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| June Haver caught kissing Santa Claus! |
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| Leslie Brooks |
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| Judy Garland |
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| Olive Thomas |
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| Diana Dors |
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| Harry Langdon... okay, I thought it was funny. |
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| Diana Lynn (I'd like to be that snowman.) |
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| Jane Greer says, "Well, I can ask for it, can't I?" |
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| Louise Brooks |
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| Delores Del Rio |
Our Gang, also known as The Little Rascals, continue to air on television decades after they first premiered in theaters back during the silent era. Released commercially on VHS and DVD multiple times, fans of the comedies are fully aware of how the original nitrates have been decomposing. What continues to get re-released on DVD and screened on television are the same 1980s print transfers, slightly fuzzy and with occasional defects. Finally, almost 90 years later, the comedy shorts are being digitally restored and you have the option to help make that happen.
Created by studio executive Hal Roach, the same man responsible for those Thelma Todd, Charley Chase and Laurel and Hardy comedies, the shorts are today noted for showing children behaving in a relatively natural way. Those raw nuances apparent in children make the gems touching and comedic. They also broke ground by portraying white and black children interacting as equals -- even though on rare occasion someone crawls out of the woodwork to express otherwise.
Classic Flix, through a licensing agreement with Hallmark, who owns the rights to the comedy shorts, was hell bent on preserving and restoring the first 22 sound shorts. The budget, set at $70,000, could easily have been twice as much ($140,000) because of the truly horrible condition of the film elements. In most cases, the elements themselves are on nitrate film stock, almost 90 years old. The company has a track record for restoring films from original elements, with superior results. The sound would also be restored.
Regrettably, the crowdfunding platform was not a success and only 45 percent of the funds were raised. As a result, the restoration project was cut in half and only the first 11 shorts will be contained on volume one, featuring shorts from 1929 to 1930.
Thankfully, a second volume may happen if the first volume sell enough copies. The company has a link where people can pre-order the first volume now to continue supporting the cause:
This was followed by Facing the Flag (1958), emulating the original illustrations for Verne's novels, also known as The Fabulous World of Jules Verne. This was followed by three Verne escapes that science-fiction fans are always seeking out to watch: The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962), The Stolen Airship (1967) and On the Comet (1970). Filmmakers Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam credit Zeman's work as a partial influence on their craft.
Very little has been documented about Zeman and his work until the recent issue of Filmfax (issue #157) was released on newsstands this past month. Woodson Hughes put together a fabulous magazine article containing numerous behind-the-scenes photos and historical perception of the films he produced. His films were recently restored from archival elements and released on DVD. And in 2015 a documentary was released about Zeman. It seems his work was always appreciated and now brought to the attention of mass media for rediscovery. I recommend you subscribe to Filmfax magazine, and be sure to grab the recent issue with Woodson Hughes' article.
http://www.filmfax.com/page1/page1.html
The Lone Ranger radio program premiered in 1933, broadcast from radio station WXYZ in Detroit, Michigan. By 1934 the program extended coverage beyond Michigan, reaching as far west as Chicago and as far East as New York City and Connecticut. Beginning in February 1938, producer George W. Trendle commissioned every radio broadcast of The Lone Ranger be recorded on transcription disc for syndication. By April 1938 the radio program could be heard across the nation courtesy of these transactions, under local sponsorship. In Atlanta the program could be sponsored by a local bakery and in Houston the program could be sponsored by a furniture store.
Charles F. Summers, III, age 64, of York, Pennsylvania, died peacefully on Wednesday, November 25, 2020 at UPMC Pinnacle Harrisburg. Known by family and friends as Chuck or Charlie, he worked for many years as an equipment operator for the York City Parks Department. He also owned and operated his own computer IT business and was the administrator of the Old-Time Radio Digest. At a time when the hobby needed communications and a transition to new collectors in the digital age, who was there? Charlie. He filled the need when others did not, would not, or could not even detect that there was a need. Remember radio scribe Elliott Lewis once had a coffee mug that said, "Where were you when the page was blank?" It was Charlie who picked up the baton when no one else did. That is the legacy he left behind.
Charlie was a great guy and a technical and digital pillar in the hobby of old-time radio. In the late 1990s and the turn of the new century, everyone in the hobby heard of Charlie Summers before they met him. And that was the irony that we later found out. Whether you knew Charlie Summers as the administrator of the OTR Digest or the coffee drinker who hung out at old-time radio conventions, we all benefited from his contributions.
In 1998, Charlie created the Old Radio Digest (which would be affectionately known as the OTR Digest and the OTR Roundtable), a listserv providing Internet users with a platform to communicate and exchange information regarding old-time radio programs. Primitive as "listserv" and dial-up may seem in today’s social media world, this was difficult and dedicated work. Charlie confessed once that the internet served as a communication medium for personal relationships, which meant everyone with an opinion was bound to be more critical than praising. Such criticisms could be detrimental to the hobby so the role of an administrator meant extinguishing fires and serving as both judge and jury – which was bound to disappoint many users over the years and Charlie, sadly, took the heat by virtue of office.
