The Good Old Days of Radio Show

It's the last in our series of "10 More Great Sci-Fi Stories" as presented on vintage radio. Today, we depart from Dimension X and X Minus One to present a post-apocalyptic story by George R. Stewart, a best-selling author who was the great granddaddy of the "disaster" genre. His story The Earth Abides imagines what it might be like to be the last survivor of a plague that wipes out all of humanit...

Today the feature is once again Groucho Marx. This is Groucho from 1946 on a funny "Mail Call" program. "Mail Call" was Armed Forces-only popular entertainment show generally recorded in front of military camps, and sent by transcription to be aired overseas. Groucho does a lot of adlibbing here, and sings a wartime version of one of his famous songs, "Lydia the Tattooed Lady." Visit our website:...

Today we are nearing the conclusion of "10 More Great Sci-Fi Stories." This story is just too weird and wildly imaginative to not include in this list. A man repeatedly relives the same day, waking up every morning screaming. This Frederik Pohl story manages to be both highly original and explore popular themes of media paranoia of the era. Visit our website: https://goodolddaysofradio.com/ Subscr...

We continue through some of the best Jack Benny shows from the year 1947. Today's episode is the Jack Benny Show at his best. It features two interesting guests, the famous singer/songwriter Hoagy Carmichael, and the high-powered movie studio executive, Samuel Goldwyn. Don't miss Jack and Goldwyn trying to hold it together reading the hilarious script. Visit our website: https://goodolddaysofradio...

Today we imagine a future where the entire transit system is made up of gigantic conveyer belts, where you can have breakfast and a cup of coffee in a café on your way to work. But what happens when the engineers have a labor strike? Robert Heinlein is the author of this famous short story, as we continue our journey exploring the world of great sci-fi stories on radio. Visit our website: https://...

In this episode, we dive into the world of Bob and Ray, the legendary comedy duo that revolutionized radio and television. Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding's weird improvised characters and satire influenced an entire generation of comedy. Today we listen to a Bob and Ray half-hour show from 1954. Visit our website: https://goodolddaysofradio.com/ Subscribe to our Facebook Group for news, discussions,...

Today we selected a story that doesn't deal with the unusual aliens and fantastic elements so much, but delves into the psychology of complete human isolation. A man has been alone in an outpost in outer space for six years, and lives side by side with his delusions. Now that the time has come to relieve him of his duties, will he know what is real and what isn't? Visit our website: https://goodol...

It's our 300th episode! That's important to us, anyway, so we are celebrating with an extra whiz-bang extravaganza. It's a 90-minute episode of "The Big Show," the audio showcase of the most popular entertainers from 1951. We are calling this a tribute to Vaudeville, because this particular episode also features several hilarious comedy teams from the days of Vaudeville, brought out of retirement...

Its summer, and we are back this week to continue with some of the best science fiction to come from the golden age of radio and sci-fi. Today's imaginative story mixes Nazis and "shrinking" technology. This story by the lesser known writer Villiers Gerson is "Fantastic Voyage" with a unique spin. Visit our website: https://goodolddaysofradio.com/ Subscribe to our Facebook Group for news, discussi...

Another great Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show. Phil is worried about getting his tonsils removed and is getting no sympathy from anyone. A lot of sitcoms from the time dealt with this topic, but perhaps none of them as uniquely and hilariously as the writers, Ray singer and Dick Chevillat. Visit our website: https://goodolddaysofradio.com/ Subscribe to our Facebook Group for news, discussions, and...

Happy Independence Day! It's difficult finding great radio specials for July 4th, because all the big shows were on summer break. However, patriotic and historical shows abounded, and this well-written play digs into the backstory of the writing of the Declaration of Independence. It speculates on the wording of the document, and imagines what the nation's learned  forefather's might have wrestled...

For the third and final week of our mini-tribute to the early work of Jack Webb, who was most famous for "Dragnet," we are going back to one of his first radio acting performances on the exceptional CBS series "Escape." This is an emotionally dramatic role for Webb, who usually played it cold, as a tightly-wound individual such as Pat Novak or Pete Kelly. This is a "Mummy"-esque fantastical story...

This week's great science fiction story is by Murray Leinster. He is most famous for his story on artificial intelligence "A Logic Named Joe," where he uncannily predicted the Internet. This story is a little more thinky, as it wrestles with heady problems of a "first contact" with an alien intelligence. Earth explorers encounter an alien ship in the midst of space, but both ships find they can no...

