Tag: American Audio Drama

Golden Age Article

The American Audio Drama Tradition, Part Thirteen: Conclusion and the Future

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Continued from Part Twelve

Conclusion

The Golden Age of American Radio at its peak held Americans in thrall day by day and week by week. It set a standard for high quality in both writing and acting that was a tough act to follow. Radio dramas that followed over the next twenty years strained to reach the heights of radio at its peak and fell far short.

The end of CBS Radio Mystery Theater in 1982 and PBS being forced to scale back its audio drama ambitions was enough to lay to rest the idea that the scope and grandeur of the golden age of radio was in reach for modern producers. Yet, that wasn’t the end of audio drama in the United States. Those currently making audio dramas fall into three categories:

A few corporate properties have found ways to make radio drama profitable. We can assume GraphicAudio’s high-octane audio dramas have made them successful enough to be a worthy acquisition last year, and it would be surprising if the Twilight Zone Radio Dramas hadn’t turned some sort of profit. In addition, Audible has begun making audio dramas and longer dramatized audiobooks as a way to draw in potential subscribers (and revenue) to their online service.

For non-profits, it was an opportunity to reach an audience to fulfill their mission at a far lower expense than television. In addition, the most prodigious at selling albums of their work have been able to recoup their production costs and use the revenue to expand their radio presence. 

Most Independent drama producers have known from the start they would never be Orson Welles, but they persisted anyway. They set out to find an audience to play for. The best of them found their audience, built a relationship, and served them well. For actors, it was (at best) a fun job to do in addition to what other acting or non-acting jobs they did to pay the bills. For Independent creators, audio dramas are a labor of love, an investment in time and money to do something they care about, but which is unlikely to do much more than break even after paying their cast and crew. If they’re very lucky, they may make a small supplemental income.

Many newer audio dramas have come out as podcasts. They never attempted to be on radio, or had a “theater.” On many productions, the cast has never met in person with recordings done at a distance (even before COVID-19) and the performances edited together seamlessly, if both the acting and editing is done well.

Yet most of these productions have a love for the medium at heart. Even for those who make a small profit, there are easier ways to make a living, even in the unreliable world of the arts. Some may have been inspired by the golden age of radio. Others may have no knowledge or interest in the old days, but nonetheless love the power of the medium. It’s cliché, even hackneyed to refer to audio as “the theater of the mind.” Yet it’s true. Audio drama, done correctly, can connect with the listener in an impactful, intimate way. by tapping into the power of imagination.

The Future 

For the foreseeable future, most successful audio dramas will be released as podcasts to a potential worldwide audience. There are countless free podcasts. Some last only few episodes before being abandoned. Some limited series were only a few episodes. Others continue for years until real life pressures and needs forces creators to step away.

Brands such as Colonial Radio Theater, Harry Nile, LA Theatre Works, GraphicAudio, and Adventures in Odyssey that have an existing base for selling products are going to be able to continue to do so and Audible can do what it likes. I doubt we’ll see new producers able to commercially sell audio dramas. While Christian radio or public radio stations might air a new audio drama or two, I expect we won’t hear a new series on radio.

While radio and CD releases have been the past of radio, it’s future will be in the world of podcasts where corporate-sponsored efforts will compete with crowd-funded podcast acting troupes, and the self-funded low-budget series. The future of American audio drama, much like its past, will be varied, colorful, and marked by passion and dedication.

Final Thoughts

It’s been quite a fun summer series and I have to thank Caroline Crompton for prompting this whole series.

The biggest regret is all the programs we didn’t cover or just briefly touched on. ZBS, National Radio Theater of the Ear, California Artists Radio Theater, the Cape Cod Mystery Theater, and Down Gilead Lane are among the series that I either didn’t say much about or whose existence I mentioned briefly. As I said when I started, I wasn’t setting out to write an exhaustive history and therefore we couldn’t include everyone.

I do see an opportunity to write a history of radio drama since the Golden Age of Radio. A lot of interesting individuals have helped form that history. It’s the type of thing that would be written by someone who had retired or could take a sabbatical year to travel, interview people, track down recordings, and create something truly special for the audience that would be interested in it. If anyone writes such an exhaustive history, I’ll be sure to read and review it.

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The American Audio Drama Tradition, Part Seven: The Seventies, Part Two

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Continued from part six.

