FREE Old Time Radio Shows
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OLD TIME RADIO SHOWS
Old Time Radios
Old Time Radio
(OTR) and the Golden Age of Radio are phrases
used to refer to
American
radio programs mainly
broadcast during the 1920s through the
late 1950s.
Vintage radio is fondly remembered for fanfares and
show openings, running gags, trademark sounds and newsworthy events, such as
the headlines after
The War of the Worlds was dramatized on
Orson
Welles'
Mercury Theater on the Air. Others recall the creaking-door sound effect on
Inner Sanctum Mysteries, the
Dragnet theme music, the "Hi-Yo, Silver!" call of the
Lone
Ranger or the cackle of
The Shadow:
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows." In the early
1950s, music radio began to replace the many familiar comedy/drama favorites. The
end of the era is often marked by the final CBS broadcasts of
Suspense
and
Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar on
September 30, 1962.
The audio
theatre art form was invented prior to radio, developing in the 1880s and
1890s on early wax recordings. The first examples were recordings of vaudeville
sketches, sometimes modified for the medium, but original audio pieces were
being created well before
Reginald Fessenden first broadcast sound over the radio on Christmas Eve,
1906. Although little radio comedy or drama currently airs in the US (mainly on
satellite and internet radio) it continues at full strength on
British and
Irish stations, and to a lesser degree in Canada. Regular
broadcasts of radio plays are also heard in South
Africa,
Australia, New
Zealand and other countries. In the
United States, vintage shows and new audio productions are accessible more
on recordings and by satellite and web broadcasters rather than over
conventional AM and FM radio.
Before the expansion of television
in the early 1950s, radio was the most popular
home entertainment avenue throughout the United States. With the rise of the movie industry,
America's appetite for mass
entertainment grew. As with films, early radio shows reflected vaudeville
origins with cornpone gags and ethnic humor interspersed between song numbers.
As the medium matured, sophistication increased.
Soap opera
was introduced in 1930 on
Chicago's
WGN. During the 1930s radio
featured genres and formats popular in other forms of American
entertainment—adventure, comedy, drama, horror, mystery, musical variety,
romance, thrillers—along with classical music concerts,
big band
remotes, farm reports, news and commentary, panel discussions, quiz shows,
sidewalk interviews, sports broadcasts, talent shows and weather forecasts.
Top comedy talents surfed the airwaves for many years:
Fred Allen,
Jack Benny,
Victor
Borge,
Fanny
Brice,
Billie
Burke, Bob Burns,
Bob Hope,
Phil
Harris,
Groucho
Marx,
Jean
Shepherd,
Red
Skelton and
Ed Wynn. More laughter was generated by such shows as
Abbott and Costello,
Amos
'n' Andy,
Burns and Allen,
Ethel and Albert,
Fibber McGee and Molly,
The
Goon Show,
The Great Gildersleeve and The Halls of Ivy. Radio comedy ran the
gamut from the country humor of
Lum
and Abner and
Minnie
Pearl to the dialect characterizations of
Mel Blanc
and the caustic sarcasm of
Henry Morgan. Gags galore were delivered weekly on Stop Me If You've
Heard This One and
Can You Top This?, panel programs devoted to the art of telling jokes.
Quiz shows were lampooned on It Pays to Be Ignorant, and other memorable
parodies were presented by such satirists as
Spike
Jones, Stoopnagle and Budd,
Stan
Freberg and
Bob and
Ray.
Some shows originated as stage productions: Clifford Goldsmith's play What
a Life was reworked into NBC's popular, long-run
The Aldrich Family (1939-1953) with the familiar catchphrase, "Coming,
Mother!" Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway hit,
You Can't Take It with You (1936), became a weekly situation comedy heard
on Mutual (1944) with Everett Sloane and later on NBC (1951) with
Walter Brennan.
Other shows were adapted from comic strips, such as
Blondie,
The Gumps,
Li'l
Abner,
Little Orphan Annie,
Popeye the Sailor,
Red Ryder,
Reg'lar Fellers,
Terry and the Pirates and Tillie the Toiler. Bob Montana's
redheaded teen of comic strips and comic books was heard on radio's
Archie Andrews from 1943 to 1953. The Timid Soul was a 1941-1942
comedy based on cartoonist H.T. Webster's famed Casper Milquetoast character,
and Robert L. Ripley's
Believe It or Not! was adapted to several different radio formats during the
1930s and 1940s.
When daytime serials began in the early 1930s, they became known as soap
operas because many were sponsored by soap products and detergents. The line-up
of late afternoon adventure serials included Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B
Riders, The Cisco Kid, Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy
and The Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters. Badges, rings, decoding
devices and other premiums offered on these adventure shows were often allied
with a sponsor's product, requiring the young listeners to mail in a box top
from a breakfast cereal.
The
Lux Radio Theater presented adaptations of Hollywood movies, performed
before a live audience, usually with cast members from the original films.
Suspense,
Escape,
The Mysterious Traveler and
Inner
Sanctum Mysteries were popular thriller anthology series. Leading
writers who created original material for radio included
Norman Corwin,
Archibald MacLeish,
Arthur Miller,
Arch
Oboler,
Rod
Serling and
Irwin Shaw.
Most
American radio
network programs were presented live, and they often were given a second
performance for listeners in Western
time zones.
Network policy did not permit the broadcast of recorded programming during most
of the OTR era. For a variety of reasons, however, many programs were recorded
as they were broadcast. In some cases, the recording was made at the point of
origination, usually network studios in
New York,
Chicago or Los
Angeles. In other cases, it was made at an affiliate
station. For example, a program originating at CBS in New York might be recorded
off the network circuit at
WJSV in
Washington.
A relatively few surviving programs were recorded off the air (airchecks),
usually at a
recording studio, since home recording equipment was uncommon during the OTR
era. Before
magnetic tape came into use in the early 1950s, the format was normally 16
inch (406 mm) diameter "transcription
disks" (aka ETs, for "electrical transcription"). Most of the OTR programs in
circulation among collectors – whether on tape, CD or MP3 – originated with
these ETs.
During part of the OTR era, the
Armed Forces Radio Service (later Armed Forces Radio and Television Service)
obtained copies of network radio entertainment programming for distribution to
AFRS radio stations serving U.S. troops overseas. Those programs were edited to
delete commercials, and disks were pressed for shipment to stations. Many OTR
shows have survived only in the edited AFRS version; some exist in both original
and AFRS formats.
A relatively small number of surviving series were recorded for
syndication. These programs were typically distributed to stations on
transcription disk, and stations would air these at their convenience. Like
syndicated television programming today, different stations played the programs
at different days and times.
Today, radio performers of the past appear at conventions which feature
recreations of classic shows, as well as music, memorabilia and historical
panels. The largest of these events is the
Friends of Old Time Radio Convention, held annually in
Newark, New Jersey each October.
The Museum of Television & Radio's collection of more than 120,000 programs
and commercials spans 88 years of radio-TV history, beginning with a 1918 speech
by labor leader
Samuel Gompers. The radio shows in this collection can be heard at the MT&R
in New York, and that same collection is duplicated at the MT&R in Los Angeles.
Old time radio programs:
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Listen to:
Reference
See also