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Old Time Radio - 1940s

(4,938 Sterne; 8 Bewertungen)

Old Time Radio of the 1940s, from England. This is a collection of BBC radio comedies: "Band Waggon" starring Arthur Askey and Richard Murdoch; "ITMA" (It's That Man Again) starring Tommy Handley; "Much Binding in the Marsh" starring Richard Murdoch and Kenneth Horne; "HMS Waterlogged" starring Eric Barker, with Jon Pertwee; "Studio Stand Easy" starring Charlie Chester; "Up The Pole" starring Jimmy Jewel and Ben Warriss, with Jon Pertwee; "Life with the Lyons" starring Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels; and "The Will Hay Programme" starring Will Hay. Little of the BBC's radio output of the 1940s has survived, as most shows were broadcast live and were not recorded. The 78 rpm disk recording technology, which was all that was available prior to the development of tape recording, resulted in sound quality that was significantly worse than a live broadcast, so it was better not to fill the air-time with recordings, and being a non-commercial broadcaster the BBC had no financial incentive to preserve its output. Those factors have made BBC recordings from this period rare. Here are some of the few which were preserved in their archives. "Band Waggon" was the first weekly BBC comedy series to be broadcast on the same day of the week and at the same time of day. Previous comedy shows had been aired on an ad hoc basis; but here, for the first time, was a series which would be on the air at the same time each week, and this helped to build a big audience for each week's broadcast. The series starred popular stage comedian Arthur Askey. He was its "resident comic", in that he appeared in every broadcast, rather than featuring a different comedian each week, as had been the usual practice up until then. Askey, however, suggested the term be taken literally, and that in the sketches he should pretend he was literally resident at the BBC, living in a (fictitious) apartment on the roof of Broadcasting House in London. This gimmick caught the public's imagination, and "Band Waggon" quickly became the BBC's most popular pre-war radio comedy. "ITMA", short for "It's That Man Again", was a wartime comedy that began in 1939, starring popular stage comedian Tommy Handley. It derived its name from newspaper headlines of the time, in which the phrase "It's That Man Again" was frequently used as an ironic reference to Hitler. Indeed, sending-up Hitler (and the German war effort generally) was a mainstay of the series. For the first time on the BBC a comedian was allowed to poke fun at a foreign leader. The BBC, usually terribly polite, generally frowned upon such goings on; but once war was declared they changed their policy pretty quickly. The result was a very topical show. The humour in the scripts tended to date very quickly, and the point of a joke might be lost just a fortnight later. The wartime show for the Services, "Merry Go Round", comprised three seperate series: one for the Army, one for the Navy, and one for the Airforce. These rotated, so that each was heard once every three weeks. The Air Force show, "Much Binding in the Marsh", was the most successful of these, to judge by how long it lasted. The series starred Richard Murdoch, who had previously appeared alongside Arthur Askey in the pre-war "Band Waggon", and Kenneth Horne, who is now remembered mainly for his 1960s heyday in the two satirical successes "Beyond Our Ken" and "Round the Horne". During the war, "Much Binding in the Marsh" was set in the fictitious RAF station of Much Binding. But the show was so popular that it continued until 1953. In the immediate post-war period, then, the RAF base became a country club run by Murdoch and Horne; while the 1950s saw them running their own newspaper, 'The Weekly Bind'. The Army show was "Studio Stand Easy", starring comedian Charlie Chester. He was actually an Army Sergeant when the show was conceived, having been called-up following the outbreak of war. Unbelieveably, he was actually ordered by his commanding officer to write a smash-hit radio show! This, he later remarked wryly, was easier said than done. But he was a first rate comedian, who, like Kenneth Horne, continued to be very successful on radio well into the 1960s. The Navy's contribution to "Merry Go Round", initially entitled "H.M.S. Waterlogged", starred light comedian Eric Barker, supported by Jon Pertwee (who was later to have big successes in the BBC radio comedy "The Navy Lark" and on television as the third Doctor Who). After the war, "H.M.S. Waterlogged" evolved into "Waterlogged Spa", with the Naval Base becoming a health spa as the show continued into the post-war period. Many of the characters who Pertwee played in this show would later reappear in "The Navy Lark" in the 1960s! After "Waterlogged Spa", though, Jon Pertwee's next success came in the radio comedy "Up The Pole", starring variety comedians Jimmy Jewel and Ben Warriss (who already had a well known double act on the music-hall stage, as Jewel and Warriss). Pertwee played a variety of crooked characters in this show, always 'on the make', and those characters later formed the basis of the humorously dishonest Chief Petty Officer who he played in "The Navy Lark", when it began in 1959. "Life with the Lyons" starred American husband-and-wife team Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels, film stars of the day. Along with their real life children, they literally formed a family show, in this long running radio series. Set in the early 1950s, it was so popular that it was still on the air at the end of that decade. Finally in this collection, a rare surviving edition of "The Will Hay Programme", starring film comedian Will Hay. This ran for three series during 1944 and 1945, with Will Hay playing the inept schoolmaster character for whom he was best known in his cinema films, as Dr Muffin, the Headmaster of St Michael's School for Boys. The files listed in the column VBR MP3 are not in fact variable bit rate files. This is a column for files which do not fall into any of the Archive's standard bitrate categories. Most of these on this page are 80 Kbps, at a sample rate of 48 kHz.