CBS Radio Mystery Theater

The third time proved to be the charm for network radio revivals. Himan Brown, who’d created the Inner Sanctum Mysteries during the Golden Age of Radio was director and producer of the program. The show was hosted by E.G. Marshall who in true Inner Sanctum fashion was the spooky host of the proceedings. The Mystery Theater told a lot of different sorts of stories under that rubric of mystery. The series was perhaps best known for its chilling stories in line with Brown’s reputation from Inner Sanctum. These hit a sweet spot in the 1970s as stories of the supernatural were popular at the box office. However, the CBS Radio Mystery Theater went beyond that. They adapted several detective stories featuring Sherlock Holmes. They also adapted several works of Mark Twain, along with Les Miserables, and The Last Days of Pompeii. The series was also known for its annual adaptation of The Christmas Carol starring E.G. Marshall as Scrooge.

The series had a lot of ties to the Golden Age of Radio and was meant to play to fans of the Golden Age of Radio. The very first episode starred Agnes Moorhead (who had starred in the most famous American radio play Sorry, Wrong Number) a few months before her death in April 1974. Among other Golden Age stars to appear were Brett Morrison of The Shadow, Superman announcer and the star of Philo Vance Jackson Beck, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar star Mandel Kramer as well as long-time radio favorites such as Mercedes McCambridge, Ralph Bell, and Larry Haines. Robert Dryden led all actors for most appearances on the CBS Radio Mystery Theater. At the same time, the CBS Radio Mystery Theater featured actors who’d become noteworthy and never appeared in the golden age of radio such as John Lithgow and Mandy Potemkin.

The series ran for 1,399 episodes over the course of nine seasons. Marshall remained the host until 1982 when Tammy Grimes took over. The series left the air after December 1982 but had a special place in the hearts of fans.

In 1997, CBS posted six episodes of the series on their website and the response was overwhelming. They received 250,000 emails. CBS-owned Westwood One agreed to resyndicate the series Monday-Friday in May of 1998 and ran it for six months with new intros by Himan Brown replacing the previous intros. However, they only attracted fifty stations and after six months the series was pulled. Brown blamed consolidation, where large media corporations, bought up huge numbers of radio stations and demanded maximum ad revenue, some wanting as much as 21 minutes of ads in an hour. Brown’s original programs only had space for ten minutes worth of ads and he refused to butcher them.

The series didn’t appear to be particularly well-marketed. Bob Stepno, who helped me find the above article, noted that there was no article announcing the series return, only its cancellation. I also found little fanfare for it in a newspapers.com search other than one newspaper columnist in Lincon, Nebraska who received letters from readers but he didn’t even know what station it was running on. Clearly, it seems Westwood could have done a better job promoting it.

Brown said he would resyndicate the series himself, but ended up settling for sharing them on NPR’s satellite service in 2000. Since then, the series has been shared frequently online on multiple websites. It remains the most beloved and sought-after American radio series that wasn’t part of the Golden Age of Radio.

A Prairie Home Companion

A Prairie Home Companion was begun by Minnesota Public Radio morning radio host Garrison Keilor in 1974. After doing some research, he decided he wanted to begin a variety show. The first program of A Prairie Home Companion featured twelve audience members. However, it grew, moving to larger venues.

The series was mostly music and storytelling, However, it included several recurring radio sketch segments. There was (of course), a golden age private detective parody “Guy Noir” as well “Lives of the Cowboys.”

The series went into national distribution in 1980. It wasn’t favored for distribution by NPR because of its expense and because NPR thought the series was an insult to small towns. However, the show persisted and eventually ended up syndicated outside of NPR through several different means. At the height of its popularity, it aired on 690 stations and boasted a listenership of 4 million. It remained on the air clear through the 2010s, with only a five-year hiatus. Keilor only retired from the show in 2016 and handed over hosting duties to Chris Thile. The next year, after a scandal involving Keilor and alleged undisclosed “inappropriate behavior,” Minnesota Public Radio severed ties with Keilor. The series was renamed Live From Here, which was canceled during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Post-Keilor, the series continued to offer music and storytelling, but the signature sketches were not part of the series.

Soap Opera Revivals

Soap Operas had been some of the most enduring programs in radio, so they tried to make a comeback.

Byron Lewis, the President of Uniworld, an African American Communications firm had grown up with parents who gathered the family around to listen to the soap operas of the day such as Our Gal Sunday. He had the idea for a new radio soap opera focused on black characters. However, he didn’t understand how radio soap operas were written or the structure of modern soaps. Then he met an actress/writer/director who pointed out what a soap opera was supposed to be and helped him develop a pilot for the series Sounds of the City. 

The series followed the Taylors, a  Southern family that had migrated to a Northern City and all the challenges they faced.It aired on the Mutual Black Network, which was made of urban radio stations in several large American cities. The series was sponsored by Quaker Oats and helped to save Uniworld. It began airing on May 1, 1974 and lasted thirty-nine weeks.

