My introduction to old-time radio came about in the 1970s, when the “nostalgia boom” was well underway.  WOUB, Ohio University’s FM radio station, had a feature that aired every Monday night entitled, appropriately enough, “Monday Night at the Radio”—and it was through that program that I was initiated into “the theater of the mind” with shows like Night Beat and The Lone Ranger.  And, there was also The Shadow, which the station slotted in a 10:30pm berth, which was way past my bedtime.  Like a generation before me, I often had to listen to the Shadow’s adventures way down low for fear that my father would burst in at any moment and exact strict parental retribution.

The program that would ultimately come to define old-time radio (along with The Lone Ranger and Fibber McGee & Molly, as once theorized by radio historian John Dunning) premiered eighty-two years ago on this date.  At the time of its debut it was known as The Detective Story Hour, an anthology program sponsored by publishers Street and Smith to promote their Detective Story magazine.  “The Shadow” of the program was the unseen narrator who introduced and closed the program each week…but it wasn’t long before listeners were asking where they might buy magazines featuring “that Shadow character from the radio.”  The publishing company was only too happy to introduce The Shadow Detective Magazine to newsstands in April of 1931.  The mag’s premiere novel-length story, “The Living Shadow,” was penned by a professional magician named Walter Gibson, who would later turn out the equivalent of 283 novels, writing as “Maxwell Grant.”

By the fall of 1932, the Shadow became a full-fledged participant on the program, voiced by both Frank Readick and James La Curto.  But, the most famous of The Shadows wouldn’t arrive until the fall of 1937, when the newly-formed Mutual Broadcasting System debuted a series sponsored by Blue Coal that featured a 22-year-old actor named Orson Welles.  Welles, before he made that movie about the sled, played both The Shadow and his alter ego, Lamont Cranston—a wealthy playboy who was taught, during a visit to the Orient, the hypnotic power to “cloud men’s minds” in order to become invisible.  This nifty parlor trick allowed Cranston to adopt the identity of The Shadow who, like The Green Hornet, became a headache to the underworld as he smashed rackets and generally made life uncomfortable for them.  The Shadow’s friendly nemesis on the police force was Commissioner Weston (played by Santos Ortega and Ray Collins, among many others), who publicly vowed to put an end to The Shadow’s activities but was secretly glad “the Shad” was on his side. Cranston’s “friend and companion, the lovely Margo Lane” was the other regular on the show, originally played by Welles’ fellow thespian from his Mercury Theater troupe, Agnes Moorehead.

Boy wonder Welles played the part of The Shadow throughout the summer season of 1938 before relinquishing the role to actor William Johnstone.  Orson would find bigger fish to fry, scaring the pants off listeners in his celebrated “War of the Worlds” broadcast on The Mercury Theatre of the Air.  Moorehead would soon be replaced as well, by Marjorie Anderson (with Lesley Woods, Grace Matthews and Gertrude Warner to follow), considered by many fans to be the best of the Margos.  Johnstone was a celebrated character actor, but his Cranston/Shadow often came across as a bit too mature (sounding like a “wealthy old man about town”).  In 1943, the actor best-remembered as The Shadow, Bret Morrison, took over for Johnstone.  Although his tenure was interrupted briefly by military service (during which he was replaced by John Archer and Steve Courtleigh), he played the role the longest, right up until the show left the airwaves on December 26, 1954.  Morrison definitely nailed the persona of callous playboy Cranston, and was a first-rate man of mystery to boot.

OTR historian Jim Harmon once observed that The Shadow became “the chief fictional representative of all that was Radioland.  After all, we knew even back then that here was the perfect hero for radio—the man you couldn’t see.”  As one of OTR’s most durable and enduring heroes, The Shadow welcomes newer generations of fans with each passing year, all of them coming to know that “the weed of crime bears bitter fruit.”  Radio Spirits does its part to introduce folks to The Shadow through its CD collections, such as the recently-released Crime Does Not Pay (which features two broadcasts from the Bill Johnstone era not heard since their original broadcasts) and classics like Bitter Fruit, Strange Puzzles and Unearthly Specters.  Who knows what makes for classic radio mystery and adventure?  The Shadow knows!

Singer-actor Tony Martin, who starred in such films as Ziegfeld Girl and Casbah, left this world for a better one on Friday, July 27 at the age of 98…his career is examined in nice detail in this online obituary at The Los Angeles Times.  Radio Spirits mourns his passing, recognizing Martin’s radio work on such shows as The George Burns & Gracie Allen Show (he was their male vocalist off-and-on from 1936-38), Good News, Tune-Up Time (1939-40), The Texaco Star Theatre (summer of 1947) and The Carnation Contented Hour (1948-51).

