Boxcars711 Old Time Radio

Burns and Allen are one of the most beloved couple in old time radio. They got started, like many of the greats of old time radio, in vaudeville, which is really just the touring popular entertainment in America prior to movies. Gracie was the sparkplug of the act, always the center of attention. George played the foil, the guy vainly trying to make sense of the ditzy world of Gracie. By the early...

MAYOR OF THE TOWN - An NBC offering. Aired on Sundays from 7:00PM to 7:30PM, starring Lional Barrymore and Agnes Moorehead. The creator and writer was Jean Holloway, the announcer Harlow Wilcox, music by Gordon Jenkins and sponsored by Rinso detergent.

CONFESSION NBC 30 minutes Sunday at 9:30PM.Cast Paul Frees, virginia Christine,Herb Butterfield, Parley Bear and other Hollywood radio actors. Announcer John Wald. From: July 5, 1953 to September 13, 1954 The Show had a texture and sound not unlike Dragnet, indeed the influence was realized throughout the show. These were true stories of Crime and Punishment, the obvious difference that Dragnet be...

By the 1940's, Frank and Ann Hummert controlled four and a half hours of national weekday broadcast schedules. Their features reportedly spawned more that 5 million pieces of correspondence annually from steadfast fans. Simultaneously they brought in more than half of the national radio chain's advertising revenues generated during the daylight hours. The couple broadcast 18 quarter-hour serials f...

The Black Museum - Opening in 1875, the Crime Museum at Scotland Yard is the oldest museum in the world purely for recording crime. The name Black Museum was coined in 1877 by a reporter from The Observer, a London newspaper, although the museum is still referred to as the Crime Museum. The idea of a crime museum was conceived by Inspector Neame who had already collected together a number of items...

Crime Classics was a U. S. radio docudrama which aired over CBS from June 15, 1953 to June 30, 1954. Created, produced, and directed by radio actor/director Elliott Lewis, the program was basically a historical true crime series, examining crimes, and especially murders, from the past. It grew out of Lewis's personal interest in famous murder cases, and took a documentary-like approach to the subj...

VICTORY THEATER "Victory Theater" was the 1942 summer replacement series for "Lux Radio Theater" and was sponsored by the United States Government. THIS EPISODE: THE PHILADELPHIA STORY Philadelphia heiress Tracy Lord throws out her playboy husband C.K. Dexter Haven shortly after their marriage. Two years later, Tracy is about to marry respectable George Kittredge whilst Dexter has been working for...

Horatio Hornblower Based on the novels by C. S. Forester. 1952-1953 Series Broadcast 1952; Transcribed in England for the BBC; aired in U.S. on CBS, then again on ABC in 1954 and Mutual in 1957.  Starring Michael Redgrave as Horatio Hornblower. a captain in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic era. The radio series was based on twelve Horatio Hornblower novels written by C.S. Forester. The...

Honest Harold Hemp lived with his mother and nephew and did a radio homemaker's program. The series received undeserved negative ratings and general negative attitude of the critics. The HONEST HAROLD scripts were well crafted with well developed characters and had excellent acting and production values. Many people, including Harold Peary, believed that THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE would not survive wi...

Mr. and Mrs. North are fictional American amateur detectives. Created by Frances and Richard Lockridge, the couple were featured in a series of twenty-six Mr. and Mrs. North novels, a Broadway play, a motion picture, and several different radio and television series. Mr. and Mrs. North was a radio mystery series that aired on CBS from 1942 to 1954. Alice Frost and Joseph Curtin had the title roles...

Archie Andrews , created in 1941 by Bob Montana, is a fictional character in an American comic book series published by Archie Comics, a long-run radio series, a syndicated comic strip and animation -- The Archie Show, a Saturday morning cartoon television series by Filmation, plus Archie's Weird Mysteries. Archie on radio Montana's characters were heard on radio in the early 1940s. Archie Andrews...

Hancock's Half-Hour is the yardstick against which all subsequent British sitcoms have been measured, the vast majority failing to size up to its extremely high standards. Based on his famous radio show of the same name, the TV run consolidated Tony Hancock's standing as Britain's leading comic of the day, the entertainer providing ample proof that his wonderfully flexible face could be as express...

The Ford Theater aired 1947 - 1949. It was broadcast on NBC until October 8, 1948 then moved to CBS.  It was hosted by Howard Lindsay. The show tried to use good but not to famous radio performers. Producer George Zachary, first producer, attempting to use popular radio stars instead of Hollywood stars offered limited success. Followed was low ratings which forced the replacement of Zachary with F...

