Subject: [removed] Digest V2007 #31
From: [removed]@[removed]
Date: 1/26/2007 9:26 PM
To: [removed]@[removed]

------------------------------


                            The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                              Volume 2007 : Issue 31
                         A Part of the [removed]!
                             [removed]
                                 ISSN: 1533-9289


                                 Today's Topics:

  Re: radio shows on tv                 [ wgaryw@[removed] ]
  Re: original Olive Oyl                [ Grams46@[removed] ]
  Aunt Bethany                          [ Ljk2476@[removed] ]
  Olive Oyl                             [ "Karen Lerner" <[removed]@[removed] ]
  Re: Commercials for Harry Lime        [ Gregg Oppenheimer <gopp@[removed]; ]
  Olive Oyl and CBS color TV            [ <verotas@[removed]; ]
  Lost OTR shows                        [ "D. FISHER" <dfisher052@[removed] ]
  Olive Oyl                             [ Dan Hughes <danhughes@[removed]; ]
  1-27 births/deaths                    [ Ronald Sayles <bogusotr@[removed] ]

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 22:53:05 -0500
From: wgaryw@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re: radio shows on tv

Jay Sweet writes:

What  television shows  based on OTR do you think did a good job?

i've always felt that burns and allen got better and better as they got older
(up till the point, perhaps, of adding ronnie to the tv show), and that the
tv show was a thousand times better than their radio work.

jack benny, on the other hand, as successful as he was on tv, and as
wonderful as his facial expressions and gestures were, was, i think, much
funnier on radio.  too often on tv the writers resorted to the cheapest of
gags, like "funny" costumes.  also, too often the tv shows were simply
retreads of ideas that were created originally for radio, and worked better
on radio, where burns and allen substantially changed the nature of their
show in the transaition from radio to tv by having george break the fourth
wall as narrator/monologist, and generally giving george a lot more to do
than he ever had on radio.

it's interesting to me that it seems the more the radio performers stuck to
the original conception of their shows when moving to tv, the less successful
they were.  fred allen's failed attempts to recreate "allen's alley" are
another good case in point. . .

--wgw

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 08:30:36 -0500
From: Grams46@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re: original Olive Oyl

dm4yeshua@[removed] writes:

charactor name  is Aunt Bethany.

her name was Mae Questel / Mae Questal / Mae  Questelle.
her extensive list of credits including olive oyl in the popeye  cartoons can
be found at [removed]

peace from  kathy
support our troops; end the war
john 3:16

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 08:34:05 -0500
From: Ljk2476@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Aunt Bethany

    Hola!      David B. asked about the actress that  played the old aunt in
the Chevy Chase comedy, 'NATIONAL LAMPOON'S CHRISTMAS  VACATION. Yes, the
woman was played by Mae Questel, the best known of the  actresses that played
"Betty Boop" for Max Fleischer's great cartoon series.  (She also made "Olive
Oyl" on Fleischer's classic POPEYE cartoons her own,  although, there too,
other actresses did the voice as well.) - Lenny  Kohl

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 10:07:26 -0500
From: "Karen Lerner" <[removed]@[removed];
To: "OTR Digest (E-mail)" <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Olive Oyl

In response to David B.'s inquiry:

I would guess that most would be familiar with the Chevy Chase Christmas
Vacation movie from the 80s.  There is an elderly woman on the
movie whose charactor name is Aunt Bethany.  I recently heard it stated
that she was the original Olive Oil on the Popeye OTR show."

David, the actress who plays Aunt Bethan in Christmas Vacation is Mae
Questel.  She was involved with the radio version of Popeye, but did not
voice Olive Oyl (that was Olive Lamoy).  She WAS on the show, though!  She
did the voice of Sweetpea.  HOWEVER, on the CARTOON version, she gave voice
to both Olive Oyl AND Sweetpea.  In addition to her involvement with Popeye,
Mae was a vaudeville performer, and the voice of Betty Boop from 1931 - 1939.
Also, according to [removed], her recording of "On The Good Ship Lollipop"
sold more than 2 million copies during the Depression.  On film, she did
appear in a Woody Allen picture (New York Stories).  Her film credits also
include Who Framed Roger Rabbit (reprising her 30's character Betty Boop),
and Funny Girl, among others.

I don't know much about the Popeye radio series except that it was fairly
short-lived (1935 - 1938) and that on radio the sailor became mighty after
eating the sponsors product WHEATENA - not spinich like on the comic strip
and television program.  "Wheatena's me diet, I ax ya to try it, I'm Popeye
the sailor man!  Beep-beep."

