I think we’re all Bozos on this bus

If you’ve ever seen Poltergeist (1982), I’m guessing you haven’t forgotten one of the most terrifying scenes in that horror flick, where the little kid’s clown doll turns evil and goes medieval on his ass.  I certainly won’t forget it, because I had a dream like that once when I was little—that my talking Bozo had me trapped in my room and wouldn’t let me out, and I couldn’t contact my parents.

I’ve known some people who claim to be freaked out by clowns.  I can’t honestly say that I share that phobia, because I dealt with the Bozo dream in a perfectly calm and rational manner: I threw that goddamned doll into the back of my closet.  (Mom: “Why don’t you ever play with Bozo anymore?”  Six-year-old me: “I don’t feel like it.”)  Mom says I was a pretty big Bozo fan as a kid—I even had this little tchotchke in the basement—but outside of the toys and maybe an occasional Bozo cartoon, it’s faded out of my childhood memory for good.

The entity billed as “The World’s Greatest Clown” was created by Alan W. Livingston in 1946 as a character for Capitol Records, offering children what was then the innovative idea of allowing them to read stories while listening along on 78 r.p.m. records (dubbed “Record Readers”).  Vocal actor Pinto Colvig (the voice of Goofy and so many others) was the man behind the clown’s voice, and he also became the first television Bozo when a TV program based on the character appeared in 1949 in the Los Angeles area.

The cathode ray tube began to cut into Bozo’s record sales, and an associate of Livingston’s, a gynecologist-turned-actor-comedian named Larry Harmon, had the foresight to see what a money-making machine the Boz could turn out to be on TV by buying the rights to various Bozo products and knock-offs.  (The jewel of the clown…er, crown, the rights to the character, were finally purchased by Harmon from Capitol in 1957.)  Harmon then started his own cartoon studio (in association with Jaywark) not long after, and eventually cranked out 156 cartoons that were so dismal in their animation they made the King Features Trilogy material look like it came out of Disney.  Armed with this “wealth” of cartoon riches, Harmon began to actively promote sales of the new cartoon series, and decided to copy the success of TV’s Romper Room by franchising his animated output: the cartoons would be sold to local stations, who in turn would produce their own kiddie-show series featuring their own Bozos—after having purchased the costume and “training” from Mr. Harmon, who became a staggeringly rich tycoon in the process.  One of the more famous individuals to don the Bozo duds was a young man named Willard Scott (on Washington’s WRC-TV from 1959-62), who a meaner person might say pretty much stayed a Bozo the rest of his life, even while doing the weather for The Today Show.  (I’m glad I didn’t disappoint you.)  WJCL-TV in Savannah even had a Bozo show, though I don’t know too much of the backstory behind that…Sam Johnson probably does, when he’s not out being the Six Million Dollar Man.

I mention Bozo’s background only because I entertained myself over the weekend watching the DVD box set Larry Harmon’s Bozo, the World’s Most Famous Clown: Volume 1, a collection of thirty shows originally broadcast over WHDH-TV in Boston between 1965-67 (the program, Bozo’s Big Top, actually ran on WHDH from 1959-70; Harmon took one hundred-and-thirty episodes from 1965-67 and syndicated them to stations who couldn’t afford their own local Bozo).  Maybe I’m just a strange person, but I’ve really been enjoying this jaw-droppingly awful collection of live shows that feature Frank Avruch as the Boz himself and future Sesame Street performer Carroll Spinney as various characters under the circus’ big top.

I say “jaw-droppingly awful” only because Bozo’s Big Top (produced and written by Harmon) can’t hold a candle to the Cadillac of Bozo shows, Bozo’s Circus, which ran on WGN-TV in Chicago from 1960 to 2001.  Having been blessed with getting WGN on our cable service in Ravenswood while I was still toiling away in high school, I got to enjoy the antics of Bob “Bozo” Bell, Frazier Thomas, Roy Brown (as Cooky), Marshall Brodien (“Wizzo the Wizard”) and the rest in an incredibly well-produced show that may have been targeted at kids but had equal appeal for adults as well.  (Actor Dan Castellaneta once revealed in an interview that he modeled the voice of The Simpsons’ Krusty the Clown character after Bell’s Bozo.)

Big Top is like a traffic accident from which you can’t quite turn away.  The ninth show on the DVD set will give you an example of its so-awful-it’s-great appeal: two of the regular performers, Carl Carlsson (who played Professor Tweetiefoofer) and Ruth Carlsson (who played most of the female characters), are doing a juggling act that they apparently rehearsed maybe twenty seconds before the show started.  They keep dropping their pins, and helpful kids from the audience get up from their seats to pick them up and hand them to the jugglers…while they’re still juggling.  When this not-at-all-impressive display is finished, the Carlssons then light torches and start to juggle these—prompting me to cry out: “Wait a minute!  You haven’t mastered the pins yet!”  Even though they turn out the lights in the studio to emphasize that the materials they’re juggling are on fire, they miraculously manage not to drop any of the torches and barbecue any of the tiny tots in the process.

On Bozo’s Big Top, Avruch would choose at random a child who was to be—and I can hear you all getting ready to guffaw—his “Butch for a Day”; Butch being the little kid in the Bozo cartoons that resembled Richie Rich except that he wore a ringmaster’s uniform.  In Show #9, he chooses a defiant little girl who most definitely is not going to wear either the jacket or cap—I sort of halfway expected her to glare at him and say “Aw, cram it, Clownie!”  The main duty of the “Butch of the Day” is to draw a number from a hat to pick a child who spins a Bozo wheel to win a big honkin’ load of toys in “Bozo’s Treasure Chest,” sort of a very-poor relation to WGN’s “Grand Prize Game.”  The “Butch” kid, who’s apparently having a bad day, ignores the clown and several kids start running out of the peanut gallery to volunteer to take over her Butch duties before Avruch manages convince Miss Pissy Moppet to pull a out a number.  The kid who has the winning number eventually wins the chest with a lucky spin; by this time, there were so many freakin’ toys in that chest (I watched eight shows before anyone won) that the winner could have opened a Toys R Us franchise there on the spot.

Once you have children breaching the soundstage perimeter, chaos eventually follows.  Bozo and his circus pals are attempting to convulse the kids with some hoary old vaudeville sketch when you can see one brave little moppet decide to join the festivities, staring at the camera as if she were ready for her close-up, Mr. DeMille.  The sketch involves the demolition of a hi-fi set, which produces a ton of paper on the floor that, of course, the tidier-minded kids feel its their job to clean up…but this time they take the paper back to their seats.

