Posted on 12/24/2015 4:15:09 AM PST by BluesDuke
Columbia Workshop: The Plot to Overthrow Christmas (CBS, 24 December 1942)
One or another way, Christmas Eve broadcasts over classic (1927-62) network radio will survive to be heard by generations who weren't alive when radio was the world's primary conductor of home entertainment. These can be considered some of the finest gifts the era bequeathed, even unto generations jaded enough by video and cinematic excess and ubiquity that you fear their inability to appreciate what one radio show's customary introduction called "the theater of the mind."
The offerings range from the sublime to the ridiculous and back to the absurd and the playful, perhaps none embracing elements of all four at once quite the way tonight's Columbia Workshop entry does. First performed on Norman Corwin, Words Without Music in 1938, "The Plot to Overthrow Christmas" has an arch delivery and a cumulative quality that makes the awkwardness of several passages--it's delivered in verse and you can sense a few stumbles now and then--more than bearable.
It's set in Hell, where some of history's most notorious villains (pending the resolution of World War II and the death of its primary protagonists, of course) convene to plan Christmas's demise, so long as they can settle a little, ahem, family squabble. "They," in this case, include Haman, Ivan the Terrible, Lucrezia Borgia, Caligula, Medusa, and Nero, a formidable family of foul balls in their own right, but it is to wonder what Corwin might have done had he been able to add Hitler, Stalin, and Tojo to the cast.
If you had the pleasure of hearing the original you may miss Will Geer as the devil, but Martin Gabel (who played among others newspaper reporter Neil Williams on the impeccable serial comedy Easy Aces) won't disappoint. And, while you may or may not miss House Jameson's (The Aldrich Family) original Santa Claus, you won't feel discomfited by future Perry Mason costar Ray Collins in the role.
For now, I'll say only that Caligula has visions of men hanging from Christmas trees, Nero's (Eric Burroughs) a little snippy (Today I note with a bitter shrug/They've made Scheherezade a jitterbug, he laments--no wonder Rome didn't stand a chance), and the ayes have it for Dame Borgia's idea . . . or, do they?
Corwin, for his part, really made his bones with the original Words Without Music production but reaffirmed them with this engaging retooling. It's as clever a way for you to launch a Christmas Eve of radio listening as you might find.
Additional cast: Unidentified, but likely including Orson Welles. Music: Bernard Herrmann. Writer/director: Norman Corwin.
CHRISTMAS EVE JEWELS--CONTINUED:
Mayor of the Town: A Christmas Carol (drama; CBS, 1942)--Time was when it wasn't Christmas without Lionel Barrymore as Scrooge in one way or another. To many who've passed it on to their children and grandchildren it still isn't. But don't be grumpy just because this one's set amidst his periodically charming period piece series, as the town decides to produce a version of the Dickens vintage. Marilly: Agnes Moorehead. Additional cast: Unidentified, but possibly including Will Wright, Conrad Binyan. Announcer: Unidentified. Music: Possibly Gordon Jenkins. Director: Jack Van Nostrand. Writers: Unidentified.
The Great Gildersleeve: Christmas Eve Program (comedy; NBC, 1944)--A possible lawsuit resulting from a failed matchmaking bid for Hooker (Earle Ross) leaves Gildersleeve (Harold Peary) in a yuletide funk, until news from Hooker prompts him to play eleventh-hour Santa . . . and read "T'was the Night Before Christmas." Gently charming. Leroy: Walter Tetley. Marjorie: Louise Erickson. Birdie: Lillian Randolph. Leila: Shirley Mitchell. Floyd: Arthur Q. Bryan. Peavey: Richard LeGrand. Eve: Bea Benaderet. Announcer: Ken Carpenter. Music: Claude Sweetin. Writers: John Whedon, Sam Moore.
The Bickersons: Christmas Eve (NBC, unknown)--Weary husband John (Don Ameche) and shrewish wife Blanche (Frances Langford) get into one of their usual exercises in nocturnal domestic blitz until they open their presents just past midnight . . . and discover just what each sold to buy each other the gifts. Hint: something each could have used with their gifts. Yep: The Honeymooners eventually lifts this one almost whole for the classic Original 39 Christmas episode. Yep, again: both derive from "The Gift of the Magi." Writer/director: Philip Rapp.