Fans of old-time radio might get a kick out of watching an old Perry Mason rerun, “The Case of the Lover’s Gamble,” which turns up on the classic television cable channel outlet Me-TV every now and then.  At the risk of spoiling the ending, the murderer in this case turns out to be a man named Freddy Fell—portrayed by radio’s “The Great Gildersleeve” himself, Harold (Hal) Peary, who was born 104 years ago today.

Born Harrold José Pereira de Faria to Portuguese immigrants in San Leandro, California in 1908, Peary developed a passion for music early on in life, and by age eleven he was performing as a boy soprano at weddings, parties and other festive affairs.  Two years later, he made his radio debut as The Oakland Tribune’s Boy Caruso…and continued to entertain over the airwaves for a number of Bay Area radio stations, notably as The Spanish Serenader for a San Francisco NBC affiliate in 1928.  But Hal demonstrated flexibility as a comic and dramatic actor, too, and appeared on occasion in roles for NBC’s One Man’s Family before relocating to Chicago in 1935.

It was in the Windy City where Peary would really make his mark in radio.  He would work as a member of the stock company on the horror program Lights Out, as well as stints on Kaltenmeyer’s Kindergarten, Welcome Valley and Flying Time.  Back on the West Coast by 1937, Hal landed steady employment on the popular Fibber McGee & Molly program, playing a variety of utility characters.  One day he asked the show’s writer, Don Quinn, about the possibility of obtaining a more prominent role on the show and Quinn obliged by creating a next-door neighbor who answered to “Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve.”  From 1939 to 1941, Peary-as-Gildersleeve was Fibber McGee’s nemesis and rival, the only Wistful Vista inhabitant pompous enough to match McGee’s windy bluff.  The Gildersleeve character was an immediate hit, popular enough to appear in feature films starring Fibber and Molly (aka Jim and Marian Jordan) like Look Who’s Laughing (1941) and Here We Go Again (1942), but also in solo appearances like Comin’ Round the Mountain (1940), County Fair (1941) and Seven Days’ Leave (1942).

Despite other radio gigs, like briefly playing Herb Woodley on the situation comedy Blondie, Peary started to chafe in his role as Gildersleeve, fearing that he would become typecast and lamenting that his musical talents were being largely ignored.  He seriously considered quitting the program, but both NBC and Fibber McGee & Molly’s sponsor, Johnson’s Wax, were anxious to retain his services—so they sold the actor-singer on the idea of a “spin-off,” The Great Gildersleeve, which premiered on NBC onAugust 31, 1941.  Hal was the star of this program, playing Throckmorton P. as a portentous but lovable man who was appointed guardian to his niece Marjorie and nephew Leroy Forrester.  “Gildy,” as nearly everyone called him, was the water commissioner of a small town called Summerfield…and also that tiny hamlet’s most notorious “bachelor-on-the-prowl.”  An endearing situation comedy that based its humor not on jokes but on the quirks and personalities of its characters, Gildersleeve was not radio’s first spin-off per se, but it was inarguably one of the medium’s most successful.  The series even inspired a brief movie series of four feature films produced between 1942 and 1944.

The star of The Great Gildersleeve never made it to the show’s official departure in March of 1957, however. Peary left his successful series in 1950 and appeared in a sitcom entitled Honest Harold for CBS that lasted only a single season.  But, Hal would find much work in the new medium of television, guest-starring on such shows as Private Secretary, Surfside 6, The Dick Van Dyke Show, My Mother the Car and Petticoat Junction, to name just a few.  He also played the part of Perry Bannister on June Havoc’s 1954-55 sitcom Willy, and reprised his Herb Woodley role when Blondie was brought to television in 1957 in the first of two video incarnations.  Peary wasn’t asked to play The Great Gildersleeve when the character made his TV debut in a brief syndicated sitcom…but he did wind up emoting as Mayor LaTrivia when the disastrous decision to bring Fibber McGee & Molly to the boob tube without the Jordans came about in 1959.

In later years, Peary’s memorable voice could be heard in productions from animation studios like Hanna-Barbera (The Galloping Ghost) and Rankin-Bass (Rudolph’s Shiny New Year).  He died of a heart attack at the age of 76 on March 30, 1985…but the characterization he made famous, Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve, lives on in broadcasts that can be purchased from Radio Spirits in collections such as Baby (the show’s “Abandoned Infant” story arc) and Marjorie’s Wedding (in which Gildy’s niece ties the knot).

