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The Soundscape series is a happy side effect from the research phase of the When Radio Ruled Historical Documentary Podcasts.   The creation of the historical documentaries begins with research. In my collection of Old Time Radio Shows I have hundreds of hours of recordings from 1938. I arranged all these radio shows by order of date broadcast and then listened to them one by one until I had liste...

In the previous episode, 1938 part 1, we looked at the political situation across the world. The coming confrontation between countries trying to provoke war and countries wishing to avoid it. How Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Franco, and Stalin created fear and suffering. How the USA, Britain, France, and the smaller democracies tried to keep free and out of war through appeasement and diplomacy while...

The Year 1938 as presented through Old Time Radio! Featuring: Eddie Cantor The Cast of March of Time Adolf Hitler Orson Welles Georgie Jessel Neville Chamberlain Jack Benny Judy Garland Winston Churchill And More!

The Jack Benny show made Phil a huge star. Even though Phil would go on to do more films and have his own radio shows, and tour the country with his band, and appear on television and build a real estate empire he would always be known first and foremost for his Jack Benny years. What you are about to hear are a series of musical selections Phil and his orchestra played live on Jack Benny's Jello...

Born Edward Israel Iskowitz in 1892 to a poor family or recent immigrants, through sheer tenacity and talent street urchin Eddie Cantor became a show biz giant for half a century. Starting out in vaudeville in 1907, starring on Broadway, a movie star in both silents and talkies, and a radio and television pioneer.   For three Generations Every household in America knew the name Eddie Cantor as wel...

Old Time Radio's Jack Benny show was a sitcom disguised as a variety show.   The cast used their real names, or rather their real stage names, but they all played characters unlike themselves. Characters of diverse comic points of view, each character contrasted with the others. Each funny in their own way and all together a delightful mix of contrasting attitudes and motivations.   Jack Benny was...

Best known today as the third angle in the Bob Hope Bing Crosby road pictures romantic triangles, or perhaps as the sarong wearing eye candy in several other films, Dorothy Lamour started out as a big band singer. Appearing weekly on the Charlie McCarthy show afforded Dorothy opportunities to remind audiences of her musical roots, and her lovely expressive voice. And that's what this episode is al...

The ladies love Charlie. Featuring: Rosalind Russell Ella Logan Barbara Stanwyck Marlene Dietrich Edgar Bergen  

The Fred Allen material you are about to hear is from his radio show, Town Hall Tonight, in 1938. Fred Allen was unique in the radio world of corny set up/punchline type snappy patter his former vaudeville and current radio peers like Eddie Cantor, Ed Wynn, Georgie Jessel, the Marx Brothers, and others favored. Oftentimes Fred's comic voice is compared to that of Mark Twain. All American and homes...

Baby Snooks was an iconic and wildly popular character through the late thirties, the war years and the end of the forties, into the fifties.   Fanny Brice had joined so many other Vaudeville greats who jumped to radio when Vaudeville collapsed and died. Al Jolson, Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, Connie Boswell, Fred Allen, George Jessel, and so many others had a journey from Vaude to Airwaves but they...

Judy Garland was born Frances Gumm in 1922, and soon revealed a talent for song and dance. Her first public performance was when she was just 2 and a half years old, singing jingle bells at a Christmas pageant.   Her father was a successful vaudevillian with Judy and her sisters following in his footsteps, touring a singing act "The Gumm Sisters" in the waning days of Vaudeville.   When sound came...