
An early Green Acres TV episode where Oliver can’t decide what to plant has its basis in the radio episode, “Mr. Granby Plants a Crop.”
And this great little bit of dialogue also came from the radio show originally:
Oliver: I’d take a seed, a tiny little seed, I’d plant it in the ground, I’d put some dirt on it, I’d water it, and pretty soon, do you know what I would have?
Lisa: A dirty little wet seed.
At the end of the radio run. John Granby (Gale Gordon) told listeners to send letters in to their local CBS station with their thoughts on Granby’s Green Acres. The show never returned to the air.
There were many reasons the show didn’t make it in 1950. One big one might be that Granby’s Green Acres was not a show that audiences were ready for. Americans had migrated in large numbers to cities like New York and Los Angeles in search of economic opportunities. Granby’s desire to move to the country seemed absurd. When Green Acres appeared on TV, it was a very different world with violence and unrest, crime on the rise, and social unrest. Moving to Hooterville sounded a lot less crazy and made us more sympathetic with Mr. Douglas.
The biggest problem with Granby’s Green Acres may have been that it just wasn’t ready for prime time. Granby is too much of a cantankerous blowhard. The radio version gives you an appreciation of the talent with which Eddie Albert played the role of Oliver Wendell Douglas, as a complex mix of bombast, idealism, practicality, and romance that made the character a joy to watch.
In the radio version, Sommers only had given real airtime to Mr. Kimball from the store, and a know it all County Agent who always ate Granby’s supper. Pretty thin gruel.
Not continuing Granby’s Green Acres was a smart decision. Even with great comics like Burns and Allen leaving radio for television, radio comedy was still undergoing a golden age and Sommers creation simply was not in the same league as shows like Our Miss Brooks,Life of Riley, and Life with Luigi.
It also had a nice aftermath. Sommers continued to develop as a writer and work the world of television, writing on such shows as Amos and Andy, Dennis the Menace, and Petticoat Junction. When Green Acres came back, it became one of television’s best sitcoms.
It featured Pat Buttram turning in the role Mr. Haney who was always trying to sell Mr. Douglas something, Eva Gabor as the sweet but often confusing Hungarian Princess Lisa Douglas, and the Ziffels who treat their pig like he’s their son, and much more.
While the radio show didn’t have these elements, it serves as a rough draft of Green Acres, which makes it an interesting listen.
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The show began in 1960 on ABC and has spawned numerous TV spinoffs, movies, and one-shot TV specials. Some of these efforts have been of dubious quality, but what keeps the remakes and spinoffs coming is that the show has so many fans that anything with the Flinstones in it will have an instant appeal.
The 1960-66 original TV run remains the bedrock (pun intended) for the Flinstones franchise. The show is in the same style of other classic “everyman” sitcoms such as The Life of Riley and The Honeymooners. The show was lead by veteran radio and cartoon actors Alan Reed and Mel Blanc. It was strengthened by good writing that took advantage of the show’s fantastic setting and the opportunities presented by cartoon physics.
What has made the show so popular for so long?
The first key is animation. Parents introduce their kids to cartoons such as Looney Tunes and Disney’s gigantic cartoon collection. They’re the type of shows that parents have no problem introducing their kids to. And the grown up nature of the Flintstones helps to keep kids fans after they’ve grown up, even if they don’t advertise it. They just buy the DVDs for the kids.
The second thing is the fantastic stone age setting. With pet dinosaurs instead of pet dogs, cars that move by the passengers and driver running, stone-age Television, and all the conveniences of living in Bedrock make the setting timeless, and help make the show as enjoyable and accessible today as when it first aired.
The Jetsons, which launched two years after the Flintstones, has endured, but with far fewer spin-offs and less prominence. The reason The Jetsons has enjoyed a lesser success is that it’s set in the future and its vision of the future often seems dated. After all, 2062 is only 50 years away and its unlikely to be the world the creators of the Jetsons imagined.
The other advantage that The Flintstones has is the relationship between the Rubbles and the Flintstones. The friendship and love between the classic characters makes the show speak to every generation.
Shows about the present and the future become dated far more easily than shows about a fantastic past, and shows that feature great friendships will last the longest of all.
