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davis_squareThe following is the first of three previews of the plays being featured in the Post-Meridian Radio Players' Summer Radio Mystery Theatre, taking place July 27th - 28th. For more information on the show and for tickets, visit srt12.pmrp.org!
When I was a kid in the suburbs of San Francisco, my mother listened to exactly one radio station, a now-defunct AM operation called Magic 61. They usually played big band music from the 30s and 40s, which I was too cool and stupid to appreciate back then, but every Sunday night Magic 61 changed its name and format to something unlike anything I’d heard before.
For a few hours every week, Magic 61 became Imagination 61, and played the classics of the golden age of radio: Jack Benny, Bergen and McCarthy, Dragnet, and of course, George and Gracie. I was hooked. I would record them onto cassettes with the little boombox in my bedroom and listen and re-listen to them constantly, to the point where my parents grew worried about my escapism; but I figure every kid who doesn’t lead a charmed life needs some kind of escape at that age, and these were mine.
You can’t really talk about the golden age of radio without talking about George Burns and Gracie Allen, one of the most well-known and beloved couples of that era. Married in real life, they started as a vaudeville act with Gracie as the straight man, but when it became clear that Gracie’s occasional antics were getting more laughs than George’s, the format was changed and two of the most influential personas in American theater were born.
George and Gracie didn’t carry the show by themselves, though. Their cast included such greats as announcer Bill Goodwin, band leader Meredith Wilson (who went on to write hit musicals like The Music Man and The Unsinkable Molly Brown), and even Mel Blanc of Looney Tunes fame, who voiced Mr. Postman and many other characters.
When I first came across the episode we will be performing for Summer Radio Mystery Theatre, which was originally broadcast on March 6th, 1947, I knew I’d found a gem. Old radio shows, particularly comedies, often suffer for how influential they’ve been over the years. To a modern audience the jokes seem old, the twists predictable, etc. One must remind one’s self that when the jokes and twists were written, they were not (usually) old or predictable; they were fresh, effective, and as a result were copied and re-copied to the point that they seem hackneyed to the modern listener.
“Gracie Takes Up Crime Solving” manages to avoid much (though admittedly not all) of this. I found myself still laughing out loud at the jokes, and groaning at the episode’s final twist. In addition to being well-written and well-performed, the episode is also remarkable in that it opens with a parody of the gumshoe detective stories of the time. Many modern detective shows, audio and otherwise, draw from the golden era with varying levels of reverence and success but here was a send-up of the genre from the perspective of the industry insiders of the time!
I sent a link to “Gracie Takes Up Crime Solving” to the artistic director of the PMRP, and he loved it too. We decided that it needed to be re-created and included as the comedy installment in our mystery-themed Summer showcase, and so here we are. I hope we succeed in doing justice to a true classic of radio comedy!
Happy listening!
When I was a kid in the suburbs of San Francisco, my mother listened to exactly one radio station, a now-defunct AM operation called Magic 61. They usually played big band music from the 30s and 40s, which I was too cool and stupid to appreciate back then, but every Sunday night Magic 61 changed its name and format to something unlike anything I’d heard before.For a few hours every week, Magic 61 became Imagination 61, and played the classics of the golden age of radio: Jack Benny, Bergen and McCarthy, Dragnet, and of course, George and Gracie. I was hooked. I would record them onto cassettes with the little boombox in my bedroom and listen and re-listen to them constantly, to the point where my parents grew worried about my escapism; but I figure every kid who doesn’t lead a charmed life needs some kind of escape at that age, and these were mine.
You can’t really talk about the golden age of radio without talking about George Burns and Gracie Allen, one of the most well-known and beloved couples of that era. Married in real life, they started as a vaudeville act with Gracie as the straight man, but when it became clear that Gracie’s occasional antics were getting more laughs than George’s, the format was changed and two of the most influential personas in American theater were born.
George and Gracie didn’t carry the show by themselves, though. Their cast included such greats as announcer Bill Goodwin, band leader Meredith Wilson (who went on to write hit musicals like The Music Man and The Unsinkable Molly Brown), and even Mel Blanc of Looney Tunes fame, who voiced Mr. Postman and many other characters.
When I first came across the episode we will be performing for Summer Radio Mystery Theatre, which was originally broadcast on March 6th, 1947, I knew I’d found a gem. Old radio shows, particularly comedies, often suffer for how influential they’ve been over the years. To a modern audience the jokes seem old, the twists predictable, etc. One must remind one’s self that when the jokes and twists were written, they were not (usually) old or predictable; they were fresh, effective, and as a result were copied and re-copied to the point that they seem hackneyed to the modern listener.“Gracie Takes Up Crime Solving” manages to avoid much (though admittedly not all) of this. I found myself still laughing out loud at the jokes, and groaning at the episode’s final twist. In addition to being well-written and well-performed, the episode is also remarkable in that it opens with a parody of the gumshoe detective stories of the time. Many modern detective shows, audio and otherwise, draw from the golden era with varying levels of reverence and success but here was a send-up of the genre from the perspective of the industry insiders of the time!
I sent a link to “Gracie Takes Up Crime Solving” to the artistic director of the PMRP, and he loved it too. We decided that it needed to be re-created and included as the comedy installment in our mystery-themed Summer showcase, and so here we are. I hope we succeed in doing justice to a true classic of radio comedy!
Happy listening!
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Date: 2012-07-02 07:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-02 10:52 pm (UTC)