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RADIO DRAMA
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Can young people today
appreciate radio dramas?
of TheColumnists.com
It seems most of
the world spent the past month watching the Olympics. But not
me. There I was in my dark and dank basement listening almost
in awe as Humphrey Bogart and Greer Garson took a trip down that
treacherous river in "The African Queen."
That’s what I said: Bogey and Garson. But I also used the
word “listening”. Let me briefly explain. I’m
preparing to teach a university course in Toronto all about TV
drama. But first I have to explain what radio drama was all about
because for its first decade live TV drama was really radio with
pictures.
I had no idea how these first year students will take to radio
drama. They’re in the age range of 18 to 20 and some have
told me they don’t even know much about TV drama. Their
world these days is the Internet, You Tube, the Blackberry.
At first I felt stymied because I was born in 1946, so my remembrances
of radio’s Golden Age are very tentative. I distinctly remember
listening with my father to some radio drama with creaking stairs.
Was it "Inner Sanctum"? Couldn’t really say.
In 1952 Canadian TV finally came on. It was one CBC station in
Toronto but it was enough for my father to consign our gigantic
radio to the upstairs closet. With one Canadian TV station and
two American stations from Buffalo we felt radio would no longer
be part of our lives.
So, when a friend gave me a cassette of "The African Queen,"
I jumped at the opportunity to listen in. I then remembered I
had some 78s in the basement with more radio dramas on them.
Then another friend loaned some of his tapes. Then I found an
Internet site with 108 episodes. Pretty soon I was listening
day and night.
So, I spent weeks listening to these dramas--they were mostly
live broadcasts, originally preserved on gigantic acetate records.
At first I went for the oddities: Barbara Stanwyck in "Wuthering
Heights." Huh? Well, Stanwyck is pretty terrific as Cathy
with only an occasional Brooklynism thrown in. Then the Internet
offered "Manhattan Melodrama" with Bill Powell, Myrna
Loy and Don Ameche substituting for Clark Gable.
But would any of these oddities attract today’s students
who may not have heard of many of the stars?
Undaunted, I sampled Joan Crawford in "Anna Christie,"
Robert Montgomery as "The Count Of Monte Cristo," "Casablanca"
with Hedy Lamarr and Alan Ladd .
Ronald Colman in "A Tale Of Two Cities." I kept conjuring
up images from the movie with Colman as I was listening. Today’s
students might find him merely stuffy. Other "Lux Radio
Theatre" presentations are fun (to me) because of last minute
cancellations: On the radio version of "For Me And My Gal"
it’s Judy Garland and George Murphy (as in the movie), but
a hastily substituted Dick Powell in the Gene Kelly role.
It was Melvyn Douglas who told me on the bigger radio efforts
like "Lux" a staff of 50 looked after each aspect of
a live production, from a full orchestra to technicians to a
supporting cast that might number up to 25. For its Monday night
the stars were called in Friday for rehearsal with another rehearsal
on Saturday and two dress rehearsals on Monday before the live
transmission at 9 p.m. With a matinee idol present like Gregory
Peck or Robert Taylor, you can actually hear women in the audience
sighing.
But I feel pretty sure Agnes Moorehead in "Sorry, Wrong
Number" will wow them. It’s far more effective than
the 1948 film with Barbara Stanwyck . In one interview I read
Moorehead claimed she’d done it 18 times on radio. This
one could well be the 1943 recording she made specifically for
Decca Records, but I can’t be sure.
I do know a number of actors I’ve interviewed had strong
radio roots. Macdonald Carey got experience on late 1930s radio
soap operas, which were 15 minutes and always live. He said working
with actress Erin O’Brien-Moore was quite an experience.
She’d drop every script page on the floor after reading
it until she was standing up to her ankles in paper.
Carey said his first big part was as host on the long running
series "First Nighter" starting in 1938. He remembered
the experience as “excruciating, nerve wracking; we had
to end right on the dot.” Doing TV’s "Days Of
Our Lives," initially live was “much easier. We had
the Teleprompter by then.”
Actress Audrey Totter was known as the “woman of a thousand
faces” during her radio hey-day. After years on soaps –she’d
do two or three a day –she had the radio series "Meet
Millie," which started in 1951. But when it went to TV in
1952 Totter’s studio (Columbia) refused to let her do TV
and so Elena Verdugo took over.
Totter said radio gave her a chance to play all sorts of parts
and many different accents provided the kind of challenges a
young actress truly needed. “Since I wasn’t seen I
didn’t suffer from over exposure," she said. "I’d
do everything in street clothes and then go on to the next assignment.”
It’s really weird listening to the radio version of "Dragnet,"
which started in 1949 with Jack Webb as Sgt. Joe Friday. The
Dum-De-Dum-Dum music is there, so is that peculiar stacatto speech
pattern of Friday’s. Barton Yarborough was the sidekick
but he died in 1951 replaced by Ben Alexander who also played
on TV (from 1952 to 1959).
Other series just don’t hold up. Alan Ladd had one of radio’s
greatest voices, but in "Box 13," which started in
1948, he’s up against hokey scripts. This detective saga
just doesn’t hold up, so I won’t run it for students.
I probably won’t run "Big Town" either, although
I’m a huge Edward G. Robinson fan. He’s pure ham as
crusading editor Steve Wilson and when he gets together with
Claire Trevor, it’s a case of two scene stealers out for
blood.
I’m sure students might actually “dig” radio’s
"Gunsmoke" with Bill Conrad. Think of it: A successful,
rather adult western that’s all words without the visuals
of fistfights and cattle drives.
Listening to a great radio program is far more time consuming
than watching TV. I can’t read the newspaper with a taut
drama running on radio or I get mixed up. So I listen with the
lights turned down low. This way an "Inner Sanctum"
becomes a frightening experience.
Radio requires a different set of brain muscles. These shows
came live to contemporary listeners who were used to the medium.
Today’s audience must supply the images in their minds.
At first this is very difficult, even painful; it takes a few
hours to really relax with the format.
But the “live” aspect is also pretty thrilling, particularly
when an actor makes a fluff and tries to recover. In today’s
era, TV drama is pre-packaged, supremely slick. Live radio drama
forces one to really listen but after a while I became rather
hooked. Will students feel the same? I’m just not sure.
I figure with these students I must start with the best: Orson
Welles’ masterful live radio drama "War Of The Worlds."
When I was at The Hamilton Spectator 30 years ago I looked
in library files for Oct. 30, 1938, and discovered Hamilton station
CKOC was carrying a live feed that fateful night via a telephone
trunk line.
This one still works beautifully. It's the first "reality"
show with brilliantly recreated dialogue and actors who seem
to be real people. Edgar Bergen once told me it was all his fault.
His show with Charlie McCarthy took most of the audience that
night, but 12 minutes into both shows Bergen’s show started
highlighting a singer. A sizable chunk of his audience switched
to Welles and instantly panicked at what they were hearing.
Hamilton citizens practically broke down The Spec’s front
doors as they anxiously sought information about the Martian
Invasion. I’ll ask the students if it could happen today?
Theoretically, yes, but TV is so much reruns and tightly edited
shows the opportunity will probably never come up.
©2008 by Jim Bawden. This column first posted Sept. 1, 2008.
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