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.

Chapters

Band Waggon - s03e03 - 1939-09-30

43:28

ITMA - 1943-10-07 - Tommy Establishes Headquarters

29:17

ITMA - 1944-02-17 - RAF Edition

21:59

ITMA - 1945-03-29 - Tom's Newspaper

29:21

ITMA - 1945-05-10 - Victory in Europe edition (a.k.a. Victory ITMA)

26:51

ITMA - 1949-01-06 - Last Ever Recording

27:19

Life With The Lyons - s01e01 - Thirteen For Dinner

27:31

Merry Go Round - 1945-08-08 - HMS Waterlogged

26:45

Merry Go Round - 1945-09-14 - Studio Stand Easy

26:44

Merry Go Round - 1945-11-04 - Much Binding in the Marsh

29:22

Much Binding in the Marsh - s01e20 - 1947-05-15

28:02

Much Binding in the Marsh - s02e02 - 1947-12-03

29:11

Much Binding in the Marsh - s03e20 - 1949-02-01

29:27

Much Binding in the Marsh - s04e10 - 1950-05-24

28:30

Much Binding in the Marsh - s07e05 - 1953-08-18

27:25

Up The Pole - 1948-11-01 - Only surviving recording

29:14

The Will Hay Programme - s02e05 - 1945-01-17

28:44

Bewertungen

Files Are Okay, Online Player Is Screwy

(0 Sterne)

Hello, Mr. Prosser. The files that you mentioned don't play in the online player, but they will work if you download them and play them in your computer's media player. I've downloaded #1 and #4, and they're working fine on my computer, in both the WinAmp and Windows Media Player programs. If you're on the hideous 'upgraded' site (with the bright white background), click 'MP3' under 'Download Options' at the upper right, and save the required mp3 files from the list that expands. If you're on the human-friendly classic Archive site (with the warm-tone background), scroll down and save the required files via the links in the column under the heading 'VBR MP3'. If you want to download all the files in a single 251Mb zip file, and you are on the classic site, just look for the link 'VBR ZIP' in the column on the left, under the heading 'Listen to audio'. This option may be on the upgraded site, but I couldn't find it. If you're on the upgraded site and you want to return to the classic site, click the circle at the top right that reads 'Exit' (just to the right of the 'Sign in' link), then click 'Exit to Classic Site' at the bottom of the white dialogue box that appears. Hope this helps, and if you enjoy Band Waggon, do a search on "Arthur Askey" to see some of his movies; they're all wonderful (and 'Bees In Paradise' is pure eye candy; yowza!)

So many of these don't work!

(0 Sterne)

Numbers 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15 and 16 are completely useless. They just won't play...which is frustrating because there's so little of British recorded material (which I'm most interested in) available to begin with. There's an almost infinite selection of American material freely available, but the stupid, tight-fisted BBC doesn't want to share anything. They forced the Imperial War Museum to remove all wartime recordings from its on line sound archive, and now none of it is available except in the very small selection of heavily edited snippets that we've all heard a thousand times. Thank goodness for this Old Time Radio site, which I think is a fantastic resource. Now, is there anyone who can fix these recordings so that they'll play, please?

These shows are out of copyright

(0 Sterne)

I posted these radio shows here because they are out of copyright. Under English law, set out in the Copyright Act of 1911, there is no such thing as broadcast copyright, because radio broadcasting was not invented until the 1920s. Consequently, there is no copyright in a broadcast that aired before 1957, the date when the legal concept of broadcast copyright was first created (in the Copyright Act of 1956). A broadcast in the UK by the BBC prior to 1957 is accordingly not covered by copyright; no copyright in it exists, not for the BBC nor for anyone else.

Gems that escaped the BBC vandals.

(5 Sterne)

It's criminal that the BBC didn't record early broadcasts - hundreds of episodes of drama, mystery and comedy lost forever - cultural vandalism. Will Hay is a comic genius. 'Old crumpet' is on top form in the two surviving episodes (the other being The Laundry) of the Will Hay Programme. Crumpet, D'Arcy Minor and Becket are a scream - "Learn some pottery" and "I know a bank" - Priceless! Much funnier live and in front of an audience, that's why it's tragic that nothing else remains.

Excellent!

(5 Sterne)

What an achievement to preserve classic comedy. I was only a child when Much Binding and ITMA were going to air, but they left an indelible impression on me, especially as they led to the Goons, Round the Horne (and Beyond Our Ken), Monty Python and Dad's Army especially. What a pity that current PC would never allow really taking the piss out of the status quo.

Classic British humour

(5 Sterne)

What fun to be able to hear these shows. The humour still stands up today. I would urge anyone who has had a stressful day to sit back and listen to any of these programmes.

Radio Spirits Scam!

(5 Sterne)

If "Radio Spirits" trys to put up a Takedown notice for these files, please ignore it, they have no ownership of these shows. The BBC copyrights ALL their shows regardless of age.

(4,5 Sterne)

Love Will Hay and this is great to hear and a rare find