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Nostalgia September 2019

Silver Screen, Golden Years

Movie Stars on Radio

By Jacqueline T. Lynch

Filling in for each other at the last minute was common in radio. Barbara Stanwyck famously jumped in for Jack’s radio girlfriend (and real-life wife) Mary Livingstone on “The Jack Benny Show.” All one needed was a script in hand, a good voice, and steady nerves.

Most stars of Hollywood’s heyday also performed on radio, even while managing successful film careers.  Before a standing microphone and often before a live audience, the two worlds of film and stage collided into a new hybrid art form, and usually with very entertaining results.

Radio programs from the 1930s through the 1950s have achieved a new popularity among younger generations. The recordings were difficult to obtain before the days of Internet. Early collectors of classic radio programs, which today are commonly referred to as “Old-Time Radio” or “OTR,” had to scrounge for reel-to-reel audio or transcription to acetate disks. In the nostalgia craze of the 1970s, some old-time radio programs became available on vinyl LP records, and later, cassette tapes.

Today, collectors are more fortunate for the wide selection of rediscovered OTR shows on audio CD, as MP3 files, and with so many dealers on old-time radio websites, some of which also publish mail order catalogues. In addition, there are free sources, like the Internet Archive of shows in public domain.

Radio was the place for actors and actresses to play roles which otherwise would not be offered to them: playing Shakespeare, as Humphrey Bogart did when he played Hotspur in Henry IV on radio; or playing roles which were older or younger than they might normally be cast; or playing against type. Screen heroes and heroines enjoyed a chance to play villains.

Character actors in movies, like Agnes Moorehead, frequently played leads on radio. Eve Arden was always the wisecracking best friend in the movies; on radio she was the star of Our Miss Brooks. Her wry delivery is as delightful as any of her film performances, and she’s backed up by Gale Gordon, who was probably the best foil anybody ever had on radio. Here we have a case of an actress who never got lead roles in film, but made radio her ticket to stardom and became an icon of pop culture.

Radio was the place where almost the entire cast of a movie could be reunited, such as in the “Screen Guild Theater” production of How Green Was My Valley in 1941, with Sara Allgood, Walter Pidgeon, Donald Crisp, Roddy McDowall, Rhys Williams, and Maureen O’Hara.

Novelist Edna Ferber played Parthy Hawks in a 1939 “Campbell Soup Playhouse” production of Show Boat, based on her novel. It starred Margaret Sullavan, with Helen Morgan reprising her original Broadway role as the tragic Julie.

Radio was the place where movie stars got their own series like “Bold Venture” with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, a steamy series set in Havana, similar their To Have and Have Not characters.

Ronald Colman and wife Benita Hume played in the comedy “The Halls of Ivy,” and Dana Andrews starred in his own noir series, “I Was a Communist for the FBI.” Phil Harris and Alice Faye ran amok in a funny situation comedy, “The Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show.”

Radio was sometimes seat-of-your-pants producing. The “Screen Guild Theater” production of “History is Made at Night” had a last-minute cast change. This 1940 episode was meant to feature Charles Boyer and Myrna Loy, but the announcer tells us that Greer Garson is stepping in suddenly because Myrna Loy is in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital “fighting a bad case of the flu.” It was Greer Garson’s first radio performance in the United States, and as often happens in show biz, the understudy became a star.

Filling in for each other at the last minute was common in radio. Barbara Stanwyck famously jumped in for Jack’s radio girlfriend (and real-life wife) Mary Livingstone on “The Jack Benny Show.” All one needed was a script in hand, a good voice, and steady nerves.

Ronald Reagan and his then wife Jane Wyman took over the Dennis Morgan and Barbara Stanwyck roles in Christmas in Connecticut in 1946 on Screen Guild Theater. Probably the funniest performance by a sound effects guy comes when they do the scene of bathing the baby. The audience continually breaks up.

While old-time radio recordings have become more easily accessible than ever, there are still, unfortunately, a number of missing programs that collectors and fans are trying to locate. For the newcomer, a whole new world is discovered when listening to these programs. Largely, it is a world of your own imagination, and that is the most astonishing and gratifying part of it, as well as getting to enjoy favorite actors and actresses showing another side to themselves.

 

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star., available online at Amazon, from CreateSpace and the author. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

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