MODERN OLD TIME RADIO ACTIVITIES

                               By

                        Jerry D. Burling

     A few years ago, I used to work for NBC in Burbank,
California.  One day, I was sitting at Floyd's Shoeshine Stand in
the Studio Building getting my shoes shined (the shoeshine stand
is still there, located just outside of Studio Three where The
Tonight Show, with Jay Leno, is taped) when someone sat down in
the chair beside me.  I looked over and saw that it was Tony
Randall.  After my initial shock, I couldn't resist asking him
about his days playing Reggie on I LOVE A MYSTERY, when it aired
out of New York.  He expressed surprise that I remembered back
that far and then he told me a funny story.
     Carlton E. Morse, who created, wrote, and directed the show,
always exited the control room, following the broadcast, via the
door leading to the outside hallway.  However, one day, he came
out of the control room by the door leading into the studio.  He
approached Tony and started talking to him.  Tony said that he
responded to Mr. Morse with something.  Morse looked startled and
asked, "What?  You mean you are not English?" (Tony's character,
Reggie, had an English accent)  Tony replied, "No, I'm just a
poor Jewish boy from Arizona."  Mr. Morse then said, "Well, I
thought you were a foreigner of some kind."  Tony laughed because
he realized that Mr. Morse was kind and was making a very funny
joke, not some kind of anti-semitic remark.
     Toward the end of the conversation, I asked Mr. Randall if
he had any recordings of the I LOVE A MYSTERY programs.  He
replied that he did not.
     Not many I LOVE A MYSTERY shows have survived on recordings,
or, at least, none that we know of.  If anyone knows the
whereabouts of any new I LOVE A MYSTERY programs that are not now
in circulation, please, for goodness sake, let someone know. 
These are wonderful programs.
     Not long ago, I worked with Bob Furmanek, the archivist for
the Abbott and Costello Estate, in rescuing many of the Abbott
and Costello radio shows from Ziv Television, who had them in
storage.  These recordings were personally paid for and saved by
Lou Costello.  Later, Bob and I transferred some of these radio
programs to 1/4 inch audio tape for the estate.  Some of the
transcriptions were from the World War II years and others were
from the Saturday morning children's program, which aired on ABC
Radio.  I liked the war years shows better than the children's
program because Abbott and Costello's comedy timing seemed to be
better on the former.  The war years' material is simply
fantastic in sound and humor.
     Bob told me he heard from Lou Costello's daughters that Lou
hated the fact that their team was sometimes referred to as "A
and C," instead of Abbott and Costello.  Lou would see A and C
printed on storage cartons, or contracts, etc. and it would set
him off.
     The "Who's On First" routine was apparently in circulation
on the vaudeville circuit in a drastically different form prior
to its usage by the Abbott and Costello team and Lou adapted it
for their use, since it was not copyrighted.  As everyone knows,
it has become one of the most famous comedy routines ever.  It is
so popular, even to this day, that it has been inducted into the
Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, New York, where it is sold
on audio cassette in the museum's lobby.
     Bud Abbott was one of the finest straight men in show
business.  He would let Lou adlib and stray out of their routines
just far enough and then he would say, "Wait a minute, wait a
minute.  What has that got to do with...." whatever was the
subject of the routine and he would steer Lou back in.  I wish I
could have met either, or both, of them before they died.
     There has been a rumor going around that the so called
"lost" Great Gildersleeve shows being found.  I can now say that
this is true, because I was the one who found them.
     I received the disks from someone who worked at NBC the same
time that I did.  All of these shows have been transferred for
Carl Amari, of Radio Spirits, Inc., and they can be purchased
from him.
     The sound quality is simply the best ever.  They were
transferred from 16 inch acetate transcriptions and the sound is
so good that you can hear the feet of the actors shuffling around
on the studio floor and the rustle of script pages.
     The Great Gildersleeve was recorded and edited on 1/4 inch
audio tape and later broadcast to NBC affiliates in the Eastern
time zones (Eastern and Central) and three hours later to the
Pacific time zones (Mountain and Pacific).  We believe that these
disks were recorded off of one of these two network feeds as
reference copies for the NBC Legal Department.  They were
recorded in Studio C and Studio D (depending upon which studio
the show was assigned to that week) when NBC Radio was located at
the corner of Sunset and Vine Streets in Hollywood, California.
     Harold Peary left The Great Gildersleeve because he was
asking for more money than NBC was willing to pay and threatened
to walk out if he did not get it, because he felt confident that
no one else could possibly duplicate his Gildersleeve character. 
How wrong he was.  NBC decided to let him walk and they spent the
entire summer, during the show's hiatus, training Willard
Waterman to sound like Peary.  Peary had a copyright on the
Gildersleeve laugh, so they could not use that.  But, at the end
of the summer, Waterman sounded enough like Peary's Gildersleeve
that NBC decided to continue with the show.
     Try to get these Great Gildersleeve shows if you can.  You
won't be disappointed.  It is a complete run, for over 20 weeks,
in 1951.