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Golden Age Article

Religious Dramas on Radio, Part One

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Over the years, many religious dramas have appeared on the radio from the 19e0s right through the present. It’s probably fair to say that the bulk of long-lasting radio dramas produced since the end of the Golden Age of radio have either been underwritten by Foundation grants or religious organizations. Still, there were plenty of programs with religious themes or put on by religious organizations during the Golden Age, and often with the same type of talent appeared on the religious programs.

Of course, during the Golden Age of Radio, many shows that would hardly be considered religious would often pause around Christmas and refer back to Bethlehem. We won’t really discuss that here. Our focus is on those shows that were religiously produced or focused on religion. And of course, we’re not considered with non-dramatic religious programming such as Aimee McPherson’s sermons. In this first part, we’ll focus on the major golden age religious programs:

The Ava Maria Hour (1939-50s):

The Ava Maria Hour was perhaps the first religious drama to hit the air. It was a Catholic program, sponsored by the Greymoor Friars in Garrison, New York.  Early episodes appear to have focused on telling the stories of the lives of the Saints.

The program’s most ambitious undertaking was in 1951 when it produced an exhaustive mini-series on the Life of Christ that ran for a stunning 43 episodes. The stories were for the most part well done and well-researched, though in a serial that long, they’ll always be a few parts that don’t work.

Recently, the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement have begun to rebroadcast old episodes of the Ava Maria Hour on Blog Talk Radio hosted by Father Bob Warren.

Light of the World (1940s):

This program originated over NBC and had the unique premise of serializing the Bible with fifteen minute daily installments. It was broadcast mostly  during World War II and unfortunately the only known episodes in existence are from major news days when stations recorded full day broadcasts.

Eternal Light (1944-73)

The Eternal Light was a program born out of World War II which brought home to many Americans the dangers of anti-Semitism.  Eternal Light was produced by the Jewish Theological Seminary and aired over NBC. It began over radio but eventually found its way to television.

The topics of the episodes varied. While there were a few episodes that were directly based on Bible stories, more often Jewish-authored books about biblical events would be used as a basis for a drama. In addition, the series focused extensively on the history of the Jewish people, their trials and persecutions, as well as the lives of accomplished Jews throughout history. In some ways, it was similar to the black radio production Destination: Freedom in its overall focus. It remained a mainstay throughout the golden age of radio, though in latter years it moved away from drama and more toward  discussions.

While there’s no handy MP3 download site, OTRCat offers a 700 episode collection for sale as well a free radio sample you can listen to and download.

The Upper Room (1947)

This was somewhat of an odd series by Carleton E. Morse, the famous creator of One Man’s Family and I Love a Mystery.  While Morse’ fictional Barbour family was a cauldron of marital strife and unrest, the hope of The Upper Room was to promote strong families and marital togetherness. Unfortunately, the episodes come off as far too preachy, as a religious version of the industrial film. Only six episodes remain in existence, four of which are available here.

The Family Theater (1947-57)

Where Morse failed, Father Patrick Peyton succeeded.  Peyton also wanted to promote family  togetherness  and family prayer and approached the Mutual Broadcasting System about doing a series called the Family Theater. There was definitely interest in the series.  In the post-war era, concerns about juvenile delinquency, and the overall decline of morals made Family Theater a dose of just what the doctor ordered.

Mutual was clear that the series had to be non-denominational in nature, so most of the episodes have appeal to a wide audience. The show had no sponsor and its only product was family prayer which was encouraged by two motto, “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreamed of” and “The family that prays together stays together.”

What aired between these two scenes were some of the finest radio dramas of the era. The programs originally written for the show  often pulled at the heartstrings as well as  encouraging courage, sacrifice, honesty, mercy, and love of family.  Later scripts dramatized parts of classic books  including Don Quixote, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Robin Hood.

Family Theater was an anthology program with a different cast every week, as well as a host who would talk about the importance of strong families and family prayer. Guets  included a who’s who of Hollywood: Jimmy Stewart, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Fred Allen, Jimmy Durante, Edward G. Robinson, William Gargan, Ronald Reagan, Edmond O’Brien, and many more. In addition, radio comedy power couples Fibber McGee and Molly and Ozzie and Harriet did special episodes of their programs for Family Theater.

Several sites sell DVD discs of the Family Theater, in addition otr.net has more than 300 episode available for online streaming.

Greatest Story Ever Told (1947-56):

The Greatest Story Ever Told focused on the life and time of Jesus. Unlike other programs mentioned,  the show was sponsored throughout its run by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber company.  However, Goodyear was sensitive to the fact that overt commercials would not sit well with many in the audience, and so they were  mentioned at the beginning of the show with a few second tag but without long form commercials.

