We’ll start off tonight with The One, The Only, Groucho! on “You Bet Your Life.”  Tonight, Groucho Marx interviews the usual assortment of unusual high school students, assistant district attorneys, housewives, and are dog trainers that different from piano teachers?  Then on Old Time Radio’s premier science fiction anthology program, “X Minus One,” comes an adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s "C-Chute.”  It was first published in the October 1951 issue of “Galaxy” magazine.  It’s a study in racism, patriotism, and the folly of war.

Episodes

You Bet Your Life
February 22, 1950
“The Secret Word is ‘Table’”
2:20

X Minus One
February 8, 1956
"C-Chute”
32:42

For the Fourth of July, we’re going to present two Independence Day-themed episodes of classic old time radio.  First drama then comedy.  “Family Theater” was a family-friendly anthology show featuring a mix of original stories and adaptations of literary classics, usually starring big names from Hollywood.  This week’s program is a dramatization of a particular moment in history -- the writing of The Declaration of Independence.  It’s narrated by Loretta Young and stars Robert Stack as Thomas Jefferson.  And, if you are a fan of the musical “1776,” note what’s the same in this adaptation and what’s different.  Then on “Our Miss Brooks,” our intrepid heroine plans to meet her boyfriend in the countryside for the 4^th of July weekend.

Episodes

Family Theater
July 1, 1953
“The Longest Hour”
2:42

Our Miss Brooks
July 3, 1949
“July 4^th Trip to Eagle Springs” aka “Conklin’s Blood Pressure”
26:03

It’s summer time, and I want to present a couple of summer-themed and summer-adjacent radio shows.  We’ll start off with real American politician, writer, and newspaper publisher Will Rogers, Jr playing a fictional Will Rogers, Jr who runs the fictional small-town newspaper, the “Illyria Weekly Gazette.”  What else says summer more than a county fair, with lots of people partaking in various competitions?  Well, this year, the ladies of Illyria have decided not to participate.  Whither the jams, jellies, and pickles?  Then, I finally get around to presenting “Lum and Abner.”  The show was created by, and stars, Chester Lauck as Lum and Norris Goff as Abner, the owners of the financially disastrous Jot ‘Em Down general store.  The show was a 15-minute continuing serial, a comedy soap opera.  In both of tonight’s episodes, the boys are planning vacations.

Episodes

Rogers of the Gazette
October 22, 1953
“Eula Horner and the County Fair”
2:27

Lum and Abner
September 8, 1942
“Back to Nature” aka “Vacation”
34:10

July 19, 1945
“Store Closed for Vacation”
46:17

The character of A.J. Raffles was created by E.W. Hornung in 1898.  Hornung was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law, and he was inspired to write about a sort of anti-Sherlock Holmes.  His Raffles is thief, to be sure, but one who was charming.  Raffles an “an amateur cracksman,” who lives the life of a gentleman.  But if you don’t actually have an independent income, you have to be able to finance your lifestyle somehow.  “Screen Directors’ Playhouse” adapted popular films to radio, often with the movie’s same stars and directors.  There had been several silent film adaptations of Hornung’s tales, as well as a 1930 film starring Ronald Colman and a 1939 film starring David Niven.  This broadcast adapts the 1939 film and features the equally suave-voiced Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. 

 Episode

Screen Directors’ Playhouse
September 14, 1951 
“Raffles”
3:30

We begin with the “College Quiz Bowl,” as students from Tulane go up against their counterparts from Northwestern.  As always, some of the topics are very specific to the day, but we 21^st Century residents should still be able to answer quite a lot.  Are you up on the names of pop culture family members, Winston Churchill’s writings, and tea in the news?  Then, we return to the contemporary (1950s, as opposed to the “old”) west with the adventures of “Bobby Benson and the B Bar B Riders.”  This Western centered on a 12-year-old boy who had inherited a Texas cattle ranch, and was packed with rustlers, cattle drives, and all the usual things American kids of the 1950s would have enjoyed.  This particular episode features action, mysticism, and a couple of moral lessons.

Episodes

College Quiz Bowl
October 24, 1953
“Tulane vs Northwestern”
2:25

Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders
November 17, 1951
“The Lost Tribe”
35:46

“Forecast” was a radio show specifically designed to try out new shows.  Both “Suspense” and “Duffy’s Tavern” got their starts there.  Tonight, we present the pilot for a show I would have absolutely loved had it gone to series, but alas it did not.  “Leave It To Jeeves,” was inspired by the P.G. Wodehouse tales of young man-about-town Bertie Wooster and his personal gentleman’s gentleman, Jeeves.  Starring Edward Everett Horton and Alan Mobray, respectively, this tale doesn’t actually adapt any of the Wodehouse tales, but it does take the structure and pay homage to the sort of situations in which Bertie and Jeeves were always finding themselves:  engagements, errands for aunts… Any Wodehouse fan will be at home in this comic, twisty misadventure.  Then “X Minus One” adapts Murray Leinster’s science fiction tale of time travel by phone call, “Sam, This Is You.”

Episodes

Forecast
August 12, 1940
“Leave It To Jeeves”
2:49

X Minus One
October 31, 1956 
“Sam, This Is You”
34:18

Tonight, we return to Orson Welles’ “The Mercury Theatre on the Air.”  In this adaptation of Jules Verne’s “Around the World in 80 Days,” Welles plays British gentleman adventurer Phileas Fogg, who has wagered his personal fortune that he can circumnavigate the globe in just that time.  Filled with fantastic music by Bernard Herrmann, top-notch sound effects, and a great supporting cast, Welles does the tale proud.

Episode

The Mercury Theatre on the Air
October 23, 1938
"Around the World in 80 Days”
3:28

Nero Wolfe, the brilliant, but lazy, detective created by Rex Stout, famously almost never left his house.  One of the few things that could stir him was his love of orchids.  In tonight’s episode of “The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe,” starring Sydney Greenstreet, it is indeed some of those lovely plants that draw him into a murder at a flower shop.  Then on “The Jack Benny Program,” Jack and the gang are planning to take the train to New York … if their adventures at the station don’t derail them first.

Episodes

The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe
December 29, 1950
“The Case of The Bashful Body”
1:42

The Jack Benny Program
February 21, 1954 
“Jack At the Train Station” aka “Train Trip to New York”
31:58

We start off tonight with an episode of “Suspense” that isn’t all that suspenseful, i.e. spooky.  But it’s a lot of fun.  “The Lost Special” is based on a non-Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which first appeared in “The Strand Magazine” in August, 1898.  Orson Welles narrates.  This is an Armed Forces Radio rebroadcast, which means the ads have been taken out.  It was played overseas for US troops.  Then, our guests on tonight’s episode of the quiz show “Information Please” are science popularizer Bernard Jaffe and … Harpo Marx?  Yes.  The show revels in the sheer novelty of having Harpo, the one Marx Brother who doesn’t speak, on a panel, and he still manages be witty and delightful. 

 Episodes

Suspense
September 30, 1943
“The Lost Special”
2:04

 Information Please
October 25, 1938 
“Guests: Bernard Jaffe and Harpo Marx”
33:18