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

Our Miss Brooks was a hit on radio from the outset; within eight months of its launch as a regular series, the show landed several honors, including four for Eve Arden, who won polls in four individual publications of the time. Arden had actually been the third choice to play the title role. Harry Ackerman, at the time CBS's West Coast director of programming, wanted Shirley Booth for the part, but as he told historian Gerald Nachman many years later, he realized Booth was too focused on the underpaid downside of public school teaching at the time to have fun with the role. Lucille Ball...

Have Gun – Will Travel is an American Western television series that was produced and originally broadcast by CBS on both television and radio from 1957 through 1963. The television version of the series starring Richard Boone was rated number three or number four in the Nielsen ratings every year of its first four seasons.Set in the period of the Old West, the series follows the adventures of "Paladin," played by Boone, a gentleman investigator/gunfighter who travels around the Old West working as a gunfighter for hire.Although Paladin charges steep fees to clients who can ...

Sears Radio Theater was a radio drama anthology series which ran weeknights on CBS Radio in 1979, sponsored by the Sears chain. Often paired with The CBS Radio Mystery Theater during its first season, the program offered a different genre of drama for each evening's broadcast.In January 1980, the program moved from CBS to the Mutual Broadcasting System and was renamed Mutual Radio Theater. The Mutual series broadcast repeats from the CBS run until September 1980, when a short season of new dramas was presented. Sears continued as a sponsor during the Mutual run.The program turned...

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 situation comedy was a staple of the NBC Red Network from 1936 on, after originating on NBC Blue in 1935. One of the most popular and enduring radio series of its time, it ran as a stand-alone series from 1935 to 1956, and then continued as a short-form series as part of the weekend Monitor from 1957 to 1959.The title characters were created and portrayed by Jim and Marian Jordan, a husband-and-wife team that had been working in radio since the 1920s.Fibber McGee and Molly followed up the Jordans' previous radio sitcom Smackout. It featured the misadventures of a ...

The series was co-created by Jerome Lawrence and Aleen Leslie, and based on Leslie's “One Girl Chorus” column in the Pittsburgh Press. Lawrence left the show in 1943.The show began as a summer replacement for Bob Hope's show, sponsored by Pepsodent and airing on NBC from June 24 to September 16, 1941, with 14-year-old Ann Gillis in the title role. Mercedes McCambridge played Judy's girl friend.[3] Dellie Ellis (later known as Joan Lorring) portrayed Judy Foster when the series returned the next summer (June 23 – September 15, 1942).Louise Erickson, then 15, took over the ...

This Is Your FBI is a radio crime drama broadcast in the United States on ABC from April 6, 1945, to January 30, 1953, for a total of 409 shows. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover gave it his endorsement, calling it "the finest dramatic program on the air".Dramatizations of FBI cases were narrated by Frank Lovejoy, Dean Carleton and William Woodson. Lawrence MacArthur wrote the episodes.This Is Your FBI was sponsored during its entire run by the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States.Promoting the program's debut, a newspaper announcement noted that the United States was then at war and ...

For over twelve years, from 1949 through 1962 (including a one year hiatus in 1954-1955), this series recounted the cases "the man with the action-packed expense account, America’s fabulous freelance insurance investigator, Johnny Dollar". Johnny was an accomplished 'padder' of his expense account. The name of the show derives from the fact that he closed each show by totaling his expense account, and signing it "End of report... Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar".

The Red Skelton Show is an American television comedy/variety show that aired from 1951 to 1971. In the decade prior to hosting the show, Richard "Red" Skelton had a successful career as a radio and motion pictures star.[1] Although his television series is largely associated with CBS, where it appeared for more than sixteen years, it actually began and ended on NBC.During its run, the program received three Emmy Awards, for Skelton as best comedian and the program as best comedy show during its initial season, and an award for comedy writing in 1961. In 1959 Skelton also received a Golden ...

The Red Skelton Show is an American television comedy/variety show that aired from 1951 to 1971. In the decade prior to hosting the show, Richard "Red" Skelton had a successful career as a radio and motion pictures star.[1] Although his television series is largely associated with CBS, where it appeared for more than sixteen years, it actually began and ended on NBC. During its run, the program received three Emmy Awards, for Skelton as best comedian and the program as best comedy show during its initial season, and an award for comedy writing in 1961. In 1959 Skelton also received a Golden ...