Moving along from last week's grimy waterfront detective Pat Novak, we look at TV and radio actor Jack Webb in a similar role, Pete Kelly, a musician who travelled amongst the seedy world of jazz musicians and crime lords. Learn on this episode how authentic this show was, and how "Pete Kelly's Blues" really had very little to do with "the blues" at all. Visit our website: https://goodolddaysofrad...

Today's unusual science fiction story is by Hugo-Award winning writer Mark Clifton, and deals with children who are a step beyond the genius IQ. They are "Brights," and they have figured out how to manipulate the space-time continuum, making the inter-dimensional cosmos their playground. This creates a thorny problem for their parents, the "Tweens" and "Stupids" to figure out. Visit our website: h...

We did a Pat Novak last year, and the dialogue writing was so outrageous, we had to go back to hear more. Jack Webb did this series briefly before becoming typecast as 'Joe Friday' on Dragnet. Here he is playing a skeezy private detective on the dirty San Francisco waterfront. Webb's delivery is so earnest and deadpan, it's no wonder this obscure series had listeners calling in to ask, "Who's that...

This is a compelling story of a family that survived a cataclysmic event, when a passing meteorite pulls the earth out of Axis and away from the sun. It is a story that is at the same time claustrophobic, about a family clinging to life in "the nest," and vast, as they must go to fetch frozen air in the frozen wastes in order to keep breathing. It's from the pen of Fritz Leiber, writer of fantasy,...

It's episode 11 of 15 for the Stan Freberg Show today, the last network comedy show. In this episode, the star sportscaster "Cliff Les Hutley" from the dressing room of Bearcat Panther Tigers, a trombone playing dog, and Bang Gunley, US Marshal. Inventive radio from a time when all eyes were glued to TV.  Visit our website: https://goodolddaysofradio.com/ Subscribe to our Facebook Group for news,...

Another great science fiction story today from one of our favorite writers of the Golden Age and beyond, Ray Bradbury. This is may be his best time travel story, about a couple from the future, who travel back in time to escape the horrors of a world consumed by war. They are being pursued though, by an agent from the future who is attempting to send them back. Visit our website: https://goodoldda...

Broadcasting from San Francisco, Jack and the gang are back. This is one of the few episodes we've played so far in our journey through this series where Jack and the cast are on stage performing the show, a staple of Jack Benny from the early years, which was like a variety program of the earlier vaudeville format. Joining them is the Academy Award winning actress Jane Wyman. Visit our website: h...

We begin a new series this week, with science fiction stories that are still as imaginative, mind-blowing, and entertaining as they were originally written. Our first stop is an author who is best-known for his i-Robot/Foundations series, Isaac Asimov. This is his riveting stand-alone short story all about cancer, and the "real" cause of cancer, that will have you scratching your head--and wonderi...

Groucho Marx is back with George Fenneman in the hugely popular radio/TV show about men and women betting and guessing. But mostly about getting a chance to exchange quips with Groucho. We're once again in the early Desoto years with this episode, and John talks about how the TV and radio show differed, and the famous "duck." Visit our website: https://goodolddaysofradio.com/ Subscribe to our Face...

After WWII, and before "The Great Escape," radio gave us "Four Went Home," a great little condensed story about some POWs who decide to break out of a Nazi prison camp. It was written by a name that keeps coming up synonymous with excellent tales of adventure and horror in later years, Antony Ellis. This is our tribute to Memorial Day, and the bravery and sacrifice of all of our Armed Forces from...

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Bob Hope playing Superman? Yes, Command Performance ventures into its second comic hero spoof. This one stars Hope as Clark Kent (A.K.A. Superman), Paulette Goddard, and features the inspired casting of Bela Lugosi as the Man of Steel's nemesis, Dr. Bikini, and his minion, Professor Atoll, played by the comic character actor Sterling Holloway (p...

Today Mickey Rooney stars as an expelled student who discovers the brutal murder of his stepmother and, assuming it was committed by his father, frames himself for the crime. However, he soon realizes his father is innocent, and he has taken the rap for the true perpetrator. This is the 10th and final tale by mystery writer Cornell Woolrich, and another incredible dramatization from the radio seri...