Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison, “It may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law.  The earth belongs always to the living generations.  They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct.  They are masters too of their own persons,  and consequently may govern them as they please.”  Are we facing a fourth turning where from 1940 to 1981 we lived in a more FDR style liberal society only to have from 1981 to the Present a more Reagan style conservative society?  Is it time for a 1940 to 1981 style society after the 2022 Midterms?

The idea is that after 80 years, on average human beings who remember 80 years ago are dead so no one on Earth alive in the Present was not around or too young to remember those events.  A great example of this took place in 1999 when Senator Phil Graham spoke out in support of repealing what was called Glass-Steagall Act that was part of the 1933 United States Banking Act that separated commercial and investment banking.  Graham argued that we had all of these laws in place to protect our money so there is no need to have Glass-Steagall.  Because of no memory of the senators and representatives in Congress in 1999 seeing what life was like before the 1933 Banking Act and Bill Clinton still in a conservative mood, that repeal led to the Crash of 2008 during the George W. Bush administration.  As we prepare to leave 2022 and go into 2023, there is talk of wanting to vote either every year or every five years to sunset Medicare and Social Security.  Again, lack of memory of what kind of abject poverty our seniors and disabled Americans lived in, or had to depend on their families; mostly their eldest sons for survival before 1935 and 1965.

OTRCat is a perfect tool for the present and future so that the listener can understand the past.  With such valuable collections like the Kent State Shootings in 1970, September 11, 2001, and January 6, 2021 and everything before and in between where you hear these events in real time give you a front row seat to that history. 

In addition to events, you can meet some interesting characters in our history from President Calvin Coolidge to President Joe Biden.  There are contenders like Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, and Hillary Clinton that you will get to know.  But there are members of Congress like Bobby Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Newt Gingrich, and Nancy Pelosi.  But we cannot forget great military heroes like Douglas MacArthur and Colin Powell.  Some of these people you might be getting to know for the first time or reacquainting with an old friend, but they are people who have made and shaped history that we live in decades later.

Unlike watching these events on a movie or television screen where you see the images, the audio is MUCH MORE POWERFUL as you have what is called theater of the mind and that will make you appreciate the past more.

With this technology of the present and future, OTRCat has that bridge for people to link to the past for preservation so that when we’re all gone from the Earth at the dawn of the 22nd Century, those Americans will have an oral resource to learn from so that they can revere our successes of the 20th and 21st Centuries and learn from our failures as well.

Who could be better at celebrating a holiday which is all about fun than Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve, the Great Man Himself? During the program’s long run (1941-1957) we got to hear Gildy’s “dirty laugh” at quite a few Halloween gatherings. One of our favorites was from 1943.

The character of Throckmorton Gildersleeve first appeared on Fibber McGee and Molly October 3, 1939, as a collector who hires McGee to get “Killer” Canova’s autograph. Walter Peary had been with Fibber McGee and Molly for many seasons, but the character of Gildy was such a good fit that he became a regular foil for Fibber. It was a pretty even match as to who would get the better of whom, but we were usually treated at least once with the catchphrase “You’re a haaaard man McGee!”

When Kraft Foods began looking for a project to promote Parkay Margarine in 1941, a program centered around Peary’s Gildersleeve was ready to go. Moving from Wistful Vista to Summerfield to take custody of his orphaned niece and nephew, Gildy found himself closer to “the real world”. The role of a lovable bachelor with kids suited Peary just fine.

Part of the show’s magic was balancing the exasperation of watching young people grow up with Gildy’s own romantic ambitions. As the program opens we hear Birdie in the kitchen, preparing for Marjorie’s Night Before Halloween Party. Gildy is shooed, first from the kitchen and then from the house, but not before encountering Marjorie’s boogie-woogie piano playing beau. He also has the chance to describe a gag to LeRoy that involves tying two water filled pails together with a trip line. Just don’t do anything like that, Gildy warns the boy, and if you do only fill the buckets half way; it won’t work if they are full!

Banished from the house for the young people’s party, the Great Man naturally arrives at the Widow Ranson’s house. (During the previous season,  they were nearly married, but Leila left Gildy at the alter so that his broken heart could be mended by the school principal, Eve Goodwin.) Gildy and Leila wind up at Peavy’s Drug store for a soda. Leila has the idea that they should have their own Halloween Party. After all, Halloween is tomorrow night.

