and now I'm starting one called
-
MsELLERYqueen2 — 10 years ago(August 10, 2015 12:30 AM)
The radio play
Sorry Wrong Number
starring Agnes Moorehead (from
Suspense
) is a well-known radio play. There is another radio play
Sorry Wrong Number
which was recorded in 1950, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster. It's very closely based on the film. In fact, I think that they just condensed the movie's script down to under an hour and recorded it for radio. It was very well done.
The radio play
Laura
was kind of like that as well - the movie script was cut to about an hour's length and most of the actors from the film did the voices.Jim Hutton (1934-79) and Ellery Queen = -
binapiraeus — 10 years ago(August 12, 2015 11:36 AM)
Ooh, I've got the radio play "Sorry Wrong Number" starring Agnes Moorehead on cassette (bought it in L.A. about 20 years ago); it's really grand!! But I didn't know there was a version with the movie's stars as well - that sounds VERY interesting, thanks a lot for the information!
Let us be realists, let us demand the impossible. -
MsELLERYqueen2 — 10 years ago(August 12, 2015 01:09 PM)
I know! I found out about that other version from some folks on the boards. Both versions are great. The second one is really just a shortened version of the film, but it's interesting to hear it on radio, I think.
Jim Hutton (1934-79) and Ellery Queen = -
MsELLERYqueen2 — 10 years ago(March 04, 2016 08:05 PM)
Yesterday I was thinking about movies whose scripts were shortened and adapted for radio.
Some which I heard:
Laura
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Spiral Staircase
Sorry Wrong Number- the movie is based on a radio play, but another radio play was recorded after the film was released. Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster star in this "remake" radio play.
Jim Hutton (1934-79) & Ellery Queen -
MsELLERYqueen2 — 10 years ago(March 05, 2016 09:40 PM)
Quite a few radio plays are posted on archive.org.
I don't know if it's necessary to buy them anymore.Jim Hutton (1934-79) & Ellery Queen -
MsELLERYqueen2 — 10 years ago(March 20, 2016 01:21 AM)
It's been a long time since I've heard a radio play. Tonight, I heard one called
On a Country Road
(from the
Suspense
series), starring Frank Lovejoy. Someone said that it stars Cary Grant. Maybe there is a Cary Grant version. Anyhow, this story is extremely suspenseful, atmospheric, and very scary. The ending isn't that surprising, but it doesn't matter for such a terrific story. Highly recommended.
It's a dark and stormy night. A couple is driving along a highway and they hear over the radio that a crazy lady has escaped from the insane asylum and that she's murdered a few people. Despite the warnings, the male driver decides to take a shortcut to the other highway. They run out of gas and a woman appears, begging to be let into their car
Listen to this one at night when it's dark.Jim Hutton (1934-79) & Ellery Queen -
binapiraeus — 10 years ago(March 24, 2016 02:28 PM)
Wow, that sounds like a REALLY scary and atmospheric play; thanks a lot for your recommendation! Ooh, I can imagine that night time is the right time for a play like this And it's intriguing, too: why does the driver take a shortcut through an area where there's a maniac killer around?? I hope I'll find the answer to that soon, if I'll be able to find the play somewhere on the Web
Let us be realists, let us demand the impossible. -
MsELLERYqueen2 — 10 years ago(March 24, 2016 09:19 PM)
I hear all radio plays on archive.org.
You might be able to find it on youtube, if you still can't access the archive.org files.
Enjoy!Jim Hutton (1934-79) & Ellery Queen -
falcon2484 — 9 years ago(August 02, 2016 09:36 AM)
I'm a huge fan of OTR. Abbott & Costello, Burns & Allen, The Bickersons, Life of Riley, Suspense, Dimension X, Inner Sanctum, Johnny Dollar, The Whistler, etc., etc., etc. I've got a lot of CDs, many of them converted from cassette, of which I've got tons. There was this outfit, Radio Reruns, who offered some random OTR CDs in a catalog for $2 eachyou didn't know what you were going to get till they arrived, like an OTR grab-bag. I bought ten. I got Phil Harris/Alice Faye, My Favorite Husband with Lucille Ball, My Friend Irma, Tarzan, Tales of the Texas Rangers, among others. It was great. I also like modern audio/radio dramas like Stephen King's "The Mist" done by ZBS Foundation, ZPPR Repertory Company, CBS Mystery Theater, The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas.but my favorite modern ones have to be the Star Wars Radio Dramas.
The Falcon flies -
darryl-tahirali — 9 years ago(August 02, 2016 10:15 AM)
Huge thread started a while ago. Skimmed many of the posts but not nearly the whole thread so my remarks may be repetitive.
As a young teen in the late 1970s in Tokyo, I first got exposed to "old-time radio" on the Armed Forces Radio Network. As expats, we were starved for English-language programming of any kind, and I recall being intrigued by those bygone programs. Over the years, I've stumbled across OTR revivals in various places, and across recordings being offered by various companies; one company, Radio Spirits, is still in business although much of the programming from radio's golden era is now available online.
I have quite a few recordings collected from over the years on both cassette and CD: comedies, dramas, sci-fi, mystery, suspense, and so on. I'm a huge
X Minus One
fan, the NBC sci-fi program from the late 1950s, with
Dimension X
, from earlier in the decade, having aired a few stories re-made by
X Minus One
. Recently, I've taken a shine to
Pat Novak for Hire
, a Jack Webb crime drama set in San Francisco with Webb as the title character, who straddles that
noir
twilight of respectability and criminality. The dialog is a hoot, winking broadly at clipped cliche: "She was pretty but looked like someone had used her badly, like a dictionary in a stupid family." Priceless.
So, yes,
Suspense
,
Dragnet
,
Gunsmoke
,
The Lone Ranger
,
Lux Radio Theatre
, and so many othersJack Benny,
Fibber McGee and Molly
,
The Life of Riley
. I'm a history student, and all these are great insights into American culture of the time, particularly during the wartime years.
I've always enjoyed radio/audio presentations because the pictures are better. Someone mentioned ZBS, which had done several long-form stories including the keynote
Moon Over Morocco
in the early 1970s, which mixed metaphysics with
Casablanca
and hippie attitudes. I'm also a huge Firesign Theatre fan. Rest in peace, Phil Austin and Peter Bergman. Shoes for industry.
I'm in the Los Angeles area, and radio station KPFK-FM has a weekly airing of the LA Theater Works, which hosts radio plays with many name actors from film and television, everything from the classics to contemporary. About a year ago, I found myself hooked on a production of Tom Stoppard's
The Real Thing
. Would love to see that on stage now.
"We hear very little, and we understand even less." refugee in "Casablanca" -
MsELLERYqueen2 — 9 years ago(October 21, 2016 11:42 PM)
I enjoy hearing radio plays on archive.org. I especially like the ones in the
Suspense
series which were written by John Dickson Carr. What a fantastic mystery writer he was! A lot of the early ones in that series are his.
Two of my faves were written by him, and they both star Peter Lorre, who had a perfect voice for radio. They are:
The Devil's Saint:
a young man wants to marry a woman he's fallen for, but first he must convince her eccentric uncle (Peter Lorre) that he's sure that he wants to do this. The uncle comes up with a rather unusual way for this young man to prove his love and devotion.
Till Death Do Us Part:
an evil math prof (Peter Lorre) has come up with a fool-proof way of killing his wife, which he outlines to her in detail.
I'll say this much about Carr: his endings were usually not all that predictable.Jim Hutton (1934-79) & Ellery Queen =