Columbo Does a Cameo on CBS Radio Mystery Theater

My favorite picture;

"I know he did it, I just

don't know how."

No kidding. If you're a Columbo fan,  you owe it to yourself to listen to this all the way through. The episode is "Honeymoon with Death"; according to EG Marshall's intro, it's written by George Lowther, whom I think may be this George Lowther➚, who had a long career in radio. He died in 1975, so the dates overlap. I looked for a connection (as perhaps writer or assistant director, etc) but IMdB doesn't list Columbo in his credits.

Columbo was first broadcast in 1971. It's almost certain George Lowther had Peter Falk in mind when writing this episode. Unfortunately for those who are "seeing" Columbo in the role, the mannerisms of Tony Roberts[1], who portrays an eager beat cop who wants to make detective someday, are distracting; many familiar Columbo-isms are there - apologies for intruding, repeat visits to just wrap up lose ends, "just one more thing" (though in different words), the "how you did it" confrontation with the killer (I won't tell you how it ends).

Click here to Listen to "Honeymoon with Death," from CBS Radio Mystery Theater, January 11, 1974➚ (Note: the first 20 minutes have some audio issues; it improves.)

[1] Probably this Tony Roberts, David Anthony "Tony" Roberts➚ , whom I only now recognize as a wonderful actor from the 1970s. I always thought he looked like James Caan. OTR has led me down another delightful rabbit hole and matched a name with a face. "Honeymoon with Death" also starred Louis Nettleton in the role of the stalked heroine. Neither Tony Roberts nor Lois Nettleton had any connection to Columbo that I can find. Neither does director Hyman Brown, who had a few forays into early TV but was much more at home in radio. Learn more about the extraordinary Hyman Brown (aka Hi Brown and Himan Brown) here➚.

Damn You, God Damn You All To Hell

[I thought I published this already; I must have saved by accident, was still listed as a draft.]

I'm not as active here as I am over at Clarence's➚ though I am active daily in OTR listening and noodling. As you probably know, I'm trying to treat myself to a new CBS Radio Mystery Theater (CBSRMT) episode each day, and relishing every moment.

I am delighted by two things:

1) The appearance of stars that I know from other places. Agnes Moorhead (who was of course Endora[1] in Bewitched) appeared in Episode 1, "Old Ones are Hard to Kill", and the other night, I listened to Kim Hunter in Episode 4, "Lost Dog." Moorhead was a fitting star for the first outing, as she is best remembered in her radio days as the frightened housewife in "Sorry, Wrong Number." If you listen to enough OTR on late-night AM radio, you'll hear it, since it's a classic and deservedly gets replayed.

Click here to Listen to Kim Hunter in "Lost Dog," from CBS Radio Mystery Theater➚


2) The production values are magnificent; I'd forgotten just how carefully crafted these where. Footsteps recede or approach, doors creak in just the right ways, and outside sounds are left outside when the door closes. It's a far cry from the organ-festooned episodes of radio's hay-day in which there was so much to choose from that it wasn't hard to find bad writing and worse sound effects, compensated by organ music that took the place of real drama (similar the place occupied by special effects in some movies today).

And if I can be indulged to list a third, #3 would be the nightly trip back to boyhood, a dark upstairs bedroom lit only by a radio dial, and the voice of EG Marshall and the descending strings. Those memories are so early that they are equally dim, but the experience is indelible.

I often fall asleep to my OTR mp3's, as it's the last thing I do at night, but an advantage to that is I just as often must restart the OTR episode about where I fell asleep, so I listen to some parts more than once.

Oh, about "Lost Dog" - Kim Hunter! My first introduction to her? Why, she will ever be Dr Zira from Planet of the Apes, of course.

I can still remember me, my brother Tom, and our friends, Rich Nickel (my age) and Dave Nickel (Tom's age and Rich's brother) lying upstairs in that same dark bedroom where I listened to CBSRMT, dissecting the end of Planet of the Apes. We couldn't figure out what it meant; why was there a Statue of Liberty on this planet, was it a duplicate of Earth? Rich figured it out and explained it to us. Rich was very bright and smarter than most kids I ever met, if not the smartest.