The program also didn’t include any cast information, so when it comes to voices involved, it could be anyone. The voice of Jesus was given an echo effect which was thought to be similar to giving a picture of Jesus a halo. The writers also decided to use no fictional dialogue for Jesus, but to only have Him make statements that were written in the Gospels.

There were several sorts of episodes: some told stories directly from the life of Christ, some dramatized parables, and others focused on how the hearers of Jesus may have applied his lessons to their own lives in the first century.

Both the parables and the incidents from the Bible were expanded, using imagination, research, and dramatic license to take what may be a few verses out of the Bible and make it into a 30 minute episode. The results were usually pretty good with the incidents, but the Parables were weaker as sometimes in the expanded story, the original point of the parable ended up lost.

The most interesting episodes  follow a first century protagonist as they face a serious problem and find a solution in hearing a teaching of Christ. The applications were usually well-thought out, and rarely came off as preachy, and helped listeners to see well-worn passages in a new light.

The show was also enhanced by an orchestra and a choir, both of which were heard frequently.

76 episodes are available here.

Next week, we’ll turn our attention to the shows began in 1950s through the modern era. If you’re aware of a religious radio dramas from before the 1950s that we’ve not mentioned, please do so in the comments.

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Casey Jones: TV’s First Policewoman

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It wasn’t Cagney and Lacey in the 1980s. It wasn’t Police Woman in the 1970s. Rather, the first police police woman to come to television was Casey Jones (played by Beverly Garland.)

Casey Jones (Beverly Garland) in Uniform

The concept of following the adventures of a Policewoman wasn’t new, but it was rarely tried. In 1946, ABC had brought stories from the case files of Lieutenant Mary Sullivan of the NYPD, the nation’s first female homicide police detective and the nation’s first director of Policewomen.

In 1957, Decoy went into syndication starring Garland as Casey Jones, a New York City policewoman.  Some declare the show a female Dragnet. The comparison is not without merits. Decoy not only had the heroine as a narrator, but was often a police procedural, although sometimes it dabbled in crime melodrama. However, Decoy, while having a technical advisor from the NYPD, was not based on real-life cases. It remains unique among police shows of its era because of its powerful female lead.

I’m a Cop Not a Sociologist

In the episode, “Dark Corridor,” Casey goes undercover to investigate the murder of a model inmate in a women’s prison. The warden has been lenient and tried to focus the prison on rehabilitation and is concerned that the murder could undermine her efforts with the state. Casey cuts her off with a simple, “I’m a policewoman, not a sociologist.”

When the show was at its best, Casey kept to that simple code, as she took on gamblers, robbers, murderers, drug dealers, smugglers, and thieves just like her male counterparts. However, Casey also investigated some crimes that targeted women which weren’t ususally dealt with on television such as rape and obscene phone calls.

Casey was a great character. She was tough and intelligent, but also sensitive. Casey cared about people and empathized with them, even some of the criminals. However, Casey’s sensitive nature didn’t stop her from doing her job (with one exception I’ll discuss below.) 

At the end of most episodes, she breaks the fourth wall and talks to the audience for a minute with some thoughts on the case just concluded.

The vast majority of episodes have Casey going undercover for at least part of the episode. Casey’s undercover roles included society heiress, nurse, carnival dancer, shop lifter, and junkie. It makes you appreciate the talent of Ms. Garland, who not only had to play her character, but play her character pretending to be someone else in nearly every episode.

Decoy also welcomed a variety of guest stars, many of whom would go on to great things. Larry Hagman, who would go on to fame in Dallas made his first television appearance in a bit part in “Saturday Was Lost.”  Suzanne Pleshette made an early TV appearance in, “The Sound of Tears.” And a young Peter Falk gave a show-stealing guest performance in “The Comeback” three years before getting a best supporting actor Ocsar Nomination and a decade before he would make his first appearance as Lieutenant Columbo.

Peter Falk

While Garland was the only actor to appear in every episode, she had one big supporting player: New York City. If nothing else were good about Decoy, it’d be worth watching for its look at 1950s New York City. The show made New York come alive and the setting was key to the whole story.

The Best of Decoy:

20 of the Public Domain Decoy episodes have made their way online and several of the non-public domain episodes have also made their way onto DVD releases from Timeless Video,  Alpha Video, and other companies. Over the past year, from a variety of sources, I’ve been able to able to watch 31 of the 39 episodes of Decoy. Some of the best of these were:

The Pilot Episode

Also known as Stranglehold. The plot is that a man was strangled and that the police believe that a woman who lives in the building knows who did it. Casey goes undercover to get the woman to spill. This a powerful suspense-filled Noirish episode that sets a great tone for the rest of the series.