If you want to know why a perfectly sane individual like me would find this sort of kitsch fascinating…well, I can’t really tell you.  But Infinity Entertainment, who released the first set, has a second collection following in November.  Somebody besides me has to be watching this stuff.  So remember what your ol’ pal Bozo always says…keep laughin’!

Blogs that make you go hmmm…

My good neighbor to the North, Brent McKee, has bestowed upon my humble blog a meme (and this just goes to show you how much I know—I thought it was pronounced “mem,” as when Madeline Kahn says to the cowboy in Blazing Saddles: “Tex mem?”) and to be honest, this isn’t any ordinary meme (you know what I’m talking about—the ones that ask “Paper or Plastic?”…or some such esoteric claim) but one that asks you to name five blogs that make you think.  I’m nothing sort of astonished when Brent says Thrilling Days of Yesteryear starts up the old thought processes for him because usually when people comment on my blog it’s a variation of “Lots of free time on your hands, huh?”

Anyway, here is how this meme works:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.

2. Link to this post so that people can find the exact origin of the meme.

3. Optional: Proudly display the Thinking Blogger Award on your site with a link to the post you wrote.

Even though Brent’s already tagged Tom Sutpen, Stephen Cooke and Richard Gibson’s pop culturally delicious If Charlie Parker Were a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats (which, in all fairness, has already been tagged previously)—one of the blogs I was going to include on my list, I thought I’d take a stab at this.  Here goes:

1. Blog d’Elisson – If you look at the “Yet More Self-Aggrandizement” Section in the right hand section of Steve’s blog, you’ll see a quote by me that I confess I swiped from Kaspar Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) in the movie The Maltese Falcon.  But in “liberating” this quote I meant no malice: simply put, Steve is one of the most fascinating individuals I’ve ever met.  His blog is a living, breathing example of esoteric; he has so many interests that he reminds me of a good friend in college who could hold forth on any subject without any hint of “I know more than you do.”  (Or, as Walter Brennan used to put it: “No brag…just fact.”)  There’s always something to be learned or taken away from Blog d’Elisson—and if you ever get the pleasure of meeting the man himself in person, take it from me: there’s no pretense about him, what you see is what you get.

2. Pop Culture Petri Dish – I have only one complaint about Tony Kay’s blog…he doesn’t update it nearly enough.  As an observer of pop culture, I am full-green-envious of those individuals who dissect it better than I can, and Tony is definitely in the top five.  In watching the TV chestnut Streets of San Francisco on DVD, Tony can’t help but marvel at the huge leaps in technology made since that series’ 1972-77 run: “’Where's his cell phone?’ my mind cried out more than once as I watched a beat cop forced to run to the nearest pay phone to call in a crime scene, and observing antique equipment like Tele-type machines and, hell, electric typewriters was like peeking in on a living museum.”  Great stuff.

3. The Third Banana - As an individual who’s been known to drive people out of the TV room with cries of “That’s so-and-so!” any time I recognize a character actor, it’s nice to know that Aaron Neathery and Company are there to share their immeasurable knowledge of comedians who are either forgotten today…or were obscure from the get-go.  Case in point, this on-the-money mini-review of The Wrong Miss Wright (1937), a Columbia two-reeler starring Charley Chase that Aaron notes “is arguably better than most of his final performances for [Hal] Roach…”  Nice to know that I’m not the only one who thinks Wright is one of Chase’s best comedies.

4. Something Old, Nothing New – I’ll just put it as succinctly as I can…I want to be Jaime Weinman when I grow up.

5. Scrubbles.net – Like any good pop culture blog, Matt Heinrichs samples everything from the buffet, from Siskel & Ebert to erotic playing cards to Disneyland records.  Matt consistently emphasizes what people have long suspected but are afraid to admit: kitsch is cool.  

Along came a Spider

For the next few days, I’m going to be jotting down random thoughts about some of the cliffhanger gems in the oeuvre of James W. Horne, the veteran comedy director and prolific serial helmsman whose work has frequently created tendentious dissension among chapter-play fans.  Fortunately, Horne’s first assignment (which he co-directed with Ray Taylor…who presumably kept Jimmy’s excesses in check)—The Spider’s Web (1938), a serial based on the popular pulp magazine hero—is generally received with favor by those both pro- and anti-Horne…not only it is considered his best cliffhanger but it is also in contention for the best serial to come out of Columbia’s stables, a studio that tried like Avis but unfortunately churned out some embarrassing (and not only that, boring) stinkers.

Future Strike It Rich host Warren Hull (who also starred in serials as the Green Hornet and Mandrake the Magician) plays Richard Wentworth, a master criminologist/scientist who agrees to help a frustrated police force (presided over by Commissioner Kirk, played by Forbes Murray) capture the Octopus, a mysterious masked villain heck-bent on destroying the industrial infrastructure of an unnamed but big honkin’ metropolitan city in a desperately insane bid for raw, unchecked power.  (Sort of like Dick Cheney…but warmer.)  Assisting Wentworth are fiancée Nita Van Sloan (played by Columbia’s “Queen of Serials,” Iris Meredith), chauffeur Jackson (Richard Fiske, the poor sap driven to distraction by the Three Stooges in their 1940 two-reeler Boobs in Arms), a butler named Jenkins (Donald Douglas), and Ram Singh (Kenne Duncan), a turban-wearing “warrior” adept at knife-throwing but for most of the serial’s running time spouts cryptic proverbs and calls everyone “Sahib.”

Wentworth’s gang are in the serial (granted, they do on occasion pull his fat out of the fire in tight moments) primarily because they’re carryovers from the pulp stories but for the most part the criminologist does all right for himself with two secret identities.  The first is costumed hero The Spider, who not only strikes terror into the hearts of evildoers but is mistrusted by the forces of law and order, who are convinced that not only is he working against them but that he may, in fact, be the Octopus his own self.  Because “The Spider” is not particularly chummy with the criminal element, Wentworth must don a third disguise as two-bit lowlife Blinky McQuade, who nevertheless is a pal to any other losers he encounters.