One series lead went on to bigger things. Robert Guillaume was cast in the role of Calvin. A couple years later, he’d become a regular on ABC’s series Soap (which parodied Daytime Soap Operas) and his character would get his own spin-off series, Benson. He won an Emmy on both series and got nominated for four additional Emmys during the run of Benson.

Radio Playhouse offered listeners not one but four soap operas. Faces of Love, Author’s Playhouse (which adapted the novel Vanity Fair) The Little Things in Life, and To Have and to Hold. The four programs that originated at WOR in New York were syndicated in several other cities. After initially featuring Joan Loring in the lead role, a young Morgan Fairchild took over for the rest. The Little Things in Life was the last radio soap operated created by Peg Lynch who had also created Ethel and Albert and The Couple Next Door during the Golden Age of radio.

Fantastic Four

Bob Michaelson, who had previously worked on the National Lampoon Radio Hour, approached Stan Lee about adapting the Fantastic Four to radio. Fortunately, for Michaelson, the rights were available, and Lee agreed to have Michaelson do the show. Lee did the narration, which he recorded in two separate sessions but wasn’t present for any actor sessions. The series told thirteen different stories taken from the first twenty-one issues of the Fantastic Four Comic book.

It has a reputation for being campy merely by staying true to Lee’s Silver Age comic book scripts fourteen years later. In addition, Bill Murray* stars as the Human Torch (aka Johnny Storm).* The series was syndicated on a few stations across the country but was not renewed for any additional episodes.

*If that’s not an opportunity to work Murray into the MCU, I don’t know what is.

Golden Age Article

The American Audio Drama Tradition, Part Six: 1970s, Part One

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One could be forgiven for thinking audio drama was well and truly dead in the 1960s, given the obscurity of most of the offerings. However, the 1970s would include numerous attempts to revive radio drama that would be far more prominent.

NPR

National Public Radio was chartered in 1970 and soon stepped into the world of audio drama with the series Earplay. How soon appears to be a matter of debate as are nearly all details about Earplay. Not only is there debate as to when Earplay started, but also as to when it ended with some saying it occurred in 1981, others in 1982, and still others some time in the 1990s. There’s an amazing amount of contradictory information around this series, if you rely on online sources. I found errors in articles published on NPR-related websites. I’ve accessed some books and newspapers and have a closer approximation of what happened, however a full knowledge of what happened to Earplay would require a multi-day trip to Wisconsin and hunting down books, studio records, and any surviving production staff. However, for our purposes that would be overkill. Here’s the best approximation I can find of what happened:

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) extended a $150,000 (nearly $1 million in 2021 money) grant to fund a year of audio drama productions through the University of Wisconsin Extension Radio project and station WHA through a program known as Earplay. The grant was provided in 1971 and accepted by the University of October. However, audio dramas wouldn’t start to air until the following year.

The project by University of Wisconsin Professor Karl Schmidt. Schmdit had gone to New York to be a radio actor but left disillusioned by the lack of opportunity and the general “soapiness” of the New York radio scene. He made it clear he wasn’t trying to create “the good old days.” Initial plans for the series was for short plays, under 20 minutes, preferably under 15 minutes, and certainly no longer than 30 minutes. He also wanted the scripts to keep in mind that American listeners generally listened to radio while doing something else.

A nationwide call for writers went out and there was a contest for scripts. An ad in the Daily Tarheel advertised a contest where $15,000 in purchase awards would be given out to twenty scripts chosen. This ads up to an average award of $750 per winner for writing a 15-20 minute radio play (or nearly $5,000 in today’s money.)

Earplay’s exclusive focus on shorter works didn’t last. They began to sign contracts with well known and prominent playwrights to produce critically-acclaimed, hour-long dramas, many of which later became Broadway plays. Earplay also experimented with new methods of sound and worked radio drama producers in other countries, particularly Canada and the U.K. In order to be able to afford to work with major playwrights, Earplay formed the Commissioning Group with six other countries to add their rights fees to the amount that Earplay was contributing. Earplay won the Peabody Award and was also the first American production to receive a Prix Italia award.

Earplay’s position of strength in the radio drama world was ultimately undone by NPR. Each year, they obtained funding from CPB as well as the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). However, NPR wanted to make their own proposal for funding for audio drama programming to these two agencies and asked Earplay not to submit their own proposal.

Many producers at non-profit radio theaters were  unhappy about the money Earplay received. Yuri Ravosky was with the National Radio Theater in Chicago in the 1970s. In a 2002 interview, he called Earplay “terribly over-produced” and stated they had “cornered some big, big money from the NEA because of it’s affiliation with NPR.”