What I still don't get (and you are welcome to enlighten me, Rich or anyone else) is why the female astronaut dies in the beginning. Her glass-encased sleep chamber is cracked, I get that, so something inside got out, or something outside got in. I can only guess that life support outside the chambers was turned off to conserve energy and only the chambers retained air and nutrients, so when hers cracked, she suffocated. Do I have that right?



Oh, and Nova was a babe. Any prepubescent boy that didn't yearn for pubescence upon seeing this beautiful creature wasn't breathing.

[1] The pastor of my church at that time - Pastor Kenneth Andrus - bless his heart, he was a very nice and spiritual man (presumably still though very old) - preached against popular media portrayals of witches and other Satantic images. He called out Endora specifically, whose name was of course drawn from the biblical Witch of Endor. That was when Pastor Andrus was preaching at Bethel Baptist Church at 737 East 26th Street, in Erie, PA, before Bethel West was set up across town and he was preaching at both locations.

Centerfolds for Dummies

Read Centerfolds for Dummies at my other blog...

http://clarence0ddbody.blogspot.com/2011/07/centerfolds-for-dummies.html&

We Will Sell No Wine Before Its/It's Time

Those of us of a certain age first encountered Orson Welles not as the Hollywood wunderkind behind Citizen Kane, but as the Paul Masson guy that said "We will sell no wine before its time," which spawned a million imitations of fill-in-the-blank near rhymes. We didn't know who Orson Welles was, aside from the guy that scared the wits out of Americans on radio when our parents were kids, and it was complicated even more by his last name, which sounded like the guy that wrote the book behind the play that scared the wits out of Americans when our parents were kids.

Actually, those about my age (40's) had a wonderful opportunity that few others have - we were introduced to wonderful fading actors and actresses (yes, they once used that word) who were appearing on TV shows like The Love Boat and Fantasy Island.

I met many stars first on The Love Boat, like Bob Cummings, Gopher's father stiffened by a stroke (I presume Mr Cummings was really suffering from a stroke); later I found him again on Love that Bob, with, of all people, Ann B Davis, the Brady Bunch maid Alice, who was as real to me as any family member. Some I was meeting again, but because so much time had passed, I didn't know I was being re-introduced - like Ray Bolger, the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz; many times I had a delightful moment where I thought to myself "I know that person," and spent the hour wondering where I'd seen him before.


There are far too many to recount, they are as near and dear as other innocent memories from my youth, a time when we believed passengers could fall in love on a 3-day cruise to Puerto Vallarta, or seven strangers shipwrecked during a 3-hour tour could recreate a believable microcosm of society for three seasons.

It doesn't matter how incredible and outlandish the stories were, it matters that they entertained us and staid with us; they may not pass on to future generations intact, but they are inextricably woven into our weltanschauung; they are a product of their time and a matrix for future times, as are all things, but we connect with some things so deeply, they punctuate our lives for generations.

(Even if we don't know it, and often we don't; I recall a college friend, Rob Scheur (sp?), comment that a girl in one of his English classes, upon reading Alexander Pope, remarked "He writes all in cliches." If you don't understand why that's both funny and sad, read a little Pope and you'll understand. Quotes Yeah, that was him. Surprised?)


The breathy Welles had a way of being genuine while acting at the same time. He was stagey, but pleasant to listen to all the same.

Click here to Listen to Orson Welles in "The Bed-Sheet," in Black Museum (unknown date)



Paul Masson Commercial - We Will Sell No Wine Before Its Time




(Which makes me ask, is this read "We will sell no wine before it is time," or "We will sell no wine before it's ready to drink"? Either one works, though I've always assumed it was the second one.)

(Note to Jim Jonker - I wrote this before you expressed a fondness for wunderkind :-)

We had quite lot to drink and then some of the fellas there started handing cheese around

I learned about this interesting device at Herculodge :

The Ferrite Sleeve Loop Antenna, by Graham Maynard
http://www.zen22142.zen.co.uk/Media/fsi.htm

Why is it that when someone invents a better mousetrap, they so often decry a history of woeful ignorance about the psychology of mice and secret government-sponsored cheese abuse?

Now, I'm a DX-er and I'd love for this contraption to work, but if it does, it adheres to the same physical laws as every other antenna, regardless how you describe them.

But it does make the world a more interesting place, and is another example of how deep the niche is that already holds ancient astronauts, Sasquatch, and things that go bump in the night.