A surviving excerpt of radio’s The Fitch Bandwagon from April 23, 1944 features Broadway sensation Celeste Holm singing (complete with Brooklyn accent) the song written by Duffy’s Tavern’s Ed Gardner, “Leave Us Face It, We’re in Love.”  It’s one of the earliest on-the-air showcases for the actress who passed away Sunday, July 15, at the age of 95—but it would definitely not be the last.  Holm would guest star on such radio favorites as New World A’Coming, Mail Call, Command Performance, Family Theatre and The Big Show…and during the radio drama revival of the 1970s, she made several appearances on The CBS Radio Mystery Theatre.

At the time of her guest shot on Bandwagon, Celeste had already established herself as a presence on Broadway—she was in the original cast of the hit musical Oklahoma!, playing Ado Annie Carnes (the girl who cain’t say no), and had already graced such productions as The Time of Your Life, Eight O’Clock Tuesday and My Fair Ladies.  Born in New York City in 1917, Holm caught the acting bug early during her school years, often performing in school productions.  Her parents relocated a great deal (she lived for a time in both Holland and France), but she graduated from Chicago’s University High School for Girls, and then went on to attend the University of Chicago to study drama.  After her triumph in Oklahoma!, she landed the lead in a Broadway play called Bloomer Girl…and with that, 20th Century Fox came calling, signing her to a movie contract in 1946 and casting her in the musical Three Little Girls in Blue.

With her third film, Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), Holm hit it out of the park.  As worldly magazine columnist Anne Dettrey, she deservedly won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award that year…one of the three trophies the controversial film would take home (the others were Best Picture and Best Director for Elia Kazan).  Celeste put aside any notions of an “Oscar curse” by following up Agreement with engaging performances in films such as Road House (1948), The Snake Pit (1948), Everybody Does It (1949), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), and Champagne for Caesar (1950).  She would even be nominated two more times for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar: for her colorful portrayal of French nun Sister Scholastica in Come to the Stable (1949), and as star Bette Davis’ supportive friend Karen Richards in All About Eve (1950).

After Eve, Holm expressed a preference for stage work over films, though she would still occasionally appear in movies such as The Tender Trap (1955) and High Society (1956)—both with Frank Sinatra, and the latter featuring the delightful duet “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”  Her later features include Tom Sawyer (1973), The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977) and Three Men and a Baby (1987).  But Celeste also explored the early medium of television: she starred in a short-lived sitcom in 1954, Honestly, Celeste!, and would later appear in both guest and semi-regular roles in such TV series as Nancy, Archie Bunker’s Place, Falcon Crest, Loving, Touched by an Angel and Promised Land.

Even in her advanced years, Celeste Holm never lost her dedication to her craft—she completed filming (despite health problems) of a feature film comedy in 2011, College Debts, at the age of 94, and even graced such recent TV series as The Beat and Third Watch.  She has left audiences with a rich legacy of splendid film and television work, and she will be sorely missed.

Since the days of the nickelodeons, serials (or “chapter plays,” as they were also called) entertained motion picture audiences by spreading out a story over several installments, generally 20-30 minutes in length.  They were quite popular during the silent era, with crowds flocking to see actresses like Pearl White and Ruth Roland at the mercy of scoundrels and villains—each chapter leaving the heroine in a situation of peril, which people referred to as the “cliffhanger.”  Serials were embraced by moviegoers of all ages, but at the end of the silent era the productions were shunted to Saturday matinees (earning them yet another nickname as “Saturday matinee serials”) where juvenile audiences became their devoted fans.

Most of the motion picture serials were westerns, seeing as how they were inexpensive to make and proved quite profitable.  But other serials allowed pulp fiction heroes and comic strip champions to be featured in their productions—the best example being Flash Gordon, whose 1936 serial featured fairly lavish production values and was a hit with both adults and kids alike.  The Golden Age of Radio also had heroes to lend: in 1938, Republic Studios brought “the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains” to the big screen in a fifteen-chapter serial (The Lone Ranger), and also produced a sequel the following year (The Lone Ranger Rides Again).  Both chapter plays proved to be box office hits, but WXYZ owner George W. Trendle was unhappy with the second Ranger serial (which presented its masked hero in a mostly unmasked state) and dissolved any future plans for additional chapter plays with Republic.  During the time The Lone Ranger Rides Again was in theaters, Trendle and his legal team had already entered negotiations with Universal to do a serial based on the station’s newest success, The Green Hornet.