However, this concern was nothing next to the alarm bells that went off when NPR submitted it’s audio drama funding grant proposal. Tom Perez, from ZBS, another drama production company found the proposed grant alarming:

The proposal was that they would have 3 centres producing radio drama. One doing classical, one doing popular, one doing serious drama, I believe. And it was starting off with 1.1. million and then it would increase to about 2 million. We looked at this proposal and were horrified. We said ‘If this thing happens, we’re screwed. Nobody else in this country will ever see any kind of money for producing radio drama’. And so we put up a stink. Yuri joined in and maybe a couple others. The National Endowment listened to us, CPB wouldn’t listen to us. And the National Endowment agreed and that year didn’t fund Earplay at all. They got zero. And they collapsed. Which surprised us because we didn’t say get rid of the guys, we just said this is unfair and that the money should be distributed around. So we were quite surprised that they were just wiped out totally.

“Wiping out totally” seems to be a slight exaggeration. NPR didn’t get all the money it hoped for, but had gotten a grant from the CPB. Earplay continued on producing full-length audio dramas into 1981. After that, the Earplay unit began to produce series such as their adaptation of the novel A Canticle for Liebowitz. The best available information I could find is that Karl Schmidt retired from NPR when the Earplay unit was disbanded, and the best resource I can find indicates Schmidt retired in 1986 and therefore audio productions apparently continued in some form at WHA, but not as weekly hour-long productions. Even after his official retirement, Schmidt continued to do the Chapter a Day program for the next thirty years until his death.

Newspapers of the day stated that Earplay was rarely “escapism” and raised a lot of hard-hitting contemporary issues. According to the Concise Encyclopedia of American Radio, Schmdit wondered whether the tendency of the program to raise problems it didn’t have an answer for was a turn-off for working people who came home from work and would gravitate instead towards something more refreshing.

NPR would offer something lighter before the end of the decade. In 1979, it broadcast Mind’s Eye’s adaptation of The Lord of the Ring novels. While this is not as popular with fans as the BBC version, it was NPR’s first step into more popular radio drama and they would take even bigger steps in the 1980s.

Jim French at KVI

Seattle served as another unusual spot for radio revival efforts. KVI radio played old time radio programs and Jim French was tasked with providing contemporary audio drama. To start with, French had to use station staff members. French was lucky that many of these staff members could actually act and that the productions were successful enough that he was able to bring in professional actors as his productions went on.

French’s efforts began with The Tower Playhouse, an anthology program that ran for nine consecutive weeks from July-September 1972 and then returned for a final Halloween episode. The second episode of that series introduced two characters; Dameron and Emile who would become the basis of French’s next series.

In the Tower Playhouse, Stewart Wright noted, “Dameron was a sailor/soldier of fortune; Emile was a café owner who was involved in espionage.” However, when The Adventures of Dameron launched in September 1972, Dameron (Robert E. Lee Hardwicke) became a freelance troubleshooter and Emile (Doug Young) became his partner. The contemporary adventure series ran for forty-nine weeks.

Crisis was French’s next big production and it premiered in November 1973. Crisis was another dramatic anthology show in the style of golden age programs such as Suspense and Escape. French utilized radio acting talent but also had national talent appear on the program from time to time, including Roddy McDowell, Bob Crane, Patty Duke, Keenan Wynn, John Astin, and radio legend Hans Conreid. The show continued to turn out new episodes until December 1977, releasing 152 in all.

Among the most notable episodes of Crisis was, “West for My Health,” released on New Year’s Day 1976. In the play, a debt-ridden private eye with a gambling problem is given one chance to save his life, travel west to Los Angeles to kill someone. However, he arrives to find his quarry is already dead, or is he?

The private detective was named Harry Nile and was played by local radio personality Phil Harper. Nile would return in three more Crisis episodes over the next seventeen months. French decided to do a continuing Harry Nile series. The four Crisis episodes were re-aired as Harry Nile episodes in November and December 1977 and The Adventures Harry Nile began airing new episodes regularly on December 27, 1977.  There would be twenty new episodes aired before KVI changed its programming format. The move was so sudden, French was left with one episode completed but unaired.

French’s 1970s run of Seattle radio drama is impressive. He’d produced and 231 audio dramas, as well having written most of them, and acting in a few. After the sudden end at KVI, it’d be thirteen years before French released a new audio drama. French’s second run of radio dramas would take a different direction and will be discussed in our article on the 1990s.

