Occasionally people ask me who my writing is aimed at and I always say “People who like to read.”
If these people are in a particularly argumentative mood, they might contend that The Fraternity will only appeal to people who went to an all-male college, and that Trombone Answers can only be appreciated by readers who came of age in the 1970s, and that The Rocheville Devil’s audience must surely be limited to people who are haunted by the ghost of their fifth-grade teacher.
I would, of course, beg to differ. You don’t have to have spent any time in the whaling industry to appreciate Moby Dick. That’s the beauty of being able to read. If you grew up in a small Midwestern town in the 1970s, Trombone Answers will strike a number of familiar chords with you. But if you grew up in a different place and time, you can read the book and come away with an understanding of what it was like to grow up in a small Midwestern town in the 1970s.
(By the way, you can scour the internet from now till the end of time and never find another paragraph that mentions Moby Dick and Trombone Answers. Except this one, I guess.)
This newsletter is written from the perspective of a guy who’s been around the block a few times, but nevertheless it’s aimed at anyone who likes to read, anyone who appreciates a little nostalgia, a progressive political viewpoint, and the occasional flights of silliness.
That said, today’s newsletter is about my love of old-time radio shows. You might appreciate it. You might get a kick out of some of the observations. You might decide to tune in to Radio Classics on SiriusXM and see what it’s all about.
But I would have to admit that the most obvious target demographic for today’s newsletter is people who have both dates filled in on their tombstones.
I’ve been listening to old-time radio shows on SiriusXM for three or four years now. Channel 148, all old-time radio all the time, all before my time. There’s no nostalgia here—I enjoy these shows because for the most part they’re good stories, well-acted, and fun to listen to. “Gee, Dono,” you might be thinking, “I’d like to start listening to some old-time radio shows too but I’ve looked all over Substack for a primer on which ones are best and which ones are kind of cringe, and I don’t think such a primer exists.”
Well, this might help a little.
1. If I were tell you that my favorite old-time radio show is about the adventures of a freelance insurance investigator, you’d think oh, this newsletter is one of Dono’s parodies. He’s pulling our legs! But it’s true: Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar—particularly the episodes from 1955-1960 when Bob Bailey played the title character—is indeed my favorite. Bailey plays Johnny Dollar with a wry sense of battle fatigue, a “here we go again” approach to every case. There’s a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek here—the show’s tagline is “The man with the action-packed expense account,” after all—but it’s all fast-paced and funny and engaging. Johnny Dollar gets into all sorts of scrapes, some life-threatening, but he always earns his fee by tracking down the fraudsters and keeping his clients from writing big checks to shady characters. Yeah, when it gets right down to it, it’s all about protecting the corporations and their shareholders, but hey, Johnny Dollar does it with wit and flair.
2. One of the things you’ll have to get used to is how the pronunciation of certain words has changed in as little as, say, 70 years. The old-time radio shows provide tons of material for anyone interested in linguistics. I’m finally accustomed to radio actors pronouncing protein with three syllables, valet to rhyme with mallet, and rations and rationing with a long A.
3. I was listening a few weeks ago to a radio crime drama that started out in a shoe store. A gangster’s moll wants a new pair of pumps but the shoe salesman says that pumps are out of fashion this year. The gangster growls “If the lady wants pumps, you get her pumps.” The salesman agrees to go look in the back. Meanwhile, another gangster shows up. There’s a confrontation. Things get heated. The moll tries to cool things down but the tension keeps rising. There’s going to be violence. Finally, the moll delivers one of my favorite lines ever: “Where’s that monkey with my pumps?!” For the rest of my life I’m going to be looking for a situation where I can say that line with the same conviction she did. Where is that monkey with my pumps?
4. The introduction to the Gunsmoke radio show goes “Around Dodge City and in the territory out west, there's just one way to handle the killers and the spoilers. That's with a U.S. Marshal, and the smell of gunsmoke.” I’ve heard the intro enough to recite it along with the announcer, but I always replace “gunsmoke” with something like “chamomile tea” or “Cinnabon” or “Axe body spray.” This makes me want to start a podcast that would be like Mystery Science Theater 3000 but for old-time radio shows.