Karen Lerner
Radio Spirits

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 12:32:37 -0500
From: Gregg Oppenheimer <gopp@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re: Commercials for Harry Lime

I'm planning a re-creation of the BBC radio program "The Lives of
Harry Lime", which was syndicated in the [removed] in the early 1950s. The
only recordings I have are minus commercials (which were added
domestically).

To make my re-creation more complete, I'd like to add commercials --
ones from the early 1950s, and preferably ones that are humorous
(whether or not the humor was intentional).

Can any of you recommend some specific commercials for me to use in
my re-creation?

Alternatively, if anyone has an aircheck of a "Harry Lime" broadcast,
it would be great to go with commercials that actually aired
(somewhere) with the show.

Thanks.

- Gregg Oppenheimer

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 16:18:18 -0500
From: <verotas@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Olive Oyl and CBS color TV

Re the Chevy Chase Christmas Movie, Aunt Bethany was played by Mae Questel.
To describe all the things with which she is identified would take a very
long posting here, and I defer to others with more expertise on this great
character singer/actress.  Boop Boop a Doop!

Now to CBS color TV:  When I was in my teens I was most fortunate to have
developed friends in radio and TV - especially at CBS - who were very kind to
me, sending me pictures and other material, tickets, etc.  One perk I
received was to be invited to a special press premier showing of the new CBS
Color TV system.  If memory serves, I believe it was in a function room at
the Waldorf Astoria.  It was a fairly large room in which were set up a
number of fairly large floor-model TV sets - perhaps half a dozen - each
complete with the cumbersome, large color wheel, whose radius had to be
slightly larger than the width of the screen in front of which it rotated.

A rather small number of chairs was placed straight out from the front of
each set, because viewing through the framing on the color wheel created a
tunnel effect between the wheel and the screen, some distance behind it.
One chair in each group was occupied by an engineer whose job was to operate
a control which made sure the wheel rotated in proper synch to keep the
correct colors showing at the correct time.  Somewhat like the original
Cinerama theatrical showings which actually had 3 screens with two fuzzy
areas in between, and an engineer had to make sure the 3 projectors were in
synch with each other.

But that's another story on another technology.  Cinerama eventually avoided
their problem; CBS color TV would have done so with theirs also, had not
'General' Sarnoff ridden roughshod over the FCC, pressuring  them to dub
knighthood on the RCA 'compatible' system of color TV without giving CBS a
chance to come up with compatibility and no color wheel, which they were
working on.  For further enlightenment on this and related issues I recommend
the excellent book and documentary  "Empire of the Air", both of which should
be in the library of everyone reading these Digests.

Present in the aforementioned room were all the NYC and other radio-TV
columnists, and I was ga-ga meeting some and staring at all.  John Crosby,
Dorothy Kilgallen, Ben Gross, and many more.  Everyone that mattered in that
tiny but important community of onlookers, watchers, molders, and muckrakers.

For this stellar event, the network brought into its one new color studio
many of its very biggest CBS stars, including my favorite Arthur Godfrey who
would be seen for the first time with his resplendent freckles and red hair
(actually more auburn).  But the sustained positive response came from the
series of sponsors' products (probably present and anticipated) which showed
up so spectacularly on the color sets:  Pall Mall and Lucky Strike
cigarettes, Prestone AntiFreeze, and many others chosen for their brilliantly
colored packaging.   Didn't that make the Madison Avenue gray flannel suits
sit up and take notice.  You don't suppose that's what CBS had in mind?

The most impressive moment came right at the get-go.  The black screens
suddenly came to life, and we were impressed that the usual gray blankness
became the blueish tint with which we are now all so familiar.  There
appeared a white background which wasn't quite just a white background.  As
it turned out, a camera was above a crystal glass bowl filled with water,
sitting on a white tablecloth.  As the color camera lifted up slightly this
became obvious.  Then a hidden hand bumped the table which rippled the water,
and we became aware of fleeting sparklets dashing about, reflections from the
multi-colored overhead lights in the TV studio.

SUDDENLY a beautiful red rose with a few green leaves dropped from above and
plopped down into the agitated liquid, causing more colorful waves in the
water, and excited ripples among the stunned onlookers.  The effect was
electric - or should I say electronic.  It got everyone's attention for all
that followed, and produced rave reviews the following day in newspapers, and
shortly after in trade and general magazines.

What kind of a day was it?  A day - like all days - filled with those events
that alter and illuminate our times.  And (thankfully)  - "I Was There!"
And never shall forget!

Lee Munsick

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 16:18:26 -0500
From: "D. FISHER" <dfisher052@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Lost OTR shows

I've been collecting since the mid '60's & still looking for "Island
Venture" from 1945 -1946.
I fondly remember listening when I was a kid.

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 19:17:57 -0500
From: Dan Hughes <danhughes@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Olive Oyl

David B. asks about the voice of Olive Oyl and her role in the movie
Christmas Vacation.