The National Lampoon Radio Hour

National Lampoon was a cutting edge humor magazine that published between 1970 and 1998. It featured humor that pushed the boundaries of good taste but drew a large following and became iconic and left a lasting impact on pop culture. The magazine spawned multiple films. The most famous were Animal House and the National Lampoon’s Vacation series of films starring Chevy Chase.

They also entered the world of audio. It started with the release of the comedy album Radio Dinner. The album did well and editor Michael O’Donoghue convinced the magazine’s publisher to bankroll a radio program. Thus was born the National Lampoon Radio Hour, which launched in November 1973.

The show’s humor was loved by its fans but it ran into a problem. Its shock humor made sponsors nervous. The show drained the magazine’s resources and after thirteen weeks it was cut to half an hour. According to NPR “As a gag, the performers pretended that stations had cut them off in mid-show.”

The series served to introduce several great comics to America including Chase, John Belushi, Bill Murray, and Gilda Radner. They would be among the most celebrated cast members and would make Saturday Night Live a hit when it launched with O’Donoghue as head writer, using much the same style of humor as they did on National Lampoon’s Radio Hour. Material from the radio series was also used for several subsequent comedy record albums.

Zero Hour/The Hollywood Radio Theater:

Eight years after the last attempt to revive network radio drama, Mutual made a new attempt with Zero Hour, which is also often referred to as the Hollywood Radio Theater. The series was hosted by Rod Serling of Twilight Zone fame and had two separate runs.

The first run featured serialized suspense stories that would have a single story running through five thirty minute episodes Monday-Friday. The first story starred John Astin, Patty Duke, and former Sam Spade radio star Howard Duff, with radio legend Elliott Lewis directing. This series began airing in September 1973 and ran for thirteen weeks.

The second run of the series featured five different standalone twenty-minute stories per week, with the same star featuring in every story broadcast during the week. Among the stars who appeared during this run were Star Trek’s William Shatner, Bewitched’s Dick Seargent, Wonder Woman’s Lyle Waggoner, Hogan’s Heroes’ Bob Crane, and Wild Wild West’s Ross Martin. Lee Merriweather, who played Catwoman in the 1966 Batman movie, co-starred as the daughter of the titular Barnaby Jones, was the only actress to be featured. The series began on April 29, 1974 and like the previous version, lasted thirteen weeks.

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The American Audio Drama Tradition, Part Five: The 1960s

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Continued from Part Four

In the years after the golden age of radio, there would be many attempts to make new audio dramas, either by paying homage to the golden age of radio or trying to do something new. This started within a year of the Golden Age’s end.

Cataloging every group of actors that ever sat down to make audio dramas over the last sixty years would be an impossible task. So much of it was lost or forgotten or just didn’t have that much of an impact. I’m going to mention those that are prominent as well as others that I find interesting. If you’re aware of an audio drama or group worth discussing, feel free to leave it in the comments.

To start with, audio dramas got released on story records. Story records were a thing in America going back to the 1940s. In some cases, they contained a special recording of a radio drama. In other cases, they contained original audio dramas.. There was a Superman Christmas album in 1941 and two brief Superman records featuring the original radio cast in 1947.

These story records continued to be made long after the golden age of radio ended. Records were made in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Power Records in the 1970s may have been the most famous of these as they told stories of Superheroes, Star Trek, Space 1999, and Planet of the Apes among others. Most of these records attempted to tell complete stories in under 15 minutes, although some (particularly the Power Record LPs) could sustain a story for 45 minutes. Do these count as audio dramas? That’s a dicey question, particularly when you get into the “book and record” sets in which the audio would supplement a book rather than standing on its own.

I don’t have a definitive answer to that question. Millions of children listened to story records over those decades and may be what comes to mind when someone mentions “audio dramas.”

Pacifica Network Takes on Radio Dramas

My initial instinct when doing this section was talk about all the 1960s radio dramas in chronological order. However, Pacifica network radio stations not only offered the first two dramas discussed, but also two others, so it seemed good to talk about them first before moving on to other projects.

The Pacifica Network is made up of listener-supported independently non-commercial radio stations. The flagship station was KPFA in Berkley, and by the 1960s, they’d been joined by KPFK in Los Angeles, and WBAI in New York City.

In October 1963, a series of movie parodies that had long been privately performed made their way onto the public airways over KPFA. The series ran for five weeks with four episodes running 45 minutes in length and the other running an hour and a half. This is the first new radio drama made in the United States after the end of the golden age of radio.

The second was the Starlight Mystery Theatre which featured Matthew Slade, Private Investigator, which began over KPFK radio in Los Angeles. The series was the brainchild of former Canadian News Publications owner Brian Adams,  who wrote for the series and was its producer/director. The series was a remake of Matthew Slade, a Canadian radio series from 1957-60. In a July 1964 interview with the Canadian newspaper The Province, he said he hoped to make the new productions available on Canadian radio. He also planned six Matthew Slade movies, although nothing appears to have come of that.

