Radio Books

Radio Spirits is noted for its fabulous collections of old-time radio shows. Their boxed sets of tapes and CDs are devoted to a single show (Jack Benny) or a single star (Frank Sinatra) or to types of programs such as Science Fiction, Mystery, Westerns, comedy, Christmas shows. Some are based on a theme such as the recent "America at War" in which broadcasts of World War II were frighteningly like those on and just after 9/11/01. However, the beginner might turn to the most recent release: "Old-Time Radio's 60 All-Time Favorites."

Available on 20 tapes with three shows each or on 30 CDs with two shows each, this collection includes several examples of just about every kind of radio show that kept us glued to that box when our imaginations supplied what the video tube was all too soon to give us--to our detriment.

Without trying to list all 60 shows, here are some of those included in this set. For comedy we have Abbott & Costello, Ozzie & Harriet, Bob Hope, "A Date With Judy," "The Great Gildersleeve" ( a serious Easter episode), "Life With Luigi," "Our Miss Brooks," Fred Allen, Red Skelton, and Phil Harris and Alice Faye. It is interesting to note that the most popular of them all, "Amos 'n' Andy," is not included, although separate collections of that hysterically funny show are available.

You like hard-boiled detectives? Try Philip Marlowe, Nero Wolfe, Sam Spade, Boston Blackie, Richard Diamond, the Falcon, and Nick Carter. A little less hard-boiled are Casey, Crime Photographer, and Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons. For mystery with a spooky atmosphere, there are "The Whistler," "Suspense," "Lights Out," and "The Black Museum."

Westerns are your meat? Then ride along with "The Six Shooter," "Have Gun, Will Travel," "Gunsmoke," and "Tales of the Texas Rangers." A little farther north you can hear "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon" getting his man across the snowy terrain.

From the comic strips and the pulps come The Shadow, The Lone Ranger, and The Green Hornet. Science Fiction, their close relative, is represented by "Dimension X" and "X-Minus One," while dramatizations of then-current films ("Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House") afford interesting comparisons as 90 to 120-minute stories have to be condensed into 25 minutes of radio time.

Straight drama is abundant: "Bold Venture" (with Bogart and Bacall, no less), "The First Nighter," "Damon Runyon Theatre," and so on. And the only show that does not fit into any of the above is the fabulous "Your Hit Parade," this one from 1943 with a certain up-comer by the name of Frank Sinatra to croon out the latest hits, including "Speak Low" and "My Ideal."

Adding extra spice to all of the above are the guest stars: Carmen Miranda, Joseph Cotten, Peter Lorrie, Cary Grant, among others. Then, of course, there are the stars themselves: Even Arden, Lucille Ball and Richard Denning, Marie Wilson, J. Carrol Nash, Joel McCrea--and I leave it to you to match those names with the shows in which they starred!

Another bit of fun comes from the commercials--especially those that tell you how good cigarettes are for you--many of which, especially on the comedy shows, were integrated into the scripts. Of course, there will be several references to wartime shortages, rationing stamps, and other items that will need footnotes for younger listeners. All of which, by the way, suggests wonderful lessons a good Social Studies teacher could develop from judicious use of these tapes or CDs.

As always, the book supplied by Radio Spirits is practically worth the price of the set alone. In 64 pages, it gives you a good deal of information about each show and has an illustration for almost all of them.

This is a very broad introduction to 60 different old time radio shows. Although these episodes are not generally the greatest from each show, they do serve as a great introduction to the quality and variety of old radio shows. The following is a list of the shows includes in this set.