Whom to invite? The Peavy’s can make it, so what about Judge Hooker? He’ll need a date, so Peavy suggests Principal Goodwin. The Judge and two of Gildy’s Women at the same party, what could possibly go wrong?

Clad in black with a tall pointy hat, cackling ominously as she rides her broom across the nighttime sky, the witch had become a fun image of Hallowe’en spookiness.  As cartoonish as they seem today, it was not so very long ago that witches and witchcraft were very real in the minds of most people.

Traditionally, the practice of witchcraft meant the use of magic or other supernatural means to bring harm to others. There were practitioners of ‘white’ magic, or “Good Witches”, and they would be tolerated and even encouraged by the general populace (although the Church objected to the practice of both Black and White magic). A white witch might use her powers to cast a love spell, help to find lost or stolen items, or even counter black magic incantations. Black Magic was inherently evil because the powers could only be gained in communion with demons and other malevolent beings.

Although the origins of belief in witchcraft are lost to history, witches are mentioned in the Old Testament as early as the Exodus from Egypt. The notion that bad things could happen to good people was incompatible with the message that the authorities, who represented a loving God, were presenting. It was simply expedient to place the blame for misfortune on the community’s least protected, older and unattached women and widows.

For as long as there has been a belief in witches there have been witch hunts. The hysteria surrounding these hunts had taken hold in Europe by the mid-1400s. By this time, witchcraft had become codified to the extent that an accused witch code could be easily identified and thereby prosecuted. This often meant torture and death for the accused.

Among a witch’s supposed powers are divination, spell casting or the use of magic, and necromancy or conjuring the dead. Any of these can be seen as counter to the interests of a community’s authority figures, thereby leading to the encouragement of witch hunting. Another important factor in witch hunts is the idea that a witch would only be able to access such powers through communion with Satan or his agents.

This begs the question of how witches transformed from the object of fear and persecution to the cartoonish Halloween icon of modern times. The image of a witch in modern media has transformed from the green-skinned, wart-nosed hag riding her broom across the night sky to an attractive nose-twitching suburban housewife or an awkward teen coming to terms with her powers, or another pop-culture icon.

The witch has become a stock character who lives within the rules set forth by the medium within which she operates, not unlike the alien monsters in a science fiction story. When the witch is divorced from the disturbing realities of the medieval witch hunt hysteria, she becomes a wonderful literary character for good or evil, depending on the author and the needs of his story.

This should not be allowed to diminish our horror at the persecution heaped upon the victims of witch hunts, who found themselves in that position as “others” and unprotected outsiders within their communities. The designation of an “other” is a basic tactic for those who seek power through the subjugation of others, whether based on race, sex, age, ability, or lifestyle.

See also: Witch’s Tale.

Belts are being tightened, pennies pinched, postage prices soar, gas prices waver, but one thing you can rely on is OTRCAT’s prices. For over 20 years (since 1999), OTRCAT.com has offered thousands of classic radio shows for just $5 per volume.

If prices for a $5.00 CDs rose with inflation, how much would OTRCAT’s CDs cost today? According to the U.S. Inflation Calculator, one OTRCAT CD would cost $8.89 with a cumulative rate of inflation since 1999 at 77.8%! Wow!

Since we have our thinking caps on we wanted to remind you how much prices have changed since the Golden Age of Radio:

It’s no wonder we all have nostalgia for the good old days of radio!

OTRCAT.com plans to continue to provide hours of entertainment for the low price of $5.00. We truly appreciate your support and business to help preserve affordable old time radio shows to future generations.

No matter who originally created him, a great detective can survive through several creators. In some instances, the shamus gains new traction and life when he is taken from the original author’s hand, in others a beloved character moves to new adventures with little more than his name intact.

The two fisted Irish private eye Michael Shayne came from the pulps authored by Brett Halliday. Halliday himself had many different lives, or rather many different sets of fingers tapping at his typewriter. Brett Halliday was originally the nom de plume of Davis Dresser, who was the first to bring Michael Shayne to life in fifty or so novels. Dresser opened a literary agency with his second wife and farmed the writing chore of the Michael Shayne series to several other authors. The Michael Shayne mystery magazine, which included a Michael Shayne story or novella in each edition, ran for nearly three decades. There were a dozen Michael Shane movies, a TV series, and of course, the semi-hard boiled character came to life on the Radio, as well.

