Golden Age of Radio

'Tis the season to enjoy some favorite Radio Mystery Theater   Christmas Radio Shows episodes: 1975-12-24 0402 Christmas Carol (A) E.G. Marshall spotlights as Scrooge in this dramatic retelling of Charles Dickens' classic... 1977-07-25 0688 Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (The) The gift of a Christmas goose with a valuable jewel inside and an old hat send Sherlock Holmes...  1980-06-09 1092 That Magic Touch Christmas works a miracle for a beautiful divorcee and her cold and standoffish husband... 1980-12-25 1140 Holiday Visit (A) En route to visit her parents for Christmas, a couple is waylaid by a highway accident...

December 27, 1976 FEATURE ROBERT DRYDEN, ACTOR, ON O.HENRY, WRITER “Somehow, and I really don’t know how, I missed reading O. Henry,” says Robert Dryden who will star as the master short story writer for seven consecutive nights when the CBSRMT MP3 , starting its fourth year on Monday, Jan. 10, presents seven adaptations of O. Henry stories. “By playing the roles, I have become fascinated with the man,” say Dryden . “He was an artist with words, to be sure, and here and there you see flashes of great depth. He seems to have been a complex sort of person, enormously lonely, and sombre. “He had an uncanny awareness of the human condition and an understanding of people. whom he treated with a combination of toughness and tenderness. But apparently he had a low image of himself, thus a gravitating toward people on the bottom of the pile. “ He also had a marvelous ability to not use too many words, presenting his stories in a straightforward, simple manner. And he ...

March 8. 1979 RE:     MYSTERY THEATER “CLASSICS” TO:    STATION MANAGER Effective Saturday, March 31, until Sunday, December 30, the Saturday and Sunday broadcasts of MYSTERY THEATER will consist of selected classics originally aired during the first five years of this radio drama series. The first weekend of MYSTERY THEATER classics will feature “ Diary of a Madman ” by Guy de Maupassant, Saturday, March 31, and “ The Mysterious Stranger ” by Mark Twain , Sunday, April 1. In later weeks, stories by Edgar Allen Poe , Ambrose Bierce, O. Henry, Oscar Wilde, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Louis Stevenson and Emily and Charlotte Bronte will be heard. A complete list of the MYSTERY THEATER  classics is attached. Also, Specific program information will continue to be sent in the present manner by Norman Ginsburg, Director of Information Services. As a reminder, the Saturday and Sunday feeds of MYSTERY THEATER take place ...

April 30, 1979 SALT LAKE CITY’S KSL SPONSORING RADIO MYSTERY THEATER WRITING CONTEST In a movie designed to encourage high school students and the general public in its listening area to try their hand at writing radio drama scripts, KSL Radio, the CBS affiliate in Salt Lake City, is sponsoring a Radio Theater Writing Contest. KSL, which broadcasts both the CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER and SEARS RADIO THEATER, will award two winners of the contest week-long, all-ex-penses-paid trips to any city or cities on the Eastern Airlines Unlimited Mileage System. The winners and their companions will spend at least two days in New York where they will visit the studio of Himan Brown, producer-director of MYSTERY THEATER. The remaining five days can be spent in any of 107 cities, 12 countries, and one Magic Kingdom served by Eastern. Subject matter in not limited, says KSL. Writers may choose fiction, real life, Western, mystery, history, comedy, science fiction or any other category. Ju...

“ MYSTERY THEATER’S ” HIMAN BROWN GIVEN BROADCAST PRECEPTOR AWARD FOR 1979 Himan Brown, producer-director of the CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER , was presented a Broadcast Preceptor Award by San Francisco State University yesterday (May 6), the opening day of the University’s 29th annual Broadcast Industry Conference. The Preceptor Award is given every year to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the industry. Mr.Brown received the award “for his tremendous energy and dedication that have re-established radio drama as an art form.” *     *     * Contact:  Bob Fuller

December 10, 1979 “ MYSTERY THEATER ” BECOMES FIVE-A-WEEK SERIES STARTING WITH BROADCAST OF MONDAY, DEC.31 The CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER, beginning Monday, Dec. 31, will be broadcast five nights a week (Mon.-thru-Fri.) instead of seven, it was announced today by Richard M. Brescia, Vice President and General Manager of the CBS Radio Network. “We’ve decided to showcase this highly praised drama series on the evenings it has performed best for us ,” Mr. Brescia said. “The MYSTERY THEATER is now carried by more stations (253) than ever before. But they’ve found and we’ve found that peak listening to the series continues to occur during the Monday-thru-Friday broadcasts. Station clearances are also at their best during those five nights.” The CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER will begin its seventh year on CBS Radio, Monday, Jan. 7, Mr. Brescia noted, with the presentation of a five-part mini-series based on Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel “ The Last Days of Pompeii .” This story of ...

March 29, 1976 FEATURE ACTRESSES GET BREAK IN "MYSTERY THEATER" ADAPTIONS OF SEVEN SHAKESPEARE PLAYS William Shakespeare 's plays don't have many good parts for women, but dramatist Ian Martin, who has adapted seven of the Bard's works for consecutive daily presentation on CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER , starting Monday, April 19, has made certain that female actors appearing in the series won't feel alighted. "Although I've had to compress these long plays into much shorter lengths," says Martin, “I’ve tried very very hard to retain as much of the women’s roles as possible. Things are a lot different now.” In  Shakespeare 's day, Martin points out, there were no respectable women in the theater. “Their roles,” he says, “were taken by young boys whose voices hadn’t broken.  Shakespeare, I’m sure, would have liked to have written major parts for women, but in those days they couldn’t appear on the stage. Any who did were consid...