KPFK had been at the center at a lot of political controversies and even had had to answer some questions from the FCC. LA Times Radio columnist Don Page pitched The Starlight Mystery Theatre (and the Los Angeles re-broadcast of The Compendium Cliche series) as a break from the seriousness and controversy.

Slade was played William Wintersole, an experienced stage actor who had just come to Hollywood and whose debut screen acting performance wouldn’t air until November. Wintersole would become a solid presence in Hollywood, logging eighty-seven different acting entries in his IMDB profile including a twenty-five year run on the soap The Young and the Restless.  Slade’s policeman foil Lieutenant Barney Flagg was played by Karl Swenson, a veteran character on screen and radio. Swenson had starred as the lead actor in the Golden Age Father Brown and Mister Chameleon and he became the first actor from the Golden Age of Radio to take part in a radio revival effort.

The Matthew Slade series was a bit tongue-in-cheek. However, it shouldn’t be confused with the type of parody of radio detective programs that have continued to be released to this day. It was tongue in cheek in the same that Richard Diamond could be. The series began airing July 5, 1964 and continued on a mostly every other week schedule until November 22nd and then re-aired four episodes in 1965. The series was resyndicated in 1966 by the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service and in 1968 over the Far East Network to American Service personnel. The only episodes missing are the Avarice Heir and the third party of the “Day of the Phoenix” trilogy. (Note: Still our most sought-after lost episode.)

The audio drama event that had the greatest impact was the arrival. of Firesign Radio Theatre, a comedy troupe that began performing on the Radio Free Oz program over KPFK. The four men who started the troupe chose the name because they were all born under the three astrological “fire signs.” They premiered in 1966 and were a definite part of the Counter-culture movement, but also managed to outlast it.  Their humor had many features: it was surreal, it pushed the envelop, and was also very political. They had several radio programs in succession beginning with Radio Free Oz followed by The Firestone Theatre Hour, Dear Friends, and Let’s Eat. The last of these series ended in 1972. They also continued to publish comedy albums with original radio plays, the most famous of which were the Nick Danger series parodying golden age of radio detectives. The group had a very productive career: releasing albums, writing books, and dipping their toe back into radio every now and again. Group member Dave Ossman established the Mark Time Awards to award excellence in audio drama.

Like any performing group of the era, they had mandatory drama and group break-ups but got back together. The group carried on long enough to even have a  podcast called the Radio Free Oz Podcast. (What else?) Founder Peter Bergmann died in 2012 and his memorial service was their last group performance.

Pacifica’s final contribution came from its New York, WBAI in New York City which produced the first radio drama based on a Marvel Superhero prorperty. Charlie Potter had been hired on at the station to do light admin work but discovered it was relatively easy to get on the air and had been missing radio drama. He decided to produce a series about Doctor Strange, Marvel’s Master of the Mystic Arts. Theyc called Stan Lee and asked his permission to do the series. Lee, whose office was near the WBAI studio, walked over and gave his blessing in person and wished him well on the radio series.

The series ran for 17 episodes, which were produced over three years. At the start of the 2010, six or (some sites said seven) episodes of this series came into circulation and were passed around by collectors. Most of these have disappeared (into some weird pocket dimension no doubt), but the origin episode is still online and it’s a supririsngly impressive production particularly in terms of sound design and direction.

Theatre Five

After Matthew Slade began airing on the West Coast, something far bigger came to the nationwide ABC radio network, Theatre Five began airing August 8, 1964. It was an anthology program that ran for 260 episodes. It was the first attempt of a major network to bring back radio drama.

It featured some key features that later efforts would implement. Notably, it was a five-night-a-week program. This was critical. While during the Golden Age of Radio, a program could be once a week on any given night, the way network radio had evolved, weeknights had a reliable schedule every night. If you wanted to have a program on one weeknight, you needed to cover them all.  Theatre Five actually filled two separate twenty-five minute timeslots as a network sustained program.

The series was based in New York and brought back many of the most noted New York voices of the Golden Age of Radio York including Jackson Beck, George Petrie, Lon Clark, Ed Begley, Staats Cotsworth, Ralph Bell, and Santos Ortega. It also featured a couple of future stars making one-off appearances in Alan Alda and James Earl Jones.  The stories ranged across a wide variety of genres from Science Fiction to Mysteries and Human Interest.  The stories were written in a very contemporary style, often following modern trends in social thinking and theories. The theme music was similarly modern,with a very memorable quintessentially 1960s feel to it.