The Sound of Tears

Casey investigates the death of an engaged man. Casey does a great job investigating the case, while dealing with old wounds it reopens, as she lost the man she loved to an act of violence.

Saturday Was Lost 

This is one episode where a Dragnet comparison is apt. Casey has to help a teenage girl what happened to her sister, while they were under the influence of drugs. A powerfully done and unforgetable episode that could have been produced by Jack Webb.

Night of Fire

Casey goes undercover in an office to investigate an arson where all fingers of suspicion are pointed at a woman who had been a mental institution. Good mystery and the denoument is dramatic and fitting.

The Comeback

Peter Falk plays a race track cashier who is in cahoots with a criminal making counterfeit parimutuelracing tickets. Casey pretends to be crooked and wanting a piece of the action in exchange for her cooperation, so she can break the racket. However, Falk believes she’s too classy to go crooked, tries to talk her out of it, and then gets beat up for trying to steal the picture that the counterfeiting took of Casey taking his money so that she can get out of it.  Falk is frustrating to both Casey and the counterfeiting boss but endearing at the same time in a TV appearance that foreshadowed a great acting career to come.

Earthbound Sattelite

Casey goes undercover to bust up a gambling ring. The plan is for police to follow her to the location. The problem? The gamblers have such a confusing system of switching cars and making turns, that the police can’t keep up. Inspired by space satellites, the police improvise a high tech solution,  at least for 1958.

Other episodes that are well-worth watching include Fiesta at Midnight, The First Arrest, Tin Pan Payoff, Shadow of Van Gogh, and Ladies Man.  

Who is Casey Jones?

Of course, the episodes weren’t all great. One of the challenges in Decoy was that the portrayal of Casey was uneven. Decoy was definitely trying to reach female viewers, howwever every Decoy script was written by a man who imagined what type of script women might like. In addition, no one wrote more than four episodes of Decoy, so there were differing views of the character that came to bear.

The episode, “Cry Revenge” was bizarre with a young disabled woman marrying a man who was making harassing and threatening  phone calls to her mother in order to get revenge on her mother for her father leaving. Similarly weird, was the episode, “Death Watch” (IMDB link only)  which featured a shoplifting ring that did murder-for-hire as a sideline, and an odd melodramatic plot with a punchy son.

Decoy rarely went more wrong than when Casey went outside of police work and towards social work. In an unforgetably disturbing scene at the end of, “Night Light,” Casey urges a criminal to reject his son (apparently to prevent him from becoming a criminal), and the criminal then proceeds to tell his son that he doesn’t want him or care about him. 

Yeah, that’s the key to a well-adjusted adulthood.

The most egregious example of this was the episode, “Scapegoat” (IMDB only) in which Casey travels out of town to bring back a suspect. The suspect is embarassed by having to wear handcuffs, so Casey feels bad for her and takes the handcuffs off as long as the fugitive promises not to run away. Casey gets distracted for a minute and low and behold, the fugure (“shock”) escapes. The convict is gets her mentally disabled ten year old-son who she plans to throw off a bridge because she’s unable to pay for the private hospital she had him and feels that he’s better off dead than a state institution. Casey talks her out of throwing her son over the bridge by using her own boneheaded move as proof that government employees are capable of compassion and caring.

This episode was a classic case of a writer violating their character. It’s almost shocking that this one made it to air because it contradicts every other episode that shows Casey as calm and thoroughly competent, with emotions in check.  

“Across the World” is notable for Casey being knocked out early in the episode and the audience getting to watch three people they don’t know or care about at each other’s throats in an after-school special style show that I guess was trying to urge people not to get involved in international gun-running.

I also didn’t buy the emotional angles in “Eye for an Eye,” but that may have been a matter of taste.

Still, with both its good and bad episodes, Decoy remains a memorable program, that any fan of Classic TV detectives should acquaint themselves with.

 20 Public Domain Decoy Episodes available at the Internet Archive.

Golden Age Article

The Top 10 1970s Columbo Episodes, Part Three

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Part One is here, Part Two is here.

3) A Friend in Deed (1974)

This episode has a good twist in it. For starters, the primary villain is none other than the Deputy Commissioner of Police (played by Richard Kiley). For another, he didn’t commit the initial homicide.