The Green Hornet, which went before the cameras in early September of 1939 and finished shooting in a mere 26 days, premiered in movie theaters in January of 1940 to enthusiastic Saturday matinee crowds.  The serial was so successful that a sequel, The Green Hornet Strikes Again!, quickly went before the cameras and was out in theaters a year later (January of 1941).  Boss man Trendle was very pleased with the final result of the two Hornet chapter plays…which might explain why The Green Hornet and The Green Hornet Strikes Again! survived in practically pristine condition (both serials were released to DVD by VCI Entertainment in 2009).  The original negative and existing prints of The Lone Ranger and The Lone Ranger Rides Again were reportedly destroyed at Trendle’s request, with the serials now existing in restored versions taken largely from surviving foreign prints.

At noon today, Turner Classic Movies will show the first three chapters of the 1940 Green Hornet serial, and follow it up on each successive Saturday with three additional installments until July 28, when the last four chapters will be shown (the Hornet being a 13-chapter serial).  Old-time radio fans are sure to get a kick out of seeing the famous masked hero get the big screen treatment decades before they decided to tackle a version in 2011.  Gordon Jones stars as both newspaper publisher Britt Reid and the Hornet (with the radio Hornet, Al Hodge, providing his voice); Jones is best known for appearing in many B-westerns (several as Roy Rogers’ sidekick) and as “Mike the Cop” on TV’s The Abbott & Costello Show.  Charlie Chan’s Number One Son, Keye Luke, tackles the role of Reid’s faithful valet, Kato.

Other actors in The Green Hornet include Anne Nagel (as secretary Lenore “Casey” Case), Wade Boteler (as bodyguard and comic relief Michael Axford) and Phillip Trent (as ace reporter Jasper Jenks).  The plot focuses on the efforts of the Hornet to smash a crime syndicate run by villainous Curtis Monroe (Cy Kendall) who is really just second-in-charge…he receives his orders from a mysterious crime boss known only as “The Chief.”  Throughout the thirteen-chapter presentation, viewers might recognize such performers as Alan Ladd, Universal B-movie queen Anne Gwynne, Death Valley Days’ “Old Ranger” Stanley Andrews, and The Beverly Hillbillies’ Raymond Bailey in small roles.

Trendle and his WXYZ team were very pleased with the final product of The Green Hornet because, unlike many radio-to-serial adaptations, the chapter play stayed remarkable true to its on-the-air origins (many of its chapters were loosely based on previous Hornet broadcasts).  Over at my home base of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, I do a weekly recap of each Green Hornet chapter (while poking a little good-natured fun, of course) and find myself enjoying it every week.  If you’re new to the Hornet, this serial will be a wonderful introduction to one of radio’s greatest heroes.  And if you’re well-acquainted with the man who “hunts the biggest of all game,” be sure to check out his classic adventures in these Radio Spirits collections: Spies & Rackets, The Biggest Game, Fog in the Night and Endpoint.  (There’s even a CD set that explores the connections between The Green Hornet and his famous ancestor The Lone Ranger in Generations!)

At 7:30am EDT this Saturday morning, July 7th, Turner Classic Movies will show the 1942 WW2 musical comedy Seven Days’ Leave (1942), starring Victor Mature and Lucille Ball   It’s a romantic comedy whose premise seems to have been borrowed from the Buster Keaton classic Seven Chances (1925): Mature is GI Johnny Grey, who stands to inherit $100,000 from a distant relative…but only if he marries heiress Terry Havalok-Allen (Lucy) within the titular time frame.  Mature’s great-great-grandfather was engaged to be married to a gal in Lucy’s family, but the Civil War put the lovers on opposite sides…yet a codicil in great-great-grandpappy’s will states he has to marry someone in the Havalok-Allen clan or he forfeits the dough.

It’s a paper-thin plot, to be sure—but one that is helped immeasurably by sprightly singing and dancing, not to mention novelty performances from acts like Lynn, Royce & Vera…two men and a woman who engage in amusing acrobatics while imitating Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers.  The film also contains a good deal of old-time radio content, beginning with the point in the plot where Mature learns about his good fortune.  He actually hears about it secondhand from his solider buddy, Bitsy Slater (played by Arnold Stang—who was sixteen years old at the time this film was made), who’s spending an evening listening to the popular CBS program The Court of Missing Heirs hosted by Charles Victor (as himself, of course).  Mature’s fellow soldier buddies are also played by two familiar radio entertainers, vocalist Buddy Clark (also as himself—he’s not credited, but I suspect he did Mature’s “singing” since it sounds a lot like him) and comedian Peter Lind Hayes (as Pete Jackson), whose impersonations of Lionel Barrymore, Ronald Colman and Charles Laughton manage to work their way into the plot.

