Showing results by author "Radio Shows of the Past!" in All Categories

The English-language propaganda radio programme Germany Calling was broadcast to audiences in the United Kingdom on the medium wave station Reichssender Hamburg and by shortwave to the United States. The programme began on 18 September 1939 and continued until 30 April 1945, when the British Army overran Hamburg. The next scheduled broadcast was made by Horst Pinschewer (also known as Geoffrey Perry), a German-Jewish refugee serving in the British Army who announced the British takeover. Pinschewer was later responsible for the capture of William Joyce.Through such broadcasts, the ...

The Stories of Sherlock Holmes was a South African radio show series of 47 or 50 episodes, produced by Michael Silver and aired on Springbok Radio (Johannesburg, South Africa) between 1979/1980 and 1985, starring Graham Armitage as Sherlock Holmes and Kerry Jordan as Dr. Watson. The episodes were around 20-30 minutes each and broadcasted on Sunday evenings at 6pm.

The Men from the Ministry is a British radio comedy series broadcast by the BBC between 1962 and 1977, starring Wilfrid Hyde-White, Richard Murdoch and, from 1966, when he replaced Hyde-White, Deryck Guyler. Written and produced by Edward Taylor with contributions from John Graham, and with some early episodes written by Johnnie Mortimer and Brian Cooke, it ran for 13 series, totalling 145 half-hour episodes and two specials.The series is about lazy, bungling, incompetent civil servants, "Number One" – Roland Hamilton-Jones (Wilfrid Hyde-White) and later Deryck Lennox-Brown (Deryck Guyler),...

The WWII news shows are historically significant to world history. Though we as today's listeners know the outcome to the historical events in these WWII broadcasts, hearing the shows offer a time capsule to a bygone era. As most WWII veterans are in their 90's even 100th year of life, we honor their service and thank them for defending freedom for America and the world. It is our hope that sharing these collections will offer a renewed appreciation for the older generations and the tribulations of their time.

Originally broadcast as Detective: Stories of Crime and Detection in London, this BBC radio drama ran for four series between 1980 and 1985. Written by the award-winning creator of Z Cars and Softly Softly, Robert Barr, it comprised 39 thrilling stories set in London’s criminal underworld, all of which are collected here. DS Dave Brook is a long-serving, ducking-and-diving police officer who takes armed robberies and violent crime in his stride. But then he is teamed up with young 'grammar school boy' DC Blair Maxton from sleepy Epsom. How will Max cope with the mean streets of his new patch...

The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe stars Sydney Greenstreet as Rex Stout's fictional detective genius Nero Wolfe. Produced by Edwin Fadiman and directed by J. Donald Wilson, the series aired on NBC from October 20, 1950 to April 27, 1951. Don Stanley was the announcer. The episodes were written by Alfred Bester and others: 325 Wolfe's legman Archie Goodwin was played by a succession of actors including Gerald Mohr, Herb Ellis, Lawrence Dobkin, Harry Bartell, Lamont Johnson and Wally Maher.Biographer John McAleer reported that Stout enjoyed Greenstreet's portrayal. The New ...

Screen Directors Playhouse (sometimes written as Screen Directors' Playhouse) is an American radio and television anthology series which brought leading Hollywood actors to the NBC microphones beginning in 1949.The radio program broadcast adaptations of films, with original directors of the films sometimes involved in the productions, although their participation was usually limited to introducing the radio adaptations and taking a brief "curtain call" with the cast and host at the end of the program. During the 1955–56 season, the series was seen on television, focusing on original ...

The Beverly Hillbillies is an American television sitcom that was broadcast on CBS from 1962 to 1971. It had an ensemble cast featuring Buddy Ebsen, Irene Ryan, Donna Douglas, and Max Baer Jr. as the Clampetts, a poor backwoods family from the Ozark Mountains of Missouri who move to posh Beverly Hills, California after striking oil on their land. The show was produced by Filmways and was created by Paul Henning. It was followed by two other Henning-inspired "country cousin" series on CBS: Petticoat Junction and its spin-off Green Acres, which reversed the rags-to-riches,...

The Lone Ranger is an American radio and television show created by George W. Trendle and developed by writer Fran Striker.The eponymous character is a masked Texas Ranger in the American Old West, originally played by Paul Halliwell, who gallops about righting injustices with the aid of his clever, laconic Indian sidekick,Tonto. Departing on his white horse Silver, the Ranger would famously say "Hi-yo, Silver, away!" as the horse galloped toward the setting sun.The theme music was the "cavalry charge" finale of Gioachino Rossini's William Tell Overture, now inseparably associated with the ...

