On the evening of February 2, 1936, The Baker's Broadcast presented the usual half-hour Sunday night feature of music, comedy and drama -- music provided by Ozzie Nelson, vocals by Harriet Hilliard, comedy by various comedians (formerly Joe Penner for a full season) and drama ranging from domestic squabbles to mystery thrillers. The program was also known as Believe-it-or-Not because Robert Ripley had a weekly feature on the program. Basil Rathbone was among the celebrity guests that particular evening and he starred in a six-minute sketch titled "The Man Who Was Hanged."
A few years ago all of the radio scripts were found and a digitizing process began to copy all of the programs into PDF files. As expected with many radio broadcasts of the 1930s, the majority of The Baker's Broadcast does not exist in recorded form. So these scripts prove valuable for almost every fan of pop culture. In this case, fans of Basil Rathbone would love to read the drama and as an interesting side note, he voiced the role of Will Purvis without being billed as Basil Rathbone. Why a character actor of radio did not play the role instead of Rathbone remains a mystery. But click the link below and enjoy this six minute oddity.