Abbott and Costello: Lou wants to become a sailor (1/25/45)
Black Museum: Raincoat (5/5/50)
Bob Hope Show: Bob's last radio show (4/21/55)
Bold Venture: The Chinese Statue (4/2/51)
Boston Blackie: The Phonograph Murder (4/15/47)
Burns and Allen: Making George sick (3/23/43)
Casey, Crime Photographer: Death in Lovers' Lane (7/31/47)
Cisco Kid: The Claim Jumpers (1/26/54)
Damon Runyon Theatre: The Lemon Drop Kid (9/26/50)
Dangerous Assignment: When a Friend Is Not a Friend (12/30/50)
Date with Judy: Joseph Cotton's date with Judy (2/6/45)
Dimension X: The Outer Limit (4/8/50)
Dragnet: The Big Kid (11/10/53)
Duffy's Tavern: w/ Marie "The Body" MacDonald (4/12/46)
Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show: Guest: Martha Raye (4/11/43)
Falcon: The Case of the Big Talker (4/29/51)
Fat Man: The Nightmare Murders (1/17/51)
Fibber McGee and Molly: Fibber bakes Molly a birthday cake (5/20/41)
First Nighter Program: Refresher Course (4/27/52)
Fred Allen Show Guest: Carmen Miranda (3/10/46)
Frontier Gentleman: Charlie Meeker (2/9/58)
Great Gildersleeve: Family prepares for Easter (4/16/57)
Green Hornet: State's Witness (2/16/49)
Gunsmoke: Billy the Kid (1st show) (4/26/52)
Halls of Ivy: Audition show (6/23/49)
Have Gun, Will Travel: Brother Lost (11/8/59)
Inner Sanctum Mysteries: Death Wears a Lonely Smile (4/4/49)
Jack Benny Program: Trouble with the sound engineer (9/26/54)
Jeff Regan, Investigator: The Guy from Gower Gulch (11/13/48)
Life of Riley: Cissie's marriage (2/13/44)
Life with Luigi: Luigi tries to get rid of his cough (3/24/50)
Lights Out: Come to the Bank (11/17/42)
Lone Ranger: Jim Farrell's Son (4/5/44)
Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons: The Mother's Plea Murder Case (4/23/52)
My Favorite Husband: George attends a teenage dance (11/20/48)
My Friend Irma: Dinner date (4/19/48)
Mystery Playhouse: Lady in the Morgue (5/15/45)
Nero Wolfe: The Case of the Bashful Body (12/29/50)
Nick Carter, Master Detective: Murder in the Crypt or Nick Carter and the Jackal God (8/2/43)
Nightbeat: Am I My Brother's Keeper? (3/13/50)
Our Miss Brooks: Budgeting problems (7/3/55)
Ozzie and Harriet: The antique vase (8/12/45)
Pat Novak, For Hire: Fleet Lady (3/6/49)
Phil Harris, Alice Faye Show: Concert stage (1/1/50)
Philip Marlowe: The Panama Hat (10/10/48)
Red Skelton Show: Satires law enforcement (10/7/41)
Richard Diamond, Private Detective: Lynn Knight Wants Protection (8/6/49)
Sam Spade, Detective: The Bow Window Caper (11/9/47)
Screen Director's Playhouse: Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (7/1/49)
Screen Guild Players: Pardon My Past (5/5/47)
Sergeant Preson of the Yukon: The Queen's Parlor (2/19/53)
Shadow: The Silent Avenger (3/13/38)
Six Shooter: The Shooting of Wyatt King (5/20/54)
Suspense: Vial of Death (5/18/53)
Tales of the Texas Rangers: Alibi (9/7/52)
True Detective Mysteries: Murder in the Horror House (8/19/37)
Whistler: Death Comes with a Lunch Kit (10/23/44)
X-Minus One: The Reluctant Heroes (12/19/56)
Your Hit Parade: w/ Frank Sinatra (12/18/43)
Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar: The James Clayton Matter (12/5/52)

This is a GREAT collection of old radio broadcasts from the '40s and '50s! It's excellent, you get twenty hours of original radio broadcasts with stars such as Orson Welles, Vincent Price, Agnes Moorehead and more! I HIGHLY recommend this collection! It's so much fun, in the car or at home it's great!!!

This is a 20-CD set of ten of the best mystery radio programs of the 1940's and 50's. There are four episodes for each of the programs (two per CD). This set also includes a small 32-page booklet that gives good background information on each of the programs and the episodes included here. For programs where the emphasis in on a detective who solves a mystery, take a look at "Old Time Radio's Greatest Detective Shows" (another 20 CD anthology from Radio Spirits). Here's a list of the programs and the included episodes and airdates:

1) Suspense
- Fear Paints a Picture w/ Nancy Coleman 04-13-43
- The Moment of Darkness w/ Peter Lorre 04-20-43
- The Diary of Sophronia Winters w/ Agnes Moorehead 04-27-43
- Sorry, Wrong Number w/ Agnes Moorehead 05-25-43
2) Murder by Experts
- Summer Heat 06-13-49
- Two Coffins to Fill 07-04-49
- Prescription for Murder 07-11-49
- Big Money 07-25-49
3) The Shadow
- White Legion 03-20-38
- The Creeper 05-29-38
- Death Rides a Broomstick 03-02-41
- Murder from the Grave 04-06-41
4) Escape
- Beau Geste 06-06-48
- Country of the Blind 06-27-48
- Present Tense w/ Vincent Price 01-31-50
- Up Periscope 08-08-51
5) The Whistler
- Lucky Night 12-17-45
- Broken Chain 05-20-46
- Hasty Conclusion 05-19-47
- Meeting on Tenth Street 02-25-48
6) Inner Sanctum Mysteries
- Musical Score 05-29-45
- Death Across the Board 06-05-45
- Dead Man's Deal 08-28-45
- The Murder Prophet 09-04-45
7) Lights Out
- Kill 04-20-43
- Heavenly Jeep 05-04-43
- Spider 05-18-43
- The Author and the Thing 09-28-43
8) The Mysterious Traveler
- No One on the Line 09-01-46
- I Won't Die Alone 05-11-48
- Devil and the Deep Blue Sea 01-06-49
- Fire in the Sky 08-28-51
9) Murder at Midnight
- Murder Is a Lonely Business 12-16-46
- House Where Death Lived 12-23-46
- The Kaballah 12-30-46
- The Ace of Death 01-06-47
10) Crime Classics
- Checkered Life and Sudden Death of Colonel James Fisk, Jr. 06-29-53
- The Final Day of General Ketchum and How He Died 07-27-53
- The Dread Event Surrounding Mr. Thrower's Hammer 08-03-53
- The Axe and the Droot Family: How They Fared 08-10-53

Forget the Internet, get World Band!

This is fun! and a great way to spend a few hours away from the computer or television!

If I could recommend only one book to have in front of you while tuning the shortwave radio bands, this would be it. It contains listing by time, country, frequency, along with complete schedules of operation. It is written for a novice user, but with valuable info for veterans as well

This was a lot of fun. Paul and his wife Steve remind me of Nick and Nora Charles(The Thin Man). If you like alot of twists and turns, and interesting characters, then you'll like this. It's really well done.Paul and Steve's relationship gives the series humor and warmth. The ending is not spectacular, but the ride there is alot of fun. The BBC really does an excellent job with radio dramas.

For two reasons I welcome this 2004 reissue. My copy of an earlier audio tape version proved to have been transferred at an incorrect speed, so that Martyn C Webster's original production sounded like monkeys chattering at the zoo. A second reason is that it marks the debut of playwright and broadcaster Peter Coke in the title role. Marjorie Westbury is here, of course, as Steve, a part she had already played for nine years.

Frances Durbridge revised "The Gilbert Case" for a radio re-run in 1959, but this is the earlier version from 1954. His sleuth, Paul Temple, becomes involved in the Gilbert Case when a murder victim's father comes to him convinced that the man charged with the murder is innocent. It takes eight tightly scripted half-hour episodes for this belief to be tested, during which the Temples sip martinis and exchange affectionate badinage unscathed by the numerous attempts to blow them and their car to smithereens. Their escapades never take them far away from London in "The Gilbert Case".

Restoration engineers have worked wonders to bring this earliest surviving Paul Temple radio series to acceptable quality. The sound is not quite as crisp as in the later radio cases. With the breaks between episodes edited out, the eight episodes have been made to fit onto 3 CDs.

This is a pleasurable, surprising, sunshine-filled, leisurely, and -- dare I say it again -- charming book. It's a little dated, but retains its wonderful capacity to evoke a time and place filled with the sights, scents, and sounds of stone masons, oil presses, village fetes, kitchen knives, bursting gardens, market days, voluble peasants, and one indomitable Fiat.

This is a charming and thoroughly engaging book. Lady Winifred describes the trials and tribulations of an English couple who move to Provence in the 30s. Her descriptions of the people and the area are so vivid that by the end of the book you feel as if you, too, live in Provence. When I finished the book, I felt homesick and wanted to return as soon as possible!

