Radio Convention Day One (of Two)

Wow! Was it fun already!

I missed the first hour, because my boss wouldn't let me go until 10... but that didn't matter much. All I ended up missing was the Opening Remarks and a short talk on "Remembering Radio".

There were around a hundred people attending, and there were maybe a handful of them that looked as if they were younger than middle-aged. I'm getting pretty used to not hanging out with my generation :) I guess we like different things, them and I... And along with the regular members of the club, there were about 10 special guests there for today... but I'll mention all this in order:

I walked into the Bellevue Coast Hotel, just off I-405, at about 10:30. I got my registration packet, and then slipped in the back during a performance in progress: a recreation of 'The Bickersons' with Rosemary Rice and Bob Hastings from the radio program 'Archie Andrews'. I settled into my seat, looked over my packet, including the items up for silent auction while I "listened in" to the show. After it finished, there was a short interview with our guests about how they got started and what it was like, acting for the network. They talked about many things, but I remember Bob talking about how 250 kids would wait "on-line" :) on the street on Saturday mornings for a spot in the studio for the broadcast. In just a few years, they had mostly disappeared; victims of Saturday morning television. Rosemary started her career on Broadway, and somehow another thing that stuck in my mind was them discussing how people used to dress up to go to Broadway plays... and even Baseball games... wow, it's hard to imagine guys in suits and ties with fedoras at the ballpark. What a different world we live in.

Afterwords, I took a moment to look around the Mingling Room, where they were selling MP3's of lots of old shows, among other things, and they had the silent auction set up for tomorrow. Radio shows, signed pictures, old programs, books... altogether cool stuff to look at.

The next engagement was a live radio theater performance of 'CBS Radio Mystery Theater' in the next room, put on by members of REPS. The show they did was called "Future Eye", a story about mixed up timelines and alternate universes set in the year 2976. This malfunctioning "master control computer" had sent someone into the wrong alternate universe of the 1970's, where the Allies had lost WWII. There were lots of computer vs. human jokes and the music for the computer sound was blaring beeps. They did make great effects with the lady's voice for the computer though... they made it reverberate or something. The show was thoroughly enjoyable.

It suddenly got to be noontime, so during break for lunch, I went next door to Denny's and sat at the counter for the first time. I had a 'prime rib sizzlin' breakfast skillet'... and whoa, was that good! Rib slices with grilled onions and peppers with warm tortillas, hashbrowns and scrambled eggs... darn... I'm hungry right now...

Back at the hotel, I did purchase a few MP3's before the next thing got started. 115 episodes of "The Shadow", 83 episodes of the "Sam Spade" detective show (for obvious reasons... lol), 35 episodes of "Flash Gordon" from 1935, and 78 episodes of "Theater of Romance" just for fun. Each set came on it's own disc, a total of four for $20. Not bad really. Should make for lots of fun at work someday.

After I completed my shopping, there was another live radio theater performance of "Lum & Abner", again by mostly REPS members. For those of you unfamiliar with this, as I was (forgive my ignorance), this was a funny little small-town show. Sort of reminded me of Andy Griffith or something. It was cute.

But next up was a re-creation of a 'Fibber McGee and Molly' episode where a "flying saucer" lands in their front yard and Mr. McGee starts telling wild tales. This was my first encounter with the show, and I know now why it's so widely popular... gosh it was great! Memorable lines: "That's just inciting mass-historia..." and "Yeeees, I'm an American... I'm from Brooklyn-grad..." (a Soviet spy). Also hysterical was Mr. McGee's long tongue-twister about "raising raisins".

Mr. McGee was played by Stuffy Singer (who has actually guested on FM&M before, as well as Our Miss Brooks, Amos 'n' Andy, Blondie and others, as well as various TV shows like Lassie and Leave it to Beaver) and Molly was played by Gloria McMillan, who created and played the role of Harriet Conklin on Our Miss Brooks from its radio days through the end of its TV run. Both had been with Jack Benny's program as well. I had the pleasure of meeting Gloria after the program! She is very, very, nice and easy to talk to as well. I looked her up online yesterday, and she has a great MySpace page. She's 66, and currently teaching performing arts in Southern California.

Next up was "It Pays to be Ignorant"... a slapstick show with four guests, Gregg Oppenheimer, Shirley Mitchell, Bob Hastings (again), and Eddie Carroll, our Jack Benny impersonator for tomorrow night. This show was... hmm, I'm at a loss for words. "Just awesome!" It was so darned funny... it was just like Victor's jokes in episode four... a tribute to Vaudeville... and we were all in stitches. It was based on the premise of a gameshow, but all they ever did was banter back and forth. The first "question" was 'How many acres are there in a 50 acre farm?' and then there were cascades of farm jokes. The second audience participant had a name that none of them could pronounce to her satisfaction... and after about two minutes of "no! it's so-and-so", she finally just told them to call her by her first name. It felt like it was part of the program, they adapted so well. LOL

Immediately following this, there was a session where Mr. Oppenheimer played "radio bloopers" from an extensive collection that he had built up. Mostly announcers bungling things up... For instance: "He is the rich man who can avail himself to all of men's facilities... um, faculties." Unabridged laughter. And then there was the one, poor news anchorman for, I think CBS... who couldn't connect to his outside sources twice in the same broadcast and ended up trying to describe what he thought was coming... with hysterical results. I had "Newsday" running through my mind... LOL

After a short break there was then a "celebrity interview" with Beverly Washburn, a dear friend of Jack Benny and an actress with many big TV shows and movies to her name. She said she had the honor of acting with Lou Costello in his only dramatic role (was that Wagon Train? - I can't recall) [Yep! Here's the episode!] and also of 'dying' in the arms of James T. Kirk during one episode of Star Trek. She was fun to listen to.

You'd think it was a full day already, but this was only the dinner break. Because of some technical difficulties, it was extended a little, and I drove up 8th street to the Crossroads Mall where I feasted on Lamb and Couscous from a Mediterranean grill. I had time to kill, so thankfully the mall has a Half-Price Bookstore in it. I ended up with a couple kids books and a book of photographs from the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Only three more shows to go upon returning! And I still had a moment when I got back, so I looked again at the silent auction. I hadn't noticed before, but one item was an 'Our Miss Brooks' script from 1948, so I browsed through it and laughed often!

I wasn't too entirely impressed with the next show, however, the episode of "Suspense" that was performed. But I guess it just wasn't my cup of tea. I did like how they made the squeaky door contraption make noise like a parrot though.

Oh, but the next show! A live radio performance of "The Wizard of Oz", complete with all the live musical numbers! It was introduced and intermissioned by snippets of "Baby Snooks". Interestingly, the lady who played Baby Snooks also played the Wicked Witch of the West. Completely different and well done! Besides Dorthy's great singing, I really liked the lady who played Snooks's baby brother's cries and Todo's yips... she was amazing! But then the guy who did the lion... could have been the guy from the movie. They were all so... fantastic!

To finish it off, they performed an episode of "The Great Gildersleeve".
It, like almost everything else today, was fabulous.

So much today has been brand new to me, yet vaguely familiar in style. I am so in awe of what a job Rupert Holmes did with Remember WENN... it's uncanny. And it's funny. A TV show about radio got me interested and fascinated with radio only so I can be amazed at the TV show all over again. Odd.

Jp