Subject: [removed] Digest V2002 #497
From: "OldRadio Mailing Lists" <[removed]@[removed];
Date: 12/20/2002 3:47 PM
To: <[removed]@[removed];

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


                            The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                              Volume 2002 : Issue 497
                         A Part of the [removed]!
                                 ISSN: 1533-9289


                                 Today's Topics:

  Younger OTR fans and Harry Bartell    [ "Irene Heinstein" <IreneTH@[removed] ]
  A question about Throckmorton         [ "Holm, Chris " <[removed]@delphiau ]
  CD making and playing                 [ "Don Frey" <alanladdsr@[removed] ]
  Old devices                           [ "Holm, Chris " <[removed]@delphiau ]
  Missing Heirs                         [ passage@[removed] ]
  Retro OTR World?                      [ "Stephen A Kallis, Jr." <skallisjr@ ]
  Re: Young members                     [ Joe Mackey <joemackey108@[removed] ]
  Christmas Moments                     [ Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed] ]
  Young Member                          [ "Kenaniah Busch" <wbfan@[removed] ]
  Howard Culver reads, "The Christmas   [ Charlie Summers <charlie@[removed] ]
  Christmas shows                       [ "Andrew Godfrey" <niteowl049@[removed] ]
  Re: young listeners                   [ "Ivan G. Shreve, Jr." <iscreve@comc ]
  Happy Holidays                        [ badaxley@[removed] ]
  re: favorite Christmas shows          [ vigor16@[removed] ]

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

Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 09:55:17 -0500
From: "Irene Heinstein" <IreneTH@[removed];
To: "OTR" <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Younger OTR fans and Harry Bartell

Thank you Ron Sayles for asking the younger members how and why they got
involved in OTR.    Not only was your question a great conversation starter
but it also brought out voices of members who were "lurking" and/or felt
they did not have much to offer.     Hopefully this will not be the only
time you all post messages.   Everyone has something to offer.  Just talking
about a show or a performer that you love is enough.

But it also demonstrated that despite our age differences we have much in
common, particularly that we respond strongly to the challenge to our
imaginations by radio in contrast to TV.

For many listeners that serves as a strong draw to OTR despite one's age.
Neither my sister nor my brother, both older then I (a 64-year old) and
exposed to radio longer don't care a  hoot about OTR, nor does my husband,
but he doesn't much like TV either.

I did force my husband and sister to listen to "War of the Worlds" when they
were trapped in our car on a longish drive.   They both enjoyed it, but
that's it, they're still not interested.   Oh well, we can't all have good
taste.  :))

I did the same things with my kids when they were growing up.  On the 4-hour
drive to and from Lake Tahoe every summer where we vacationed for many years
I would tolerate their music tapes but insisted that my tapes be in the
rotation too.   They always enjoyed the tapes, carefully chosen by me on the
basis of what I thought they'd like but they were basically not interested
in pursuing OTR.

 Finding this group and finding sources for increasing my OTR library has
been such a blessing.  It has provided me so many wonderful hours of
listening and developing a knowledge base of the actors, writers, directors,
things I cared little about when I was growing up with radio.

I think this is a great group and I really appreciated hearing from new
voices.   Please, please, keep talking.

Which leads to my next subject, the wonderful Harry Bartell.  I second Mike
Ray's praiseful comments.    I eagerly look forward to Harry's column.   I
didn't think of the Kennedy Center but I agree that Harry should have that
kind of honor.  But I did and still do think that Harry would be a wonderful
part of Bob Edward's "Morning Edition" on NPR,  a la Bob's ongoing
conversations with Red Barber which ran every Friday.

I think it's about time for Harry to get his due outside of our growing
circle.    No day is complete without hearing Harry at least once and when
I'm listening to a whole series, most recently "Frontier Gentleman"  I hear
Harry a lot more then once.    He is all over my OTR collection and has hung
out with an incredible part of acting history, OTR actors and beyond.  He's
smart, articulate and modest, with enough humility to pass the Arthur
Godfrey test.

We are getting delicious bites of his experiences, insight and knowledge,
but I'm sure most of us want a lot more and wish he would write a book.
Please, Harry, consider it.    You are such a good writer.

