Our long, cold, lonely winter seems to have passed at last, and my south Minneapolis neighborhood has once again begun to be filled with the drumbeats of street repairs and home rennovation projects. So its obviously the time when Minnesotans start to dream of things to do when the temperatures finally rise and summer vacation time arrives.  If there’s a car trip in your travel plans, whether it’s up north to a lake cabin or an extended sightseeing trip, then you’ll eventually be facing the problem of how to retain your sanity once the scenery stops piquing your interest, the conversation has devolved into words of single syllables, and you’re left with choosing something to listen to that will save your sanity and your marriage.  The kids have their GameBoys, iPhones, and portable DVD players, so the hapless adults in the front seat are free to indulge themselves with audio entertainment that satisfies the intellect and soothes the soul.  If you’re like me, as the traffic cones endlessly go by, you soon pass the point where not even your favorite music from high school and college can keep your eyes from glazing over.  But there is a wonderful alternative I think you’ll enjoy, and best of all, it’s FREE!

Back when I was living in the San Francisco area, my business required driving down to Los Angeles 2 or three times a year, a trip of about 8 hours of driving in a small car packed to the gills with merchandise.  For a time, my wife worked for a company that produced books on tape, and we found they were wonderful distractions from the hours-long stretches of the I-5 in California’s Central Valley where the scenery barely changes for 300 miles.  Of course, for family trips around Minnesota with the kids – books on tape aren’t going to be a popular choice if they don’t involve witches, werewolves, or superheroes.  You’ll mostly be choosing music playlists and hoping you can get away with sprinkling a few of your old favorites in amongst the songs your kids choose.  But if you can get the youngsters in the back seat to use their headphones, there’s a head-soothing alternative for the grown-ups: Old Time Radio.

Old time radio programs ranged from comedies to soap operas, just as television has always done.  I’m just old enough to remember catching an occasional episode of “Gunsmoke” and “Have Gun Will Travel” on rare occasions when I was in the kitchen helping (mostly watching) Mom make Sunday dinner.   These old programs are great for car trips because they generally run about 30 minutes – which is just long enough to keep your brain cells active between pit stops, but not so long that you start to lose interest.  The comedies don’t always hold up as well as the dramas because they tend to be topical, and they’re pretty corny even for fans like me.  But the mysteries are still as enjoyable today as they ever were.

Before I delve too deeply into my personal recommendations, let me give you the good news about these old programs: They’re all available for downloading from The Internet Archive.  Just go to the Audio section and you’ll find “Radio Programs” near the bottom of the list.  The Archive includes roughly two million recordings including music, audiobooks, and podcasts.  You can download them directly to your smartphone or easily transfer them from your computer to whatever music player you use in the car.  And again, it’s all free!

Among the many radio mysteries, my absolute favorite is “Nero Wolfe” starring Sidney Greenstreet, who came to fame playing the Fat Man in “The Maltese Falcon” with Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor and Peter Lorre.  While the stories are all told by Archie Goodwin, Greenstreet’s inimitable laugh makes these great adventures in post-War New York city come to life in your head.  They’re classic murder mysteries set in a nostalgic era, tales of crimes that have the police baffled and only the genius of Nero Wolfe is able to suss out the villain.  While these half-hour programs can’t hope to provide the intracacies of the original books by Rex Stout, but they manage to capture the spirit of the characters of Wolfe, Archie, Inspector Cramer, and Fritz the butler, all while serving a tidy little plot.  The only thing lacking for me here is not having Timothy Hutton play Archie as he did in the short-lived TV program on A&E.  I think he was the best actor to ever play the role, giving Archie the perfect balance of swagger and style.

Second only to Nero Wolfe are the many radio incarnations of Sherlock Holmes.  The best, naturally, star Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. John Watson.  But I’m very happy with the others as well since the actors all ended up imitating those iconic stars anyway.  The half-hour episodes stack up respectably in comparison to the classic tales by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, but you can find full-length performances of the originals if you prefer them.  You just can’t go far wrong with Sherlock Holmes.

 

 

For Film Noir buffs, I strongly recommend the “Phillip Marlowe” series based on the books by Raymond Chandler.  If you enjoyed “The Big Sleep” or “Farewell My Lovely”, you’ll find these stories right up your alley.  Of all the detective shows I’ve sampled, these were the most engaging mysteries.  The wise-cracking Marlowe kept everyone on their toes while bringing the bad guys to justice.  Two fine actors played Marlowe.  Van Heflin gave Marlowe a subdued attitude of a world-weary man whose seen everything before and not much surprises him anymore.  Gerald Mohr played Marlowe much closer to the tough-guy detective of pulp novels.  Both were outstanding in this series.