"The Police Reporter" pre-dates the more famous network show by a couple of years - if not the first, it could be one of the earliest true crime shows on the air. Program 1 of the series is about a man who has been missing for four days. A neighbor calls the police, thinking something may be wrong. It's the Lincoln murder case, which occurred in Aurora, Illinois in 1923.The program includes an announcement that this is the first program of the series. The series uses real names, dates and locations, so it's easy to track down information on the real cases dramatized on many of the programs. ...

Broadcasters had pursued a Mickey Mouse radio program for several years, but Disney rejected the idea, feeling that the cartoon characters' main appeal was visual, and that the voices might not be enough to carry a radio series. However, the opportunity to promote the Snow White film was too important to miss. The first proposed version was a talk show, with Mickey interviewing guest stars, but that idea was scrapped in September 1937. The writers focused instead on the Disney characters' affinity with folk tales and nursery rhymes. Disney performed Mickey's voice for the first three ...

Aunt Jenny's Real Life Stories was a 15-minute radio drama that aired January 18, 1937, to November 16, 1956, on CBS, sponsored by Spry shortening. The program was heard weekdays at 11:45 a.m. until 1946, when it moved to 12:15 p.m.Unlike most continuing soap operas, on Monday of each week a new, self-contained storyline was begun, one which would then reach its conclusion on Friday. A review in the trade publication Radio Daily noted that the program's "dramatic playlets with popular appeal plots hold good human interest." Aunt Jenny (Edith Spencer, Agnes Young) offered cooking tips ...

The Cisco Kid is a fictional character found in numerous film, radio, television and comic book series based on the fictional Western character created by O. Henry in his 1907 short story "The Caballero's Way", published in Everybody's Magazine, v17, July 1907, as well as in the collection Heart of the West (1907). Originally a murderous criminal in O. Henry's story, the Kid was depicted as a heroic Mexican caballero later in films, radio and television adaptations.In O. Henry's original story, the character is a 25-year-old desperado in the Texas–Mexico border country who bears...

The Cinnamon Bear is an old-time radio program produced by Transco (Transcription Company of America), based in Hollywood, California. The series comprised 26 episodes, and was specifically designed to be listened to six days a week between Thanksgiving and Christmas.[1]The series was first broadcast between Friday, November 26 and Saturday December 25, 1937. Some markets like Portland, Oregon, jumped the gun, debuting the program on November 25, Thanksgiving Day. In the first season, Portland broadcast the program on two stations, KALE at 6:00pm and KXL at 7:00pm.When syndication ...

The Adventures of Harry Lime is one of the most successful series created by prolific British radio producer Harry Alan Towers and his company Towers of London. Towers and Graham Greene, author of The Third Man, had the same literary agent, and Towers learned that Greene had not sold the rights to the character of Harry Lime to Alexander Korda when he sold Korda The Third Man. Towers quickly bought the rights to the character and in 1951 he put a syndicated radio series into production. Orson Welles reprised the role of Harry Lime in a series of adventures that preceded the story told ...

Roosevelt also made extensive use of radio. She was not the first first lady to broadcast—her predecessor, Lou Henry Hoover, had done that already. But Hoover did not have a regular radio program, whereas Roosevelt did. She first broadcast her own programs of radio commentary beginning on July 9, 1934. On that first show, she talked about the effect of movies on children, the need for a censor who could make sure movies did not glorify crime and violence, and her opinion about the recent All-Star baseball game. She also read a commercial from a mattress company, which sponsored the ...

World War II newsreels often included sounds such as the hum of motors, the whistling of bombs, and explosions, but these sounds were rarely authenticated as field recordings. Here are some other things to know about World War II newsreels: Sound newsreelsThe arrival of sound newsreels in 1929 changed the way people experienced news and armed conflict. PropagandaNewsreels were used to spread propaganda, with countries carefully editing news reports to combine propaganda and straight news. The United States Office of War InformationThe OWI produced a series of 267 newsreels called The ...

One of the longest running young-adult-oriented old radio shows during the golden age of radio was the widely popular "Dick Tracy." The series aired over a period of 14 years, from 1934 - 1948, and was based on a newspaper comic strip. This juvenile police detective radio program began as a 15-minute show which was later extended to a full 30-minutes due to popular demand.The series’ central theme was crime-fighting taken to a higher level by the many mind boggling plot twists the shows writer’s came up with. What set Dick Tracy apart from other old time radio serializations was his use of...

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill[a] (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 (during the Second World War) and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from 1922 to 1924, he was a member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an adherent to economic liberalism and imperialism, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from ...

In 1936, major World War 2 news included Hitler's remilitarization of the Rhineland, a blatant violation of the Treaty of Versailles, marking a significant escalation of German aggression, alongside Mussolini's conquest of Ethiopia and the growing alliance between Germany and Italy, forming the "Rome-Berlin Axis" which further destabilized international relations; additionally, Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany, solidifying a bloc against the Soviet Union. Key events of 1936: March 1936:German troops occupy the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone under the Treaty of Versailles....