Classic Movies On the Radio

When radio was king, adaptations of popular movies were all the rage. An hour or half an hour would be devoted to a streamlined script of Jezebel or A Star Is Born, for instance, and broadcast over the airwaves.

Movie stars - great and near-great - would stand before the microphones (sometimes playing their original film roles) and perform in front of a live studio audience. I enjoy the audience reactions. Sometimes an actor will deliberately play to them -  make some gesture or ad lib a line that will elicit a gasp or a laugh or, in the case of Frank Sinatra or Al Jolson (!) squeals of carnal ecstasy. 

As I listen on my Zune in total isolation (as opposed to family gathered around a radio, as was the custom), I wish for a second that I could be in that audience just to find out, for instance, what exactly Cary Grant does  in Lux Radio's "The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer" which causes that "thump" sound  and elicits high laughter and applause during his Zoot Route greeting.

But you don't have to be a fanboy to enjoy these aural diversions. It's a good way to introduce people to classic movies. An acquaintance of mine who usually doesn't like pop culture B.B.E. - before the Britney/Beyonce era - listened to "Meet Me In St. Louis" during a road trip and was absolutely enthralled with demented little six-year old Tootie who buries her dolls. ("She's like totally emo. Pre-goth goth.")

From the early to mid- 20th century, there were so many radio theaters, one pretty much like the other, that they struggled to distinguish themselves from their competitors. One Show would feature 30 minutes of only Oscar-winning stories or Oscar-winning actors.  Another 30-minute show  was performed exclusively by SAG members who forfeited their radio show salaries to fund charities for indigent movie industry people.   Yet another was just like the rest except it had an hour-long format with several commercial interruptions for a prominent car company. There was even one radio program which performed only streamlined broadway plays, before or after they had become films.

Then there's the, arguably, most famous one -  Lux Radio Theater - which was initially directed by Cecil B. DeMille. It ran for about 20 years, survived 3 directors and provided a TV spin off - Lux Video Theater.

All the radio programs would feature commercials for various sponsored items (soap, cigarettes, petroleum). These interruptions were probably annoying at the time (just as TV and internet advertising is today), and were no doubt mocked by a lot of people [Mankiewicz famously makes fun of radio and its commercials in A Letter To Three Wives (1949)] but for me, they are history lessons in marketing. The advertising often sought to make the customer discontent until they have product X, and that method hasn't changed.  I must admit, though, that I prefer the humor of today's commercials; the radio ones back then are relatively grave.

Along with the products, ad spots might promote the actors. At the beginning of the episodes (especially in the hour-long shows) the presenter gives a little background of the stars or how the show was put together this week or some related movie news. At the conclusion, there might be an interview with the performers who plug their next film (a precursor to late night TV shows). In between the acts, a young starlet who isn't performing in the radio play might be trotted out to plug her name.

Although these Hollywood programs are self-referential (they are selling movies, after all), it's not completely self-contained. Every once in awhile you get a sense of daily life beyond Tinseltown. During one show a producer urges listeners to continue taking used bacon grease to the local butchers so that they can send it off to make bullets for "The Emergency." One presenter announced that the episode would be cut short to make way for a radio broadcast by the President - Franklin D. Roosevelt.  In a November broadcast in 1944, Cecil B DeMille claims at the beginning of "It Started with Eve" that the film version was the first American movie shown to the U.S. troops after they had stormed the shore in Normandy. (Wow! That totally gives my favorite Deanna Durbin film a sobering historical context that this light comedy didn't have before.)

In addition to the historic references, I enjoy comparing various versions of the same story. Not only contrasting the radio adaptation with its screen parent (Did you know that Judy Garland played in a radio version of A Star is Born  more than a decade before her Oscar-nominated performance in 1954?), but also comparing the many rehashed radio scripts among themselves.(Someone has too many husbands.)

I suppose somewhere there is still radio theater, but I'm not holding my breath for it to come to my neck of the woods. Sure, radio is no longer the leading purveyor of  up-to-date information and entertainment, and that's OK. Were it not for the internet, I would never have found these gems of cinematic history.