Old-time radio, 24 December: 'Tis the night before Christmas . . .

Kallman's Alley ^ | 24 December 2015 | Yours truly

[BluesDuke]

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night of old-time Christmas Eve radio!

[Fresh Wind]

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

[a fool in paradise]

bump for later

[BluesDuke]

The book was better than the movie.

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.

[don-o]

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.

[logitech]

Merry Christmas ping

[WorkingClassFilth]

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!

[WXRGina]

Thank you, BluesDuke, and Merry Christmas!

[Vision]

Thanks and Merry Christmas. Hope you decide to post a BB thread tonight.

[Vision]

Thanks and love reading your site. Merry Christmas.

[IM2MAD]

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.

[WXRGina]

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!

[Fresh Wind]

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?

[goodnesswins]

Bfl

[BluesDuke]

I don't know if there's an online link to it, but this was Shepherd's exact comment:

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.

[don-o]

Here’s a link

http://paulrhymer.net/scripts.cgi?s=34

[Vision]

Merry Christmas Gina!

[Fresh Wind]

Good Lord, Shepherd wasn't offering an opinion as you claim, he was speaking of HIS MEMORY of Fred Allen, and he goes on to contrast that memory with his much more complete and positive memory of Vic & Sade.

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.

[BluesDuke]

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

[BluesDuke]

I know that site well! I not only got some choice stuff from them, it was (wait for it!) I who provided my Easy Aces collection to them and wrote the episode synposes for them. Good folks, those.