Death Of A Salesman

Here's a head's up about an upcoming show...NOT a radio show, but a real live theater piece involving several TOTM members and alumni! Takes place in the late '40's or early '50's, too.

Death Of A Salesman
When: Starts Oct. 8. Fridays, 8 p.m., Saturdays, 8 p.m. and Sun., Oct. 17, 3 p.m. Continues through Oct. 23
Phone: 847-360-4740
Price: $20/ Student $10/ Sr & Military $15

Death of a Salesman is presented by Bowen Park Theatre company and runs from October 8 through October 23. Tickets are $20 for adults , $15 Seniors & Military and $10 for Students. Death of a Salesman is a modern tragedy about the “common man”. This Pulitzer Prize winning play, written by Arthur Miller, has as the main character, an old salesman named Willie Loman. The play explores his family relationships and the consequences of his decisions and behavior that have left him unhappy and pathetic. Directed by Shawn Fitzgerald. The Lynn Schornick Theatre at the Jack Benny Center is a charming, intimate venue that involves and engages its' audiences like no large theatre can!


Jack Benny Center For The Arts
39 Jack Benny Dr, Bowen Park
Waukegan IL 60087
847-360-4740


What are TOTM'ers doing in this show?
Acting: Laura Jansen, Mark Kettner, and Stephen Jansen
Directing: Shawn Fitzgerald
Costuming: Virginia Fitzgerald
Sound Designing: Stephen Jansen
Stage Managing: Christopher Wild
JBC Artistic Director: Jason Clark
There In Spirit: Bob Juenger ("Hi, Bob!")


Be sure to check out the show - it's going to be a big hit!

Ray Bradbury's 90th Birthday

Sure, it's short notice - but if you enjoy Theatre Of The Mindless (many of whom were born and bred in Waukegan) and/or enjoy that other Waukegan native, prolific author Ray Bradbury, be sure to visit the Waukegan Public Library on Sunday the 22nd.

All afternoon will be Bradbury readings and trolley rides visiting special local Bradbury-related landmarks, and later, even cake and ice cream - all in honor of Mr B's ninetieth birthday!

We hope to see you there!

TOTM will be doing a few short stories of his (as old time radio drama, of course), and the entire batch of festivities is free. You can register for the trolley rides HERE.

For more info:
Main Library 128 North County St. Waukegan, IL 60085 (847) 623-2041

We hope to see you there!

Lost "Duffy's Tavern" Found In Cincy!

Here's a "lost" episode of Duffy's Tavern (no audio exists of this show), copied from original scripts by Derek Tague, and performed by a slew of talented amateurs, including a "Theatre Of The Mindless" member as Finnegan (I think it's the stupid-sounding guy in the hat)!

Most of the script is pretty funny, especially Steven Thompson's character Archie, but unless you are a supreme devotee of pre-1950's opera, the show's punchline may leave you a bit flat.

Still, any port in a storm, and this "Duffy" was only heard on the night it was originally broadcast - never since, until now.

Another TOTM'er Wins Award!

Here's our own Laura Jansen, winning the Dave Warren Award (which is given for outstanding work done in Old Time Radio re-creations) at the 2010 Cincinnati Old Time Radio Convention.

What a great chuckle from the audience as Don Ramlow (the presenter, and director of the Cincy re-creations) says the name of our group, "Theatre Of The Mindless".

In fact, this year, Laura decided to take some time off from performing at the Cincy Con (awww!). She was the most surprised person in the room when she won (the rest of us know how great she is already)!

Congratulations, Laura!

ScriptFrenzy Winner!

One of us made it to 100 pages on April 29th - the finish line for the ScriptFrenzy contest, a day early! WOOHOO!

Watch (listen) for "Drive-Thru", a comedy-mystery story (sort of "Clerks" meets "Rear Window") coming "soon"!

Trying Out ScriptFrenzy

Yup - one of the secrets of producing new material is to actually WRITE SOME. And the secret to writing some is...well...to SIT DOWN AND WRITE SOME!

No excuses, no tough rules: during the month of April, you write a 100-page script.