The radio Mike Shayne was a follow up to the success of the first movie Mike Shayne. The Red-headed Irish detective first appeared on the screen played by Lloyd Nolan in five different films released by 20th Century Fox between 1940 and 1942. In mid-October, 1944, the Mutual Network revived the franchise with The Adventures of Michael Shayne, Private Detective, starring Wally Maher. Dresser later commented that of all the portrayals of his character, both on film and on the air, Maher’s was the author’s personal favorite.

The first radio iteration of Mike Shayne featured his blond-bombshell girlfriend, Phyllis “Phyl” Knight, voiced by Cathy Lewis. Phyl certainly took the sting out of chasing crooks, the pulp version of Shayne was married to Phyllis Shayne in the earlier novels, but she was a somewhat limited character who was often out of town. Dresser “killed her off” when he sold the movie rights to the character. As a result,  the later novels were darker as Shayne was forced to deal with the death of his wife.

Producers Releasing Corporation brought Shayne back to the screen for five more films in 1945-46, starring Hugh Beaumont (yes, that Hugh Beaumont). The best thing that can be said for the later films was that they helped to promote Maher’s program on Mutual.

Maher, Lewis, and Mutual stayed with Mike Shane until 1947. In 1948, director Bill Rousseau brought The New Adventures of Michael Shayne to the airwaves, under Don W. Sharp syndication. Rousseau was good friends with Jack Webb, and the uncredited collaboration gave The New Adventures a feel similar to Pat Novak, For Hire. Although the program lost some of the lightheartedness of the original stories, it did benefit from the use of Jeff Chandler in the title role. Rosseau set The New Adventures in exotic New Orleans.

Chandler only appeared in 26 episodes, but thanks to syndication, they received the widest airplay, and was part of the AFRTS line-up into the late 1960s. In 1952, Rousseau convinced ABC to give the character one last shot at the radio on Friday nights in The Adventures of Michael Shame. The two biggest developments of the ABC incarnation were a new love interest for Shayne, Lucy Hamilton played by Dorothy Donahue, and a return to his Miami stomping grounds.

It was simple concept, but it made for a revolutionary format in children’s radio. If the stories were for children, kids should be reading them. That was the concept for Nila Mack’s Let’s Pretend, and the show aired for two decades.

Let’s Pretend started radio life as The Adventures of Helen and Mary in 1934 when it was transformed by Nila Mack into the show that would last for two decades until 1954. Mack believed that, if the stories were for children, then children should tell the story.

Nila Mack used a core of regular children’s actor’s including Sybil Trent, Arthur Anderson, Jack Grimes, Miriam Wolfe, Gwen Davies and Michael O’Day. Anderson went on to write a book about his time on the show called Let’s Pretend and the Golden Age of Radio. Mack died in 1953 and the show lasted one more year under the direction of Jean Hight.

The Peabody award-winning show was broadcast with an audience full of children beginning with Uncle Bill Adams’ salutation, “Hello Pretenders!” followed by the response “Hello, Uncle Bill!”. After some back and forth with the kids, the show would launch into an adaptation of a classic children’s stories and fairy tales like Rumpelstiltskin, Sleeping Beauty, Thumbelina and many, many more.

For other great Children’s show see also: Howdy Doody Time, Minnesota School of the Air, Cinnamon Bear, Wormwood Forest, and Children’s Collection.

Old Time Radio shows are more than simply historical audio artifacts. They are a high entertainment value. The stories and humor are timeless. Although they come from a supposedly “more innocent time”, the plots and stories you will hear in radio drama and situation comedies are still being used on TV sitcoms and dramas today.

One of the terrific things about getting into Old Time Radio, or OTR, is that it is a form of entertainment that can be enjoyed just about anywhere without interfering with what is going on in your world. Listening to a 50 year old or earlier radio program is not as current or high tech as enjoying the latest viral video. However, it is difficult to really enjoy a video while you are cleaning the house, fixing a meal, walking the dog or taking the kids to the park. You can even enjoy your OTR programs while driving. The half-hour or 15 minute format of these old programs make them an easy fit into a commute, shopping trip or a road trip. With a portable MP3 player, you can even enjoy your OTR while standing in line at the supermarket.

What sort of programming can you find when you get into OTR? Almost any type of program that you can see on television was first tried on the radio, so the variety is nearly endless. Many OTR enthusiasts keep a collection of comedy, mystery and dramas on hand.

