Hollywood Memoir: Radio Actors in the Old Days

Here’s a

Hollywood memoir

(or memory) that folks in my generation will recall. For those of you who are in the boomer generation or younger, way back in the 1940s and ‘50s, before television drama and situation comedy there was radio drama and situation comedy. I know you think radio is something you listen to in your car or a thing that provides background music in your home or guys arguing about sports or political bombast. But it used to be a lot more that that.

A few of the dozens dramas: Lux Radio Theater, Sam Spade, Dragnet, Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, (I love that title.) The Shadow, The Inner Sanctum, Gangbusters (My favorite)

Some of the countless comedies: Amos ‘n’ Andy, (My favorite though now incredibly politically incorrect) Duffy’s Tavern, Fibber McGee & Molly, The Jack Benny Program, Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy (Candice’s dad, strangely, became famous as a ventriloquist on radio. Later when TV came in it turned out that his mouth moved.)

And a small sampling of the daytime (original) Soap Operas: Backstage Wife, The Goldbergs, The Guiding Light, Ma Perkins, One Man’s Family, Pepper Young’s Family, Portia Faces Life (The moniker “Soap Operas, abbreviated as “Soaps” came into being because nearly all of them were sponsored by household cleaning products.)

These shows and countless other less famous (and local) ones were presented on the radio live. Many of the actors worked several shows. It was not uncommon for an actor to finish a show, run to another studio, pick up a script and go on the air reading their role cold. These people had to be not necessarily good actors in the current understanding of that appellation but quick, glib readers.

This was a high pressure line of work not just for the actors but for the writers as well. A story illustrating this was told to me by my friend and acting mentor, Kathleen Freeman, seen in this photo with my mom Lucy.

Kathy Freeman with Mom.

In her younger years Kathy was doing a radio drama – I’ve long forgotten what show – the writer of which was somewhat of a tippler and notoriously late with his scripts. On one occasion he exceeded his own record for tardiness in that the show was on the air live before he finished the script. Between gasps of laughter Kathleen related how the cast could see this guy, framed by a halo of cigarette smoke, in the control booth frantically typing away. A production assistant would snatch a finished page with its carbon copies (youngsters, look that up) from the typewriter, rush to the studio and pass the pages out to the actors. There were a lot of stretch signals coming from the director in the booth cuing the cast to slow down so as not to finish a page before the next one was completed. Kathy Freeman, never known to be a liar, swore that this was a true story. In the biz myself for most of my adult life and having witnessed as well as participated in many bizarre on stage events, I have no reason to disbelieve this hilariously harrowing tale.

This bit of history is presented to illuminate the descriptive term “radio actor” that is applied to some performers who are gifted with quick and agile minds but lack depth in their performances. That was me. My best performance in an acting role was often my cold reading of the script at the audition. Having never taken a professional acting class I never thought about “developing a character” until, ironically, my last role on the off-Broadway stage. That story is in the last chapter of Three Stages, the first book of my memoir trilogy.

Though this is not an excerpt from my Hollywood Memoir you’ll find many more inside showbiz tales when you click here to get Three Stages.

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