Lum & Abner was created by two fellows who certainly knew what they were talking about. Chet Lauck and Norris Goff were both born in Arkansas, where the show is set, in the early 1900¹s. By 1911, both were living in the little town of Mena, Arkansas, where they became a popular comedy team, and local "Amos and Andy" imitators. In 1931, just before a charity performance in Hot Springs, they created those two lovable Arkansas philosophers "Lum Eddards and Abner Peabody." Three months later "Lum & Abner" made its national radio debut on the NBC radio network from Chicago, with the Quaker Oats Company as their first sponsor. They were to continue charming audiences on the air, with different sponsors and networks, for nearly 25 years.

Vaudeville and 7 films followed, but radio was where the world of "the two loveable old characters from Pine Ridge" flourished, delivering home-spun wisdom and humor from the front porch of the "Jot 'Em Down Store." After 5,000 live radio shows and a life on stage and screen, the boys retired. Though Norris "Tuffy" Goff (Abner) passed away in 1978, and Chester "Chet" Lauck (Lum) joined him in 1980, it isn¹t hard to imagine the two whittling and philosophizing in their celestial rockers somewhere, making the angels laugh.

CANDY MATSON was the private eye star of Candy Matson, YUkon 2-8208, an NBC West Coast show which first aired in March 1949 and was created by Monty Masters. He cast his wife, Natalie Parks, in the title role of this sassy, sexy PI. Her understated love interest, Lt. Ray Mallard, was played by Henry Leff while her assistant and best pal, aptly named Rembrandt Watson, was the voice of Jack Thomas.

Every show opened with a ringing telephone and our lady PI answering it with "Candy Matson, YU 2-8209" and then the organ swung into the theme song, "Candy". Each job took Candy from her apartment on Telegraph Hill into some actual location in San Francisco. The writers, overseen by Monty, worked plenty of real Bay Area locations into every plot.

Candy was bright, tough, and fearless. She used her pistol infrequently, but was unintimidated by bad guys, regardless of circumstances. Threats, assaults, and even bullets would usually produce a caustic, but clever, response for this blonde sleuth. She and Mallard were frequently working the same case, but she usually solved it first.

OTR experts generally agree that this show was the finest of all the female PIs. Although the show ran until May 1951, it never attracted a sponsor (although the first season's final episode ended with the announcement that "Candy Matson Is San Francisco's Most Popular Program").

...The name says it all. Every program was a thriller, and you could never tell which side would win. By the end of the programs the listener is just as likely to be cheering for the villain.

The Suspense Radio Series had a great run, lasting from 1942 through 1962. There were approximately 945 episodes aired during its run. The show went through several major phases, characterized by its hosts, sponsors and director/producers. The show became so popular that over 900 of the original episodes exist in high-quality recordings, a rarity for Old Time Radio programs. Most of what you hear on OTR collections are recordings from over the air, made by amateur recording buffs on some pretty creaky machines.

The audition show was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, an adaptation of his movie, The Lodger, that he filmed in 1926. The radio program, broadcast in 1940, was entitled Forecast, and it starred Herbert Marshall. In the early episodes, the program was hosted by "The Man in Black" (played by Joseph Kearns or Ted Osborne) and with many of the episodes written or adapted by John Dickerson Carr. The first sponsor was Roma Wines and then Autolite. William Spier, William N. Robson, and Anton M. Leder were among the producers and directors.

The heyday of the show came in the early 1950's when the radio actor, producer and director Elliott Lewis took over. Among the some of the show stars were Orson Welles (we're doing one of his episodes this season), Joseph Cotton, Henry Fonda, Humphrey Bogart, Ronald Colman, and Cary Grant. The single most popular episode of Suspense is Sorry, Wrong Number, written by the premier radio scribe Lucille Fletcher, in which a panicked, bedridden woman (played by veteran radio actor Agnes Moorehead) tries to convince a telephone operator she has overheard a murder plot on a crossed line. Ms. Fletcher also wrote The Hitchhiker which we produced in the first Sunday Night by the Philco.

Suspense remains in the minds of many as the epitome of radio drama. Its opening was one of radio's best-remembered classics;

THE BURNS AND ALLEN SHOW began in 1933 and had a successful seventeen-year run. Although they were wed 7 January 1926, Burns and Allen didn't acknowledge it on radio until 1942. Burns recalls,

" When your ratings drop little by little, a half a point ... then a quarter of a point,...you're in trouble. If your ratings drop five points you're not in trouble because that means that night somebody that was very good was on against you on another network, but our ratings kept dropping a quarter of a point. One morning I woke up at about 2 o'clock and woke up Gracie. I said, 'Gracie, I figured out what our problem is. Our jokes are too young for us. We're older than these jokes.' And that's when I told the audience on the very next show that Gracie and I were married and had two children. So we changed the whole idea, the jokes, the writing, and our ratings picked up."

As usual, Gracie said it best.
Gracie is confused about where Carnation Milk comes from

Later

A year later

Burns and Allen are a classic example of how Vaudeville acts were able to find new audiences and make the transition to the new medium of radio. The style of comedy that only needs two people talking is ideal for the radio. Burns and Allen also went on to conquer television and movies as well. To this day they remain an indelible part of the American entertainment landscape. Gracie died in 1964, but George went on to star in a number of Hollywood films and continued to perform until his death in 1996 at the age of one hundred.