There. That's it. Three and a third pages a day, give or take. What could be simpler?

A few of us in TOTM are giving it a try.

Later, you may be able to hear the stories here (let's HOPE!)...gosh, they're gonna be long, since a hundred pages ends up running about a hundred minutes.

I figure if I edit out everything that isn't absolutely top-notch in my story, I should have a solid thirteen minutes of excellent audio drama.

;^)

War Of The Worlds (excerpt)

Here's an excerpt of "War Of the Worlds", done at the Waukegan Public Library a few years ago. This one was received very well - in fact, since we played period music before the show to help set the mood, and we "interrupted" the music with this newscast, we stayed very much in character with the original broadcast...and keeping in mind of our original TOTM goals, we slipped in a tiny bit of historical truth along with the entertainment.

ENJOY!

Kazoo Factory

Here's the ol' TOTM'ers doing a bit of Bob and Ray - Wally Ballou visits a kazoo factory!

Be A Green Lama Club Member!

Here is a nice big scan of a 1940's Green Lama Club card. Print it out, sign it, and enjoy all of the extended privileges! I'm going to have to find and post the secret code key, though, so you'll be able to understand any instructions the Green Lama may send to you...

You DO understand that once you are entrusted with the secret code and all those great club privileges, you will be expected to fulfill certain...responsibilities? The Green Lama will contact you when he needs you. Be ready.

Some OTR Samples

Here is a zip file of a few short OTR samples, recorded at different bitrates and frequencies (just paste the link into your address bar and download, then unzip):

http://www.humyo.com/F/3468529-986584877

All are MONO, of course. I think that my favorite is 80kbts/22hhz. You listen and decide.

FEEL FREE TO LEAVE COMMENTS!

Thank you!

MANC Convention

Be sure not to miss the coolest convention there is for OTR fans - the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention! August 27-29, Clarion Hotel, Aberdeen, Maryland. Not only Old Time Radio, but tons of cool old stuff: cars, movies, posters, comic books, magazines, cartoons, collectibles, books, an inflatable drive-in (!) and REAL LIVE TV AND MOVIE STARS!

This year:

JAMES BEST

The Dukes of Hazzard

The Twilight Zone

Have Gun - Will Travel

Forbidden Planet (1956)

LEE MERIWETHER
Batman
Time Tunnel
Barnaby Jones
Miss America, 1955

CELESTE HOLM
All About Eve (1950)
Tom Sawyer (1973)
Academy Award winning
actress for her role in
A Gentleman's Agreement (1947)

PATTY McCORMACK

Route 66

Rawhide

Wagon Train

Playhouse 90

The Wild, Wild West

Academy Award nominee for

THE BAD SEED (1956)

BOB HASTINGS

McHale's Navy

Batman

The Twilight Zone

The Poseidon Adventure

(the original 1972 classic)

The Untouchables

Captain Video (TV series)

Tom Corbett, Space Cadet

JOHNNY WHITAKER

A Family Affair

Tom Sawyer (1973)

Green Acres

DIANA SOWLE

Willy Wonka and the

Chocolate Factory

ROSEMARY RICE

Katrin, star of TV's Mama

(a.k.a. I Remember Mama)

Betty on radio's Archie Andrews

DON'T MISS IT!

Life On the Radio Wave

Here's some single-panel comic strips by "Pinto" Colvig from 1922. This was when radio was really beginning to hit BIG: it was brand-new technology - exciting, unknown, and which happened to fall nicely under that huge umbrella of "things that men like to do" (building / tinkering / climbing / mechanical / electronic stuff)...

Amazing how much work people would do in order to get a little free entertainment!

This creator, Vance DeBar "Pinto" Colvig, was a newspaper cartoonist when he wasn't joined up with the circus, or playing off-key clarinet on the vaudeville circuit. He worked on creating some of the earliest animated cartoons, was the voice of Walt Disney characters Goofy and Pluto and the ("Snow White") dwarves Grumpy and Sleepy and ("Three Little Pigs") Practical Pig, some of the Munchkins in "The Wizard Of Oz", Gabby in "Gulliver's Travels", and Bluto in "Popeye The Sailor". The Disney artists even used his overly-expressive face as models for the animated characters!