Later in the film, Mature’s Johnny takes Lucy’s Terry to a broadcast of Truth or Consequences, hosted by Ralph Edwards, where the young couple wind up as contestants for Edwards’ practical jokes.  (For those of us who have always found Edwards a tad unctuous, he is a good enough sport to take a pie in the face during this sequence.)  Les Brown (and His Band of Renown) and Freddy Martin are also featured with their orchestras, and Ginny Simms (on loan from Kay Kyser, I’m guessing) also contributes a song.

The big radio name in Seven Days’ Leave is Harold Peary, who plays Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve and provides many of the film’s wonderful moments (including a fun rendition of A Touch of Texas, where he sings and dances with Lind-Hayes, Mature and Marcy McGuire).  Peary’s appearance in this movie—as well as the Fibber McGee & Molly-Bergen & McCarthy vehicles Look Who’s Laughing and Here We Go Again—inspired studio R-K-O to inaugurate a short series of Great Gildersleeve films from 1942-44.  Peary’s Gildersleeve is the executor of Johnny Gray’s estate…so apparently in between running his girdle business and becoming Summerfield’s water commissioner Gildy had a degree in law.  (The chuckle-out-loud moment for me is when Gildy introduces Mature and Ball to his Uncle Percy—played by Harry Holman—and then refers to him afterward as “Unk.”)

Also in the cast are Latin spitfire Mapy Cortes (as Mature’s jilted girlfriend), Wallace Ford (as Mature’s superior officer) and Walter Reed, playing the “Ralph Bellamy” role as Terry’s fiancé, eventually dumped for Johnny.  It’s frothy, morale-boosting entertainment—with plenty of old jokes courtesy of scribes William Bowers, Ralph Spence, Curtis Kenyon and Kenneth Earl…and better-than-average tunes from the team of Jimmy McHugh and Frank Loesser.  A New York Times reviewer noted of the film: “…on a thin tire the producers are still getting a little mileage. The audience seemed to enjoy the ride.”  I think you will, too.

In 1979, veteran radio producers Fletcher Markle and Elliott Lewis made an attempt to resurrect the lost art of radio drama with The Sears Radio Theater, a program that followed in the footsteps of such 70s offerings as Zero Hour, Earplay and The CBS Radio Mystery Theater.  Five nights a week, offerings of comedy, drama, horror and even westerns were presented on participating CBS Radio stations, with each night a different “theme” hosted by celebrities such as Lorne Greene, Cicely Tyson and radio “Saint” Vincent Price.  Tuesday nights were reserved for comedy plays, and the host of that hour was television favorite Andy Griffith.

The Sears Radio Theater (which was later renamed The Mutual Radio Theater when the program moved to another network) constitutes the major radio contribution of actor-comedian Griffith, who passed away July 3rd at the age of 86.  Andy appeared on a few shows broadcast over AFRTS in the late 50s/early 60s, but for the most part he was a creature of TV, movies and the live stage.  And yet, it would be unseemly not to recognize his passing here in this space…because The Andy Griffith Show, his singular sitcom achievement, was in many ways a visual embodiment of some of radio’s long-running favorites from the past.  The tranquil town of Summerfield, the setting for radio’s The Great Gildersleeve, could have been a “sister city” to the fictional Mayberry of Griffith’s series (with many of the writers on TAGS veteran radio scribes).  The lovable eccentrics of shows like Lum ‘n’ Abner and Vic and Sade could have relocated to Mayberry…and no one would have batted an eyelash.

Andrew Samuel Griffith was born on June 1, 1926 in the small North Carolina town of Mount Airy…and though Griffith never specifically came right out and admitted it, many have fervently believed that Mount Airy was the model for what would later become America’s favorite television small town.  He showed an interest in the arts at a young age, getting involved with the music and drama departments at his high school.  His pursuit of music may have even been responsible for his deciding to change his major in college (he had originally planned to become a minister), and he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a music degree in 1949.  He put his aspirations on temporary hold while he taught English at a high school in Goldsboro…but he also used his leisure time to write comedy monologues, many in the style of one of his idols, Will Rogers.  An amusing recitation about a young man’s first encounter with a football game, entitled “What it Was, Was Football,” was recorded by Andy for a small record label in 1954…and the record soon became a national Top Ten hit.

