Being a fan of 1930s pulps, I am a big fan of The Shadow, and I also have copies of the 2 radio programs they did in the '90s of my beloved Doc Savage. There was a Doc radio show in the 1930s, but the audio is long gone. I do have a book of the scripts for those shows, though. I’ll have to see if I can find a link to the shows; they did Fear Cay and The Thousand-Headed Man.
I also have brilliant memories of sitting in the dark listening to War of the Worlds with my father. Our local acting troupe also did a brilliant Dracula during the 2020 shutdown.
I have an app on my phone that I listen to a lot. I also use OTR to fall asleep - used to be Gunsmoke, then I found it too dark for my psyche during these plague years, so I switched to Burns & Allen and, having burned through all of those, am now working my way through Fibber McGee & Molly.
Also love The Saint with Vincent Price and The Goon Show.
I listened to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater as a kid, and my first exposure to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was the radio show.
I loved the old CBS Mystery Theater as a kid. The Bradbury 13 series was created by the local University and one of the sound engineers was a family friend. You can find the episodes on YouTube and Audible. I also loved the Star Wars audio plays that started with the original series but also included dozens of in Universe books.
On a MST3K related note, The Pole Vault Championship of the Entire Universe By Rifftrax’s Conor Lastowka has an all-star cast that includes Janet Varney, Al Yankovic, Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett, Jand Paul F. Tompkins.
I used to have a copy of Bradbury 13 and for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you anything about it anymore, but I didn’t buy things like that unless I’d already checked them out and enjoyed them, so I assume they’re worth my finding.
Oh, cool. Hadn’t thought of Lodestone for years. I forgot that’s where I picked up some Firesign Theater merch items.
I keep finding new-to-me OTR shows. Last week’s ThoseWereTheDays had a great Frank Sinatra comedy show called “Rocky Fortune”. Steve Darnall is a friend of MST3K
My old boss was obsessed with Norman Corwin. I never got that one. He wasn’t a bad writer, but I never got what was so special about him. Maybe one of you could enlighten me.
I’m very passionate about OTR. I could list all my favorite shows but there are just way too many. The Whistler; Gunsmoke; Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar; The Jack Benny Show; Lights Out; Tales of the Texas Rangers; Romance Of The Ranchos are among my most favorite.
How does everyone feel about the mid-2010’s Sherlock Holmes radio productions? I found them to be remarkably faithful to the quality of the originals.
The mid-2000’s Twilight Zone? Eh, not so much. I found the acting to be mediocre at best. It goes to show that being a good stage and screen actor does not mean you are a good radio actor. That is a special skill all to its own.
There have been at least three different audio dramatization versions of The Lord of the Rings that I know of, but the one done by the BBC with Ian Holm as Frodo (which must have been why Peter Jackson cast him as Bilbo) is amazing. I like it much more than the movies. No offense to Serkis, but his Gollum doesn’t do it for me like the one in the radio drama.
The thread made me think of one of my all-time favorite Abbott and Costello movies (Who Done It?), which was set around a radio show.
I listened to a Nightfall episode (The Porch Light) and I enjoyed it, though I couldn’t help but chuckle a few times… I think Bob and Doug have ruined Canadian voices for me. But yeah, it was a goodie other than that.
Right? And McDougal the frog makes a TV’s Frank gulp noise! What’s not to love?
Fun Fact: Eve Arden aka Connie Brooks was the principal in Grease and Grease 2. And her unmistakable voice doesn’t sound a bit different in those movies.
I haven’t listened to much in the way of dramas but a couple years ago I ran through all the Paul Whiteman and Rudy Vallee shows I could find on Internet Archive. Just amazing.
Decoder Ring Theater, before the last couple of years where it’s just been readings from the books the guy wrote, had some newly written OTR-style detective stories.
I used to read a very funny comic called “The Red Panda” (about a Canadian superhero and his trusted sidekick, the Flying Squirrel) that they turned into - or were inspired by (don’t know what came first) a radio show that played on Decoder Ring Theater, haven’t visited the site in years.
I’m another fan of OTR shows. In addition to the many classic shows already mentioned, some of my favorites include:
Broadway Is My Beat – about the adventures of NYPD Det. Danny Clover in " The gaudiest. The most violent. The lonesomest mile in the world. Broadway… my beat!". The show’s writers clearly had absorbed the works of Raymond Chandler.
Bold Venture – starring Bogie and Bacall. That’s all you need, really.
Richard Diamond, Private Detective – I’ve never seen the subsequent TV version, but the radio series starred movie star Dick Powell. He was a double threat, because in addition to being a good dramatic actor, he was also a good singer and most episodes concluded with him crooning a tune at the piano after successfully solving another case. Created, and often written/directed, by Blake Edwards.
Phil Harris & Alice Faye – a spinoff from the Jack Benny Show, this show featured the comic misadventures of band leader Phil Harris and his wife, the glamorous movie star, Alice Faye. The writing here can sometimes seem a bit sitcom formulaic, but the personalities of the stars carry the show. In most episodes, both PH and AF get a feature song to perform. And it features the voice work of Walter Tetley, Mr. Peabody’s boy Sherman, before he was Sherman!
Bob & Ray – because most of their work was on radio and they did little film or TV work, they may be two of America’s most overlooked – and hilarious – comedians. I only heard them contemporaneously back in the 1980’s when they had a weekly show on NPR, but I love any incarnation of their comedy. Some of their best stuff comes from the late 1940’s, when they did Matinee With Bob & Ray on a station in Boston. For that, they had a half hour of air time to fill each day with little or no script preparation, just free to go where ever their imaginations took them.