A great way to get some extra smiles into your day is listening to Radio Comedies. The Situation Comedy follows basically the same formula we all know from TV. It is a miniature drama driven by characters that listeners come to know and love who find themselves in a new ridiculous situation in each episode. Great Radio Sitcoms include Life of Riley, Blondie, My Favorite Husband starring Lucille Ball, and The Great Gildersleeve.

Another comedy format, which was wildly popular during the Golden Age, was the Hosted Variety Program. These programs were originally built around some of Vaudeville’s best performers. Along with the host was an orchestra, usually a singer, and a cast of supporting players. Some of their routines may have been old fashioned, but they knew how to work an audience, both in person and on the air. Two of the best were Bob Hope and Jack Benny. Bob had a gift of connecting with his audience, which made him popular with the servicemen he loved and respected. Jack created a character who was nothing like himself in real life, but with all his supposed negative qualities, audiences loved him because he allowed himself to be the butt of the jokes.

Mysteries and crime dramas are fun listening because they ask the listener to solve a puzzle, and that puzzle is often murder! Crime shows are often divided into hard and soft boiled. Soft boiled detectives are usually more cerebral, looking for the clues to find out Whodunit. The hard boiled sort are more action packed with no-nonsense heroes who always get their man, and usually the pretty girl, as well!

Radio drama takes on many forms, from the daily “cry in your dishwater” world of the Soap Operas to retelling of historical events to horror and science fiction stories to Hollywood Movie plots adapted to the radio. Some of the great anthology programs like Suspense, Escape, General Electric Theater and NBC University dramatized great works of fiction for the radio audience. Cavalcade of America profiled real people and events with remarkably high production values. Shows like Lux Radio Theater, Academy Award Theater and Hollywood Star Time allowed folks who could not get to the movie house on a regular basis a way to enjoy Hollywood productions before the days of DVD or even VHS tapes!

The setting is one of the first elements defined in storytelling. The author will often select a certain setting for the mood it will evoke in the reader, although it is also true that a story takes place in a specific location because it is one that the author knows well enough to allow the story to flow. The time period is also an element of the story’s setting which helps the listener know what to expect from the characters.

Part of the magic of radio drama is that the writer and the actors, who are working in a studio somewhere, can take us anywhere and anytime. Most OTR fans can picture dozens of places that they have never been to but know almost as well as their own living rooms. The living room at 79 Wistful Vista; Jack Benny‘s house next door to Ronald and Benita Colman with a vault in the basement and the kitchen in back where Jack does laundry for hire; the foggy San Francisco waterfront where Pat Novak for Hire foils bad guys; The offices of Spade and Archer where Sam Spade dictates his case notes to Effie; the grimy streets of post War Los Angeles in Dragnet; the dusty prairie around Dodge City in Gunsmoke. The listener may have never been to any of these places but when he hears a few notes of the program’s theme music, he is transported there.

The detective or private investigator usually has a safe place to retire between cases, or somewhere safe to contemplate the clues in the case he is working on. The most obvious example is the famous Batcave (interestingly even though Batman never had his own series during the Golden Age of Radio, he and Robin appeared in several story arc of Mutual Network’s Superman; although the Man of Steel never sees the Batcave, Clark Kent does visit Stately Wayne Manor). Sherlock Holmes‘ apartment at 221B Baker Street still receives fan mail addressed to the mythical detective. Jack Casey of Casey Crime Photographer and his girlfriend, reporter Ann Williams, could often be found whiling away the hours at the Blue Note, a jazz club in the wrong part of town.

A bar seems like a natural lair for a private eye, there is the privacy of darkness even at midday, strong drink to help the P.I. focus his thoughts, and any number of unsavory characters passing through to bring fresh clues. However, the radio networks were incredibly protective of the family-friendly atmosphere of their programs, which made the Blue Note an interesting anomaly in radio.

Crucial to any good bar scene is the trusty bartender, and the lead mixologist at the Blue Note is none other than the enigmatic Ethelbert. Although his position provides Ethelbert with more than his share of street-knowledge, he is more often employed as a sounding board for Casey and Ann than a real source of intel or even advice. With a rather affected Brooklyn accent, Ethelbert seems to be modeled after Archie the Bartender at Duffy’s Tavern and seems nearly as clueless. Although Ethelbert contributes relatively little to whatever case or story Casey and Ann are chasing, he is the beyond-the-workplace glue which holds the couple together. In this way he is even more effective than an office romance (and all the stickiness that would imply).