Flush with the success of “Football,” Griffith became a fixture on television variety shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show and The Steve Allen Show, and he also flexed his thespic muscles on a telecast of The U.S. Steel Hour playing a small-town innocent in “No Time for Sergeants.”  “Sergeants” was later adapted as a stage play, and a movie adaptation was released in 1958.  It was not Griffith’s first feature film, however; director Elia Kazan cast him as a hobo-turned-demagogue in his 1957 political satire A Face in the Crowd…a role that failed to win Andy anything remotely resembling an Oscar nomination, despite the fact that a majority of movie buffs feel it was his finest hour onscreen.  Griffith continued his television appearances, and a guest shot on the popular Danny Thomas Show would result in changing his fortunes overnight.  In “Danny Meets Andy Griffith,” Andy played a small-town sheriff who caught series star Danny Thomas (as entertainer Danny Williams) running a stop sign and made him a guest of his jail until Danny agreed to pay the fine.  After that episode, General Foods expressed interest in sponsoring a series based around Griffith’s bucolic sheriff (who was also justice of the peace and the newspaper editor), and under the supervision of radio second banana-turned-producer Sheldon Leonard, The Andy Griffith Show came to TV screens in the fall of 1960, where it became that season’s newest hit.

On TAGS, Griffith continued as the duly constituted arm of law enforcement in the town of Mayberry; a widower who was raising his young son Opie (played by future film director Ron Howard) with the help of his aunt, Beatrice “Aunt Bee” Taylor (Frances Bavier).  Both Howard and Bavier had been on the Danny Thomas pilot (though Bavier played a different character, townswoman Henrietta Perkins).  On the regular series, Andy was also joined by comic actor Don Knotts.  Knotts, who had become a friend of Griffith’s when they both worked in the stage production of “No Time for Sergeants,” had suggested that Andy’s character on the show needed a deputy…and Andy assigned that responsibility to Don.  With the hiring of his friend, the pieces were in place for one of television’s most durable and endearing sitcoms.

In the early episodes of TAGS, Griffith’s character of Andy Taylor wasn’t too far removed from the grinning-from-ear-to-ear Will Stockdale he played in “Sergeants”…but gradually, Andy and the show’s writers realized that Sheriff Taylor functioned best as a straight man, reacting to the zanies around him.  The atmosphere of Mayberry was so idyllic that crime was at a relative minimum, something Deputy Barney Fife never seemed to understand, as he was always in favor of ramping up police efforts—even when it involved incarcerating town drunk Otis Campbell (Hal Smith), who was so harmless Sheriff Taylor left the cell keys within reach so Otis could go home when his time was up.  Other characters on TAGS included befuddled barber Floyd Lawson (Howard McNear), constantly reacting to the world around him with a mixture of awe and wonderment, and Gomer Pyle (Jim Nabors), the sweetly naïve gas station mechanic whose heart was a teensy bit bigger than his gray matter.  (When actor Nabors left TAGS after a year-and-a-half for a successful spin-off entitled Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., George Lindsey replaced him as cousin Goober, who was just as dumb and just as lovable.)

Throughout it all, Griffith’s Andy Taylor was the rock on which the other characters leaned.  He didn’t even carry a gun, preferring to tamp down crime in Mayberry with country logic and down-home common sense.  And as both father and mother to son Opie, he would become a model parent for many younger viewers who watched the series during its original run over CBS-TV and in reruns afterward.  He was stern but loving, firm but forgiving.  The show’s opening credits, with Andy and Opie heading out for a bit of angling at their favorite fishing hole, spoke volumes about the relationship between father and son on TAGS.

The Andy Griffith Show had a remarkable eight-season run on CBS…even in its final season, the series ranked #1 in the Nielsens, and the network would have been only too happy to have Griffith continue to police Mayberry.  But Andy wanted to follow in his friend Don Knotts’ footsteps (Knotts left the show after five seasons to become a success in motion pictures), and said “no mas” when his contract was up.  His post-TAGS feature film, Angel in My Pocket (1969), was a critical and financial flop—so Andy went back to what had been good to him in the past, TV.  He tried a pair of sitcom follow-ups, Headmaster and The New Andy Griffith Show (titled to distinguish it from the old one), but both shows ultimately fizzled despite initially strong starts.