The Spider’s Web is undeniably a rip-snortin’, slam-bang actioner, filled with impressive stunts (and the fight sequences aren’t too shabby, either) and a suspenseful plot that features great cliffhangers…that are, unfortunately, spoiled due to Columbia’s unfortunate habit of “telegraphing” future events with their ill-advised codas at the end of each chapter.  The performances are also good, particularly Hull and Meredith’s—it’s a shame that Meredith’s services couldn’t be retained for the 1941 sequel, The Spider Returns; actress Mary Ainslee takes on the Sloan role, and though I suppose you could argue that the fact that Nita has been waiting three years to march Richard down the aisle for the rice-and-old-shoes routine—with precious little success—it still doesn’t excuse Ainslee’s often irritating approach to the part (she’s a bit of a detriment, to tell the truth).  Hull and Duncan returned to reprise their roles (though Duncan’s Ram Singh really gets shunted to the background in Returns), with serial vet Joe Girard (the geriatric Major Steel in Captain Midnight) as Kirk and Pete Smith Specialties star Dave O’Brien (Captain Midnight himself) as Jackson the wheel-man.  (I like O’Brien’s approach to his role; it’s not entirely winking-at-the-audience but he doesn’t skimp on the tongue-in-cheek either.)  This time, the Spider takes on the Gargoyle (a better villain than the Octopus, in my opinion—though his identity is fairly obvious), a meanie who’s out to put a monkey wrench in the burgeoning defense industry (even though we’re technically not in the war yet, there’s still a ton of propaganda in this baby).  In all honesty, I thought Returns was every bit as good as Web, but there are scores of people who disagree with me.  There’s a scene in Chapter 6 (“The X-Ray Eye”) in which the Gargoyle spies on his henchmen…only to learn that they’re throwing a little office party, complete with drinks and floozies.  (One Serial Squadron member told me he and a friend fell on the floor laughing at this.)  Hey, when your head goon is played by Anthony Warde—the hardest working henchman in the serial business—shouldn’t he be entitled to a little R-and-R every now and then?  If you prefer your serials with a much smaller laugh quotient, then Returns will definitely not be your particular meat.

Half-Nelson

Via a post at Jaime Weinman’s Something Old, Nothing New (and the Home Theater Forum post that reveals the depressing news) I’ve learned to my consternation that the Shout! Factory release of The Best of The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet due out the first of May will contain the heavily-edited syndicated versions of the cherry-picked episodes of the long-running domestic comedy; last seen in repose on the afternoon schedule of GoodLife TV (“the channel where old TV shows go to die”).

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this turn of events.  First, I preordered the set—which usually spells trouble from the get-go.  Second, during its stint on GoodLife, Ozzie & Harriet were paired with another famous 50s sitcom family, the Williams’s (Danny, Kathy, Terry, Rusty and Linda) of Make Room for Daddy (a.k.a. The Danny Thomas Show) fame—a series also put cut to ribbons in syndication and whose repeats were used for the first (and of this writing, only) DVD release (dubbed “The Complete Fifth Season,” completely ignoring the Jean Hagen years).  On this boxset, the celebrated episode that served as the pilot for what later became The Andy Griffith Show is practically incomprehensible due to its chainsaw-like editing, a fate that also befell the Daddy episode that introduced Joey Bishop in the pilot for his 1961-65 sitcom.  (Though I maintain that much of the slicing-and-dicing of that half-hour is an insidious conspiracy instigated by Marlo Thomas to keep people from seeing what she looked like before she learned she didn’t have to go through life with her father’s nose.)

Since David Nelson has decided to go the cheap rate with his family-sanctioned DVD set. I’m guessing that the “radio episodes” that are to be included as extras in this collection are probably ones already in circulation among old-time radio fans.  I had heard quite some time ago (and I apologize for not having the full story—it’s hell getting old) that more of Ozzie & Harriet’s radio “adventures” are extant—only they’re under lock-and-key in some library collection of some college (I believe my source said Northwestern, but I could be wrong about this), tucked safely away from an admiring public.  This is a similar fate that befell some of Fred Allen’s broadcasts, which are now ensconced in the Boston Public Library (where Allen was employed while a mere sprat) so that greedy OTR entrepreneurs can’t get hold of them and sell them to people like myself.  (Joe Mackey and I once discussed an elaborate Ocean’s Eleven-like plot to rescue these tapes…but admittedly, the master plan is still in its embryonic stages.)

I don’t know if any Ozzie & Harriet fans are going to bite the bullet and still purchase the Shout! Factory set despite this revelation (in fact, I don’t know many Ozzie & Harriet fans period) but I will suggest an alternate route: check out this latest Mill Creek Entertainment release.  It’s advertised as Fun with Ozzie & Harriet, a public domain collection of thirty-eight episodes…but if you order it from Deep Discount.com, it will arrive at your doorstep with one hundred episodes under the title The Essential Ozzie & Harriet Collection.  All for the low price of $6.58, which you cannot beat with a stick.

My stinkin’ job

If you keep up with the frantic activity on this blog (that’s a joke, son!) you might remember a previous occasion when I went out of my way to do something nice for the hotel that employs me as a night auditor…only to see it turn around and bite me in the ass.  (I’m referring to the time that I suggested that our former doofus of a security guard, “Slappy,” be transferred to Sunday/Monday nights in an effort to protect our declining hotel scores…only to have the rug pulled out from under me when they saddled me with him for both nights, working Monday and Tuesdays.)  I swore to myself that I would not allow this to happen again…but of course, I’m an idiot, and I rarely learn from my mistakes.

Perhaps I should start at the beginning.  This past week, the La Quinta Midtown followed the lead of other La Quintas in the chain and switched operating systems over to something called Nite Vision, which is without a doubt the least audit-friendly system that I have ever encountered.  Our former system, known as LISA, was designed for accounting purposes.  Nite Vision—touted by the powers-that-be as the greatest idea since the walking man—is geared more toward hotel and motel management…but because auditing, in my opinion, is basically accounting I am hating the new system with the intensity of a thousand white-hot suns.  We converted to Nite Vision Monday night, and by Tuesday evening everyone who went near the damn thing was reduced to a helpless, gibbering idiot (though for some of the people at the front desk, this is barely noticeable).

I was given the extreme pleasure of conducting our first Nite Vision audit, a task that has since become a blur because not only did I spend what appeared to be forty-eight hours on it (okay, I may be exaggerating a tad) anything that could conceivably go wrong did that evening: some numbnut neglected to buy more copier paper, the phones went out, etc.  But did I let the system defeat me?  Did I break down crying, curled up in a fetal position and wishing for it to go away?  Of course I did—several times that night, in fact.  But eventually I wrestled the bull by the horns (okay, maybe this isn’t the best analogy but work with me here) and took control of the situation.  And with each subsequent night, as I became more and more confident with using the system…I became more and more convinced that it’s a steaming pile of horse crud.

It has definitely changed the face of auditing around the Midtown location because I have no earthly idea of knowing whether anything is correct because I cannot print out any pre-reports—I have no idea of knowing whether the rates are correct or the tax exempts have been applied right because the system either does not allow me to print out certain reports or I can’t locate the reports that, if they can be printed, need to be printed out.  It’s almost like the people who designed this damn thing just assumed that no one at that front desk ever makes a mistake, a thought that makes me cackle wildly to the point where I’m ready for a friggin’ strait-jacket.