David, I went to [removed], looked up Christmas Vacation, found
that Aunt Bethany was played by Mae Questal, who was the voice of Olive
Oyl but also and more famously, the voice of Betty Boop.  The Betty Boop
character was modeled after Mae.  Read about her here:
[removed]

---Dan

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 23:26:58 -0500
From: Ronald Sayles <bogusotr@[removed];
To: Olde Tyme Radio Digest Digest <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  1-27 births/deaths

January 27th births

01-27-1885 - Jerome Kern - NYC - d. 11-11-1945
composer: "Railroad Hour"; "Show Boat"
01-27-1888 - Harry "Singin' Sam" Frankel - Hillsboro, OH - d. 6-12-1948
singer: (The Barbasol Man) "Reminiscin' with Singin' Sam"
01-27-1895 - Harry Ruby - NYC - d. 2-23-1974
songwriter: "Thirty Minutes in Hollywood"; "Great Moments to Music"
01-27-1895 - Violet Heming - Leeds, Yorkshire, England - d. 7-4-1981
actor: Connie Wakefield "Right to Happiness"
01-27-1899 - Milton Rettenberg - NYC - d. 12-24-1986
pianist/conductor: "Chesterfield Presents"; "Cities Service Concerts"
01-27-1904 - Frankie Marvin - Butler, Indian Territory, Oklahoma - d.
1-18-1985
actor: "Gene Autry's Melody Rance"
01-27-1905 - Howard McNear - Los Angeles, CA - d. 1-3-1969
actor: Doctor Charles Adams "Gunsmoke"
01-27-1908 - "Hot Lips" Page - Dallas, TX - d. 11-5-1954
jazz trumpeter: "Milt Herth Trio"; "Eddie Condon's Jazz Concert"
01-27-1912 - Benay Venuta - San Francisco, CA - d. 9-1-1995
singer: "Benay Venuta's Program"; "Shell Chateau"
01-27-1914 - Alexander Albert Avola - Boston, MA - d. 1-20-2000
guitarist/arranger: Artie Shaw Orchestra; Tommy Dorsey Orchestra
01-27-1916 - Merrill Mueller - NYC - d. 11-30-1980
reporter: "NBC Stands By"; "Morning News Roundup"; "The Navy Hour"
01-27-1918 - Skitch Henderson - Birmingham, England - d. 11-1-2005
bandleader: "Philco Radio Time"; "Songs by Sinatra"
01-27-1921 - Donna Reed - Dennison, IA - d. 1-14-1986
actor: "Lux Radio Theatre"; "Star and the Story"; "Silver Theatre"
01-27-1924 - Sabu - Mysore, India - d. 12-2-1963
actor: "Confidential Close-Ups"

January 27th deaths

01-21-1904 - Allen Prescott - St. Louis, MO - d. 1-27-1978
host: "Wife Saver"; "Prescott Presents"
02-08-1915 - George "Doc" Abraham - Wayland, NY - d. 1-27-2005
gardner, host: "The Green Thumb"
02-20-1919 - Dick Wesson - Idaho - d. 1-27-1979
announcer: "Space Patrol"
03-16-1901 - Edward Pawley - Kansas City, KS - d. 1-27-1988
actor: Steve Wilson "Big Town"
05-01-1918 - Jack Paar - Canton, OH - d. 1-27-2004
comedian: "Jack Paar Show"; "Take It or Leave It"
06-13-1887 - Edward 'Senator' Ford - Brooklyn, NY - d. 1-27-1970
panelist: "Can You Top This"
06-23-1910 - Edward P. Morgan - Walla Walla, WA - d. 1-27-1993
newscaster: "News and Commentary"
06-27-1908 - Bill Kennedy - Cleveland Heights, OH - d. 1-27-1997
announcer: "Nobody's Children"
08-12-1898 - Oscar Homolka - Vienna, Austria - d. 1-27-1978
actor: "Lux Radio Theatre"
08-22-1887 - Julia Sanderson - Springfield, MA - d. 1-27-1975
singer, emcee: "Blackstone Plantation"; "Battle of the Sexes"; "Let's
Be Charming"
10-13-1900 - Gerald Marks - Saginaw, MI - d. 1-27-1997
tin pan alley composer: "Great Days We Honor"
10-26-1911 - Mahalia Jackson - New Orleans, LA - d. 1-27-1972
gospel singer: (The Angel of Peace) "Mahalia Jackson Show"
xx-xx-1911 - Lou Crosby - Lawton, OK - d. 1-27-1984
announcer: "Rise Stevens Show"; "Gene Autry's Melody Ranch"; "Lum and
Abner"

Ron Sayles

--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V2007 Issue #31
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