I also enjoy “The Saint” featuring the late, great Vincent Price as Simon Templar.  The plots are a bit simple, of course, but you can’t help but enjoy Vincent Price’s portrayal of the sharp-tongued bon-vivant detective as he goes toe-to-toe with nefarious villains to save the helpless victims, solving the crimes with his wits instead of guns or his fists.

While exploring these gems from days gone by, I delved into “The Shadow”.  You have to be a die-hard fan of old radio to enjoy these old clunkers.  For me, the signature phrase, “Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men?  The Shadow knows!” is worth the price of admission.  First appearing in 1930, you can just imagine Depression-era kids huddled on the living room floor with their hearts beating a mile-a-minute as they listened to the chilling adventures of the mysterious Shadow.  What tickled me the most was the commercials for “Blue Coal”.  It’s hard enough to imagine life where you had to stoke your home furnace with coal all the time, let alone commercials for a particular *brand* of coal.  The mind truly boggles.  But you could tell that technology was marching on, even in those days as the commercials included promotions for a regulating device you could have installed that must have been the first thermostats.

In the same vein, being a fan of the TV show back in the 60’s, I’ve also tried a few episodes of “The Green Hornet” hoping for something a bit meatier than the “Batman” spin-off I also watched back then.  Like The Shadow, Green Hornet was made for kids and was mostly just too preachy to endure for long, but still a hoot for nostalgia fans.  The same goes for “The Lone Ranger”, “Dragnet” and “Superman”.  Just good enough to try once in a while, but just not as a regular diet.

If your taste runs much more to the contemporary, the Internet Archive has a small number of episodes of “The CBS Radio Mystery Theater” series from the 1970’s that featured Minnesota’s own E.G. Marshall.  The shows were much like “The Twilight Zone”, ranging from mysteries to horror to classic novels, including the works of Charles Dickens, Conan-Doyle (of course!), O Henry, and Oscar Wilde.  They often featured well-known movie and television performers.  Some searching will let you find more of the nearly 1400 episodes that were broadcast from 1974 to 1982.

As for the comedies, I doubt that many people today share my tastes.  I grew up watching the stand-up comedians on “The Tonight Show” and “The Ed Sullivan Show” which, in those days, showcased a mix of trendy newcomers, Las Vegas stars and Borsht Belt veterans.  So, between that and my love of old movies I’m sure my tolerance for their sappy characters and well-worn jokes is higher than most.  But, even so, if your just a fan of comedy, you’ll enjoy many of these great programs.

The 1940’s was truly the golden age for old time radio.  The Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) would re-broadcast programs for the troops in Europe and the Pacific, which meant they were recorded on phonograph records and distributed to those theaters of operation.  Naturally, they were mostly musical variety shows featuring popular singers and movie stars, with lots of comedy to help boost morale.  Apparently, many of those old records survived and were shared by enthusiasts over the years – a practice which exploded on the Internet.  Many of them reek of pops and scratches, giving away their origin.  You’ll find nearly complete libraries of popular shows of the day like “Fibber McGee and Molly”, “The Great Gildersleeves”, and “Henry Aldrich” over on Archive.org.

But my real favorites are the “GI Journal” shows that usually featured Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.  It was the era of shows with singing stars and lots of comedy routines straight out of Vaudeville, and the boys were always ready with an ad-lib to throw each other off the script like Tim Conway and Harvey Korman did on “The Carol Burnett Show”.  Years ago I snared a special clip from one of those radio shows for the GIs that included some sort of tribute to Minnesota and featured our own Judy Garland.  It starts with Judy singing “Clang, Clang, Clang” followed by a short piece of business with Bing joking about fishing in Minnesota with Bob Hope.  Hope and Crosby had Judy giggling like a schoolgirl when she appeared with them.  You can listen to them below:

I have to admit that I’m a sucker for Hope and Crosby.  I have been a fan since I was a kid watching their old “Road” pictures on late night TV.  The plots were ludicrous, but I’d watch them just for the non-stop jokes – the quick digs at Bob’s nose, Bing’s age, the censors, and studio executives – often breaking the fourth wall, which was nearly unheard-of back then.  OK, so Dorothy Lamour was another reason.  You don’t see enough sarongs any more.  Finding these old radio programs was like finding buried treasure.  Both Bob and Bing had their own radio programs, as well.   Bob’s show was on the air until 1955, and had a brief run on television.  The style of Bob Hope’s monologues never changed and hold up remarkably well to this day, even when you don’t recognize the political references.  He started in Vaudeville as a song and dance man, and while his reedy voice would never even begin to compete with Bing’s dulcet vocal tones, Bob was a surprisingly graceful dancer – especially for a comedian, and simply a marvelous all-around entertainer.  Hope and Crosby would often indulge in a little soft shoe during their stage performances, but if you want a real treat, check out the 1957 movie “The Seven Little Foys” that stars Hope as Vaudevillian Eddie Foy in which Jimmy Cagney does a cameo as George M. Cohan, and the two do an impressive tap dance number on a table top that by itself is worth the price of admission.  Jimmy proved his dancing talents years earlier playing Cohan in “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, of course, but here you can see Bob matching Cagney step-for-step.  Both of them pure class and pure entertainment.  But I digress.