Through the OTR Digest, fans of vintage radio programs who had access to the Internet were able to learn about clubs, newsletters, fanzines, the discovery of lost radio programs, and get contact information for collectors who bought, sold, and traded old-time radio. When Bill Pfeiffer, the maintainer of old.time.radio Digest, died as a result of an auto accident in September 1999, a number of people cooperated to move the Digest to Charlie’s personal website. He reveled in the joy of old-time radio, and it was his desire to use the Internet to expose old-time radio to the masses.
In an era before Facebook and Yahoo Groups even existed, the OTR Digest was the most popular discussion platform for anything related to old-time radio. Subscribers shared information and opinions, reviews and the latest news from the hobby. The OTR Digest is credited for having contributed to the ongoing success of the Friends of Old-Time Radio Convention and the Cincinnati Old-Time Radio Convention. It was in the OTRDigest that people learned about the annual fan gatherings, OTR clubs, newsletters, and discoveries from radio’s Golden Age, thus widening the perspective of the hobby itself.
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| Hal Stone (left) and Charlie Summers (right) |
Charlie began listening to and collecting old-time radio in the late 1960s. He grew up watching 1960s television (especially Star Trek), relished the 1968 masterpiece Night of the Living Dead, enjoyed listening to The CBS Radio Mystery Theater, shared a deep appreciation for independent coffee shops, considered himself a guru with computers, disliked blog spammers, and embraced the prose of radio commentator Bob Edwards. For years Charlie insisted he maintained the largest collection of Bob Edwards radio broadcasts in the United States. There is no reason to doubt his claim.
It was his presence at the annual fan gatherings where we all came to know the “ol’ curmudgeon” as he often referred to himself. With a jovial wit, wicked sense of humor and infectious laugh, no one could resist the charms of Charlie Summers. At one of the Cincinnati Old-Time Radio Conventions, Charlie bragged that he knew every George Carlin routine by heart and when challenged to recite one verbatim, he did so flawlessly. As a frequent attendee at old-time radio conventions, Charlie became good friends with radio actors Harry Bartell and particularly Hal Stone, with whom he formed a close bond. For years Charlie debated going to conventions after the untimely death of Stone, questioning whether it was worth the travel to visit a hotel empty on friendship, in what he once remarked, “resembled a mausoleum.” But Charlie still went to conventions afterwards to see his friends and share some laughs.
For many years, at the Friends of Old-Time Radio Convention, Charlie could be found in the panels/seminar room handling the camera equipment to capture the events for preservation. More than once, he dismissed the notion that anything he did for the hobby was monumental, firmly believing that acting as an administrator for the Digest was merely a laborious, but happy, job. His work was acknowledged on more than one occasion as a recipient of both the Parley E. Baer Award and the Allen Rockford Award. But no greater acknowledgement can one bestow Charlie Summers than one particular year when he paid a visit to the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention. “We decided to have lunch together,” recalled Fred Berney. “Just walking from the dealer’s room to the hotel’s restaurant he was stopped by a number of people who treated him like a celebrity. I doubt if there are too many people in the OTR hobby who didn’t know the name Charlie Summers.”
Anyone who knew Charlie personally would attest that old-time radio came third in his list of accomplishments. His wife, Annie, and his daughter, Katie, were the center of his world. Annie was the handlebars to his bike and Katie was their proudest accomplishment. Together with his daughter they co-hosted their own Internet radio program and contributed entries for Radio Rides the Range (2014, McFarland Publishing).
For Charlie, the computer and the Internet was his universe. The brightest star in the digital sky may be gone forever, but his efforts to widen our perspective will never be forgotten. The Old Radio Digest was his legacy to the hobby, and we will forever be grateful.
For anyone who is not familiar with Bear Manor Media, the publishing house responsible for probably more books about retro television, classic Hollywood, celebrity biographies and old-time radio than any other publishing company, you may want to check out their website at www.BearManorMedia.com
The publishing company has a 25 percent off sale going on right now which is applied automatically during checkout. Even if you cannot purchase books right now, browsing their website is like window shopping at your favorite book store. But with winter coming, who couldn't use a few books stacked to the side to read on a cold winter night?
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| Audrey Ferris |
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| Betty Grable |
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| Joyce Holden |
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| Anne Shirley, Carol Stone and Rosina Lawrence |
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| Judy Garland |
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| June Lang |
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| Leila Haymes |
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| Lillian Wells |
Did you know there is an official Lone Ranger fan club?
I did back in 1990 when I signed up and became member #10. Today the club has over 5,000 members and four times a year they mail out a newsletter concerning all things Lone Ranger. Past issues of The Silver Bullet are available to read online when you are a member of the club. They give you a Username and Password when you sign up to become a member.