Although a number of actors would play Casey and Ann over the years (most notably Jan Miner and Shakespearean actor Staats Cosworth), John Gibson would voice Ethelbert for eleven years, mixing drinks and metaphors to the delight of all. In fact, because the program played during family hours, Ethelbert served far fewer drinks than the club’s owners would have preferred. The Blue Note Café was better known for its house band than its bar, and when the Teddy Wilson Trio was on the show, some critics felt that the band had a bigger following than the show.

There is an old saw that supposes when a man marries, he wants his wife to stay the same sweet, loving girl she was when they met while the woman immediately begins to change the man into her ideal of manhood. Like so many examples of folk wisdom, this old saw seems to be true to a greater or lesser extent in every relationship, and there will always be exceptions. For an illustration, we need look no further than one of the most successful and beloved couples in show business, George Burns and Gracie Allen.

George and Gracie came from different backgrounds, even different ends of the country. Grace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen was born in San Francisco on July 26, sometime between 1895 and 1906, no one is really sure, including George. Gracie famously claimed that she was born in 1906, and the records were lost in the Great Earthquake and Fire (“But the San Francisco Earthquake was in April of 1906 and your birthday is on July 27?” “It was a really big earthquake!”) Singing, dancing, and entertaining were part of the Allen household even before Gracie was born, and when she was old enough she joined her sisters as one of “The Four Colleens” dance troupe, and began making some small vaudeville engagements. She was still a teen when she hit the road with “Larry Reilly and Company”, the company being Gracie and her sisters. One by one, her other sisters dropped out of the act, and in New Jersey, Reilly changed the name of the act to just “Larry Reilly”. Gracie dropped out of the act, she hadn’t had much billing before, but no billing was insufferable.

Nathan Birnbaum was born in New York City, 1896, the ninth of twelve children born to Romanian Jews who had immigrated to America. When father Louis Birnbaum died suddenly during the influenza epidemic of 1903, little Nattie went to work at whatever he could find, shining shoes, peddling newspapers, or just running errands. When he was seven, he was hired with a team of boys to make syrup in the basement of a candy shop. Bored with stirring the syrup, the boys began harmonizing and were heard by the postman who fancied himself an agent. When he insisted that the boys sing again, a crowd gathered and Nattie realized that he had found the way he wanted to make a living.

There are different versions of how Nattie Birnbaum became George Burns, all of which were told by George himself. One is that he picked up the name because there was a George H. Burns and a George J. Burns both playing in the Major Leagues, and the name seemed lucky. Another is that his brother Izzy wanted to be called George and then he added the last name after reading it off of a Burns Bros. Coal Company wagon. He began performing wherever he could find an audience, singing on ferries, at bus stops, in front of taverns, eventually hitting the vaudeville circuit. He tried working as a song and dance man, a monologist, as part of a comedy team, as part of a dance team, even with a trained seal.

George happened to be in New Jersey when his act with Billy Lorraine was breaking up. A mutual friend was Gracie’s roommate and introduced them. George later said that as soon as he heard Gracie’s delicate voice, he knew she was a dancer. However, they found that they had enough in common to put together a new act. They started as dance partners and began adding patter, eventually evolving into what was known as a “park bench act”. The park bench act was a small drama which took place between a man and woman on a bench and was popular with theater owners because it could be performed in front of the curtain (while the scenery was being reset for the next act).

As originally conceived, the act consisted of Gracie asking a seemingly innocent question and George supplying a funny answer. After just a few performances, George realized that Gracie was getting more laughs with her questions than he got with the funny answers, so he rewrote the material reversing the roles and they became a hit. Audiences were falling in love with Gracie Allen. And so was George Burns.

The only problem was that Gracie was in love with an Irish tenor named Benny Ryan. Benny fully intended to marry Gracie, but luckily for George, Burns and Allen landed a booking on the Orpheum Circuit. Gracie was not sure she wanted to make the trip, even though her friend Mary Livingstone, Jack Benny‘s wife, pointed out that she would finally get to see her picture in the lobby of the San Francisco Orpheum Theater. Grace was finally convinced to make the tour, so long as their wages were increased by $50 a week. No wonder George was smitten.

