The Good Old Days of Radio Show

Today we’re going back to 1942 for a wartime drama from The Cavalcade of America, one of radio’s most unsung A-list anthology series. This episode, In The Best Tradition, stars Orson Welles and was originally broadcast in honor of Navy Day. It’s pure patriotic storytelling, tracing the proud history of the U.S. Navy from its founding in 1775 to the modern age of steel and ordnance. You’ll hear about heroes like John Paul Jones and ...

Today we’re dipping into a popular post-war genre, suspense and noir. The series is The Whistler, one of the leading crime-thriller shows of the era. The story is from June 12, 1949, broadcast over CBS, Perfect Alibi, complete with that Signal Oil sponsorship and the unmistakable voice of Jack Webb before his Dragnet days. We have the original transcription discs of this one, and it's firing on all the proper tropes: a slick privat...

Today we’re heading back to July 1946 for a zany half hour with The Jack Kirkwood Show, a fast-talking, anything-goes comedy that’s as unpredictable as its star. Jack Kirkwood might not be a household name anymore, but his irreverent and absurdist humor works just as well today as it did back then. In this episode, Kirkwood finds himself in a tight spot. Fifteen years of mooching off his buddy William finally catch up to him, and n...

Today for our Halloween episode, we’re going back to 1943 for a chilling mystery from the golden age of radio suspense. It’s Suspense with “The Devil’s Saint,” starring the incomparable Peter Lorre as the sinister Count Stefan Kohari. In this haunting tale, a young Englishman named Lord Edward Whiteford dares to spend a night in the cursed Tapestry Room of Kohari’s ancient chateau, hoping to win the hand of the Count’s niece, Elona...

Today we’re going back to October 4, 1943, for one of the wildest and weirdest comedy programs ever to hit the airwaves, It Pays to Be Ignorant. Hosted by Tom Howard and featuring his panel of so-called “experts,” Harry McNaughton, Lulu McConnell, and George Shelton, the show turns the idea of a quiz show upside down, serving up ridiculous questions, nonsensical answers, and nonstop vaudeville-style banter. You’ll also hear authent...

Welcome to the fourth installment in our lead-up to Halloween on The Good Old Days of Radio Show. In this episode, we have an episode of The Shadow, titled “The Face,” originally aired on September 21, 1947. The plot follows Hugh Windham, a former actor whose face is horribly disfigured in a plane accident. After plastic surgery fails, Windham becomes a ruthless killer, targeting women who knew his original looks, until The Shadow ...

On this episode of The Good Old Days of Radio Show, we are bringing you a powerful World War II–era broadcast from March 14, 1944: “The Long Name None Could Spell,” part of the Columbia Presents Corwin series. Written, directed, and produced by Norman Corwin, this dramatic program is a heartfelt tribute to Czechoslovakia after its betrayal and breakup following the 1938 Munich Agreement. Featuring narration by Martin Gabel and comm...

This week, we continue our countdown to Halloween with the third spooky installment in the series. Today’s episode is Quiet, Please classic “Wear the Dead Man’s Coat,” originally broadcast on February 23, 1948. Written and directed by Willis Cooper and starring Ernest Chappell, this story follows Floyd, a man who helps a shady character named Kidney Foot Cassidy get his hands on a warm overcoat… and ends up tangled in a murder, a m...

Today we shine a spotlight on one of the great but often forgotten comedians of the 1940s and ’50s: Henry Morgan. We’ll be hearing his April 4, 1950 NBC broadcast, and includes a few fun sketches, like an interview with a wrestler named “Gorgeous Carney,” a musical number from the Billy Williams Quartet, and a parody of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde featuring Henry Morgan alongside familiar voices like Art Carney and Arnold Stang. It’s c...

Today we have another quietly spooky one. This is the classic "Coffin In Studio B," a script written by the highly original Wyllis Cooper, back in the '30s when Cooper was heavily involved in the legendary (and mostly lost), Lights Out! run. We have it from a short revival series from July 13th, 1946. The story focuses on three men late at night in a lonely radio studio, frantically rehearsing for the radio drama, minutes before it...

We have an extended episode of the podcast for you today. It’s a rare, full 90-minute CBS broadcast from October 1945 called Stars in the Afternoon. This previously uncirculated broadcast originally aired live from Carnegie Hall, and was a special, designed as a big promotional preview for CBS’s fall lineup. Produced by Norman Corwin, you'll hear snippets and appearances from popular shows of the day, including The Aldrich Family, ...

On this first Thursday of October we are featuring a chilling installment from the classic series Mystery in the Air, starring the famous Peter Lorre. Originally broadcast on September 4, 1947 (and yes, sponsored by Camel Cigarettes), the story is titled The Mask of Medusa. The plot takes us into the world of a wax museum owner with a horrifying secret: the “figures” in his museum aren’t wax at all, but real people transformed into...

On this episode, in addition to listening to a newly restored version of “Nothing Behind the Door” by Wyllis Cooper, John and Joel Tefteller dive into the fascinating (and often painstaking) world of audio restoration. They’re joined by Corey Harker, president of SPERDVAC (the Society to Preserve and Encourage Radio Drama, Variety, and Comedy) to talk about the group’s history and its renewed push to keep classic radio alive. Corey...

This episode wraps up our 10 More Monsters series with a once-lost recording of Escape. It’s a tense story set in the Louisiana bayou, where villagers suspect a stranger named Zeb of being a loup-garou ("werewolf") after livestock disappear and a baby dies. Host John Tefteller shares the story of how this rare episode turned up in a collection of reel-to-reel tapes from a late collector, and what it means for preserving old-time ra...

This time on The Good Old Days of Radio Show, we’re looking at another rare take on Daphne du Maurier’s The Birds. This is an hour-long version from 1953, a year earlier than the Escape version we presented last week. The story here follows John Waite (played in this version by Herbert Marshall), a writer living with his family on the Dover coast, as the birds go from being a minor annoyance to a terrifying, organized threat that f...

On this episode we bring you “More Monsters” with an early radio adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s classic short story The Birds. Long before Alfred Hitchcock turned it into a famous film, the story was produced on the radio series Escape, starring British actor Ben Wright. John sets the stage with some background on the show and the tricky business of preserving old recordings. The story is a chilling tale of a family on the Engli...

Today we’re featuring two skits with Fanny Brice as “Baby Snooks,” where Snooks drives “Daddy” (played brilliantly by radio veteran Hanley Stafford) up the wall with forged report cards and phony camp emergencies. In between, you’ll hear Red Skelton as “Junior the Mean Widdle Kid.” Unlike Fanny Brice, Skelton didn’t sound much like a kid, which was part of the uniqueness of the character. These rare recordings, taken from original ...

What if a monster could come to life just because enough people believed in it? That’s the unique premise behind today’s episode of The Mysterious Traveler, titled If You Believe, first aired on December 29, 1946. Our More Monsters host, John Tefteller, sets the scene for this strange tale of Professor Jonathan Davis, a solitary scientist working quietly to create artificial life. But when slick newspaper reporter Dan Duncan spins ...

Today’s show takes us to September 24, 1950, for an episode of The Jack Kirkwood Show, a fast-paced satirical comedy that aired on the Mutual Radio Network. Kirkwood is not very well remembered, but his crazy humor is in the vein of Stan Freberg or Henry Morgan. This episode is packed with sketches, musical numbers, and recurring bits like “Mad House Theater” and “Poet’s Nook,” all built around Kirkwood’s wordplay, sly...