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

The Horatio Hornblower series is based upon the novels by C. S. Forester. They were admired by many fans, including Winston Churchill and Ernest Hemmingway who is quoted as saying, "I recommend Forester to everyone literate I know."The adventures follow the rising career from a young, unpromising, and seasick midshipman who eventually becomes Admiral of The Fleet of the Britain's Royal Navy. The storyline occurs during the Napoleonic era. Although many great naval leaders inspired Hornblower, Forester was careful to place the plots far enough away from actual battles so as not to interfere ...

In the fall of 1933, NBC writer Wyllis Cooper conceived the idea of "a midnight mystery serial to catch the attention of the listeners at the witching hour." The idea was to offer listeners a dramatic program late at night, at a time when the competition was mostly airing music. At some point, the serial concept was dropped in favor of an anthology format emphasizing crime thrillers and the supernatural. The first series of shows (each 15 minutes long) ran on a local NBC station, WENR, at midnight Wednesdays, starting in January 1934. By April, the series proved successful enough to ...

Following on the heels of the 1951 movie by the same name, Dana Andrews brought the show to radio in 1952. The show was a patriotic vehicle to warn against the evils of communism at a time when the tensions of the Cold War with the Soviet Union were ever-present. The show aired for a little over a year, and all but four episodes appear to have survived and are included here.

The fictional Commonwealth Space Project (CSP), based in Woomera, South Australia, is working to build a space station orbiting a thousand miles above the Earth's surface: Orbiter X. Planned to be a refuelling station for further space exploration, along with laboratories and other services, the CSP has launched the various components for the space station into orbit. But before construction can begin, the first assembly ship, Orbiter 1, is seemingly attacked and loses contact with CSP Control.A second ship, Orbiter 2, piloted by Captain Bob Britton (John Carson), sent to rescue the ...

Dependable, level-headed Jane Stacy (Cathy Lewis—plus Joan Banks during Lewis' illness in early 1949 and Mary Shipp later) began each weekly radio program by narrating a misadventure of her innocent, bewildered roommate Irma, a scatterbrained stenographer from Minnesota. The two central characters were in their mid-20s. Irma had her 25th birthday in one episode; she was born on May 5. After the two met in the first episode, they lived together in an apartment rented from their Irish landlady Mrs. O'Reilly (Jane Morgan, Gloria Gordon).Irma's boyfriend Al (John Brown) was a deadbeat, barely ...

This series consisted of 15 minute shows, similar in format to Ripley's Believe It Or Not that had aired from 1930 to 1948. It was hosted/narrated by Ken Nordine and was produced by Unusual Features Syndicate.This syndicated series was heard on the Mutual network during 1950 and 1951 on various days and at various times. For example, according to "The Ultimate History of Network Radio Programming and Guide To All Circulating Shows" by Jay Hickerson, it aired on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9:30 PM from April 17, 1950 through June 5, 1951 and on Saturdays at 5:15 PM from June 30, 1951 through ...

Edgar John (Berggren) Bergen was an American actor & radio performer, born to Swedish family, in Decatur, Michigan. He lived there until he was 16 (when his father died), then went to Chicago, where he attended Lake View High School and worked n a silent movie house.He taught himself ventriloquism from a pamphlet when he was 11 and a few years later, commissioned as a woodcarver to make a likeness of a rascally Irish newspaper boy he knew. The head went on a puppet named Charlie McCarthy, who became Bergen's lifelong sidekick.In 1938, Bergen was presented an Honorary Oscar (in the form of a ...

X Minus One is an American half-hour science fiction radio drama series that was broadcast from April 24, 1955, to January 9, 1958, in various timeslots on NBC. Known for high production values in adapting stories from the leading American authors of the era, X Minus One has been described as one of the finest offerings of American radio drama and one of the best science fiction series in any medium.

Comic Weekly Man aired from 1947 to 1954 and was a show where the Comic Weekly Man would read the Sunday comics in a dramatic fashion, complete with music and sound effects as well. Adults and children of all ages would tune in to hear the show and to enjoy the antics of the Comic Weekly Man. He read from such strips as Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Hi and Lois, and many, many others.

