Ah, the Good Old Days … Back When It Made Sense

The world can be a frightening place. (As if you needed me to tell you that.)
But twice a day at least, I get to escape from it for a few minutes, back to a time when things made more sense. I’m referring to the times I get into my car and come to work or go home, and I spend that time listening to Old-Time Radio classic programs.
From the late 1920s until the 1950s, radio was the mainstay of entertainment in the home. People would go out to the movies, of course, and starting in the late 1940s television began encroaching into our homes and our lives. But for a good three decades and more, it was radio that kept people informed, amused, and entertained.
It still does today, of course, but in a much more diminished role – and I say that as someone who’s been a part of radio for 50 years myself.
Back in the day, radio was “theatre of the mind.” You didn’t have to see your favorite performers, all you had to do was listen to them, and your imagination did the rest. I defy anyone to listen to a classic broadcast of The Shadow or The Jack Benny Program and not tell me they could see everything that was happening in their mind’s eye.
As I say, at least twice a day – well, any time I get into the car for a drive – I lose myself in the programs of the past, a time in which the world seemed to make much more sense than it does now.
Where else but radio, I ask, could a ventriloquist become a star? Edgar Bergen and his pal, Charlie McCarthy, were a hit for a long time, even though you couldn’t see Bergen holding the doll. His amazing ability to, basically, have a conversation with himself, switching voices at will, was incredible. It was all the more so when television came along and we all noticed that, unlike most ventriloquists, Bergen moved his lips while speaking McCarthy’s lines. We didn’t care. It was Edgar Bergen, for Heaven’s sake, and he was flat-out hilarious.
Comedy was a mainstay of the radio era. I mentioned Jack Benny, of course, the undisputed master of comedy timing. Who else could just say, “Hmmm,” and have millions of people doubled over in laughter? Benny’s miser character was so well-defined that, in his personal life away from the microphone, he had to be an extravagant giver to prove he was just acting when on the air.
My favorite Benny anecdote: When he gave a too-large tip to a waiter at a restaurant, the waiter returned the tip with a smile, saying, “Please, Mr. Benny. Let me have my fantasy.”
Another classic radio comedian was the great Fred Allen. His deadpan delivery and nasal twang gave anything he said an edge of hilarity, and his courage in confronting the conventions of the day – and the sponsors who made those conventions possible – was undeniable. His battles with networks and sponsors made the news, and a classic line of his came in a story conference where a network executive didn’t like a joke on page thirteen of that week’s script.  Said Allen: “You no-good so-and-so, where were you when page thirteen was a blank piece of paper?” Allen got his way and the joke remained in the script.
No comment about radio comedy can be complete without a mention of Bob Hope, who spent those years making movies and entertaining soldiers all over the world. His forays into radio were the stuff of legend, and it’s wonderful that we can still listen to them today.
Drama was big on radio, too. It’s fun to listen to The Adventures of Superman; The Green Hornet; Mr. Keen: Tracer of Lost Persons; Mr. District Attorney; The Shadow; Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar; and Dragnet, to name but a few. Yes, television fans, Dragnet began as a radio show. Jack Webb created the show for radio and it made an easy transition to television.
Superman was true theatre of the mind. Actor Bud Collyer conveyed both Clark Kent and the last son of Krypton just by changing the timbre of his voice – and listeners believed it was two different people. Do that on television, I dare you.
And the music! Musical shows and revues were wonderful. Sure, the tunes are from the beginning of the 20th Century, but that was fantastic music anyway! To give you a comparison to the modern world, there’s this:
During a commercial break in one of the shows, the satellite provider said they were excited about a new channel of modern music – with no expletives. That’s the selling point – no cursing in the songs. There shouldn’t be any cursing in them anyway.
How far we have fallen from the Good Old Days, back when it made sense.