5. Crime and detective shows hold up pretty well today, but some of the comedies are dated and some of them make me wonder how anyone ever thought they were funny. Red Skelton, for instance, is painful to listen to. Everything is an obvious set-up leading into an obvious joke that stretches the definition of humor. Jimmy Durante’s shows are full of corn but his vaudeville persona is charming enough to let him get away with it. Bob Hope too is much funnier in movies than he is on radio. For my money the radio comedian whose humor holds up best today is Jack Benny. There’s a timelessness to it, probably because the comedy is character-driven and not fueled by contrived gags. If you’ve ever heard that Jack Benny was a master of comedic timing, his radio show is proof of that. Plus, nobody was better at ad-libbing after a blooper than Jack Benny.
6. If you start listening to the radio police/detective shows, keep in mind that not one single radio-show crime was ever solved through DNA.
7. I know you know who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. That would be the Shadow, played by Orson Welles. Unfortunately I don’t know that I’ve ever caught an episode of The Shadow on SiriusXM. Maybe some legal/financial knots need to be untied first. Or maybe my timing is off.
8. I was listening to an episode of Father Knows Best (which later made the transition to TV), and the boy Bud was complaining about having to distract his dad while the rest of the family set up for his surprise birthday party. The older sister Betty responds “Jumpin’ creepers, Bud—it’ll take fifteen minutes!” Jumpin’ creepers? I had never heard that particular combination of euphemisms. Someday when I do that MST3K podcast for radio shows, Betty will not be limited to sanitized 1950s profanity.
9. Dragnet is another radio show that moved easily into a television version, and my favorite thing about it is how well they capture the mundane minutiae of police work. Sgt Joe Friday and his partner Frank Smith will be on a stakeout, and to pass the time they’ll go on and on and on about what they had for dinner the night before.
Smith: Wife made meatloaf last night.
Friday: Good?
Smith: Great. Lots of onions.
Friday: I don’t care for onions myself.
Smith: No?
Friday: No.
Smith: She uses onions. I like onions.
Friday: I’d rather have my meatloaf without.
Smith: Without onions?
Friday: Right.
Smith: I don’t know if that’s possible.
Friday: Why not?
Smith: Well, you mix all the ingredients together before you put it in the oven. The onions would be evenly distributed.
Friday: Didn’t think of that.
Smith: She uses lots of onions in her meatloaf.
Friday: I wouldn’t like that.
Smith: No?
Friday: No. I don’t like onions. Hey, there’s our guy going into the warehouse.
10. I like Vincent Price but I’m not a big fan of his radio version of The Saint. The reason, I think, is that Vincent Price always just sounds like Vincent Price.
11. There were a handful of attempts to bring back the Golden Age of Radio in the 1970s. I used to try to listen to CBS Radio Mystery Theater, but it came on kind of late for school nights. SiriusXM occasionally runs a show called The Adventures of Harry Nile, which was produced in Seattle from the late ‘70s on into the ’90s. The title character is a hard-boiled 1940s detective, and while the scripts are generally good the acting is a little flat and whenever they need someone to do a British accent it just feels like they’ve grabbed someone off the street and hoped for the best. Plus, the recording technology on Harry Nile sounds like it’s regressed from the 1940s. Someone’s inner monologue? Simply turn up the reverb. Two characters having a conversation on a train? Turn up the reverb. In a car? Turn up the reverb.
12. The Adventures of Harry Nile is also the source of one of the most egregious examples of careless writing I’ve ever heard. A potential client calls up Harry Nile to see if he’d be interested in taking a case. Nile agrees and the client suggests the meeting place: “There’s a cafe and bar on Lake Street at the corner of Sierra and Pasadena.” I was really disappointed that Harry Nile didn’t say “Why don’t you call me back when you figure out how street names work?”
Favorite jack benny on radio:
Gunman: Your money or your life.
Benny: (silence)
Gunman: Well?!
Benny: I’m thinking it over.
Yes- a self-effacing tightwad, probably a nonexistent character in our life, and likeable .