When they returned to New York, Gracie found out that Benny was on tour again and they could not marry until he returned. George pressed his suit with little success. Finally, he was asked to play Santa at a party at the Benny’s Christmas party. Seeing his chances with Gracie slipping away, he was an incredibly surly Santa (Gracie was late because she was waiting for a phone call from Ryan). When he opened Gracie’s gift, signed “To Nattie, With all My Love”, he grumped, “All your love? Ha ha ha, you don’t even know what love means!” and left in a huff. Gracie ran into the bedroom, crying, then realized that if Nattie Birnbaum could make her cry, she must be in love. They were married on January 7, 1925, in Cleveland, Ohio, between performances.

As their vaudeville fame grew, Burns and Allen built a reputation as a reliable “disappointment act”. Whenever the scheduled act failed to make it to the theater, the disappointment act could be called upon at the last minute to go on. A similar thing happened at Paramount’s New York studios in 1929 when Fred Allen was scheduled to make a short talking film. Someone on the set had the idea of calling George and Gracie, who went through their “Lambchops” routine.

1929, but NBC failed to show any interest when they auditioned after returning to the US in 1930. Guy Lombardo began using them as part of his show on CBS, and when Lombardo moved to NBC, his spot was filled by The Adventures of Gracie beginning in the 1934 fall season. Their radio act was very similar to their patter routines in vaudeville, but the writing became a challenge. In vaudeville, George could create a bit which they would perfect according to audience reactions, and before the act became stale they would be moving on to another city. For a regular radio program, they needed fresh material every week so a team of writers was hired. George would select the best gags, then arrange them to fit into the show. This also gave him the opportunity to introduce the running gags which eventually ensure Burns and Allen as stars.

The first running gag was “Where is Gracie’s Brother?” routine. The gag actually began while they were still working with Guy Lombardo and soon became a cross-network phenomenon. Not only did they use the gag on their own show, Gracie would appear on other programs to ask if the characters had seen her brother. The laughs finally came to an end when Rudy Vallee let it slip that Gracie’s real brother, a mild-mannered accountant in San Francisco, was not amused by the attention and had in fact gone into hiding for a time.

The next big running gag came during the Presidential election of 1940 when Gracie jokingly announced that she was running on the “Surprise Party” ticket. The bit was expected to be a short-lived gag on the air, but eventually, a Surprise Party Convention was scheduled in Omaha, Nebraska, and George and Gracie made a whistle-stop tour along the way. Although she did not distract Roosevelt or Wilkie that much, with War Clouds gathering, she did give a troubled nation more than a little to smile about.

Although it was no secret that Burns and Allen were a married couple, their radio program was still based on a park bench routine, and George was savvy enough to realize that they were getting a little mature to keep pulling it off. He made the decision to remake the show as a situation comedy where he and Gracie would be a married couple in the entertainment industry. Perhaps not much of a stretch, but domestic bliss combined with Gracie’s illogical-logic was enough laughs for many more years.

The post-War era on radio was marked mostly by the exodus of the top performers to television, but few made the transition as gracefully as Burns and Allen. George took a few stylistic risks with The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, most notably breaking the “fourth wall” and commenting on the action directly to the audience. He said that he knew it was an original idea because he originally stole it from Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town. The one thing that he wisely refused to do was mess with Gracie’s character, knowing full well that Gracie was the reason for his success. Gracie was less happy with the arrangement.

George had worked full time on the radio program, putting together the script, arranging guests, and the other chores required to produce a weekly program. Gracie had to show up for a couple of hours’ rehearsal each week, and the live broadcast but the rest of her time could be dedicated to being a housewife, which she relished. For TV, she had to work at learning her lines, do more complicated rehearsals, make-up sessions, as well as taping the show. She quickly tired, but continued to do it, mostly to keep George happy. Finally, she got to the point of announcing that she would retire at the end of the 1958 season. George tried to keep the show going with the same supporting cast without his wife, but, just as he knew it would, it simply did not work without Gracie.

When Gracie retired from showbiz, she really retired. There were countless offers for her to make films or appear as a guest on several TV shows, but they would have gotten in the way of her gardening, shopping, and the other things that she enjoyed. However, her work schedule, while she was in TV, had taken a toll on her health. She had a history of cardiac problems, and she died of a heart attack at her Hollywood home in 1964.