~Irene

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

Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 09:55:33 -0500
From: "Holm, Chris " <[removed]@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  A question about Throckmorton

One of my coworkers will be having a child soon, and I recommended that she
name the kid Throckmorton.  No one would believe that Throckmorton was a real
name.  Being a fan of Mr. Gildersleeve, I had assumed it was.  Well, long
story short, we checked several online lists of 'baby names' and could find
no listing for Throckmorton.  Are there any scholars out there who can give a
short history of the name Throckmorton?

-Chris Holm

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

Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 09:55:49 -0500
From: "Don Frey" <alanladdsr@[removed];
To: "otr message" <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  CD making and playing

Quick tech question. Have ordinary sony walkman/auto CD player.
Received two homemade audio CDs from two people.
Sound is fine but both fail to move automatically to most, but not all,
"next" tracks.
Never happens on commercial CDs.
Is problem the CD maker or CD player or partly both?

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

Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 09:56:20 -0500
From: "Holm, Chris " <[removed]@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Old devices

In #495, Al Girard wrote:

I even have a teleptype machine. How about the rest
of you?  Do you have any devices that would have been
used in the forties and fifties?  Do any of you use a
fountain pen? Do you have an inkwell or a blotter?

I have a great old device that I believe dates to the late fifties (although
I'm not positive - it might be newer), and it's seasonally appropriate.  It's
an artificial Christmas tree - it's silver, it sits on a rotating base, and
it has a spotlight that changes color.  It's really cool, and the centerpiece
of my annual holiday party.  Combine the tree with my 1970's era furniture
that I 'liberated' from my parents basement, and my OTR and big band
collection, and all of my friends assume I'm some retro-crazed hipster.

To tie all of this in with OTR, I do make an annual ritual of putting up the
tree.  Since you have to place each branch on the center post individually,
it does take some time.  So right after Thanksgiving (_NEVER_ before), I pick
a few of my favorite Christmas OTR shows (Jack Benny shopping, Suspense "Out
for Christmas", a couple of others), and assemble the tree while listening to
OTR.

-Chris Holm

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

Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 10:16:59 -0500
From: passage@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Missing Heirs
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from multipart/alternative
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Hi All,

I received the following message from Victoria Ferrante
cablegirl34@[removed].
Anyone know of this series?

Hi, would you know if there was a radio show in the 40's or late 30's
called
"Missing Heirs"?? I remember my grandmother telling me about it years
ago.
If you can point me in the right direction on a particular link I can
go [removed]
please do. thank you  so much.

Vicki Age 34 Albany, NY

Frank

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  ***                  as the sender intended.                   ***

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Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 11:19:05 -0500
From: "Stephen A Kallis, Jr." <skallisjr@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Retro OTR World?

Al Girard, reacting to Rick Keatings list of manual typewriters, et al,
observes,

I sense another thread possibility.  I own several rotary-dial
telephones and use one of them right here beside my computer.  I also own
a Brother portable electric typewriter.  I even have a teleptype machine.
How about the rest of you?  Do you have any devices that would have been
used in the forties and fifties?

Well, I have an old portable typewriter that's the exact same model as
the one I had in high school in the early 1950s.  I do have a rotary
telephone, but it was 1960s vintage.

An interesting news item I read a few weeks ago is that those suffering
from Alzheimer's Disease work better of put into a retro environment --
1950s or 1940s devices and appliances (refrigerators, stoves, etc.).  I
suspect this would also work well for OTR shows.

What might be an interesting and useful project for such an environment
would be an MP3 disk with 24 hours' OTR programs on it, wired to a
living-room or kitchen radio so that someone could "turn on" the "radio"
and always have something different "on the air."  Naturally, neither
"radio" need be tunable, nor have any functional components inside save a
volume control/off-on switch, and a speaker.  A week's worth of such MP3
disks in a jukebox would provide complete OTR coverage for such an
environment.  (I wish I'd have thought about that -- and had the
equipment to do something like that for my recently deceased mother.  I
did play her individual tapes from time to time, and she enjoyed them
thoroughly.)

Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.

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

Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 11:19:30 -0500
From: Joe Mackey <joemackey108@[removed];
To: otr-net <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Re: Young members

  Ron Sayles asked --

My question is to those young people who did not grow up with radio as us
"old-timers" did. How did you first get interested, what happened to make
you love, or at least like Old Time Radio?

