Radio Comedies, where to start?

 

Jello again! Ironic there's a no smoking sign when
 the show was sponsored by cigarettes for about 15 years.

Again, I shall attempt to paint a picture in your mind. It's a lazy Sunday day, yet there's work to be done. You shuffle through your cleaning playlists but nothing seems to interest you. You can't watch TV because you can't see it where you are and it'll distract you too much. Allow me to once again bring up radio as the solution. 

As I've said in my first post about radio, it's the theatre of the mind. No more staring at a screen for entertainment, it's going right from speakers straight into your cerebral cortex. Alright, now I made it weird, let me rephrase. Part of me feels like it's difficult to convince a modern audience to listen to people from 1940 make jokes for 30 minutes, but perhaps this editorial will sway you to try something new. 

 I consider radio the ultimate in "menial entertainment". Instead of commanding your full attention like TV or a movie does, radio only asks for one of your senses, allowing the others free for tasks that don't quite require 100% brain power. Without further ado, I give you a veritable smorgasbord of sightless sitcoms sure to satisfy any shortage of silliness in your schedule.  I promise no more alliteration from now on.

From left to right: Dennis Day, Rochester, Phil Harris, Mary Livingstone, Jack Benny, Don Wilson, and Mel Blanc.

The Jack Benny Program. Also known as the Jello Program, the Lucky Strike program, the Chevrolet program, etc. It depends on which decade you're listening in. Jack Benny is officially one of my idols. He's broken barriers on a social, political and cultural level simply by talking into a microphone for half an hour. The original "fall guy", his act always made him the butt of every joke. He portrayed an uppity, narcissistic, miserly persona constantly one-upped by the delightful cast of characters around him. From the loyal Don Wilson as announcer, Jack's wise-cracking girlfriend Mary Livingstone, the naïve and young singer Dennis Day, and one of the most influential black characters from back there, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. The Jack Benny Program spans more than three decades, and can be found on radio and television. It's an absolute recommend for me, I hope you'll fall in love with the gang as much as I have. 

Q: Can Jack Benny Ad-Lib, Fred?
Fred Allen: Jack Benny couldn't ad-lib a belch after a meal!

Next, we have the Fred Allen Show. Fred and Jack had a feud going since the mid-30s. Good friends in real life, the two threw potshots at each other (More Fred than Benny) in almost every show in some way. I actually discovered Fred Allen from his appearances in the panel show What's My Line (Soon to be covered). From the moment I heard the DiMarco sisters introduce his program, I was hooked. There's something so timeless about his humor. Jack Benny tended to use references a lot in his work. Those would have been hilarious to audiences in 1934, but the average person nowadays does not know that Greta Garbo had big feet. 

Fred Allen, from what I've seen, preferred to keep his humor more contemporary.  He'd revise his format many times, but the most popular one is where he'd set up a dilemma and go around the fictional town of "Allen's Alley" seeking opinions. One of those characters in said alley, named Senator Cleghorn (Played by Kenny Delmar) became the inspiration for the similar sounding Looney Tunes character Foghorn Leghorn, with the classic catchphrase of, "Somebody, I say somebody," or other such circumlocutions. 

From left to right: Fred Allen, Senator Cleghorn, Ms. Nusbaum, Falstaff Openshaw and Titus Moody
(I really don't know if I'm right with this order, so...Look it up yourself )
:)

Perhaps an odd choice for the third sitcom being the Henry Morgan show. Henry Morgan used to regard himself something of a loose cannon, and from the moment you hear his show, you'll know why. In my opinion, while the likes of Henry Morgan with his flagrant dislike of his sponsors and his audience was considered extremely daring in the 40s, it's rather tame and doesn't even come close to reaching the heights of more "out there" humor today. Henry Morgan himself is a rather interesting character, and is entirely deserving of a spotlight post himself. Barring that, his show is a definite recommend for me mainly just to see what he says next. His dry, sort of "Anti-joking" method of humor was ahead of its time, and there's a lot to learn from him, once you can get past the digs he makes.

Henry Morgan seen here with the only
other human being I've heard him be nice to,
Arnold Stang.

Now, I don't need to tell you there's many, many more shows that I haven't mentioned here. There's the Great Gildersleeve, Fibber McGee and Molly, Phil Harris and Alice Faye, George Burns and Gracie Allen, my Favorite Husband with Lucille Ball, the list goes on. I can only recommend what I've listened to, but I've heard good things about all of those shows. I hope to cover all these shows in greater detail sometime down the line, but I just wanted to give you an introduction, in the hopes that you'll find something you like.

I hope to see you back there.

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