Broadway is My Beat: Nick Norman and Santa Claus (crime drama; CBS, 1949)--Det. Clover (Larry Thor) needs to help find a Santa Claus for a Police Athletic League chapter until Sgt. Tartaglia (Charles Calvert) provides one—an ex-con (Gil Stratton, Jr.) who played Santa in the slammer for over a decade after his imprisonment for safecracking, and is doing it on his first day of freedom--making Clover nervous when he has time to kill before the gig. Additional cast: Howard McNear, Hal March, Bert Holland, Kep Menkin, Estelle Dodd, Peggy Webber. Announcer: Joe Walters. Music: Alexander Courage. Director: Elliott Lewis. Writers: Morton Fine, David Friedkin.
Richard Diamond, Private Detective: Another Christmas Carol (crime drama; NBC, 1949)--The jaunty gumshoe (Dick Powell) casts his own usual suspects--most of whom are the police with whom he normally works and/or fences--into an analogic interpretation of the Dickens classic. We're dead certain, all things considered regarding Mr. Diamond, that there was no intent to paint police as miserly or crotchety (ho ho ho), though we're comparably certain this is one of the funniest imaginings of "A Christmas Carol" of them all. Levinson: Ed Begley. Helen: Virginia Gregg. Otis: Wilms Herbert. Announcer: Eddie King. Music: David Baskerville. Director: William P. Rousseau. Writer: Blake Edwards. (Yes--that Blake Edwards.)
The Big Show: Christmas Eve Program (NBC, 1950)--Jimmy Durante, Bert Lahr, Ed Wynn, and host Tallulah Bankhead swap gags about Christmas bed jackets, horses, and John Dillinger, while pondering a gift for guest Margaret O'Brien. Also: O'Brien helps Lahr reprise "If I Was King of the Forest" (from The Wizard of Oz); Durante suggests a toy-spangled Christmas tree and finds a way to sing "Isn't It A Shame That Christmas Comes But Once A Year"; Wynn and company try to prove Santa Claus; and, some stunning music from Fran Warren ("Look to the Rainbow"), Metropolitan Opera star Robert Merrill ("O Holy Night") and the tragic French chanteuse Edith Piaf. (A beautiful "Autumn Leaves.") Announcer: Ed Herlihy. Music: Meredith Willson, the Big Show Orchestra and Chorus. Writers: Goodman Ace, George Foster, Mort Greene, Frank Wilson.
The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show: Annual Christmas Show (comedy; NBC, 1950)--Alice (Faye) needles Phil (Harris) about his Christmas storytelling; the girls (Jeanine Roos, Anne Whitfield) want to stay up to see Santa, and Daddy gives in (as usual) . . . with no clue who he's going to con into playing the jolly one. So it recycles a few choice bits from previous Christmas shows? Who cares when it's this much fun. Santa: Andy Devine. Remley: Elliott Lewis. Willie: Robert North. Announcer: Bill Forman. Music: Walter Scharf/Phil Harris Orchestra. Director: Paul Phillips. Writers: Ray Singer, Dick Chevillat.
Further Christmas Eve Channel Surfing:
Fibber McGee & Molly: Gildy's Radio Phonograph (comedy; NBC, 1940)
The Lucky Strike Program Starring Jack Benny: Trimming a Tree (comedy; NBC, 1944)
The Old Gold Comedy Theater: Bachelor Mother (dramatic anthology; NBC, 1944)
Fibber McGee & Molly: Fixing Broken Toys for Needy Children (comedy; NBC, 1946)
The Mel Blanc Show: Mel Plays Santa Claus (comedy; NBC, 1946)
The Life of Riley: Christmas Bonuses from Mr. Stevenson (comedy; NBC, 1948)
The Whistler: The Three Wise Guys (crime drama; CBS, 1950)
Fibber McGee & Molly: Laura, the Lopsided Pine Tree (comedy; NBC, 1953)
Romance: Richer By One Christmas (dramatic anthology; CBS, 1955)
Bob & Ray Present the CBS Radio Network: One Fella's Family--Merry Christmas, One and All (improvisational comedy; no coaching from the audience, please, 1959)
Allow me to add a suggestion:
Jean Shepherd, a New York writer and radio personality from the 50s through the 70s, wrote some stories for Playboy magazine, one of which was the source for the Christmas Story movie tale about the Red Ryder BB gun.