Bright Star (also known as The Irene Dunne-Fred MacMurray Show) was a 30-minute, 52 episode radio comedy-drama broadcast in 1952-53 and syndicated by Ziv. The storyline followed the misadventures of Hillsdale Morning Star editor Susan Armstrong (Irene Dunne) and her idealistic ace reporter George Harvey (Fred MacMurray) as they attempted to keep the struggling newspaper in business despite continual financial problems

The Halls of Ivy featured Ronald Colman as William Todhunter Hall, the president of small, Midwestern Ivy College, and Benita Hume as his wife, Victoria, a former British musical comedy star who sometimes feels the tug of her former profession, and followed their interactions with students, friends, and college trustees. Others in the cast included Herb Butterfield as testy board chairman Clarence Wellman, Willard Waterman (then starring as Harold Peary's successor as The Great Gildersleeve) as board member John Merriweather, and Bea Benaderet, Elizabeth Patterson, and Gloria Gordon...

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 ...

Theater of Romance was a 30-minute old-time radio show that aired on CBS from 1943 to 1957 as a filler for other shows. The show featured classic romantic stories from movies and historical fiction, and often had a live audience. The content, directors, performers, and producers changed frequently, but the show maintained its theme. Some of the stars who appeared on the show include Gregory Peck, Ida Lupino, Edward G. Robinson, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, Elliott and Kathy Lewis, Peter Leeds, Lurene Tuttle, Lou Merrill, and Gerald Mohr

Ripley's Believe It or Not! is an American franchise founded by Robert Ripley, which deals in bizarre events and items so strange and unusual that readers might question the claims. Originally a newspaper panel, the Believe It or Not feature proved popular and was later adapted into a wide variety of formats, including radio, television, comic books, a chain of museums and a book series.The Ripley collection includes 20,000 photographs, 30,000 artifacts and more than 100,000 cartoon panels. With 80-plus attractions, the Orlando, Florida-based Ripley Entertainment, Inc., a division of the...

The Five Mysteries Program is an audience participation radio series broadcast on the Mutual Broadcasting System August 10, 1947 – March 27, 1950. In 1947-48 it aired on Sundays at 2 p.m. Such mysteries were produced and syndicated (1945-48) to individual local radio stations as a "barter-trade" program to sell advertising to local merchants or trade the advertising announcements for goods, services or premiums, such as prizes awarded to listeners in radio station contests or promotions. To facilitate personalizing the shows to individual stations and insert the local ads, the producers...

Crime and Peter Chambers brought to radio a fictional private detective created by author Henry Kane, who also produced the show and wrote for it.[2] Kane introduced Chambers in the 1947 novel A Halo for Nobody. and featured him in a series of novels, the last of which was Kill for the Millions (1972).]Chambers was based in New York City, and his fee was $500 per day. Unlike many private detectives on radio, Chambers usually coordinated his work with that of the police. In fact, his best friend was police Lieutenant Louis Parker.[2]Radio historian John Dunning described the program as ...

The Sound of War is an 18 episode collection. Jay Hickerson's "The Ultimate Guide to all Circulating Shows" states that this is how many were produced. The series used the tagline "The Actual Sound Record of World War II. A drama preserved for all time through the medium of radio. An era not to be forgotten." The Sound of War contains many sound clips, some rare from such notable figures as Adolf Hitler, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Benito Mussolini, Neville Chamberlin, General Douglas McArthur, Charles DeGaulle, Hermann Goering, and many more.It's not clear when the show was ...

"The War of the Worlds" was a Halloween episode of the radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air directed and narrated by Orson Welles as an adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds (1898) that was performed and broadcast live at 8 pm ET on October 30, 1938, over the CBS Radio Network. The episode is famous for inciting a panic by convincing some members of the listening audience that a Martian invasion was taking place, though the scale of panic is disputed, as the program had relatively few listeners. The episode begins with an introductory monologue based ...

The series began on NBC Radio, running June 28, 1944 - September 20, 1944, as a summer replacement for Eddie Cantor's program with Sal Hepatica as sponsor. Young's character was "a bashful young man".[2] The show also featured vocalist Bea Wain, with music by Peter Van Steeden.From October 3, 1944, to June 28, 1946, the program was on ABC Radio with Young's girlfriend Betty portrayed by Jean Gillespie and Doris Singleton and with Ed Begley as Betty's father. Will Glickman and Jay Sommers were the writers.[3]The program returned to NBC September 20, 1946, - May 30, 1947, with ...

One Man's Family debuted as a radio series on April 29, 1932 in Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco, moving to the full West Coast NBC network the following month, sponsored by Snowdrift and Wesson Oil. On May 17, 1933, it expanded to the full coast-to-coast NBC network as the first West Coast show heard regularly on the East Coast.The show was broadcast as a weekly half-hour series (1933-1950) [sustained by Standard Brands from 1935 through 1949], then shifted to daily 15-minute installments, initially originating from the studios of San Francisco radio station KPO, NBC's flagship ...