As the title suggests, this book covers the philosophical background behind films defined as neo-noir. Surprisingly this contains a large number of films most people wouldn't readily identity as Film Noir. Blade Runner, Memento, A Simple Plan and the works of Quentin Tarantino and the Cohen Brothers are amongst some of the movies that are analysed in depth. Many other movies are touched upon including Fight Club, Minority Report, The Bourne Identity and many others. The essays in this book give new insight into these movies and are easily readable by those without any background in philosophy. I would highly recommend it.

Neo-noir films incorporated the visual style, characterizations, and subject matter of the classic film noir of the 1940s and '50s. But this latter film genre was able to employ more advanced film techniques; and with the replacement of the moralistic Production Code with the more flexible modern ratings system, neo-noir film was able to add new dimensions of subject and visual matter. The 1974 "Chinatown" may be "the first authentic neo-noir," writes Richard Gilmore, professor of philosophy at a Minnesota college. The TV program "Miami Vice"--first program, September 1984--was set in the Great Miami area for its "cycle of decline, decay, development, and renewal (invariably followed by further repetitions of the cycle) [which] affirmed the indeterminacy and contingency of the postmodern noir," as Stevens Sanders, emeritus professor of philosophy at a Massachusetts university writes. Thirteen essays by these and other philosophy professors relate neo-noir films not only to the film noir which preceded them, but also philosophical thoughts and ethical perspectives of Sartre, Plato, Kant, Kierkegaard, Marx, and others. Blade Runner, L. A. Confidential, The Onion Field, Parallax View, Dances With Wolves, and Raiders of the Lost Arc are among the films analyzed as neo-noir or which contain elements of this genre. This collection of essays is a companion of the editor Conard's "The Philosophy of Film Noir."

For those of us who grew up with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, The Lone Ranger, and enjoy all those Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns, we can get our fix of the ole wild west in the audio drama format now, too. POWDER RIVER is written in the style of the 1940s and '50s radio drama, where a central ensemble of characters carry on surviving what life in a frontier town throws at them. The series is set in Clearmont, Wyoming near Fort Sheridan, at a time when American Indians were being "resettled" from one reservation to another and the railroad was being built, and law and order were yet fully established so there is plenty of action to be had here. One of the things that I like about Powder River, is that it is "family friendly," with language and situations appropriate for children to listen to with parents. For a good old shoot 'em up western, I highly recommend the POWDER RIVER series of audio dramas... especially great in the car!

That's what people are calling "Powder RIver" and they are right. I love this show, and I have been listening to it on XM Radio since 2005. If you love old time westerns, like Gunsmoke, or anything with John Wayne, James Stewart or Henry Fonda, you will LOVE Powder River! This show gets better with every episode. The final episode of this season has the BIGGEST and BEST saloon fight you will ever hear in "sound." Men flying through glass window, balcony's collapsing, - this is one of the most amazing scenes in the entire series. I love the entire cast. Powder River - in a class by itself.

For those of us who grew up with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, The Lone Ranger, and enjoy all those Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns, we can get our fix of the ole wild west in the audio drama format now, too. POWDER RIVER is written in the style of the 1940s and '50s radio drama, where a central ensemble of characters carry on surviving what life in a frontier town throws at them. The series is set in Clearmont, Wyoming near Fort Sheridan, at a time when American Indians were being "resettled" from one reservation to another and the railroad was being built, and law and order were yet fully established so there is plenty of action to be had here. One of the things that I like about Powder River, is that it is "family friendly," with language and situations appropriate for children to listen to with parents. For a good old shoot 'em up western, I highly recommend the POWDER RIVER series of audio dramas... especially great in the car!

I enjoyed this program. It is modern radio. I use it during commutes to work.

calvin davidson

This is an excellent second-hand source for media history about several big-name TV producers. I bought it to obtain an overview of Roy Huggins' career in television and this helpful text provided a lot of insight on Huggins as well as other big-name TV producers from the past. If you are into media history from the 1950s to the 1980s, then the chapters on Huggins as well as Glen A. Larson and Michael "Miami Vice" Mann should fascinate and inform you.

It was like remembering my childhood all over again. If Robert Thompson could only explain the love for the Three Stooges

Dr. Hazlett explicates the dilemmas of free enterprise and government regulation, as they apply to the evil cable mafias, in this witty book. If you get cable tv, you should read this.

Dr. Hazlett explicates the dilemmas of free enterprise and government regulation, as they apply to the evil cable mafias, in this witty book. If you get cable tv, you should read this.