The Roy Rogers Show is an American Western television series starring Roy Rogers. 100 episodes were broadcast on NBC for six seasons between December 30, 1951, and June 9, 1957. The episodes were set in the prevailing times (1950s) in the style of a neo-Western, rather than the Old West. Various episodes are known to be in the public domain today, being featured in low-budget cable television channels and home video.

The Sealed Book was a radio series of mystery and terror tales, produced and directed by Jock MacGregor for the Mutual network. Between March 18 and September 9, 1945, the melodramatic anthology series was broadcast on Sundays from 10:30 pm to 11:00 pm.Each week, after "the sound of the great gong," host Philip Clarke observed that the mysteriously silent "keeper of the book has opened the ponderous door to the secret vault wherein is kept the great sealed book, in which is recorded all the secrets and mysteries of mankind through the ages.Here are tales of every kind, tales of murder, of ...

The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok is an American Western television series that ran for eight seasons from April 15, 1951, through September 24, 1958. The Screen Gems series began in syndication, but ran on CBS from June 5, 1955, through 1958, and, at the same time, on ABC from 1957 through 1958. The Kellogg's cereal company was the show's national sponsor. The series was also exported to Australia during the late 1950s.

Mystery House staffers would perform in each half-hour drama, while others would provide sound effects, rewrite scripts and so on. But could this really succeed as a business model? Would people buy a mystery book if they already knew the ending? An interesting question, considering how little information there is available about the firm -- or if, in fact, it even existed.Research into this query turned up an address for "Mystery House" at 70 Park Avenue in New York City, where a hotel now stands, and that the publishing firm ceased operation sometime after 1964. As for the broadcast history ...

The series originated on January 31, 1936, on WXYZ, the same local Detroit station that originated its companion shows The Lone Ranger and Challenge of the Yukon. Beginning April 12, 1938, the station supplied the series to the Mutual Broadcasting System radio network, and then to NBC Blue and its successors, the Blue Network and ABC Network, from November 16, 1939, through September 8, 1950. It returned from September 10 to December 5, 1952.It was sponsored by General Mills from January to August 1948 and by Orange Crush in its brief 1952 run. Distinguished by its use of classical music for ...

The Stories of Sherlock Holmes was a South African radio show series of 47 or 50 episodes, produced by Michael Silver and aired on Springbok Radio (Johannesburg, South Africa) between 1979/1980 and 1985, starring Graham Armitage as Sherlock Holmes and Kerry Jordan as Dr. Watson. The episodes were around 20-30 minutes each and broadcasted on Sunday evenings at 6pm.

This show, from the early 1950s, is a good example of the true story style of delivery made popular in radio's classic crime shows Gangbusters and Mr. District Attorney. Of course, the best and most popular of the true crime shows was Dragnet -- the monotone, "just the facts" style demanded by Jack Webb in the show made two points at once: first, that the show wasn't a typical melodramatic crime show, as had been on radio since "the good old days", and more importantly, that we were along for the ride on another day at the office -- in this case, a policeman's “day at the office".

The titular setting for the show was "a seedy bar and grille on New York's Third Avenue". The cast had Ed Gardner as Archie, Alan Reed as Finnegan, Pattee Chapman as Miss Duffy, Jimmy Conlin as Charlie, Veda Ann Borg as Peaches La Tour, and Herb Vigran as Second Story Jackson.The radio version of Duffy's Tavern ended in 1952. When the TV version began two years later, Gardner's involvement was limited to acting. He said, "In radio, I was the producer and the director and half the time the writer and also Archie." The TV version had Hal Roach Jr. as producer and Harve Foster as director.[6]This...

Originally broadcast as Detective: Stories of Crime and Detection in London, this BBC radio drama ran for four series between 1980 and 1985. Written by the award-winning creator of Z Cars and Softly Softly, Robert Barr, it comprised 39 thrilling stories set in London’s criminal underworld, all of which are collected here. DS Dave Brook is a long-serving, ducking-and-diving police officer who takes armed robberies and violent crime in his stride. But then he is teamed up with young 'grammar school boy' DC Blair Maxton from sleepy Epsom. How will Max cope with the mean streets of his new patch...

"The Police Reporter" pre-dates the more famous network show by a couple of years - if not the first, it could be one of the earliest true crime shows on the air. Program 1 of the series is about a man who has been missing for four days. A neighbor calls the police, thinking something may be wrong. It's the Lincoln murder case, which occurred in Aurora, Illinois in 1923.The program includes an announcement that this is the first program of the series. The series uses real names, dates and locations, so it's easy to track down information on the real cases dramatized on many of the programs. ...