He co-wrote the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf".

He was the original "voice" of Jack Benny's Maxwell automobile, the hiccuping horse on Dennis Day, and several voices on Amos 'n' Andy.

He was also the ORIGINAL Bozo The Clown.

A lifelong smoker (Shades of Bob Bell and Krusty the Clown), he was one of the pioneers in advocating warning labels about cancer risk on cigarette packages.

He died of lung cancer in 1967.

A Neat Find!

Okay, plenty of OTR buffs have a few 16-inch transcription discs...Theatre Of The Mindless puts several up for the audience to see, when we put on a show. I am in no way a TD collector - especially since I don't even own a transcription turntable to play them, I just have a short stack of mediocre shows with a few cool labels.

But just the other day, while I was going through the discs, pulling them out of their protective manila sleeves and checking them out, I noticed THIS disc. An AFRS recording: "Boston Symphony Part 5" on side 1, and on side 2 - this neat etched/pressed/bas-relief which includes big 3-inch letters "RCA Victor", the RCA logo, and the Nipper dog listening to his master's voice. The background is a network of circular spiderwebs.

It took several tries to get it to photograph well, as it is just molded into the disc surface, but I think this view shows it off very well (click the picture for a bigger version).

This disc isn't going back into the sleeve, it's going up on the wall!

Thethethe Planetanetanet Mananan...

Here's one of our takes on the excellent "Planet Man"...juvenile radio scifi adventure just doesn't get any better than this stuff!

New Member Of Cap's Flight Patrol

I am now a card-carrying (okay, medal-carrying) member of Captain Midnight's 1940 Flight Patrol! This nice bronze medallion originally went to listeners of the radio show for nothing more than a quick visit to the local Skelly Oil service station. Nowadays, it's a quick visit to the nearest internet auction site, and about ten dollars.

It's a nice spinner - place the front side down (the center of the propellor is a nub on which the coin spins freely) and give a twist. The back has a clock face at the midnight position,...whoever the hands point at when the coin stops spinning is "it"!

And what's that "?COBRALHOFA?" mean? Well, from Jim Widner's Captain Midnight Page:

Some of the premiums were a part of the show: the propeller spinning medal had the secret word "COBRALHOFA" on it. The word was not so secret, however, as it was regularly announced on the series, though never spelled. During the time that Chuck was captured in some 1940 episodes, he would send out messages to the Captain which were coded messages. By taking a message and selecting every tenth word, the messages could be translated. Why ten? Because the COBRALHOFA was equal to ten letters. For example, one message was:

"Hello, Captain Midnight and everybody. It sure seems a long time since I have seen you and the old home at Black Gulch. I am feeling fine. This is on my word of honor. Do as Ivan Shark asks, flying to any point he says as swiftly as an arrow. Ivan Shark is a snake, a Cobra but..."

The second message was almost the same as the first in that the code words were repeated. Captain Midnight discovered that every tenth word in both messages were the same. He also knew that the coded words corresponded to the last five letters of the secret password, COBRALHOFA and that it was intentional for Chuck to use the word Cobra:

"Hello, Captain Midnight and everybody. Please do not delay long. Fly where Ivan Shark says. I will not be home again if you refuse. To do all these things on my account is a lot, I know. Remember that flying to Ivan Shark's direction as straight as an arrow is essential..."

Captain Midnight figured that Chuck would send a third message using the first part of the secret password which he alluded to in the earliest message. And a third arrived:

"Hello Captain Midnight. This is your last chance to come to an agreement with Ivan Shark. Please think it over. If you do not aggree, this will be the bridge that will separate us forever. You should do the right thing. The thing that will surely bring us together at last..."

Once all the messages were placed in the order of the secret word, the message gave away Ivan Shark's hiding place:

COBRALHOFA
Come Over Bridge Right At Long Home On Flying Arrow

*************************************************

Visit Mr Widner's page for a whole bunch more interesting information on Captain Midnight.