Showing results by author "Radio Shows of the Past!" in All Categories

The Stan Freberg Show was a weekly radio comedy show that ran on the CBS Radio Network for fifteen episodes in 1957 from July 14 through October 20. The show, starring comedian Stan Freberg and featuring the vocal talents of Daws Butler, June Foray and Peter Leeds, Peggy Taylor as the resident singer, and the musical direction of Billy May. The show aired in the 7:30 p.m. (ET) time slot following repeats of The Jack Benny Program ("The Best Of Benny") on Sundays. The show was produced by Pete Barnum.Despite its short run, the show contained some running gags and stock jokes,...

Dangerously Yours was a half hour show sponsored by Vicks. There were sixteen episodes broadcast in 1944, with eleven of them available to collectors today. Each episode seemed to star Victor Jory as the leading man, and concentrated heavily on romance, with much airtime being devoted to lovers murmuring sweet nothings at each other, and the action and adventure being relegated to backdrop status. At the end of each episode, the announcer would give a very brief teaser for the following week's show.

This is the fascinating story of Dantro, The Planet Man, troubleshooter for the League of Planets organization, the law enforcement body for peace and justice in the celestial world -- whose headquarters and center of operations are situated on the capital of all planets, Planteria Rex. From Mercury to Pluto, where ever danger threatens the universe, you will find Dantro the Planet Man fighting for fair play. The Planet Man was a juvenile science ficton series of the 1950's transcribed and syndicated by Palladium Radio Productions.

Dr. James Kildare is a fictional American medical doctor, originally created in the 1930s by the author Frederick Schiller Faust under the pen name Max Brand. Shortly after the character's first appearance in a magazine story, Paramount Pictures used the story and character as the basis for the 1937 film Internes Can't Take Money, starring Joel McCrea as Jimmie Kildare. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) subsequently acquired the rights and featured Kildare as the primary character in a series of American theatrical films in the late 1930s and early 1940s.Several of these films were ...

The Hall of Fantasy featured stories with supernatural themes. Radio historian John Dunning wrote in his reference work Tune in Yesterday: "The difference between this program and its competitors was that here, man was usually the loser. The supernatural was offered as something respectable, awesome, sometimes devastating and always frightening."An early version of the show was developed by Richard Thorne and Carl Greyson and broadcast on KALL in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1949, Thorne revived the program on WGN in Chicago, enhancing the program's appeal with "unusually excellent ...

Casey, Crime Photographer, known by a variety of titles on radio (aka Crime Photographer, Flashgun Casey, Casey, Press Photographer) was a media franchise from the 1930s to the 1960s. The character was the creation of novelist George Harmon Coxe. Casey was featured in the pulp magazine, Black Mask, novels, comic books, radio, film, television and legitimate theatre.Jack "Flashgun" Casey, was a crime photographer for the newspaper The Morning Express. With the help of reporter Ann Williams, he solved crimes and recounted his stories to Ethelbert the bartender (portrayed by John Gibson) ...

Magic Island was a science-fantasy radio serial syndicated in the late 1930s and 1940s. The series had 130 15-minute episodes, and all episodes have survived.The storyline followed wealthy Patricia Gregory as she ended her 14-year search in the South Pacific for her long lost daughter Joan. When Joan was one year old, the Gregory yacht was shipwrecked near the 30th parallel south. Lashed to a lifeboat, Joan was presumed lost by all but Patricia. In the opening episode, she receives a tip about a white girl living on a mysterious island populated by scientifically advanced people in the ...

Fu Manchu (Harold Huber) was a diabolical criminal mastermind. British official Nayland Smith (Hanley Stafford), assisted by Dr. Petrie (Gale Gordon), set out to stop Fu Manchu at any cost. In Radio Crime Fighters (2002), Jim Cox wrote:The plots of Rohmer's insidious figure and Smith and Petrie's attempts to thwart the archenemy formed a repetitive theme in the storyline.A stunningly exotic Karamaneh became the slave girl of the evil doctor; an objective of the combatants was to secure her release. The series, though brief, is memorable, and focused on one of the most effective villains to...

The Adventures of Harry Lime is one of the most successful series created by prolific British radio producer Harry Alan Towers and his company Towers of London. Towers and Graham Greene, author of The Third Man, had the same literary agent, and Towers learned that Greene had not sold the rights to the character of Harry Lime to Alexander Korda when he sold Korda The Third Man. Towers quickly bought the rights to the character and in 1951 he put a syndicated radio series into production. Orson Welles reprised the role of Harry Lime in a series of adventures that preceded the story told ...

The Adventures of Frank Race was an American radio adventure serial syndicated by Bruce Eells Productions. The 30-minute program's first East Coast broadcast was 1949, and the show ran 43 episodes. Because it was syndicated, it aired on different stations on different days. For instance, in New York City, the first episode ran on WINS on April 9, 1949. It "began running in some markets May 1, 1949. The series was broadcast on the West Coast from 1951–52.Each episode opened with a one-minute organ theme and then the following from announcer Art Gilmore:The war changed many things; ...