Another comedic treasure and a throw-back to an earlier age is “Our Miss Brooks,” starring the beautiful Eve Arden who plays Connie Brooks, a 26 year-old high school English teacher.  Miss Brooks is smitten with Mr. Boynton the totally oblivious biology teacher played by Jeff Chandler, who also had a very respectable career in the movies.  The cast also includes school principal Osgood Conklin, played by the much under-appreciated Gale Gordon whom most people know today from his many appearances on “The Lucy Show” with Lucille Ball, and Walter Denton, a student played by the amazingly versatile actor Richard Crenna, who many of us baby-boomers know best from the TV show “The Real McCoys” starring Walter Brennan and you youngsters would recognize from the “Rambo” movies where he played Stallone’s commander.  Eve Arden’s always been one of my favorite actresses.  She was tall, blonde, gorgeous, with expressive eyes, and had perfect comedic timing.  She often played the sassy girlfriend in movies, and did so brilliantly.  Today’s audiences would probably only recognize her as Pricipal McGee in the movie “Grease” or, perhaps, “Anatomy of a Murder” with Jimmy Stewart.  “Our Miss Brooks” ran from 1948 to 1957.  The television version, also starring Arden, Gordon, and Crenna, ran from 1952 to 1956.  And it’s easy to see why it was a big hit back then.  Hardly the stuff for the era of women’s rights, but more than funny enough to make up for it.

If you can set aside the cliche of the nagging wife, “The Bickersons” are lots of fun.  Starring Don Ameche and Frances Langford as John and Blanche Bickerson, and Danny Thomas as Blanche’s ne’er-do-well brother, the shows tell the tale of a poor slob who just can’t get ahead in life and whose shrewish wife never ceases to blame him for everything from his poor pay as a bowling ball salesman to the weather.  All three of these talented performers had exceptional careers beyond this one radio program.  The show itself was so popular that Ameche and Langford made three Bickersons records during the haydays of comedy albums in the late 1950’s/early 1960’s.

For something much more contemporary, check out the old “Bob and Ray” radio program.  These two geniuses created their own characters starring in satiric versions of classic radio programs which all played on their mock radio network, “The Findlay Quality Network”.  They appeared on several different TV programs over the years, wrote several books, and often did live performances around the country.  The Internet Archive has quite a few of their recordings, including some bootlegs of a handful of the duo’s live performances.  Any other members of “The Slow Talkers of America” out there?

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Minnesota’s own “A Prairie Home Companion” with Garrison Keillor.  You can sometimes snare an episode online, or you can get their albums from their online store.  The Tales of Lake Woebegone are just the thing for a car trip in Minnesota where incredibly few of those above-average children ever seem to be on the road when I am.

I think the “Car Talk” albums are a natural match for car trips.  My favorite is “Maternal Combustion” which is all about family relationships – especially one Mother’s Day episode when Mrs. Magliozzi is co-hosting and complains about the boys making jokes about her and being teased by her parish priest by congratulating her for “getting out of the slammer” so she could attend Sunday Mass.  “Doesn’t Anyone Screen These Calls?” is a close second.  It’s a compendium of stories about cars and animals.  Be sure to check out “Sidney’s Lunch is Missing”.  It’s available as a single MP3 download from Amazon and well worth the 99 cents.  If the kids are listening, they’d probably get as much of a kick out of the “Car Tunes” albums as you do.  Where Doug Berman found all those silly songs is a mystery to me, but they’re a riot.  “Grandpa’s Advice” by Adie Gray is not to be missed.   It’s also available from Amazon as a single download for just a buck and I guarantee it will be on your in-car playlist forever.

I know I tend to blather on, but my intentions are good.  And if you’ve held on this far, you have my thanks and as a reward I want to share one final suggestion.  On my many trips through the traffic nightmare that are the Los Angeles freeways I’ve found that the best way to endure it all is classical music.  I’m not a classical music enthusiast, and like most kids in my day I was first exposed to it by the Warner Brothers cartoons like “What’s Opera, Doc?” and “The Rabbit of Seville”.  But when the noise and traffic really start to get to me, there’s nothing better than a simple Bach concerto like Jessie Stone (Tom Selleck) listens to in the Stone Cold TV movie series when he needs to relax.

I hope you have fun when you travel with your family this summer.  Remember that the object of the exercise is to simply arrive at your destination, not how fast you can get there.