Golden Age Radio

From the early days of radio, before television, dramas, comedies, mysteries, adventures etc gave us a chance to use our imagination and escape from the everyday boredom.

Those old time shows allowed us to be armchair detectives, g-men, entertainers, explorers of the unknown, allowed us to laugh or cry, and were just plain funny and entertaining.

Abbott and Costello centered around Bud abbot and Lou Costello and followed the trouble they frequently got into. They have became famous for such sketches as "Who's on First","Horses Fodder","and my personal favorite,"Hertz-U-drive". The show had guest stars like Lucille Ball, and Ginger Rodgers.

Amos and Andy was a comedy that centered around Amos Jones, Andrew Brown and their friends as they went about their lives in Harlem. The radio show spawned a short lived tv show.

George Burns and Gracie Allen made us laugh in just about every medium. This show or rather shows counting the tv version was about the life of the famous husband and wife team.

Flight of The Bumbelbee was the opening theme for The Green Hornet. It followed the adventures of one Brit Reed, newspaper editor and his faithful manservant Kato. Brit used the power of the press and as The Green Hornet used both technology and his very effective fighting skills to fight crime and injustice. Brit was the great grand nephew of John Reed a.k.a. The Lone Ranger.

After seeing an entire team of his fellow texas rangers killed and being left for dead, John Reed doned a black mask and became The Lone Ranger. He was aided in his journeys by Tanto, the indian that found him and nursed him back to health. Their horses, Silver and Scout carried them across the wild west in their fight aginst injustice.

The Shadow opened up with creepy music and chilling laughter. It followed the adventures of Lamont Cranston aka "The Shadow" and his lovely friend and companion, Margo Lane. The Shadow had the unusual ability to cloud mens minds so they couldn't see him and used this ability to fight crime and injustice.

The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was about the life of the master detective and his friend and biographer, Dr. Watson. This show was based on the premise that while he mentioned several cases in the stories that were published, Dr Watson never did talk about them until the show.

Strange visitor from a distant planet didn't always refer to Bill Clinton but to Superman. After being rocketed to Earth from his native planet Krypton shortly before its destruction, Superman found he had powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men and used those abilities to fight crime and injustice and to help mankind.

Orson Wells inadvertently caused a small panic with his dramaitization of War Of The Worlds, a story of a martian attack on the planet Earth.

One interesting item to come out of radio is premiums. This would refer to the prizes we have all come to expect to find in cereal boxes as kids. They were advertised during the commercials on the shows like Superman and for the time period, were things like buttons displaying the insignia of different bomber squadrons (remember, there was a world war going on during many of the shows runs), sundial watches or other (in retrospect) silly things.

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