Box 13 - The premise of the program was that Dan Holiday was an author who wrote mystery novels. To get ideas for his novels he placed an advertisement in a newspaper saying "Adventure wanted, will go anywhere, do anything, Box 13." The ads always brought fun adventures of all kinds: from racketeer's victim to psychotic killer looking for fun. Most of the episodes were based on Dan Holiday replyin...

Spy Catcher -  (BBC) 1960-1961. A series of true stories in the unceasing search for enemy spys in wartime. Based on the memoirs of Lt. Col. Oreste Pinto of Allied Counterintelligence Services. The shows were extremly popular during the golden age of radio. THIS EPISODE: The Infernal Triangle - In May 1945 the war in Europe was over but the search for spys was still on and a mass of letters on kno...

Groucho Marx matches wits with the American public in four episodes of this classic game show. Starting on the radio in 1947, You Bet Your Life made its television debut in 1950 and aired for 11 years with Groucho as host and emcee. Sponsored rather conspicuously by the Dodge DeSoto car manufacturers, the show featured two contestants working as a team to answer questions for cash prizes. Another...

2000 AD  (2000 Plus) is known as the first of the network science fiction shows, although it ran on Mutual just a month prior to the introduction of the landmark series, Dimension X. It was a half hour of science fiction wonder in an exciting package. The stories have a charm that is always present in science fiction of the future that is written in the past. "When The Worlds Met" takes place "at...

Sherlock Holmes detective stories appeared on radio for more than 25 years, with a long list of performers playing the parts of Holmes and Dr Watson. FIRST BROADCAST: October 20th 1930 LAST BROADCAST: September 4th 1956. The stories were written by Edith Meiser, a self-confessed Holmes addict.  These were so well written that she was warmly praised by Arthur Conan Doyleâs widow and son.

The Adventures Of Philip Marlowe - The first portrayal of Phillip Marlowe on the radio was by Dick Powell, when he played Raymond Chandler's detective on the Lux Radio Theater on June 11, 1945. This was a radio adaptation of the 1944 movie, from RKO, in which Mr. Powell played the lead. Two years later, Van Heflin starred as Marlowe in a summer replacement series for the Bob Hope Show on NBC. This...

The Chase is an exciting Old Time Radio series in which every episode contains, well, a chase. Tales, highly melodramatic and often improbable, of people on the run. The concept of "hunter and hunted" was built into the signatures. with the lone bugle of a fox hunt, the braying of dogs, the sounds of a man running, a gunshot, and the slowing footsteps and eventual fall of the victim.  It may be an...

21ST PRECINCT was one of the realistic police drama series of the early- to mid-1950's that were aired in the wake of DRAGNET. Hard-boiled private detective series that often portrayed police as inept or incompetent were losing favor. NBC's DRAGNET had proven that a realistic police show could attract and hold an audience. In 1953 CBS decided to use New York City as the backdrop for their own half...

Adventures In Research Episode 9   "The Immigrant Inventor" (3-30-43) Episode 10 "Dirty Hands" (4-06-43) A wonderfully informative old time radio series can be found in Adventures In Research. With tales that are not only wonderfully dramatic, but at the same time extremely interesting and entertaining. Adventures In Research offers the listener accounts in American scientific research history. Yo...

1984-1986 There were 69 episodes in the original series. The series continued after that under various names and formats. "The point between reality and fantasy. Where imagination holds the key to new worlds. That point of no return---The Vanishing Point." Favorably compared to Rod Sterling's classic TV series, The Twilight Zone, these finely tuned radio dramas from the Canadian Broadcasting Corpo...

Richard Diamond, Private Detective was a radio show starring Dick Powell which aired from 1949 to 1953, first on NBC, then ABC and finally on CBS. The title character was a rather light-hearted detective who often ended the episodes singing to his girlfriend, Helen. The television series was produced by Powell's company, Four Star Television, and that series ran for 3 years from 1957 to 1960. On T...

Baby Snooks - FIRST BROADCAST: 29th February 1936 as part of The Ziegfield Follies of the Air LAST BROADCAST: 29th May 1951 CAST: Fanny Brice as Baby Snooks. Henley Stafford as Lancelot âDaddyâ Higgins, Baby Snooks father. Lalive Brownell as âMommyâ Higgins (later played by Lois Corbet and Arlene Harris).Leone Ledoux as Snookâs little brother Roberspierre. ANNOUNCERS: John Conte (late 30s and earl...