Monty Python - "The Mouse Problem" sketch
"We had quite lot to drink and then some of the fellas there started handing cheese around."

Wesleyan Methodists Have More Fun

I knew Jerry Beers for a number of years growing up in Erie, PA. We went to Bethel Christian School together for 2-3 years. We were cut from the same cloth, pubescent rebels with a conscience, finding every possible opportunity to upset teachers and administrators then briefly guilt-stricken afterwards until we confessed. Wash, rinse, repeat.

His father was a Wesleyan Methodist minister. They lived in the parsonage on Liberty Street, and the church was kitty-corner to them. The family ran a small bakery near the same corner. I don't recall the name exactly, I think it was very simple, The Beers Family Bakery or something like that.

The Beers family was a large family. Every child's name began with the letter 'j'. I don't remember them all, but they included John, Jim, Jerry, Jenny and Julie.

Jerry told me a story about his father that I remember well. Apparently his father was preaching on humility one Sunday, and at the end of the sermon, to demonstrate, he got down from the pulpit and crawled on his hands and knees to the back of the church. It is the most vivid memory of a religious event I have, and I never actually witnessed it.

(I told that to a boss once, at a company I worked for years ago and is now defunct, and my boss smirked at the ridiculousness of that lesson in humility. He just didn't get it, and that's too bad. I've only told that story 2 or 3 times since, for fear of the same response.)

It would strain my memory to recall all the things we did as juvenile rebels, but to recount a few...

• We played dice in the boy's bathroom for real money. We called it craps because that's what we heard on TV, but we didn't know how to play, we just made up rules as we went along. Gambling was my idea and dice were easy to hide. I think I took them from a Yahtzee game, since it had plenty to spare.

• Jerry stole Between the Acts Little Cigars from the corner variety and put money on the counter to pay for them. We smoked them together and called them "barber-ans", which was a corruption of the Beach Boys' "Ba ba ba, ba Barbara Anne." Don't ask why, we were 13 years old, it meant something to us and nothing to adults.

• I took a bus to Millcreek Mall, met Jerry and we saw Coma at the theater. Neither of us were permitted to go to movies. This was a considerable offense, and I lived with the guilt for years. Wasn't until my 20's that I could tell my parents without fear of reprisal, though it was by then trivial even to them.

• We invented a clandestine group, the BS, which we inked on our hands and told everyone if asked that it meant "Bethel School," but it actually meant "Black Sheep," after the WWII pilots in he Pacific popularized in a TV show at the time of the same name. (The show stands up well after all these years if you get a chance to watch it). We were eventually discovered and forced to disband, and told by the principal, Mr Meeker (whom I admire now) that we should not admire those men. But how can 13 year olds not admire a bunch of drunken brawling womanizers? (Sorry, Mr Meeker, I still admire them, and I'm nearing 50.)

• Bethel Christian School was held in Bethel Baptist Church, located at that time at 737 E. 26th Street. One Sunday after evening service we poured black ink into Miss Emerson's plant in her 8th grade English classroom. The plant was deathly black by Monday morning, and by Tuesday had expired.

The small Beers Family Bakery is boarded up now. The parsonage and church have long since become home and flock to a different family and minister. And the variety store next to the parsonage that supplied us with smokes is now a battery store. But memories remain, and one in particular is the reason for this post:

Jerry's family did not have TV. They were very traditional Wesleyans. Women wore dresses, didn't cut their hair or wear makeup. I suppose there were restrictions for men, among them prohibitions against long hair (especially problematic in a day when it was the style), but other than that, I don't remember.

Jerry's one private joy was radio. Without TV, it was his window into the world outside a home, church and school suspicious of popular media. He knew many classic and modern songs by heart, sang them out loud in class at times, understood which ones were funny or fun, which ones were serious. He didn't need images, he created them in his mind, and so they were always what he expected them to be.

He told me about "The Chicken Heart" radio play. I didn't actually hear it until a couple years ago when I put a large random collection of OTR episodes on my mp3 player and that happened to be in it. When I was a boy, it was probably aired as a nostalgic offering for Halloween.

(Local station WCCK, which promoted itself as K104, played Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" in which Mars invaded Earth every year, along with the appropriate precautions that it was not real, which made it all the more exciting; we shared exaggerated stories about the mass hysteria and how frightened listeners cast themselves from tall buildings rather than be captured.)