   I was born in 1950 and my family got its first t--------n set in 1949
and for the first three months all that was available was the Indian
head test pattern.  But from that time on my family all but turned their
back on radio.  I remember my mother listening to soaps while working in
the kitchen but other wise, that was all.
   As I grew older I became interested in radio (and history in general,
and enjoyed old films better than the new ones, etc) and believed that
since the shows were all aired live there were no recordings.  Every
once in a great while I might run across a distant station playing a
show but could never find the station a second time.  The CBSRMT didn't
air where I lived and the station that would come in faded in and out
and trying to listen over the static was very difficult.  Not to mention
it was on in the middle of the night.
   It wasn't until the late '80s that, thanks to our own Jim Widner,
whom I met on GEnie, I learned of SPERDVAC and their vast library and
began collecting on tape then discovered WRW about the same time.  A
little later I learned about ORCA and raided their library.  And today
with .mp3 there are many more shows available than I ever imagined still
existed.
   I love radio much better than the other medium because, as the old
story of the child goes, "the pictures are better".
   Joe

--
Visit my home page:
[removed]~[removed]

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

Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 11:20:14 -0500
From: Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Christmas Moments

A couple of favorite Christmas moments --

Naturally enough, I've always enjoyed the "Amos 'n' Andy" Christmas
episodes, particularly the 1941 15-minute presentation. One of the most
touching moments in all of OTR comes at the very end of the episode, when
Amos looks down at his sleeping daughter and whispers "good night, my
darlin'." The sincerity evident in the delivery of this one line, for me,
captures the love of a father for his child more than any other moment in
radio.

There are a couple of other memorable Xmas moments in the early A&A
scripts -- a scene on Christmas Eve 1930, with Amos, Andy, and Brother
Crawford setting up a little tree at the taxicab office and reflecting on
the value of friendship, and the Christmas Eve 1937 episode, with Amos
and his family gathered around the tree as Amos reads aloud the nativity
scene from the Gospel of Luke.

In an entirely different vein, I also enjoy the 12/25/32 Linit Bath Club
Revue with Fred Allen, one of the most corrosive Christmas programs ever.
After a day of fighting crowds at the mall and the traffic to get there,
who can't appreciate the ending of this program -- with Santy Claus
hurling himself out the window in despair.

Elizabeth

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

Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 11:20:30 -0500
From: "Kenaniah Busch" <wbfan@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Young Member
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I'm writing in response to Ron Sayles question about how younger members got
interested in OTR. For me it was almost accidental. My parents thought I would
like a collection of OTR that they saw in a magazine. They gave it to me for a
Christmas present, I think. The first program I heard was the Abbot and
Costello program. After one broadcast, I was hooked. I'm 16 now and have been
collecting for about four years. I absolutely love it. It's probably my main
form of entertainment.

Mycroft

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Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 12:12:51 -0500
From: Charlie Summers <charlie@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Howard Culver reads, "The Christmas Story"

Folks;

   Thanks to our own Lois Culver, there's a small Christmas Gift for you
sitting on The Nostalgia Pages; Howard Culver reading "The Christmas Story,"
with Bob Mitchell on the organ. Lois says, "This disk was cut for purpose of
getting a mail [removed] write in and request it, and it was yours! They
were completely amazed at the response."

   Just stop by:

[removed]

   ...and follow the link.

         Charlie

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

Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 11:53:53 -0500
From: "Andrew Godfrey" <niteowl049@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Christmas shows

  I was born in 1944 and grew up with radio until we got our first TV in
1953. My dad never really listened to radio much but my mom listened to soap
operas like Just Plain Bill, Lorenzo Jones, Stella Dallas and Pepper Young's
Family. Remember Don McNeil's Breakfast Club on radio and the Arthur Godfrey
show. Unlike most families growing up with radio we never all sat down and
listened to the radio as some families did. I remember well shows like Inner
Sanctum and Dragnet.
  Am really enjoying these threads about favorite Christmas shows and how
younger listeners got interested in OTR.
  Another favorite Christmas show of mine is the traditional Lum and Abner
show first broadcast in 1933 about Lum and Abner and Grandpappy Spears
walking a long way in snow to a barn where a man and his wife had gone to
have a baby since there was no room for them at the local hotel.
They went there to bring a heater and some blankets as the barn had no heat.
It has many similarities with the birth of baby Jesus and is a very touching
story.
  Really enjoyed the Jack Benny Christmas show that has Mel Blanc as a clerk
at a department store and Jack Benny keeps returning items he bought and it
is driving Mel completely bonkers after Jack returns the fifth or sixth time
and Mel winds up going to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist even works at
the store to see what Jack Benny is like and he goes off his rocker too just
like Mel.
   I have never enjoyed an OTR newsletter like this one. Even when someone
disagrees with someone else on some topic they disagree in a civilized
manner.
   Merry Christmas!!
   Andrew Godfrey

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

Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 11:54:08 -0500
From: "Ivan G. Shreve, Jr." <iscreve@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re: young listeners

I'm reluctant to call myself young, since I just turned 39 in September.
Instead, I've taken to using the adjective "ageless," in honor of Jack
Benny--who stayed 39 for many, many years as well.