A number of those stories were assembled into a book named “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash”. In my opinion, the book was much better than the movie.
Here he is reading his Christmas story on WOR Radio from 1974:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkicEleOiTM
bump for later
But I still haven't forgiven Jean Shepherd for a gratuitous (and false) slap he leveled at Fred Allen in his introduction to an otherwise wonderful collection of Vic & Sade scripts. Saying Allen was nothing more than a phony Chinese detective (referencing Allen's Charlie Chan satires, the "One Long Pan" routines) showed Shepherd to be an ignoramus. He didn't need to do that to present Paul Rhymer's genius.
Very nice.
And I am pleased to come across another Paul Rhymer fan. I belong to a few OTR groups on FB and when Vic and Sade comes, a lot of people have negative comments.
Any time I come across someone who “gets it” and appreciates the absolute genius, it’s like being in a foreign land and finally finding someone who speaks English.
Merry Christmas ping
Thank you for this thread. The mind is a great theater, indeed!
Does anybody recall a reading done for several years on NPR or one of the affiliates that had an older, rural sounding man recalling a childhood Christmas during the depression and in grinding poverty? The blessings he counted for that era were true tear jerkers.
I heard it for a couple years when I could still stand to listen to NPR and that was many years ago. I was always shocked that they would air such a rustic tribute to God, America and the traditional family.
God bless all of you and have a very merry Christmas!
Thank you, BluesDuke, and Merry Christmas!
Thanks and Merry Christmas. Hope you decide to post a BB thread tonight.
Thanks and love reading your site. Merry Christmas.
I fondly remember the children’s OTR show “The Cinnamon Bear” which ran 6 days a week between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I remember the Wintergreen Witch and the Crazy Quilt Dragon.
I forgot you said you’d be out of town. I’ll try to remember to post it. I believe I still have your HTML template in my e-mail.
Merry Christmas, Vision!
I looked, but haven’t been able to find the full text of the introduction you mentioned, so I can’t speak in anything but general terms, but frankly I have never cared for Fred Allen, and it sounds like Shepherd didn’t either. I won’t disagree that his comment might have been out of place in that introduction, but I won’t disagree with his opinion.
Do you have a link?
Bfl
All I remember of Fred Allen is his phony Chinese accent when playing a detective.
A classic instance of offering a slap in the face with nothing to back it up. Fred Allen may not be to everyone's taste, I enjoy him but I get why others may not, but if that's all Shepherd could remember of Allen it's plain that a) Shepherd was not offering an opinion with even minimal reasonable qualification, and b) he didn't really get that Fred Allen's cumulative style wasn't anything like Paul Rhymer's cumulative style,. and that it would have been foolish to link them in the first place whatever Shepherd thought of Allen.
Merry Christmas Gina!
Why in the world do you think he had to justify that memory? Memories can be faulty, they can be incomplete, but they are not the same thing as opinions.
Shepherd wasn't hired to critique Fred Allen, and he didn't. He was hired to write about Vic & Sade.
You're making a proverbial mountain out of a molehill.
Why in the world do you think he had to justify that memory? Memories can be faulty, they can be incomplete, but they are not the same thing as opinions.A man who made a fair part of his broadcast and print living trucking in memories---for his fiction and non-fiction alike---and had a reputation for having an outstanding memory might be expected at minimum to remember just a little more of something he chooses to zap. Or, at least, to be honest enough to say he wasn't a fan when zapping.
In the big scheme of things it amounts to nothing much in the end. But as an old-time radio fan and, as it happens, a professional journalist myself (I work freelance now, kind of a shadow, but I like that after having been burned out of the phoniness of the profession over a decade ago), such disingenuity drives me nuts
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.