Dark Fantasy was an American radio supernatural thriller anthology series. It had a short run of 31 episodes, debuting on November 14, 1941, and ending on June 19, 1942. Its writer was Scott Bishop, also known for his work on The Mysterious Traveler. It originated from station WKY in Oklahoma City and was heard Friday nights on NBC stations. The stories found a nationwide audience almost immediately.

You Bet Your Life is an American comedy quiz series that has aired on both radio and television. The original version was hosted by Groucho Marx of the Marx Brothers, with announcer and assistant George Fenneman. The show debuted on ABC Radio on October 27, 1947, moved to CBS Radio debuting October 5, 1949, and went to NBC-TV and NBC Radio on October 4, 1950.Because of its simple format, it was possible to broadcast the show on both radio and television but not simultaneously. Many of the laughs on the television show were evoked by Groucho's facial reactions and other visual ...

Following a trend begun by the radio series Dragnet, The Lineup strove to portray realism in a police drama. The title indicated the show's focus, as each story began and ended with a lineup of suspects in a police station in San Francisco. Sergeant Matt Grebb, who was heard giving instructions to participants in each lineup, was "quick-tempered and often bored", while his boss, Lieutenant Ben Guthrie, was "soft-spoken and calm."The program portrayed most activities of the police as part of the job with "few heroics". Episodes were "fast, furious, and realistic." Each episode began with ...

The Casebook of Gregory Hood was a radio detective program in the United States. It existed in several versions - with different stars on different networks in different years. Hood was an importer in San Francisco who dealt in rare items. John Dunning summarized the show's premise as follows: "With his sidekick Sanderson ('Sandy') Taylor, Hood traveled the world seeking artifacts for his import house. Each item found by Hood had an intriguing history and was inevitably linked to some present-day mystery."The character of Hood was based on real-life importer Richard Gump, who lived in San...

Frontier Gentleman was one of several "adult westerns," along with Gunsmoke (1952–1961), Luke Slaughter of Tombstone and others, that appeared on radio and television in the early 1950s. The genre was described as "grittier, more realistic, and clearly intended for an older audience.Adult westerns were less the descendants of their juvenile predecessors than they were cousins of western feature films such as Shane (1953), with Alan Ladd and High Noon (1952), starring Gary Cooper"

The Mystery Project was produced by CBC Radio (Canada). It aired every Saturday night on CBC Radio One (6:30 p.m. for most of Canada, 7:30 p.m. Maritimes, 8:00 p.m. Nfld.), and was repeated at 3:30 p.m. the following Mondays on The Roundup, also on Radio One.The series ran from 1992 until 2002. Each week, casual listeners got to puzzle through a fully dramatized radio-play with a resolved plot, while regular listeners had the added fun of following familiar characters' further adventures. The series was created by the Executive Producer, Bill Howell. Barry Morgan was the ...

Abbott Mysteries was a comedy-mystery radio program adapted from the novels of Frances Crane (1896-1981). Initially a summer replacement for Quick As a Flash, the series was heard on Mutual and NBC between the years 1945 and 1955.The Mutual series, sponsored by Helbros Watches, debuted June 10, 1945, airing Sundays at 6 p.m. The scripts by Howard Merrill and Ed Adamson were in the lighthearted tradition of Mr. and Mrs. North. Julie Stevens and Charles Webster starred as Jean and Pat Abbott, a San Francisco married couple "who were habitually involved in various sorts of mayhem and in ...

This upload contains 74 episodes of the old time radio show, Voice of the Army. The show, which aired from the early 1940s to the early 1950s, was conceived as a recruiting vehicle for the United States Army and Army Air Corps (which became the United States Air Force in 1947). The evolution of the show is interesting. During WWII, the stories focused significantly on the heroism of the Army nurses to encourage women to volunteer for that assignment. In the immediate post-war period, the shows focused on encourage men to re-enlist in the standing army. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, ...

Cavalcade of America is an anthology drama series that was sponsored by the DuPont Company, although it occasionally presented musicals, such as an adaptation of Show Boat,[1] and condensed biographies of popular composers. It was initially broadcast on radio from 1935 to 1953, and on television from 1952 to 1957. Originally on CBS, the series pioneered the use of anthology drama for company audio advertising.Cavalcade of America documented historical events using stories of individual courage, initiative and achievement, often with feel-good dramatizations of the human spirit's ...

The stories followed the 30th-century adventures of Commander-in-Chief Buzz Corry (Ed Kemmer) of the United Planets Space Patrol and his young sidekick Cadet Happy (Lyn Osborn), as they faced interplanetary villains with diabolical schemes. The show was targeted to children, but attracted a sizable adult audience. Many episodes featured commercial tie-in merchandise, like toys and mail-order premiums, that were advertised during commercial breaks. Many of the ads for corporate sponsor Ralston Purina's Chex cereals used the show's space opera motif in their pitches. A unique feature of...