The series ended after a year. The programs were translated into Spanish. In addition, ABC gave copies of the series to non-profit radio station WBUR to re-air for educational purposes.

Horizon’s West

Horizon’s West was a thirteen-episode docudrama of the Lewis and Clark expedition. It was actually produced by the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service which was better known for distribution radio drama.  The series starred golden age radio regular Harry Bartel as Merriweather Lewis and also featured golden age radio actors like Ben Wright, Jay Novello, and Les Tremayne. It was broadcast to American service personnel.

While radio drama continued to be produced during the 1960s, but most were rather obscure. The 1970s would bring memorable efforts to revive radio drama as the attempts to revive it in the United States would begin in earnest.

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The American Audio Drama Tradition, Part Four: The Legacy of the Golden Age of Radio

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Continued from Part Three

On September 30, 1962, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar and Suspense aired their last episodes. This marked the end of the Golden Age of Radio. But what exactly had ended?

Many believe this marked the end of radio drama or audio drama as a whole. In truth, the U.K., South Africa, and many other countries around the world continued to make radio dramas for decades and British have never stopped. Further, thousands of hours of audio drama have also been still produced in the United States. In fact, there hasn’t been a single week since 1962 that at least one audio drama was produced in the United States.

Heartbeat Theater was produced from Hollywood by the Salvation Army. It often recruited mid-level Hollywood characters. It would continue until 1985. The Eternal Light was presented by the Hebrew Theological Seminary. In later years, it often moved towards panel discussions, but they continued to incorporate audio drama as part of their broadcasts off and on into the late 1960s.

In addition, radio drama programs aimed at children, like The Children’s Bible Hour and Your Story Hour continued to produce new material. Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago began broadcasting weekly audio dramas in 1950 and continues to this present day

Radio drama didn’t die, but that doesn’t mean nothing had changed. Two big factors had changed.

The Golden Age of Radio was marked by an embarrassment of riches in talent and glamour. Its top shows featured the best actors, musicians, and writers. It is a level of glamour and talent that radio will never see again. Imagine what a modern-day version of the Lux Radio Theater would be like. The theater would be hosted by Steven Spielberg with musical direction with Danny Elfman providing the music and actors like Tom Hanks, Emma Watson, Cate Blanchett, Robert Downey, Jr, and Dwayne Johnson would perform radio version of their own movies.

This would never happen today. There’s neither money or public interest to justify it. Nor could any radio show draw guest stars at the top of their game and height of their popularity like Suspense and several other dramatic anthology programs.

The people who make modern audio dramas aren’t big stars and have no interest in becoming such. More audio drama in recent decades has come out of places like Boston, Grand Rapids, Colorado Springs, and Seattle than from Hollywood.

The second big change is American radio drama ceased being part of America’s common culture. At the height of the golden age of radio, radio was at the center of American popular culture. It was famous. It had its own legendary unforgettable moments. A generation of Americans can’t hear “Flight of the Bumblebee Bee” without thinking of The Green Hornet. In the popular culture, it was possible to understand references to radio programs in the same way we might understand when a work is referencing The Godfather or Star Wars without ever having seen them.

When I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, the most enduring pop culture artifact of the period were the Looney Tunes. Those cartoons contain pop culture references that will go right over your head if you don’t know the Golden Age of Radio. For example, mother animals giving a distinctive shout to absent children of  “Henry!” and Daffy Duck’s wife saying, “I want a divorce.” are references to golden-age radio programs.

By contrast, all radio programs released since the end of the Golden Age of Radio are cult entertainment. The continuing fandom for golden age of radio is as well, but that’s always been the case with newer programs. They are loved by their devotees and completely irrelevant to every other living creature on the face of the Earth.

That being the case, it’s reasonable to wonder if the end of the Golden Age of Radio might have occurred earlier. Some cite November 1960 as the end of the golden age of radio, particularly fans of soap operas. Once Gunsmoke was canceled in June 1961, all that remained of the world of network-originated radio drama was an hour of programming featuring TV soap opera actors. I still prefer September 1962, as network radio drama had faded and withered eleven years until then..

Nonetheless, Golden Age radio programming has been kept alive in a number of ways.

Radio Rebroadcasts

Military radio services like the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service and the Far East Network (FEN) continued to replay radio programs from the golden age of radio.

Also, various stations continued to dedicate a portion of their programming to replaying programs from the Golden Age of Radio, some with hosts, and others without hosts. There has been a decline in such radio rebroadcasts in recent years, particularly as radio stations seek to avoid backlash over content that doesn’t meet modern standards and sensibilities.