I’ve been the guinea pig on this thing all week, and the GM is still convinced that the powers-that-be have made the right decision (though he says this in a “Raymond-Shaw-is-the-kindest-bravest-warmest-most-wonderful-human-being-I've-ever-known-in-my-life” Manchurian-Candidate kind of way).  But here’s the real test: will the relief auditors, “Little Miss Weekend Warrior” and the other gal (she works four days a week at our Southside location, and one at Midtown) I refer to as “Dreads,” be able to perform this new audit.  The smart money says no: Warrior made no attempt to attend any of the sessions conducted for the new system (though she did sit in and watch me do half the audit before taking off, explaining she had to go) while Dreads, though she was present and accounted for at the night auditor Nite Vision session, has ignored the conversion completely.

Against my better judgment, I told the GM this morning that I could be persuaded—if necessary—to sit in on the first four hours of the audit to make certain these two were up to speed on the changes.  (I had also been asked by the full-time auditor at the La Quinta on 204/I-95 if she could sit in as well.)  Lord knows I did not want to do this, and in fact I was praying that the GM would say “Hell, no” because I’m already swimming in enough overtime to incur the wrath of his boss.  No such luck.  He’s given me the greenlight.

Why do I have a bad feeling about this?

Spirits and demons beware

Before Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis (oh, and Ernie Hudson) began investigating something strange in your neighborhood, Saturday morning kidvid aficionados knew who the real Ghost Busters were: a pair of bumbling paranormal investigators and their pet gorilla who answered to Spenser, Tracy and Kong.  (For the record…Tracy was the gorilla.)  I mentioned back in February that BCI-Navarre was bringing this Saturday morning perennial to DVD, and since it arrived in the mail this week (along with my Criterion copy of Brute Force)…well, let’s just say curiosity did the rest.

Premiering on CBS in the fall of 1975, The Ghost Busters was part of a Saturday morning tradition of live action shows produced especially for kids and adults with no discriminating taste (I used to belong to the former group—now I’m in the latter).  It reunited former F Troop co-stars Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch and allowed them to do their patented vaudeville burlesque in a series that honestly hasn’t changed all that much from what I remember.  (I will issue a caveat here: if you’re unlike me and you look upon F Troop as a television travesty, you will not want to order this DVD set.)  Though the humor is unabashedly corny and kid-oriented (many of the jokes are the sort that even Abbott and Costello would have taken a pass on) it is still amusing once I go to my “silly place.”  The running gags (Storch’s weekly struggle with a mind-of-its-own file cabinet, plus the fact that all the ghosts choose “the old castle near the cemetery” as their hideout), Bob Burns’ wonderful gorilla-suited turn as Tracy and the one-of-a-kind chemistry between Tucker and Storch still brings a smile to my jaded face (the fact that both actors unabashedly give their all to material that neither Oscar Wilde nor Noel Coward contributed to is inspiring, to say the least).  Burns observes in an interview on the DVD set that he was in such awe of his two co-stars that it affected his performance; he held back as the “gorilla” fearing he would upstage their antics.  When he finally summed up the nerve to discuss it with Tucker, the actor shrugged it off and told him not to worry about it because “I’m too old to care and Larry is too dumb.”  (Burns also reveals that Storch would refer to his pal as “Sarge,” something that as an F Troop fan I find oddly endearing.)

But the best thing about Ghost Busters is that the series attracted an impressive wattage of character talent that felt the same way Tucker and Storch did: they were there to entertain people and only too happy to get the work.  That’s why you find performers like Ted Knight as “The Canterville Ghost,” an outing that also co-stars Family Affair’s Kathy Garver and Len “Uncle Leo” Lesser.  Knight had a long association with Filmation, the producers of Busters, having done voice work on their animated shows like Fantastic Voyage and Journey to the Center of the Earth.  (Knight even posed as an animation editor on one occasion in an effort to convince a visiting businessman to invest in the company.)  Other character greats to appear on the show include Bernie Kopell (channeling KAOS’ Siegfried as Dr. Frankenstein), Lennie Weinrib, Marty Ingels, Severn Darden (as Dr. Henry Jekyll), Joe E. Ross (as Mr. Hyde—though he appears to be wearing his caveman get-up from It’s About Time), Howard Morris, Jim Backus and Ronny Graham.

Fifteen episodes of Busters were produced at breakneck speed (I believe they mentioned that it was done in about three months in one of the interviews) and of those fifteen my favorites are “The Maltese Monkey” (the plot is too stupid for words but I like Good Times’ Johnny Brown’s impression of Sydney Greenstreet and Billy Barty’s take on Peter Lorre) and “Which Witch is Which?”  This last one is a real hoot: The Dick Van Dyke Show’s Ann Morgan Guilbert is a Salem witch who comes back to take revenge on the ancestor of the man who burned her at the stake (if you guessed that it’s Storch, then you can skip this one) and Bowery Boy Huntz Hall plays her incredibly dense sidekick (and yes, he does the “Motorlips” bit).  Hall’s character (an amiable dunce named Gronk) must have been well received because he turned up in another episode, this time stooging for “Merlin the Magician”—with the titular sorcerer played by Carl Ballantine of McHale’s Navy fame.  (How Gronk met up with Merlin is left unexplained.)

This two-disc set features some generous extras, including interviews with Burns and producer Lou Scheimer, photo galleries and some trailers for Filmation series either already out on DVD or due to come (including Ark II, Space Academy, Jason of Star Command and The Secrets of Isis).  Curiously, there’s also an episode of the animated Ghost Busters, which followed the exploits of Spenser, Tracy and Kong’s descendants.  This show was so terrible that I didn’t even mind when a rival cartoon—using the characters from the Murray-Aykroyd-Ramis film—called itself The Real Ghostbusters.  (Because I know who the real originals are:  “With us on the job/troubles will fade/the Ghost Busters do it againnnnn…”)

Takin’ care of business

Close to twenty years ago, I was toiling as a CSR (Customer Service Representative) for a Blockbuster Video franchise here in Savannah and in retrospect, it was one of the best jobs I ever had.  (It all went south when I was forced into becoming an assistant manager.)  Being a movie buff, I generously took advantage of the store’s free rental policy for its staff (you usually had to wait for the new releases, but for a classic film geek like me all the older stuff was there for the taking) and caught up on my sadly neglected film education.