In the 1970s, Griffith continued to be a TV presence, appearing in such TV-movies as Go Ask Alice (1973) and Savages (1974)—a couple of these made-for-TV features even led to short-lived series like Adams of Eagle Lake (from the 1974 movie Winter Kill) and Salvage I (from 1979’s Salvage).  He continued to receive critical plaudits for roles in miniseries like Washington: Behind Closed Doors (1977) and Roots: The Next Generation (1979), and further extended his range playing villainous types in productions like Murder in Coweta County (1983) and Crime of Innocence (1985).  An appearance in the 1984 TV-movie Fatal Vision, in which he was cast as an attorney, can be said to have inspired his second successful weekly TV venture beginning in the fall of 1985: Matlock.  As Atlanta, GA lawyer Ben Matlock, Andy played a “Perry Mason” for the modern generation in a series that many often mocked for its appeal to the geriatric crowd.  Matlock ran on NBC-TV from 1986 to 1992, and then jumped ship to ABC for three more seasons, ending in 1995.

Andy Griffith never completely abandoned his ambition to establish himself in feature films; among the films he graced were Hearts of the West (1975), Rustlers’ Rhapsody (1986), Spy Hard (1996), Daddy and Them (2001) and Play the Game (2009).  His performance in 2007’s independent fave Waitress earned him more than a few critical kudos as he played a crusty, philosophical businessman who takes a shine to the titular server.  In addition to TV and movies, Griffith would often perform live in concert, with a mixture of comedy and gospel singing—he recorded several gospel albums in the 1990s for Sparrow Records, including the platinum album I Love to Tell the Story: 25 Timeless Hymns.

Andy Griffith was a television icon.  His 1960-68 self-titled sitcom, which celebrated its fiftieth anniversary two years ago in October, continues to be a classic rerun staple…even outside the normal cable outlets like TVLand and Me-TV (we have a local station here in Atlanta that runs it every night, the only black-and-white show on their schedule).  He was responsible for creating a small town that everyone wishes they had grown up in…but for those of us who did grow up in such places, we recognize many of the people and much of the laid-back, peaceful atmosphere that surrounds the fictional Mayberry in our hometowns as well.  R.I.P., Andy.  You will most definitely be missed.

Playwright George S. Kaufman once observed: “Satire is what closes on Saturday night.”  Perhaps this famous quote might be able to explain the dismal box-office take of So This is New York (1948), a motion picture that failed to win over audiences despite laudatory reviews.  The satirical comedy, based on Ring Lardner’s novel The Big Town, certainly possessed a pedigree from one of filmdom’s finest stables: it was co-written by Carl Foreman (who would later go to write the screenplays for film classics like Champion, The Men and High Noon) and directed by Richard Fleischer (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Fantastic Voyage).  It was produced by Stanley Kramer, who would become one of the most prominent filmmakers of the 1950s and 1960s with “social dramas” like The Defiant Ones and Judgment at Nuremberg.

It was also the only starring role in feature films for “radio’s bad boy,” legendary humorist Henry Morgan.  Morgan, an acerbic comedian who at the time of the film’s shooting was headlining a weekly half-hour comedy series on ABC Radio, was perfect casting for the movie’s lead character—Ernie Finch, a cigar salesman from South Bend, Indiana.  (The opening credits of New York even feature Morgan “outside the same cigar store” as a nod to his weekly sign-off.)  Married to a woman who’s jointly inherited a large sum of money ($60,000) along with her flighty sister, Ernie finds himself roped into taking a trip to “the big town,” New York City, because wife Ella (Virginia Grey) hopes to find a better class of husband for her sister Kate (Dona Drake) instead of Kate’s fiancé, butcher Willis Gilbey (Dave Willock).  Ernie knows nothing good will come of this.  “All you’re going to get for it in New York is grief…only you’ll pay more for it.”

On the slow train trip to the Big Apple, Ernie and the sisters make the acquaintance of wealthy stockbroker Francis Griffin (Jerome Cowan), who would seem to be the perfect mate for Kate…but he later shows his true colors when he reveals he has designs on married Ella.  The next eligible bachelor to make the family’s acquaintance is Lucius Trumbull (Hugh Herbert), an eccentric—but still wealthy—collector of antiquities.  Trumbull has two strikes against him: he’s considerably older than Kate (Ernie notes that both of them got new teeth fifteen years ago…only Trumbull paid for his)…and he’s already married.  Then it’s on to another rich man—courtly Southern gentleman Herbert Daley (Rudy Vallee), whose passion for the horses will prove to be his undoing…because Kate falls for the jockey who commandeers Daley’s racehorse, Sid Mercer (Leo Gorcey).

