I grew up with radio. We didn’t have a TV set until 1947, when I was 16 turning 17. Henry Aldrich. Fibber McGee and Molly. Gangbusters. Like that.
We call that old-time radio now?
Right. And I joined a club devoted to that era in radio broadcasting. Heard an announcement on the radio one day. I guess I was 40-something at the time. The club was called the Golden Radio Buffs of Maryland. We called it the GRB. I joined at the first meeting I attended.
What did the club do?
Some of the members collected tapes of radio broadcasts from that golden age, and the club had a large library of cassettes available for borrowing.
We celebrated the old shows by re-creating them at our meetings.
You broadcasted them?
No, we didn’t actually broadcast them, but we had a sign that implied it.
For realism.
Right. It was a salute to those days of yesteryear, before TV had taken hold, and newspapers actually listed the radio programs.
One of the members would transcribe a program from tape to printed script, and copies would go to the members who were part of the re-creation.
We did many a program over the years. One that stands out is Sorry, Wrong Number, about a frantic woman who overhears a murder being planned on the telephone.
It was a movie with Barbara Stanwyck.
Right. But it was also a radio play, and we did it.
I played the part of a New York policeman talking with the woman on the phone. For that I summoned up my best “Noo Yawk” accent.
We did it at our club meeting. And we also re-created it at a couple of retirement homes so the residents could reminisce..
On one occasion we didn’t follow a script but rather improvised in a simulated broadcast of Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts.
Completely unrehearsed, as a presumed talent scout, I got into a discussion with the actor playing Godfrey over the pronunciation of the word “Baltimore.” Being from that city, I claimed it was really pronounced “Balmer.” All in good fun.
Then I launched into a made-up story about how I had discovered my singer performing in a roadside tavern where I had stopped for a sandwich and a beer.
More realism.
Another project at our GRB meetings was a series of episodes of an original soap opera, called Portrait of Love, written by one of our members. It was the kind of soap that typically women would listen to in the afternoon. I remember my mother often would be listening to one when I came home from school.
Why did they call them soap operas?
Because they were aimed at women in the home — who would do the laundry — they were largely sponsored by soap companies.
In our original soap, a female member and I had the principal roles.
We were both a bit past middle age, but, through “the magic of radio,” to the listening audience we were a young married couple.
I see what you mean.