The story begins with a friend of the Deputy Commissioner meets him at a bar and tells him he just killed his wife in a moment of rage and doesn’t know what to do. The Commissioner assures him he’ll take care of it and carefully re-arranges the crime scene to make it look like it was the work of a burgular who had been hitting local homes and arrange an alibi for his neighbor.

Then the Commissioner murders his own wife and uses the occasion of the wake for the first man’s wife to enlist the help of the first killer in covering up his own murder.

This case presents a unique challenge to Columbo. There are several cases when the prominent murderers he hunts will use their connections to pressure Columbo to back off, but this time Columbo is facing off against corrupt superior with more direct authority and control over the investigation. Even as Columbo produces more inconsistencies with “the burgular did it” story, the Commissioner pushes him towards that one answer.

The Commissioner is one of Columbo’s chilling villains, combining his sociopathic nature, an intimidating personality, and the raw power of a high police official.

In the end, Columbo has to get very creative and enlist the help of the real burgular to solve the case in one of Columbo’s memorable endings.

2) Now, You See Him-1976

This episode is the second Jack Cassidy episode on the list. This is perhaps the Columbo episode I enjoyed the most. Cassidy is fantastically believable as the Great Santini, a clever magician with a past that he must keep secret at all costs which leads him to kill his employer who is blackmailing him.

Even though, the music and style of the Great Santini are totally 1970s, there’s a certain edge of coolness even watching this episode 30 years later, and Cassidy plays the murderer with a great deal of charm throughout the episode.

This episode saw the return of Sergeant Wilson (Bob Disky). Wilson had appeared in the 1972 episode, “The Greenhouse Jungle” as a young by the book police sergeant who chafed against Columbo’s unorthodox methods, only for Columbo to be proven right after Wilson arrested the wrong man. In, “Now You See Him,” Wilson has grown a bit and actually is helpful to Columbo on the case. It should be noted that this is the only time that giving Columbo a sidekick worked out well.

With a solid denouement featuring Columbo’s own magic trick with some key help from Sergeant Wilson, this is a fun way to spend 75 minutes.

1) A Stitch in Crime-1973

This episode begins with a fairly clever murder plot in which a Dr. Barry Mayfieldplans to murder his partner by putting temporary sutures where permanent ones ought to go, which will lead to the doctor’s death. A nurse finds out and the Mayfield kills her to stop her from spilling the plan.

As Nimoy is most famous for playing Spock on Star Trek many reviews will reference this as Spock v. Columbo. The comparison is not entirely without merit. Nimoyis cold, calculating, and throughout most of the episode, detached and unemotional. He’s the picture of a perfect sociopath and very menacing. The scene right before he murdered the nurse is perhaps the most startling in the series. 

Like with “A Friend in Deed,” what makes Mayfield a particularly dangerous killer is not just that he’s a heartless murderer, but his position. In this case, as he’s a doctor who is supposed to be a healer, it adds another dimension to the character.

In this episode, Columbo has to work to prevent the original murder that Dr. Mayfield set out commit. This adds some additional tension to the episode that isn’t your ordinary episode of Columbo. This episode is also notable for being one of the occassions where Columbo gets mad at a killer and shows it:

The ending to this episode just can’t be beat. As we get to the end, it does look like Columbo may have lost or more accurately, got a split decision that will leave Dr. Mayfield free. It’s only in the last forty-five seconds that Columbo pulls it out. 

Of course, other fans have their favorites. And it’s a hallmark of Columbo movie reviews that on nearly every 1970s episode, some fans will insist it was one of Columbo’s best and others will insist it was one of the weakest. Your feedback is always welcomed.

The entire 1970s Columbo Series is available on DVD from Amazon, along the 1989 and 1990 Mystery Movies series. The 1991-93 Mystery Moviesseries will be available on DVD February 8th. Episodes of Columbo are also available on DVD and Instant Watch from Netflix.

This post contains affiliate links, which means that items purchased from these links may result in a commission being paid to the author of this post.

UPDATE:

Linked by the Rap Sheet where folks are discussing their own favorites and suggesting substitutions.

Golden Age Article

The Guide to OTR Distribution Models

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There are a number of ways to get an Old Time Radio fix. Each has advantages and disadvantages to it.  There’s some debate back and forth between various sites. I think each can meet the needs of a specific base of fans.

My purpose is not to reccomend any specific products, hosts, or services, only to give the interested fan a look at the benefits and drawbacks of each way of accessing Old Time Radio.

It should also be said that just because there are disadvantages to a method doesn’t mean the medium is bad, just giving pros and cons.

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