"The Chicken Heart," an episode of Lights Out from March 10, 1937:

►Cick to Listen to The Chicken Heart from 1937

For the search engines, I am...

Charles Cairns
Bethel Christian School 1978
Erie, PA

I've tried to hook up with folks from those days; had a little luck some years ago, but not much. I found Jerry and lost him again. If you know me and are interested, you can find me here http://oldtimeradiodiner.blogspot.com/p/follow-me-here.html.

I have the fondest memories of Jerry and his family, and the deepest respect for their convictions, an ability to maintain decency and decorum in an upside-down world, the fine examples they were to me, and the fine people and spiritual leaders they became.

Did the Shadow People Originate in Old Time Radio?

If you've spent much time listening to Coast to Coast AM with George Noory (I listen when I can), you know that the Shadow People have often been discussed.

There's not much on Wikipedia, which I turned to first for some historical context (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_people) but with a little Googling there's a wealth of speculation and personal accounts.

Interestingly, this wonderful OTR episode (link below) of Hall of Fantasy from 1953 incorporates many aspects of what I understand to be the nature of encounters with the Shadow People, though in this treatment they are decidedly sinister.

Is the 1953 story a reflection of growing American paranoia? Real events? The seed of a modern collective myth?

Film historians often site the political uncertainties of the Cold War era and post-nuclear Japan as sources for Godzilla, giant creepy crawlies and invaders from outer space. This radio play could be the fictional matrix of a modern neurosis.

If someone knows of an earlier documented reference, please comment or contact me. You can find me a couple tabs over here http://oldtimeradiodiner.blogspot.com/p/follow-me-here.html .

►Click to Listen to The Shadow People from 1953


Learn more about Hall of Fantasy at the Digital Deli:
http://www.digitaldeliftp.com/DigitalDeliToo/dd2jb-Hall-of-Fantasy.html

Free OTR Storage and Streaming

My needs were modest but specific - ability to store fairly large number of public domain longer-duration mp3's of medium quality; a host that would permit streaming; a free basic audio player. And it all needed to work with Blogger, which isn't the best blog solution, but works pretty well.

After a lot of research and some trial and error, I came up with the solution below. I'm sharing this in case anyone else is looking for something similar.


000webhosting.com
http://www.000webhost.com/
Up to 1.5Gb storage free; php scripting, FTP access, no restriction on file types, but some restrictions on direct downloads. If the average OTR show is ~15Mb (some are as small as 6Mb, some hour-long are much larger), that's ~1,500 episodes - not enough to build a library for the serious OTR fan, but enough room for me to get started and decide if I want to invest in more space, move my blog to 000, etc.)

JW Player
http://www.longtailvideo.com/
Configurable, skinable; plays variety of media types; viral and non-viral versions available for free; I use the non-viral version because I'd like visitors to use Blogger's built-in sharing options for now.

Blogger
(You are there now)
I started with Blogger because it's owned by Google, no other reason than that. I would probably try WordPress if I were to start over, but Blogger is serviceable. Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't play nice with iFrames; I'd prefer that, but the page jumps down to the iFrame on page load; probably some js I can put in there to stop that, but that's over my head. For now, instead, I'm opening the player in a popup, which I'd prefer anyway if I was browsing and wanted to listen while I was doing other things.

I've Turned Off Verification for Posting Comments

Thought I had that turned off.....

CBSRMT / CBS Radio Mystery Theater

I like to listen to entire OTR/Old Time Radio series or seasonal themes.

I began some years ago collecting seasonal shows - ie, listening to a few dozen Christmas shows in successions Halloween, and Thanksgiving (under-represented but very good). I listened to an entire broadcast day from WJSV on 9/21/39 (http://www.archive.org/details/CompleteBroadcastDay), and the entire X-1 series, also on archive.org and which I'll try to post here.

(Finally found a host and can stream successfully with a popup, gotta get some css figured out but it's serviceable.)

I'd like to turn next to CBS Mystery Radio Theater. The entire series is over 14Gb (1,399 shows - interesting number to end with.) Getting them onto an mp3 player in batches will be interesting. And presuming I listen to an episode a day every day - unlikely - it would take me almost 4 years.