One of the movies I rented simply because I was tickled by its premise was Heartbreak Hotel (1988), a rock ‘n’ roll fable whose plot centers on the kidnapping of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll (David Keith) in 1972 by an Ohio j.d. (Charlie Schlatter) and his pals in an effort to cheer up his mom (Tuesday Weld), who’s been laid low in a car accident.  Hotel was cute and forgettable (though Weld is always worth a look-see—plus it features two of my favorite country music singers, T. Graham Brown and Hal Ketchum) and yet I always believed that someone missed out on turning it into a TV series (kind of a Route 66 affair) that would feature the King driving from small town to small town, tackling odd jobs and helping small communities by healing the sick, making the lame walk, etc.  (The idea of Elvis being alive and well was later co-opted by an episode (“Spotting Elvis”) of a short-lived series, Johnny Bago, starring Peter Dobson as a hood on the run from both the Mafia and his vengeful ex-wife.  The King was spending his declining years in a trailer park in that one.)

I sort of expected the same Heartbreak Hotel whimsy during the wee a.m. hours of this morning when I put Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) in the DVD player but I was surprised after watching it to see most of the cast playing it straight—well, as straight as a movie starring Bruce Campbell can be.  Bruce plays a geriatric Elvis biding his time in an East Texas nursing home when he and his pal John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davis—and that’s not a typo) learn that an Egyptian mummy is prowling the halls of their facility and sucking out the lifeforce from the souls of its residents.  The King and JFK team up to defeat this undead menace in a horror film generously laced with deadpan comedy, directed and written by Don Coscarelli, who’s a legend among horror fans for the Phantasm series.  (The screenplay for Bubba was adapted from a short story/novella written by Texan Joe R. Lansdale.)  Bubba is a hell of a lot of fun for viewers who park their brains in neutral: Campbell channels Elvis extremely well and in addition to Davis’ performance there are also impressive turns from Ella Joyce (who played Charles S. Dutton’s ever-patient spouse on the underrated Roc sitcom) and Larry “Dash Riprock” Pennell as a resident who thinks he’s the Lone Ranger.  I can’t wait to see Ho-Tepís prequel, Bubba Nosferatu and the Curse of the Vampires, which features the King running afoul of a Louisiana vampire coven while shooting a film; Campbell is set to reprise his role, and Paul Giamatti will be tackling the part of Colonel Tom Parker.  (Wild!)

“When it comes to parenting I prefer to put it down to the bird watching technique where you've got to keep your distance, keep very still and try not to frighten them.” – Ben Harper (Robert Lindsay), My Family (BBC-1)

My Family, a popular BBC-1 sitcom that some of you may have seen on the cable channel BBC America, had its first two series released on Region 1 DVD courtesy of Warner Home Video last October.  I reluctantly admit I didn’t pay much attention to this announcement—I’ve been purchasing the Region 2 discs—but I thought about this the other day because I was scrounging around the living room the other day looking for something to watch and I found Series 2 lying on the coffee table (Mom and I have been going through the show a few episodes at a time).

My Family is a very popular comedy series across the pond (not so much critically acclaimed but well-received by the viewing public) and as a fan, I give it a pretty substantial endorsement as well.  It’s a nice blend of American-style humor (the show’s creator is Fred Barron, who also hatched Dave’s World and Caroline in the City) and traditional British farce, and stars longtime Britcom fave Robert Lindsay (Citizen Smith, Nightingales) as a harried husband/dentist driven to distraction (or should that be extraction?) by his family: wife Susan (cute-as-a-button Zoë Wanamaker—Madame Hooch in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), daughter Janey (Daniela Denby-Ashe) and sons Nick (Kris Marshall) and Michael (Gabriel Thomson).  I like the Harpers because even though they’re a loving and supportive bunch there’s still an edginess to the entire clan.

I watched a pair of episodes yesterday that literally had me laughing out loud; the first, “Trust Never Sleeps,” finds Ben and Susan giving permission to Janey to throw a party at the Harpers’ while they’re out of town visiting friends.  A conversation overheard in a liquor store about a wild party being thrown “by a girl whose parents are gone for the weekend” gives Ben second thoughts (when Susan asks him how he can be so sure the conversation was about Janey’s shindig Ben responds: “They said the parents were idiots!”) and he races back home, with Susan fretting about how this lack of trust will affect her and her daughter’s relationship.  The two of them arrive to find nothing going on—but then the kids start piling in and Ben and Susan are forced to hightail it upstairs and hide in their bedroom.  The complications multiply after that, particularly when Ben cannot ignore the call of nature after drinking several bottles of wine…and their own bathroom toilet is out of commission.

In “Death and Ben Take a Holiday,” Ben has to go to Leeds for an aunt’s funeral and because a flu-ridden Susan is too sick to go, he ends up dragging his layabout son Nick along.  Through a series of mishaps (inspired, no doubt, by shenanigans witnessed by your humble narrator at La Quinta), the two men are forced to room and share a bed together (a priceless sequence) and then more wackiness occurs at the funeral with Susan having arrived…and looped on medication.

Though the news about My Family on Region 1 is a bit late, I will give you a heads-up on another Britcom previously available only on Region 2 DVD.  Warner Home Video will release the first two series of One Foot in the Grave on March 27, so if you’re a fan be sure to keep an eye peeled for them.

“My head is made up!”

I finished the last of five DVDs that I purchased recently from Finders Keepers—a great mom-and-pop business that specializes in hard-to-find, OTR-related movies—last night while enjoying time off from work. I’m glad I saved this one for last, because it was clearly the best and most entertaining of the bunch (which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy the others, you understand): the 1948 (some sources date it as 1949) feature film-version of the radio sitcom hit The Life of Riley. It was like having dessert after a truly fine meal.

Released by Universal-International and written & directed by the show’s creator, Irving Brecher, The Life of Riley is a textbook example of how to make a really great old-time radio related film. The movie never takes a false step; it’s both well-written and well-paced, its 87-minute running time moving along at a breezy, entertaining clip with no padding whatsoever. Best of all, it takes characters from what I freely admit is your typical farcical sitcom and fleshes them out into three-dimensional human beings; it blends laugh-out-loud comedy with bittersweet poignancy to boot.

Chester A. Riley (William Bendix), devoted and loving husband of wife Peg (Rosemary DeCamp) and father to Babs (Meg Randall) and Junior (Lanny Rees), is determined to advance from his lowly position as riveter for the Stevenson Aircraft Company after being humiliated in front of Sidney Monahan, an acquaintance of the Rileys from Brooklyn (and Peg’s ex-beau). Riley’s boss (William E. Green) has planned to promote Riley to plant foreman as a reward for Riley’s hard work, but his son Burt (Mark Daniels), in debt to a gambler, schemes to have Riley made into an executive—that way, he can get Babs to marry him and he can get at his trust fund. Riley figures out what the son is up to and calls off the wedding, allowing his daughter to marry her true love (Richard Long).

