Okay, and just in case some of you might like to do some time-travel of your own, here's a nifty Dick Tracy Radio Club card from the 1930's. Print it out, fill it out, and become a Junior Detective!
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A dialog about the nearly-lost art of audio drama - find out about the live "old time radio"-styled performances of "Theatre Of The Mindless", the processes of writing, recording, and putting on a show which is unique and thoroughly entertaining. Plus a bunch of Nifty-Keen Old Time Radio stuff!
1 comment:
Hey, you tryin’ to call me old just ‘cause I remember the old radio stuff? I like that card at the bottom, too... Dick Tracy! (Same logo forTurner Classic Movies, I think). I spent a lotta time with Chet gettin’ him to use that name, Dick". He wanted to use the name Chauncy or Percival
but it just didn't fit the square jaw for Tracy. He finally settled on the name Richard but the Tribune made him change it to Dick. (Sort of reminded the editor of a girl be once new at the paper; square chin, slits for eyes... even had a five o'clock shadow. We used to joke about how she could do ads for Gillette... but she really need television which wasn't invented ‘till later.
Just a bit of trivia).
Anyway, getting back to OTR... It was popular ‘cause everyone could sorta figure out how to work the radio. You know: ON-OFF switch which was also a volume control and another one which moved a pointer on a dial... BIG ENOUGH TO SEE. There also weren't hundreds of brands to choose from and you didn't have to know about all those Hertz’s and blogs and dot coms... One just tuned in and listened. Oh sure, we had to listen to advertising but all the guys wanted to be a champion and if it took Wheaties; well, we ate ‘em and they were pretty good, too. Back then we ate cereals, not because they were healthy for us, but ‘cause we got good prizes; cutout Super Heroes what could fly like a glider (sorta) and decoder rings, and
patches and all sorts of stuff tied right into the radio programs.
Reality, unlike today’s junk, was being scared to go to bed ‘cause you thought about that Inner Sanctum program which your mother told you not to listen to ‘cause you'd be scared to go to bed. And the only fightin’ you heard was on the Gillette Friday Night Fights ... not like the every
night fights reality you'd hear from next door, today. Besides, we didn't have to waste a lotta time making choices (10,000 songs or more with an i-pod?). Naw, we just tuned to Fred Waring & his Pennsylvanians or Glenn Miller or (in later years) Romy Goz if you felt like a polka. Simple choices equals more time for lotsa fun.
PS Chauncy Tracy never would have caught on. With a whimpy name like that, he might have called him Cyril Snap... and got a job with Kellogg.
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