While it is not quite as common these day, old time radio still is rebroadcast. The longest running of these series is The Big Broadcast which originates in Washington, DC. It was originally hosted by John Hickman (1964-90), and then by radio hall of famer Ed Walker (1950-2015) and has been hosted by 2016 by Pulitzer Prize Winner Murray Hurwitz.

The most widely heard show is When Radio Was, a series syndicated by Radio Spirits. The series began in 1990 and has had numerous hosts including original Jeopardy Host Art Fleming (1990-95), comedian Stan Freberg (1995-2006), and Broadcaster/History Chuck Schaeden (2006-2007). Since 2007 Greg Bell has hosted the daily syndicated series, which also airs on the Radio Classics Satellite radio channel.

Radio Preservation and Conventions: 

Most American radio programs aired only once. Much of radio was done live and disappeared into the ether. However, transcription disks were made of many programs. Most of these were intended to be destroyed after they were played.  However, there were quite a few disks that survived in radio stations or ended up stored in various locations and were purchased by collectors and preservationists. Tapes were often made from the disks.

Fans of old-time radio began to gather. The Friends of Old Time Radio arose in the 1970s and was followed in the 1980s by The Society to Preserve and Encourage Radio Drama, Variety And Comedy (SPERDVAC). These organizations served gathering places for fans and collectors of golden age radio. In addition to the opportunity to meet surviving cast and crew from the Golden Age of radio, fans traded tapes of programs with other collectors. It is through this process of collectors acquiring and trading radio programs with each other that so many programs survive from the golden age of radio.

Commercial Sellers:

Over the years, many companies have sold commercial radio vinyl records, cassettes, and CDs. They were sold to the general market consumers at stores and record shops. These products gave fans of certain programs or types of programs a chance to listen to programs or types of programs they particularly enjoyed when they wanted to. It was a tricky business to negotiate for a wide variety of reasons, such as figuring out what type of programs people would be nostalgic for enough to buy, as well as finding the right price point for consumers that would allow the company to stay in business. Many companies entered the market but most went defunct.

The Internet:

The Internet has overall been a boon for vintage radio programs. The first old time radio programs posted on the Internet were low-quality and often barely listenable, perhaps due to the limited quality of recordings available to original posters. At the same time, it made it easier for old time radio fans and researchers to regularly connect with one another.

Thanks to advancing audio technology, increased hard drive storage capacity, the proliferation of broadband, and the work of many volunteers,  the poorer quality recordings have been replaced with better-sounding episodes. Golden age radio programs are available at hundreds of old-time radio websites and podcasts, as well as on video sites such as YouTube.

Whatever Happened To…

There’s a perception by many that after the Golden Age of Radio, that era’s performers suffered and faced their careers ending. In reality, it’s hard to say for certain about any performer, “If only had radio had remained influential, their life would not have gone downhill.”  Maybe one actor comes to mind that you could make that argument.

For most radio actors, working in radio was a blessing. They enjoyed the work and the ability to become anyone. Radio’s light rehearsal schedule and quick turn around allowed them more time with family. Some treasured being able to act before a wide audience but going about in public unrecognized. However, most pressed on with their careers.

Some found their place in TV land. Agnes Moorhead had been the original Margot Lane on The Shadow and starred in one of radio’s most iconic plays, “Sorry, Wrong Number.” To anyone who didn’t know radio, she was simply Endora on Bewitched. Howard McNear had been a versatile character adept at creating mad killers or just plain eccentric oddballs, but was known to many as Floyd the Barber on the Andy Griffith show. Others such as Virginia Gregg, Herb Vigran, and John Dehner had stunningly long careers and a wide variety of character roles.

Others took their voice acting experience into the world of animation. Janet Waldo had played the quintessential teen girl in the 1940s radio series Meet Corliss Archer. In animation, she starred as Judy Jetson, Penelope Pitstop, and Josie from Josie and the Pussycats. Paul Frees created the voice for Disney’s psychologist duck Ludwig Von Drake. and the role of Boris Badenov on The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Sometimes, a cartoon would feature multiple stars from Radio’s Golden era, such as the first Fantastic Four cartoon which featured Adventures of Philip Marlowe star Gerald Mohr as Mr. Fantastic and Paul Frees as The Thing. 

Many who survived long enough got to attend the first old-time radio conventions, meet the fans who loved their work, and some  performed old scripts, putting on their old radio roles like a comfortable pair of shoes.

There were radio actors who moved on to other things but recalled their radio days fondly. They’d gladly get back into radio if given the chance. These sort of actors not only were part of the golden age of radio, but would take part in the prominent efforts to bring back radio drama over the next two decades.