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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=playlist
As Halloween radio broadcasts go, it might be laborious to displace in American cultural reminiscence the variation of H. G. Wells’ The Battle of the Worlds that aired in 1938. Not each Halloween particular might be directed by a younger Orson Welles, after all, however that’s hardly a purpose to disregard the numerous different Halloween broadcasts from the Golden Age of Radio. This yr you may tune them in with the Youtube playlist above, which collects 149 such spookiest-time-of-the-season episodes from such beloved exhibits as Lum and Abner, The Aldrich Household, Fibber McGee and Molly, Our Miss Brooks, The Nice Gildersleeve, The Jack Benny Program, The Shadow, and extra.
Whether or not comedy, drama, or one other style apart from, old-time radio packages tended to grab upon the theme of each vacation that got here down the pike, and Halloween — with its costume events, ever-present risk of pranks, and door-to-door calls for — supplied their writers and performers a once-in-a-year alternative for unwonted levels of mischief.
For usually lighthearted exhibits, it was additionally an opportunity to go a minimum of a little bit bit darkish; for a present like Suspense, whose lengthy and sometimes chilling run started with an Alfred Hitchcock manufacturing, most weeks have been Halloween proper up till the top of radio’s Golden Age. (This playlist options a broadcast from August of 1961 that also entertains in October of 2022.)
If you happen to’d identical to a soundtrack straight from the basic American airwaves for subsequent Monday night time (or a weekend social gathering beforehand), have a take heed to the newly uploaded classic Halloween playlist simply above. Its fifteen tracks embody seasonally appropriate songs from Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., and Sarah Vaughan (to not point out its opener, a not-exactly-“Monster Mash” quantity from Bobby Pickett), with classic ads and different broadcast ephemera in between. It was as true in radio’s heyday of the late nineteen-twenties via the early sixties as it’s now: Halloween is the time to let blur the boundaries between mild and darkish, fantasy and actuality, the abnormal and the grotesque — and to make quite a lot of corny gags when you’re at it.
Associated content material:
Hear Vincent Worth, Horror Movie Legend, Learn 8+ Hours of Scary Tales
Completely happy Halloween! Louis Armstrong Performs Skeleton within the Closet (1936)
Hear 90+ Episodes of Suspense, the Iconic Golden Age Radio Present Launched by Alfred Hitchcock
Hear Orson Welles’ Iconic Battle of the Worlds Broadcast (1938)
Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and tradition. His tasks embody the Substack publication Books on Cities, the e-book The Stateless Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Century Los Angeles and the video sequence The Metropolis in Cinema. Comply with him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Fb.
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