What impressed me the most about this movie was its maturity; the theme of the film centers on career advancement and the achievement of “the American Dream.” Riley’s a blue-collar lug, a little dumb perhaps, but he works hard to get ahead and is crushed that he’s unable to provide a better life for his family. His promotion to executive has him walking on a cloud—even his co-workers congratulate him on one of their own “making good”—but then when people start to believe that the only reason for his advancement is because his daughter is getting hitched to the boss’ son, they turn their backs to him and it really tears him up inside. Babs has offered to marry Burt because she doesn’t want to see her father and mother slide back downward (with Riley’s promotion, he’s able to put a down payment on their house and get Peg that wedding ring she’s always wanted), but Riley refuses to jeopardize her happiness for a life of ease, and announces that he’d rather remain poor—prompting his boss to remark, “Riley—you’re the richest man I know.”

I’ve stated previously in many a blog entry how much of a fan I am of William Bendix, especially in films like The Glass Key (1942) and Detective Story (1951)—but his portrayal of Riley continuously sticks out in my mind. I know that the show had a paint-by-the-numbers quality to it, but there was something about Bendix that really made Riley endearing—here you had this big mule-headed brute whose stubbornness masked a tender, sensitive side. On radio, television, and especially this film—he is simply terrific; he's sensational at using humor as a lemon to cut the occasional sweetness. Rosemary DeCamp (an OTR veteran, known primarily for her work on Dr. Christian) unfortunately doesn’t have much to do, but she does provide solid support for Bendix’s Riley—and she was so good in this role that she was cast alongside Jackie Gleason in the first TV version of the show in 1949 (along with Lanny Rees’ Junior).

Other OTR personalities in the film include Bill Goodwin as the obnoxiously oily Sidney Monahan—and although Goodwin was primarily an announcer/supporting player on such programs as The Bob Hope Show and Burns & Allen, he enjoyed a nice career in films as a character actor, appearing in So This is New York (1948, with Henry Morgan) and It’s a Great Feeling (1949, with Jack Carson, Dennis Morgan and Doris Day—my favorite of the Carson-Morgan vehicles). John Brown, however, steals every single scene he’s in as he brings his Life of Riley character Digby “Digger” O’Dell to the silver screen. Digger is first introduced to the audience in a scene where the Rileys’ electricity has been cut off and the house is plunged into darkness; I thought this was a very clever touch, allowing them to hear his clammy, sepulchral tones before they see his beautifully somber mug on screen. Brown would also make it to the 1949-50 TV series, but for some reason wasn’t available for Bendix’s version, which ran from 1953-58. (Perhaps Brown was in poor health, he passed away in 1957.)

The Life of Riley is also populated with some wonderful character actors—James Gleason (who plays Riley’s best friend and neighbor Gillis—fans know, of course, that Brown played this part on radio as well), Beulah Bondi, Ted de Corsia (who was no slouch on OTR either) and a young Richard Long, before he relocated with Barbara Stanwyck to The Big Valley. (Or set up shop at 77 Sunset Strip, if that’s the way you remember him.) There’s also a great voice cameo by a famous OTR detective, and I wouldn’t dream of spoiling that surprise. (There are some really good in-jokes in this movie; my favorite is a book that’s mentioned as being written by “Professor Alan Lipscott”—Lipscott being one of the writers of The Life of Riley on radio.)

Making a film based on a radio series was a dicey proposition at best back in the 30s, 40s and even 50s. Radio fans would often find themselves surprised at the physical appearance of an actor or actress (knowing them only by their voice, of course), or would have a completely different impression of how their house or car or whatever looked. And though many of these films were produced simply for their novelty value (with plots flimsier than a politician’s campaign promise), there were a handful that transcended this and provided novel and fantastic entertainment. I’m pleased to report that The Life of Riley most assuredly stands out in this bunch.

“Bless his heart…buh-less his little heart!”

After Here We Go Again, I cranked up the DVD player for a viewing of the 1944 Lum & Abner feature Goin’ to Town. I have to say at this point in the game, this vehicle has entertained me the most of any of the L&A films that I’ve seen. (Keep in mind that I’ve still not had the opportunity to catch what fans call their best film, 1946’s Partners in Time—but that shall be rectified very soon, thanks to a recent eBay purchase.)

A pair of oil company executives (Andrew Toombes, George Chandler) are passing through Pine Ridge and relieve themselves of boredom by playing some practical jokes on the town’s inhabitants—including convincing Lum & Abner (Chester Lauck, Norris Goff) that there’s oil underneath the Jot ‘Em Down Store. The boys decide to start their own oil exploration company, and persuade the townsfolk to invest by mortgaging their properties—but the boom turns out to be a bust, so Messrs. Edwards and Peabody are forced to journey to Chicago to try and sell the company to the original jokers. Their associate (Jack Rice) buys them out for a princely sum, allowing them to redeem themselves in the eyes of their Pine Ridge neighbors once again.

I know this plot sounds similar to that of Two Weeks to Live (1943), and it is—but Goin’ to Town (1944) is a much superior film. It benefits from swift, no-nonsense direction from veteran comedy director Leslie Goodwins; Goodwins’ resume includes many of the Mexican Spitfire features (with Lupe Velez) and the comedy shorts of Edgar Kennedy and Leon Errol to boot. He was a pretty experienced B-movie comedy director, and Goin’ to Town is all the better for it. It eliminates the obviously phony and painfully unfunny stunt work of Two Weeks to Live, and concentrates more on Pine Ridge and its delightfully eccentric characters. There are more characters from the radio program in this movie than in any other: Cedric Weehunt, Squire Skimp, Grandpappy Spears and Sister Simpson are all showcased here—with character Grady Sutton making his second appearance as Cedric (he was previously seen in The Bashful Bachelor) and Danny Duncan in his second of three appearances as Grandpap.

Dick Elliott, by the way, makes a sensational Squire Skimp (the role was previously played by Oscar O’Shea in Bachelor and Two Weeks); Elliott was a veteran character actor who just might possibly have appeared in every single film produced in the 30s and 40s (yes, I am exaggerating here) but he’s best remembered as the cantankerous old fart who tries to give James Stewart advice on how to romance Donna Reed in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). (Elliott would reprise his Skimp role in Partners in Time as well.) L&A fans are, of course, well aware that these denizens of Pine Ridge were played by Lauck (Cedric, Grandpap) and Goff (Squire) on the radio show, so it’s great that they were able to find actors to flesh out these characters—I suppose Chet and “Tuffy” could have played them via a split screen, but the low-budget nature of these movies no doubt put the kibosh on that plan.