Finally, Ella and Kate make the acquaintance of stage comedian Jimmy Ralston (Bill Goodwin), who while not bragging about the money he’s making as the headliner for the Ziegfeld Follies, has serious dramatic aspirations and convinces both women to be “angels” for a play in which he’s modestly directing, writing, producing and starring.  The production is a flop, and because Ella has blown all of the family’s money (including a secret stash won by Ernie playing the ponies) it looks as if they’ll be trapped in New Yorkfor the rest of their lives.  Fortunately, they are rescued by a deux ex machina ending and return to South Bend sadder but wiser.

Lardner’s satirical novel was re-tailored extensively for Morgan’s comedic gifts (he’s even billed in parentheses during the closing credits as “ABC’s comedy star”)…but if you were unaware of this on a first viewing of So This is New York, you’ll definitely detect Henry’s stamp all over the picture.  This is most evident in the sequence where Ernie and Ella attend the opening night of Ralston’s play, Bridget Sees a Ghost (in which Kate plays the small part of “Bridget”); an awful experience to be sure, but one that results in much hilarity due to Morgan’s wisecracking narration…which could have come directly from one of his radio scripts.  (I’m pretty sure Henry also contributed the gag in which the gamblers to whom Vallee’s Daley is in debt are introduced as “Hooper, Crossley and Hemingway.”)  There’s a subtlety to much of the film’s humor; it features one of the earliest uses of the translation gag—where a character’s vernacular has to be translated via subtitles, a la the “jive” scene in Airplane! (in New York, it’s a cab driver played by Phil Arnold, whose query of “Hey, Mack…I can’t wait all day for you to choose up sides—you want a hack, or don’t you, hey?” is translated as “This vehicle awaits your pleasure, sir”).  (I also broke up when Morgan’s character, who constantly has to tip the men delivering packages of clothing purchases to the hotel room, has streamlined the process by wearing a conductor’s change maker on his belt.)

The supporting cast of So This is New York provides the film with its major strengths, and it’s wonderful to see so many radio second bananas land plum roles.  You have Bob Hope/Burns & Allen announcer Bill Goodwin as hammy comedian Jimmy Ralston, and Jack Carson’s longtime vaudeville partner and sitcom “Tugwell,” Dave Willock, as Kate’s South Bend butcher beau.  Leo Gorcey, best known to movie buffs as the Bowery Boys’ Terence Aloysius “Slip” Mahoney, is also on hand—Gorcey was a regular on Groucho Marx’s short-lived Blue Ribbon Town and Bob Burns’s radio show as well.  Perhaps the most famous of the supporting players is the Vagabond Lover himself, Rudy Vallee—whose glorious radio days of the 1930s were somewhat behind him but who was reemerging in films as a most unlikely comedian thanks to appearances in such Preston Sturges films as The Palm Beach Story and Unfaithfully Yours.

One other second banana whom Morgan insisted on featuring in New York was his radio sidekick Arnold Stang, who has a memorable bit role as a Western Union clerk arguing with Morgan’s Finch about the length of a telegram he wants to send (the message consists of only one word: “Now”).  “What is it, in code?” Stang’s clerk asks at one point, whereupon Finch insists “My friend will understand it.”

“I don’t understand it,” snaps the clerk during the amusing exchange.  Morgan’s Finch then ends the argument by telling the clerk: “Look, Senator.  I’m payin’ for ten words.  You send it just the way it is there, and put the other nine words on somebody else’s telegram.”  But Arnold gets the last word when he mutters “Wise guy” after Finch exits the office.

Even the film’s low-budget (director Fleischer shot the movie the same way he would do some of his later film noirs like Follow Me Quietly and Armored Car Robbery) wasn’t able to allow So This is New York to turn a profit, so this and a small role in the 1960 film Murder, Inc. were the only cinematic contributions to be made by Henry Morgan, who is probably best known by today’s generation as a wry panelist on TV’s I’ve Got a Secret.  Though Morgan’s reign in radio was relatively brief, his surviving broadcasts reveal a comedian who possessed a ready and rapier-like wit in the same league as his good friend Fred Allen.  Radio Spirits invites you to check out this brand new CD collection containing ten broadcasts from the comedian’s heyday in 1946 and 1947.