The website is listed below.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Laurie York Erskine was in the forefront of living authors who reached a wide audience. He was also incredibly prolific: 20 full-length novels, over a hundred short stories in such magazines as Colliers and the Saturday Evening Post, articles in the New York Herald-Tribune and Life, eight motion pictures, major network radio broadcasts, a number of stage plays for boys, texts for United States Armed Forces Institute courses in citizenship for enlisted personnel, and a war memoir selected for the Library of the Imperial War Museum in London.
There can be no debate that his greatest success was Renfrew of the Mounted, the dramatic series of a Canadian Mountie who was more than a match for the wiliest and most hard-boiled of criminals. The cry known as the Renfrew call — which children all over America imitated, heard daily on the long-running radio program — echoed through city streets and alleys. In an era when brutality and bloodshed seemed to be exerting a baleful influence on young and old, Renfrew was unusual in that he dealt with his enemies without stooping to torture, dishonesty, and third-degree methods. In consequence, a greater strain was put on his courage and moral behavior, and he was respected, even revered, by the underworld. At the peak of his popularity, the followers of Erskine’s stories, books, and radio programs could be counted in the millions.
The Renfrew novels were written and published partly out of necessity; Erskine donated the profits from his handiwork to the funding of a private boys’ school. The school needed what money Erskine could chip in — far more than it needed his presence — which kept him busy at writing, and often took him away for prolonged absences. He always came back, and everyone on campus recalled his writing always played second fiddle to his interest in the educational influences of the school. It was this financial responsibility that sustained unceasing production of Renfrew of the Mounted adventures in both short story and novel form.
For a few short years Renfrew of the Royal Mounted reigned supreme as the top Canadian Mountie in both popularity polls and as a nationwide pop culture franchise. Such adventure stories of a frozen Northern territory in which Mounties replaced the heroic sheriffs and gunslingers of the American Western, exoticized locales such as the Yukon, offering the local color of dogsleds, fur thieves, trappers, drunk gamblers, and foolish gold prospectors. With the majority of the Canadian Mountie novels written prior to 1920, and the first Renfrew novel published in 1922, his stories were (historically speaking) belated entries in the sub-genre that proliferated in the early 20th century.
By the late 1930s, every movie studio in California attempted to cash in on the popularity of the Canadian Mounties. Cowboy stars Kirby Grant, Russell Hayden, and Charles Starrett swapped riding chaps and six-guns for scarlet coats with shiny brass buttons. As multiple film critics pointed out, Saskatchewan might as well have been in Texas. Laurie York Erskine, however, continued to write for the magazines, mapping out the plots for future Renfrew novels, and found continued success with Renfrew on radio for three separate incarnations over two different networks.
To add to Erskine’s troubles was Challenge of the Yukon (later re-titled Sergeant Preston of the Yukon) which was syndicated across all 48 states. There was room for only one Canadian Mountie in a market that was oversaturated with cowboys and private detectives. Summed up, Erskine’s contribution to the war cause resulted in the demise of Inspector Douglas Renfrew, as well as any and all future income from the franchise.
To add insult to injury, the fictional Mountie was left largely to Hollywood. By the late fifties, Mounties in Canada were rarely portrayed from historical studies but rather ironic or satiric sketches on radio and television. Today the Royal Canadian Mounted Police remains the federal and national police service of Canada, but not (in general) an active provincial or municipal police structure for local policing. Few today can tell you who Inspector Douglas Renfrew was, but many can instantly picture the comedic efforts of Dudley Do-Right.
Sadly, despite multiple attempts to revive the franchise from the 1950s through the 1980s, Renfrew of the Mounted fell victim to hard times. Fewer than a dozen of the almost 400 radio broadcasts are known to exist in recorded form. Erskine himself bequeathed the rights to his character to a university who chose not to renew the rights or trademarks, as did a defunct low-budget movie studio that (in the late 1930s) produced a series of eight Renfrew motion-pictures. As a result, the franchise fell into orphaned status and — until publication of this book — was bound for obsolescence.
It is my hope that this reference will rectify that oversight and, at the very least, preserve what remains of Renfrew of the Royal Mounted. After consulting a number of archives across the country, reading all of Erskine’s printed prose, and reading all of the radio scripts and thus documenting the plot summaries for your convenience, this book should plug in a gap that sorely needed to be filled. Look at it as an act of preservation, so to speak, which provides a major one-stop reference to all things related to Renfrew of the Royal Mounted, and to Laurie York Erskine.
I launched a Kickstarter to pre-sell copies of the book, with a special "thank you" gift for those to pledge to buy a book -- a CD with 13 "lost" episodes of the radio program (including two unaired audition recordings) that have never been heard since their initial broadcasts (from 1936 to 1957).
You can click the link below to make a pledge. And in advance, I thank you.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tallulahbankheadbook/renfrew-of-the-mounted-project
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| July 1934 |
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| KFAC Radio Premium from The Lone Indian program. |
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| 1950 |
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| Theme park post card from 1929. |