Other performers in this film include a young Barbara Hale (best remembered as Della Street on TV’s Perry Mason), Florence Lake (“wife” to Edgar Kennedy in many of his RKO comedy shorts, which is probably why Goodwins cast her in this movie), and Herbert Rawlinson. Nils T. Granlund (N.T.G. to his friends) and his bevy of beautiful babes are also on hand to entertain in a memorable nightclub sequence (when the maitre’d asks Lum & Abner if they have a reservation or a table, Abner asks his partner, “Was we supposed to bring our own table?”) With a funny script written by Charles R. Marion (who would go on to pen many of the Leo Gorcey/Huntz Hall Bowery Boys efforts) and Charles E. Roberts (responsible for many of RKO’s comedy two-reelers), Goin’ to Town is definitely my favorite of the Lum & Abner feature films—until my copy of Partners in Time arrives in the post, that is.

Wednesday Night at the Movies

I had last night off, and I’ve been itchin’ to watch some of these DVDs that I purchased recently—so I treated myself to a midnight double feature of old-time radio-related films. First off the bat, 1942’s Here We Go Again—the follow-up to the successful feature Look Who’s Laughing (1941) which memorably teamed Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy and Fibber McGee & Molly on screen.

Look Who’s Laughing starts out with Edgar & Charlie (performing a reprisal of their famous vaudeville act, “The Operation,” in front of a radio audience) so it seems only fitting that Here We Go Again begin with the McGees. Fibber & Molly have planned a big shindig to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary, but their pals in Wistful Vista have given them the big brush-off, electing to vacation at a swanky lakeside resort instead. So the McGees decide to head that way themselves (although they can’t afford the tariff to stay there) and upon their arrival, encounter Otis Cadwalader (Gale Gordon, in his film debut)—Molly’s old beau and Fibber’s bete noire. Otis cons Fibber into getting Edgar (who’s also vacationing nearby, in search of a silk-producing moth) to invest in a formula for “synthetic gasoline”; it turns out to be a bust, but lepidopterist Bergen has discovered a use for it for his moths, and everything comes out in the wash by film’s end.

Here We Go Again doesn’t quite have the same punch as its predecessor, but it’s still grand entertainment for any OTR fan. The movie does boast of a boost in star-wattage: Ray Noble, Bergen’s orchestra leader and comic foil, and dummy Mortimer Snerd make appearances, and joining Hal Peary’s Throckmorton Gildersleeve and Isabel Randolph’s Abigail Uppington are Gordon and Bill Thompson as super-milquetoast Wallace Wimple (“Wimp” is the brains behind the formula). Also in the cast of OTR stars is Ginny Simms, a singer-actress who achieved fame as vocalist for Kay Kyser’s orchestra, and was also featured on The Bob Burns Show and her own self-titled variety show on radio from 1942-47. Ginny plays Gildy’s sister Jean and is Bergen’s romantic interest in this movie (I guess that whole Lucille Ball thing didn’t work out). Two other actors from Look Who’s Laughing, Sterling Holloway and George Cleveland, also have small roles in this film as well.

Here We Go Again contains some memorable set-pieces: Gildy and Fibber trade insults over a game of pool, Edgar and Charlie play Indian, and Molly cuts a rug with Cadwalader (both Marian Jordan and Gale Gordon do some pretty impressive hoofing in this one). Even Charlie McCarthy has a song-and-dance number—yes, you read that right, dance. Director Allan Dawn got the idea to allow both Charlie and Mortimer to be a little more mobile thanks to some doubling by midget actors. (This idea to use little people would later resurface in a memorable television episode of The Jack Benny Program; Jack pays Edgar and Francis Bergen a visit and is stunned to see both dummies moving about like real people.) The movie also contains a novel chase sequence at the end that eschews the traditionally tired use of cars and substitutes horse-and-buggies instead (you know how it is with those "A" cards).

Once again, as in Look Who’s Laughing, the comedic strengths in this film emanate from the witty dialogue provided for the stars: Bergen scribe Royal Foster joins Zeno Klinker and Dorothy Kingsley in supplying Edgar and his dummies’ material, and Don Quinn performs the same favor for the McGees. Allan Dwan returns to helm this second film as well; Dwan was a veteran director whose output includes Suez (1938), Frontier Marshal (1939), and Sands of Iwo Jima (1949). All in all, Here We Go Again is a breezy, pleasant romp and a must-see for any old-time radio fan.

“We love the halls of Ivy…that surround us here today…”

Just as it’s hard to believe that Our Miss Brooks was created without Eve Arden originally in mind, it is equally difficult to fathom that Ronald and Benita Colman were not the first performers considered when Don Quinn originated The Halls of Ivy. Veteran character actor Gale Gordon and actress Edna Best were originally cast as Dr. and Mrs. William Todhunter Hall, a college president and his wife who presided over Ivy College in a small middle America town with the same name.

In an audition record dated June 22, 1949, both Gordon and Best do a pretty good job in their roles, but NBC was reluctant to commit to Gordon, seeing as how he was already doing similar school work on Brooks. The director of Ivy, Nat Wolff, then hit upon the novel idea to offer the part to his friend Ronald Colman. Both Colman and his wife, Benita Hume Colman, had demonstrated an extraordinary talent for dry comedy with their guest appearances on The Jack Benny Program—and beginning January 6, 1950 over NBC Radio for Schlitz Beer (beer and college—a perfect ad match, wouldn’t you say) the Colmans breathed life into one of radio’s best and most memorable sitcoms.

Colman’s portrayal of Hall is one of the reasons I became a fan of his; the character he plays, an erudite individual who manages to avoid coming across as a staid, stuffy, professorial caricature, is a fully three-dimensional personage, never stooping to your typical cardboard stereotype. (Hall reminds me of a similar part Colman played in the movies—that of Professor Michael “Mike” Lightcap in The Talk of the Town (1942), after he’s been "humanized" by Nora Shelley, played by the always delightful Jean Arthur.) Hall’s commitment to both the college and students is truly inspiring. But the real revelation on this series is Benita Colman, whose character of Hall’s wife—the former Victoria Cromwell, English music hall entertainer—is an absolute treasure; her vivacious, effervescent personality and lilting, infectious laugh endeared her to many a radio listener (consider me guilty of falling under her spell as well, especially when she calls her fictional husband “Toddy-dear.”).

Joining Ronnie and Benita on The Halls of Ivy was a supporting cast of first-rate radio veterans, beginning with Herb Butterfield as Clarence Wellman, Hall’s nemesis on the Board of Regents, and Willard Waterman (The Great Gildersleeve), who as John Merriweather was frequently Hall’s lone voice of support. Elizabeth Patterson and Gloria Gordon were both heard as Penny, the Hall's maid. In the two episodes that I listened to while at work last night, I was delighted to hear from such talents as Gil Stratton, Jr., Frank Martin, Jane Morgan, Herb Vigran, Janet Scott, Jack Kruschen (who was sensational as a college-educated cop) and Jerry Hausner.