I missed by about a year any kind of OTR still on the air, but I was
fortunate to remember the nostalgia boom of the 1970s.  A station in
Charleston, WV broadcast "Lum & Abner" reruns in the daytime and I remember
being fascinated by people talking--not singing--on the radio.

I can't quite explain why, as a youth, I had such a fascination for old
movies and TV and OTR--my parents considered it quite freakish that I knew,
for example, who Basil Rathbone was.  My father had only the vaguest memory
of some programs like "Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons" and my mother only
remembered OTR because her grandmother had still not purchased a TV set and
she had fond memories of listening to "The Lone Ranger" with her.  But I
really got into OTR through Public Radio; the college station in Athens, OH
used to play "The Goon Show" on Tuesday nights and then later featured a
program called "Monday Night at the Radio" with reruns of "The Shadow,"
"Nightbeat," and "The Lone Ranger," to name a few.  ("Monday Night at the
Radio" came on at 10:30 pm which, according to my father, was much too late
for me--I remember sneaking a transistor radio into bed with me so I could
listen.)  I also recall how many stations would broadcast OTR on or around
New Year's Day, particularly WBRJ in Marietta.  Later, I discovered that I
could locate KMOX (although you needed a safecracker's touch) in St. Louis
and listen to "The CBS Radio Mystery Theatre" around 8pm and Jack Carney's
Sunday night "Comedy/Mystery Theatre," allowing for the occasional
drop-outs.

I bought my first cassettes in 1975 from Radiola by using an order form I
clipped from an issue of The Good Old Days (my parents had got my
grandfather a subscription)--a couple of "Shadow" programs, a "Lone Ranger,"
a "Gildersleeve" and "Our Miss Brooks."  (The funny thing was that I was per
forming in a musical version of "Brooks" at the local high school--I was the
principal.)  You know the story by now--I was completely hooked.

My favorite OTR programs are the comedy shows and comedians; I never cease
to be amazed by the mastery and craft of such greats like Benny, Allen,
Bergen, Fibber McGee & Molly, Skelton, Durante, etc.  I also especially
enjoy forums like this where OTR fans can truly converse about the deep,
abiding love for a wonderful era of America's past.

Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.

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

Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 14:00:10 -0500
From: badaxley@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Happy Holidays

Just wanted to add my best wishes to everyone on the list for a very Merry
Christmas and a happy Holidays to all.  Also to say thank you Harry Bartell
for
giving us the inside info on OTR.  I would hope that some day some one would
take all of these vignettes and put them into book form.  I continue to look
forward to your memories!
Bob Axley

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

Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 14:01:26 -0500
From: vigor16@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  re: favorite Christmas shows

Hi all,

I must weigh in on the Christmasn show thread:  Here are five, not my top
five, but five favorite shows.

1. Jimmy Darante with Peggy Lee and Margaret O'Brian.  (Old Saint Nick"
2. Gunsmoke, Matt's tale about a boy's Christmas.
3. Fibber McGee and Molly decorating the house, twearly to bed twearly to
rise makes a man  dizzy.
4. Obviously, 60 minute version of A Christmas Carrol with Lyonal
Barimore.
5. The day they gave babies away CBS radio Workshop, a great tear jerker.

Actually, at this time of year, great shows abound.  Radio is a sharing
medium and Christmas is a great time to share. Giving  several gifts of
the CB serial have brightened adult and children's faces for a few years
now in our little corner of the world. I remember a show, it escapes me
now, a Family Theatre show about a girl who receives her sight by way of
an angel while she puts a star on the tree.  Another one, and I'll go, I
think it is Mystereous Traveler where an ambulance driver is taught the
true meaning of Christmas on his rounds by a strange visitor.  Have a
happy Christmas, or whatever people celebrate these days.  I am not PC, I
am friendly.

Deric

--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V2002 Issue #497
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