George opened his 1988 memoir by admitting, “For forty years my act consisted of one joke. And then she died.” George Burns without Gracie Allen seemed like an impossibility. He immersed himself in his work as a producer and made a few tours of the nightclub circuit with various actresses playing the Gracie role, including Carol Channing, Jane Russell, and Connie Haines. His good friend, Jack Benny, had been scheduled to play a lead in the film version of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys (1975) but passed away before production began. George took the role and went on to establish himself as one of the grand old men of show business. He continued to work until his death on March 9, 1996, 49 days after his 100^th birthday.

George Burns has been honored with three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6510 Hollywood Blvd for his contributions to Television, at 1639 Vine St for Motion Pictures, and at 6672 Hollywood Blvd for Live Performance. Gracie Allen’s Star for Television is also at 6672 Hollywood Blvd

How does one become an expert on murder? According to the creators of Murder By Experts, expertise in murder is demonstrated by writing about murder in a highly entertaining fashion. No university has a recognized degree program in murder, and consulting someone with “experience in the field” is too ghastly to contemplate.

The subject itself seems too ghastly to consider, but murder mysteries make for highly entertaining fair and they are the centerpiece of the majority of the crime dramas which filled the air during the Golden Age of Radio. The average listener might drive a few miles over the speed limit on occasion or could neglect to tell Uncle Sam the whole truth on their tax returns, but by and large, they are law-abiding people who would go out of their way to help their fellow man. The psychological makeup of someone who is actually capable of murder is fascinating to behold. Remember the old joke about going to a party dressed as a homicidal maniac? They look just like you and me.

Using their own standard, Robert Arthur and Dave Kogan each qualified as experts in murder. Kogan grew up with Radio entering the Golden Age and entered Columbia University to study radio production. At a scriptwriting class in 1940, he met Robert Arthur Jr, who had a mixed bag of experiences any author would be happy to draw upon. He was born in Corregidor, Philippines, the son of a US Army lieutenant. After a life of moving from base to base around the country he won an appointment to West Point but decided against a military career and entered William and Mary College in Virginia in 1926, later transferring to the University of Michigan (Robert Arthur Sr was working there as a Professor of Military Science) where he earned a BA then an MA in English. After settling in Greenwich Village, New York City, he began writing for pulp magazines and had stories published in Wonder Stories, Detective Fiction Weekly, The Illustrated Detective Magazine, Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine, Detective Tales, Thrilling Detective, Double Detective, The Phantom Detective, Unknown Worlds, Black Mask, and several other magazines.

Arthur married a radio soap opera actress in 1938, but they split before he joined the scriptwriting class at Columbia in 1940. Kogan and Arthur’s friendship developed into a formidable scriptwriting team. They would work together in an intense session to hammer out a story, then Kogan would take over as director and producer. They went to work together at WOR, the flagship station of the Mutual Network, creating scripts for the short-lived Dark Destiny in 1942. With one success under their belt, the duo was allowed to put together another series, The Mysterious Traveler, which first aired in December 1943. In addition to spellbinding tales of fantasy, science fiction, and the supernatural to go along with crime drama, The Traveler featured the Traveler himself as a horror host.

The series spawned comic books and, eventually, its own pulp magazine. With a proven money-maker on their hands, Mutual gave Kogan and Arthur the greenlight for another series, Murder By Experts, which would begin airing in 1949. Experts would be just as thrilling as The Traveler, but the format took some interesting creative turns. One of the most important was that rather than original plots the show used stories selected by the weekly guest “Expert”, the stories still had to be adapted to a radio format. The “horror host” was replaced by a host expert, prolific mystery writer John Dickson Carr during the first season.

Carr was no stranger to radio. Not only had several of his stories been adapted by various anthology series, but he wrote several original scripts for Suspense. Each week Carr’s “guest expert” would select a favorite murder story, usually the work of yet a third author. After the first season, Carr left the series, presumably to concentrate on furthering his writing career. He was replaced by Brett Halliday, creator of the Michael Shayne detective series. Halliday was the pseudonym of Davis Dresser, who had been influential in founding the Mystery Writers of America. Kogan and Arthur were awarded an “Edgar” award by the Mystery Writers in 1950 for “best radio program of a mystery nature” in 1950 for Murder By Experts (The Mysterious Traveler would be so honored in 1953).

The team of Kogan and Arthur decided to give back to the radio writing profession by becoming supporters of the Radio Writers Guild. At the time, however, any collective bargaining effort was destined to be painted as a Communist front by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Although they were not listed in Red Channels, HUAC attention was enough to gain notice from Mutual’s sponsors who put pressure on the network to cancel both Experts and Traveler.