As mentioned before, writer Don Quinn created The Halls of Ivy, and Quinn’s name crops up quite frequently when discussing old-time radio since he was the mastermind behind one of OTR’s classic comedies, Fibber McGee & Molly. Ivy was a definite change of pace for the veteran scribe, although you can definitely detect his signature wordplay in many of its scripts. (In one episode, Vicky mentions that a local diner, the Dew Drop Inn, is referred to by the students who have eaten there as “the Dew Drop Dead.”) But Quinn’s forte was jokes; he was aware of his limitations in developing plots and situations, and so writers like Walter Brown Newman, Jerome Lawrence & Robert Lee, and Milton & Barbara Merlin were around to ably assist him in the writing. Their contributions brought some wonderfully poignant overtones to the scripts—the character of Dr. Hall often found himself nostalgically flashing back to the early days of his and Vicky’s courtship and eventual marriage.

A broadcast from April 7, 1950 is a good example of the top quality that is The Halls of Ivy, as Dr. Hall approaches the missus with an announcement:

TODDY: Victoria…it’s much too beautiful a day for work…let’s play hooky…
VICKY: Hooky? On a school day?
TODDY: Of course! Can’t very well be played on a day of rest…to play hooky at all, one must have something to play it from…I mean to say, those are the ground rules…
VICKY: Yes, but would it be cricket?
TODDY: Oh, no, no…it’s nothing like cricket…if anything, it resembles dirty pinochle…but actually, it’s hooky…
VICKY (laughs): Well, it’s a lovely idea…and beautifully expressed…but you can’t…you’ve got a meeting scheduled for two o’clock this afternoon with all your department heads…Quincannon, Haislip, Gearhart…
TODDY: No, I refuse to consider it…I won’t spend a moment of this day cooped up indoors…not one sun-swept, dazzling moment…how could you even suggest such a course of action? To a man known in his youth as “Gypsy” Hall…
VICKY (laughs): I was only reminding you…
TODDY: I’ll get out of it…I’ll phone Quincannon…I’ll tell him I have a cold…
VICKY: Toddy, you’re not going to tell him a thumping lie…?
TODDY: Bad form, eh?
VICKY: Very bad form…
TODDY: Wouldn’t be…ethical?
VICKY: Far from it…
TODDY: All right, then I’ll have Penny do it… (calls) Penny!

Hall manages to deceive Quincannon (Frank Martin) into thinking he’s under the weather, but his and Vicky’s plans for a picnic outing soon go astray:

(SFX: door opens, then slams quickly)
TODDY: Oh good heavens!
VICKY: What is it?
TODDY: Quincannon…he’s in his yard, across the street…playing with the children…
VICKY: Oh, did he see you?
TODDY: No…you’d think, wouldn’t you, that a man in his position would have something better to do…he should be working!
VICKY: I’m sure he’s finished at least one class this morning…
TODDY: I wonder how long he’ll stay out there…I hate to lose a moment of this sunlight…I know!
VICKY: We’ll sneak out the back way…
TODDY: Uh…sneak is a rather shabby term, Victoria…surely we are privileged to leave our own house by the rear entrance if the whim seizes us?
VICKY (mock contrition): I beg your pardon…
TODDY: I accept your apology…now, let’s sneak out the back way…

A series of interruptions prevent the Halls from escaping the house, but when they finally are able to leave, Toddy begins to feel guilty about abandoning his sense of duty and returns to the college for the meeting—only to discover that he wasn’t the only one who thought about “playing hooky.” A second episode, from April 14, 1950, is equally entertaining and amusing, as the Halls are taking a cab en route to a dinner party:

VICKY: I do like dinner parties…I wonder what the main course will be?
TODDY: Main course? Me. There is nothing Mrs. Foster likes to serve her guests so much as a celebrity—major or minor…
VICKY (laughs): She should be very happy this evening, then…in your black tie, you’re quite a tasty dish…
TODDY (chuckles): Thank you—but not as tasty, I’m afraid, as the major celebrity she originally intended to have tonight…he disappointed her at the last moment…
VICKY: Oh? How?
TODDY: He led with his right, and was knocked out in the sixth round—and thereby ceased to be a major celebrity…ah, she forced to settle for a college president…
VICKY: Oh, poor woman…
TODDY: She is not, thank heavens, a poor woman…she’s one of the richest in town…and one of the loneliest…that’s why she fritters away so much of her wealth on trivialities…I’ve been trying for over a year to guide her interests into more constructive channels…
VICKY: Like, say, um…gymnasium constructive? Or library?
TODDY: Exactly…I have a feeling that when we leave tonight, I’ll have a nice, fat endowment check in my pocket…
VICKY: Well, I have the same feeling…Mr. Merriweather told me that you made a very great impression on her…
TODDY: Yes, I suppose I have…I mean to say, I…I have some, er, respectable degrees…and I’ve written a few good books…
VICKY: Ah, it’s your good looks that have impressed her, not your good books…
TODDY: Oh, nonsense…nonsense, Victoria… (laughs) I never…never heard anything so ridiculous in my life… (laughs) good looks… (laughs) me… (laughs, then long pause) you really think so?
VICKY: Of course I do! And I’m not the only one…every coed on the campus is mad about you…
TODDY (laughs): You’re just saying that… (chuckles) Really?
(SFX: car stops)
CABBIE: This is as far as I can go…
VICKY: Driver, you took the words right out of my mouth…

The Halls are forced to walk the rest of the way (due to road construction), and on their way there they encounter a runaway dog—in the process of trying to find the mutt’s owners, they end up being late and missing the party. This one is a real gem, particularly when Benita Colman talks “baby talk” to the dog, it alone is worth the price of admission. (The plot resolution of this show is also pretty easy to figure out for students of sitcoms, but trust me, getting there is half the fun.)

Sadly, The Halls of Ivy enjoyed a relatively brief run on radio, wrapping it up on June 25, 1952. Though it also appeared for a short time on television (from October 19, 1954 to September 29, 1955), it’s a shame that such a gentle, literate comedy bowed out too soon. (I’ve only seen one episode of the TV series—“The Umbrella Man” (5/17/55)—and while it’s very entertaining, it simply can’t touch the radio version; plus, I was sort of distracted by Colman’s all-too-obvious dependency on cue cards.) Nearly ninety episodes of the series are extant today (many of them rebroadcasts from the Voice of America), and I heartily recommend this warm, underrated show to each and every old-time radio fan.