In 1938, Walt Disney had his own NBC musical variety radio series, The Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air. Sponsored by Pepsodent with a weekly budget of $10,000 to $12,000, it was broadcast from the Disney Little Theater on the RKO lot, airing on Sunday afternoons from January 2 to May 21, 1938. Disney was both the host and the voice of Mickey Mouse, along with Donald Duck (Clarence Nash), Goofy (Stuart Buchanan), Clarabelle Cow (Florence Gill) and Minnie Mouse (Thelma Boardman). Scripted by comedy writer Bill Demling and radio actor Eddie Holden, the series also featured Old King Cole (Billy Bletcher), Clara Cluck (Florence Gill) and other Disney characters. Others heard on the series were Mel Blanc and Walter Tetley (later famed as nephew Leroy on The Great Gildersleeve and grocery boy Julius on The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show).

The opening theme was "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", and the Felix Mills Orchestra (with 33 musicians) supplied the music. Also heard was Donald Duck's Swing Band and Donald Duck's Webfoot Sextet (with cowbells, bottles, a car horn and a meat grinder creating Spike Jones-like effects), plus a 12-voice female choir (with four members who supplied the whistling for Minnie Mouse's Woodland Bird Choir) and an eight-voice male choir. John Hiestan was the announcer. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs opened February 4, 1938, and this radio series was created to promote the film. So after the debut "Robin Hood" episode, "Snow White Day" was heard January 9. The 20 episodes included "Ancient China," "Sleeping Beauty," "Who Killed Cock Robin?" and "William Tell".

Click below to hear seven episodes, beginning with ''Snow White", followed by "Mother Goose Land," "Cinderella," "King Neptune" (with Bea Benaderet as Miriam the Mermaid), "The Pied Piper" (with Hans Conried), "The Old Woman in the Shoe" and "Old MacDonald" (with Cliff Arquette in the title role and Mel Blanc as the hiccuping farmer's daughter). From the fourth episode on, the voice of Mickey was not Disney but was supplied by comedian Joe Twerp. And when Walt was too busy to host, he was impersonated by announcer Hiestan!
http://archive.org/details/MickeyMouseTheateroftheAir

Tampa Theatre interior

Kurt Loft captured the magic of the Tampa Theatre in his 2007 article for the Tampa Tribune:

Control click heading above to hear episode from November 19, 1940 which involves Yamilton's Department Store seen at far right middle in the aerial view. Go to the Internet Archive for many more episodes.

Here is Larry Yust's unforgettable short film The Lottery (1969), one title from an Encyclopedia Britannica educational film series. During the 1970s, I saw that Massachusetts Educational Television had made the series available, yet there was a curiosity. All the titles in the series were listed with the exception of The Lottery. This struck me as somewhat peculiar, so I made a phone call to find out why. I spoke to a woman who said that the MET "board members voted it out." So there you have it: This film was banned in Boston.

This is easily the best adaptation of the famed Shirley Jackson short story, first published in The New Yorker (June 28, 1948). Filmed in Fellows and Taft, California, the short is so naturalistic that it opens with a disclaimer ("The following is fiction"), even though it was part of a series called Short Story Showcase. Many people remember seeing this film in school and wanted to see it again years later, but it was hard to locate until it resurfaced six months ago.



Also see it here.

Joe Summers is played by Billy Benedict, a familiar face during the 1940s as a regular in the Bowery Boys. Benedict, who made almost 300 films and TV episodes before his death in 1999, was reunited with director Yust in the horror film Homebodies (1974), one of the few features ever directed by the talented Yust. Benedict spoke briefly about working with Yust in this interview.

The Academic Film Archive cited this "as one of the two bestselling educational films ever". When it was made, it had an accompanying ten-minute commentary film, Discussion of The Lottery by USC English professor Dr. James Durbin. To see the Durbin discussion, go here.

Shirley Jackson recalled reactions to the story in her 1960 lecture "Biography of a Story":

I had written the story three weeks before, on a bright June morning when summer seemed to have come at last, with blue skies and warm sun and no heavenly signs to warn me that my morning's work was anything but just another story. The idea had come to me while I was pushing my daughter up the hill in her stroller - it was, as I say, a warm morning, and the hill was steep, and beside my daughter the stroller held the day's groceries - and perhaps the effort of that last 50 yards up the hill put an edge to the story; at any rate, I had the idea fairly clearly in my mind when I put my daughter in her playpen and the frozen vegetables in the refrigerator, and, writing the story, I found that it went quickly and easily, moving from beginning to end without pause. As a matter of fact, when I read it over later I decided that except for one or two minor corrections, it needed no changes, and the story I finally typed up and sent off to my agent the next day was almost word for word the original draft. This, as any writer of stories can tell you, is not a usual thing...

One of the most terrifying aspects of publishing stories and books is the realization that they are going to be read, and read by strangers. I had never fully realized this before, although I had of course in my imagination dwelt lovingly upon the thought of the millions and millions of people who were going to be uplifted and enriched and delighted by the stories I wrote. It had simply never occurred to me that these millions and millions of people might be so far from being uplifted that they would sit down and write me letters I was downright scared to open; of the 300-odd letters that I received that summer I can count only 13 that spoke kindly to me, and they were mostly from friends. Even my mother scolded me: "Dad and I did not care at all for your story in The New Yorker," she wrote sternly; "it does seem, dear, that this gloomy kind of story is what all you young people think about these days. Why don't you write something to cheer people up?"

Curiously, there are three main themes which dominate the letters of that first summer—three themes which might be identified as bewilderment, speculation and plain old-fashioned abuse. In the years since then, during which the story has been anthologized, dramatized, televised, and even—in one completely mystifying transformation—made into a ballet, the tenor of letters I receive has changed. I am addressed more politely, as a rule, and the letters largely confine themselves to questions like what does this story mean? The general tone of the early letters, however, was a kind of wide-eyed, shocked innocence. People at first were not so much concerned with what the story meant; what they wanted to know was where these lotteries were held, and whether they could go there and watch.

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The NYC Paley Center has an upcoming (3/31) Bob and Ray panel discussion with Bob Elliott (now 85), Chris Elliott and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. The connection is that Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World" segment is based on an old Bob and Ray routine.

The other cast members on the Bob and Ray television series (1951-53) were Cloris Leachman and Audrey Meadows. Above: Meadows plays a game of Duplication with Bob and Ray. The game required Peppermint Patties, cards, checkers and cribbage boards. The series was also known as Club Embassy.

NPR interview with Bob Elliott.

Thanks to collector Ira Gallen, here's a 1952 clip from the series involving a pitch for the Bob and Ray Burglar Kit.
When you click to enlarge Bob and Ray Throw a Stereo Spectacular (RCA LSP 1773), you can see that on this 1958 Living Stereo record jacket Jack Davis managed to squeeze in almost every performer and group heard on the album. (The only one I don't see is the Percussion Ensemble.)

Listen above for episodes of Bob and Ray's Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife. When I was last at the Museum of Television & Radio (now the Paley Center), I saw they had a huge amount of uncataloged Bob and Ray shows. In 1954 I stayed up until 11pm to listen each night to their late night series, a bit more informal than their daytime shows, yet I never see that series mentioned in print and never run across any CDs or MP3s specifically noting the late night series. Odd. Does anyone know if this is around somewhere? Another item I recall: the Bob and Ray newsletter, available if one wrote in and requested to be placed on the mailing list. Has anyone ever seen this?