Techie aside: I downloaded the entire 14Gb file from archive.org but could not open with any of the common zip utilities I use - I tried IZArch, Winzip, 7Zip, PKZip for Windows, each with varying success, but none that would unzip all 1,399 episodes. So I used a download utility for Firefox - http://www.downloadhelper.net/ - set the limit to 2,000 files and downloaded each one at a time. Turns out those files I couldn't extract from the zipfile also can't be downloaded in this fashion. However, the 0k files number less than 300, so it should be easy to download the rest individually.)

Of course CBSRMT (CBS Radio Mystery Theater) was the 70's-80's radio drama hosted by EG Marshall that introduced the medium to a new generation that were being raised on television. I happened to be one of those that loved radio just as much, but I was too young to understand that I was experiencing a revival, and unfortunately, a homage, to a fading format.

Most would probably place The Golden Age of Radio somewhere in the 40's-50's, but you can easily find programming from the 20's through the 70's. (I just listened to a Fibber McGee and Molly New Years episode from 1936, in which, interestingly, Fibber has a distinct Irish accent that comes and goes.)

But radio is alive and well with the spoken word; public radio has outstanding game shows (for lack of a better term), talk, and something you might call "stand-up dramedy" like the Moth Hour - not sure what else to call it, one moment you're laughing, the next crying; it's quirky and often wonderful; but aside from the recent revival of The Twilight Zone, the days of the days of radio comedy and drama are past, at least as they were once produced, and are but fleeting recollections upon seeing an old photo or a radio in an antique shop.)

Listen to CBSRMT on Live365...
http://www.wix.com/myafcha1/cbsrmt

Test Popup of "The Lodger"

Click to open test popup

Alfred Hitchcock Directs "The Lodger"

"This is Hollywood and CBS presenting broadcast #4, Herbert Marshall directed by Alfred Hitchcock in the first program of the proposed new series entitled Suspense."




Listen for Hitch to talk at the end of the radio play, you can detect the young director already developing his promotional skills. Listen also for Edmund Gwenn, Santa Clause from Miracle on 34th Street, and who worked again with Hitchcock in The Trouble with Harry.

Hitchcock considered The Lodger his first real film, and I recall as a student learning that no complete print of the film existed, but it seems that this is in fact the first of Hitchcock's films that is complete http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017075/ . He did make two earlier films, and it is perhaps those I was thinking of.

(If you don't know what it's about, it plays off the Jack the Ripper story.)

Distance Lends Enchantment to the View

I wrote recently that some places are nice to DX but you wouldn't want to visit because it would dull the charm.

I feel the same way about radio personalities. I really don't want to know what they look like, I'd rather invent that myself, and I fear knowing too much about their personal lives, preferring instead to know them by what they create behind the microphone.

I'd very much like to read Walter Tetley's biography  (http://www.amazon.com/Walter-Tetley-Corns-Ben-Ohmart/dp/1593930003/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309947810&sr=1-1) I like his voice and the image he conjured on the "Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show" (the Thanksgiving episode is priceless and one of the best in my opinion; I know I have it but must not have filed it with other Thanksgiving shows, because I can't find it; I will look for it). I understand Tetley's story is tragic and I'd prefer not to know it just yet; maybe someday.


When I was a boy there were all sorts of tell-all bios about famous people. One I never want to read is Bing Crosby's, written by his son Gary Crosby

( http://www.amazon.com/Going-Own-Way-Gary-Crosby/dp/0449205444/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top ).

Of course I knew Bing Crosby from the movies, not radio, so I had a face to put with the voice. The bio was written after Bing's death. Bing died just before Christmas when I was young, and I remember feeling a loss, missing something special, as White Christmas, the song and the movie, were inextricably linked with my childhood celebration of the season. Bing is still a meaningful part of my Christmas to this day, despite Gary Crosby's catharsis (and the annual complaints that 'White Christmas' is overplayed).

Let them eat fruitcake.

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis Drop the F-Bomb

I'm taking a a brief vacation, be back soon, but until then, I leave you with this little gem...

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis Drop the F-Bomb during a taping of a radio promo for "The Caddy," 1953:



In this clip, Dean Martin and Lewis have a fake argument; very funny, but IMHO narrowly skirts some of the subtle cruelty that gets you asking "is this real?" Some homo-erotica insinuation that was (and is still) common among male duo acts.

(I'm experimenting with a new audio streaming service; stay tuned for improvements.)