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You will also find classic tales of terror as voiced by the likes of Orson Welles, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, and Vincent Price. Decades before the advent of widespread, affordable, commercial television (the 1920's, 1930's, 1940's, and even the very early 1950's), radio was where America received the vast majority of its home entertainment, music, and news. From dawn until late in the evening, radio stations (local and national) filled the airwaves with a variety of programming, much like commercial television does today. One could find episodes of Gunsmoke, The Cisco Kid, and The Lone Ranger alongside such diverse fare as the Sealtest Variety Theater (with guest stars Dorothy Lamour, Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, and Charles Laughton to name but a few), Academy Award Theater, the Adventures of Ellery Queen (and Sam Spade, Sherlock Holmes, The Saint, Nero Wolfe, and more, played by some of Hollywood's top stars), the Black Museum (a police procedural starring Orson Welles), Dragnet (starring Jack Webb), and even episodes of the never-say-die and ever-popular Ripley's Believe It or Not (from as far back as the 1930's), right alongside such musical, or variety entertainments as the Andrew Sisters, Breakfast in Hollywood (a morning "man on the street" show performed in a Hollywood diner), The Bing Crosby Show, and The Bob Hope Show (precursors of such variety shows as television's The Ed Sullivan Show and countless others over the years). Quiz shows, game shows, audience participation shows, dramatizations of classic novels, historical docu-dramas and soap operas--all were born on radio and thrive today on television. There were also many shows during the 1940's devoted to, or in some way about, World War II, such as You Can't Do Business with Hitler, Words at War, and GI Journal (a musical-variety show whose purpose was to build morale for soldiers overseas; it featured the likes of Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper, Mel Blanc {the voice of Bugs Bunny and innumerable other cartoon favorites}, Groucho Marx, Lucille Ball, Alan Ladd, Robert Young, Lionel Barrymore, and many more). When television began to permeate America's homes on a broad scale in the 1950s, many of the most popular radio shows became tv's first shows (drawing their radio audiences along with them). As well, many radio actors were able to transition into the first tv stars--though some would not make the transition from radio to tv successfully as actors for a variety of reasons, though they would find steady work for decades to come as the voices behind some very popular classic tv cartoon characters. The relationship between old time radio and early television is many-layered and intricately woven, but our interest lies in those classic radio shows devoted to science-fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy, horror, suspense, and mystery. As such, you'll find episodes from the following radio series', and more as we go along: Dark Fantasy, Suspense, Dimension X (the forerunner of X Minus One), X Minus One, Lights Out, The Mysterious Traveler, Tales of Tomorrow, Escape, The Witch's Tale, Inner Sanctum, Mystery in the Air, The Avenger, and The Shadow. A word of gratitude and acknowledgment is due at this time. From 1979-1992 DAW Books published a twenty-five volume landmark series of thick paperbacks with the overall title of The Great SF Stories. It began with the year 1939--the year considered the beginning of modern science-fiction, when Astounding Science Fiction and its new editor, John W. Campbell, Jr., began to reshape the entire genre and bring a measure of maturity to the SF story. The series ended with the year 1963, the year before stories would become eligible for the newly founded (1965) Science Fiction Writers of America's Nebula Awards for stories published in 1964. Each volume provided an historical overview of each year covered, as well as introductory notes on each story by the series editors, Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg. In my own prefatory remarks to many of the old time radio episodes herein--and while other sources (and my own memory) were used as source material--I have borrowed quite liberally from those yearly introductions by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg. They are invaluable time capsules into the stories of each particular year and provide fascinating historical (and personal to the editors) context. Therefore, I am grateful to Messrs. Asimov and Greenberg and hope they (now only the latter, sadly, with the passing of Asimov) will not begrudge my use of the introductory format they used to such great advantage in their wonderful series. In this case, imitation truly is meant to be the sincerest form of flattery. While individual episodes of many old time radio shows can be downloaded for free from many websites (realizing you take your chances with the quality in some cases, and must hunt and search for hours at times to find anything worth keeping), and there are also sites where one can download either individual episodes cheaply (under a dollar), or for a rather exorbitant price (but with attractive, plastic-boxed sets) order maybe ten or twenty episodes (with a mere two episodes/CD) of any given show for $20-$40--for overall quality of reproduction, extremely low cost ($5/MP3 CD), speedy delivery, and the enormous number of episodes one receives on each MP3 disc (up to 50 hrs. and up to 70+ episodes on a single CD) we recommend visiting the Old Time Radio catalog (OTRcat) website. Simply click on the OTRcat/Sci-Fi banner below and begin building your own old time radio library. As a bonus with every order, OTRcat offers a free Sampler MP3 CD of your choice (there are six). Each disc includes a staggering amount of highly varied and fascinating material from all over the classic radio spectrum. For a broad sampling of the wide variety of material to be found at the OTRcat website, click the play bar on the Old Time Radio banner located on our front page. Each and every day there will be an episode of something new and different for your enjoyment, courtesy of OTRcat. In the meantime, just click on the titles below to listen to the science fiction, fantasy, horror, dark mystery, and suspense episodes we'll have for you on a regular basis. We're debuting with five, and will be adding at least one per week. Please note that the most recent OTR episodes are listed first, at the top of the list below, and if you wish to listen to them in chronological order, as presented, simply scroll to the bottom and work your way up. |
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