Colin Clive on Radio - He's Alive!

[bobfells]

Here's Colin Clive live on the Rudy Vallee Fleischmann Hour broadcast of November 14, 1935 from NYC. This is the only radio work of Mr. Clive that I've ever come across and his appearance is decidedly ironic. He plays a dead man who finds himself in the afterlife with Leo G. Carroll, years before he trafficked with ghosts in TV's "Topper," as his guide. Some of Colin's dialogue has a significance now that it didn't have then.

I have excerpted the show to focus on the skit, which is a one act play by John Balderston (who co-wrote BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN). There's some intermittent surface noise and a couple of minutes are missing (probably a broken 78 disc) but the continuity works just fine:

[audio http://oldhollywoodincolor.files.wordpr ... 4-1935.mp3" target="_blank]

[Christopher Jacobs]

There's some intermittent surface noise and a couple of minutes are missing (probably a broken 78 disc)

As far as I know, all E.T.'s were 33 1/3 rpm, and ran about 15 minutes per side of the disc, playing from the inside to the outside. I used to have one with two episodes of CECIL AND SALLY (one on each side) that my dad had gotten from a radio station as a kid, but sadly my little brother cracked it back in the late 1970s. Much of it was still playable, however, until it was lost in the flood of 1997.

[bobfells]

There's some intermittent surface noise and a couple of minutes are missing (probably a broken 78 disc)

As far as I know, all E.T.'s were 33 1/3 rpm, and ran about 15 minutes per side of the disc, playing from the inside to the outside. I used to have one with two episodes of CECIL AND SALLY (one on each side) that my dad had gotten from a radio station as a kid, but sadly my little brother cracked it back in the late 1970s. Much of it was still playable, however, until it was lost in the flood of 1997.

I don't pretend to know for sure but I understand that the networks did not begin recording their broadcasts until about 1938 or '39. That's when those 33 1/3 rpm 16-inch came into play. Those discs were recorded from the direct feed, not off the air, so when the discs have survived in good condition they sound like the equivalent of commercial studio records ala Victor or Columbia. Prior to that, off the air recordings were made by private companies hired by some individual connected with the particular show. Rudy Vallee arranged to have his Fleischmann shows recorded and given the sidebreaks that we can hear coming every three or four minutes or so, I'm guessing that 78s were used. Elsewhere during that time, Eddie Cantor arranged for his Chase & Sanborn broadcasts to be recorded, so did Lawrence Tibbett with his Met Opera broadcasts, and of course, Cecil B. DeMille with his Lux Radio theater. The Lux shows do sound like they are on four-15 minute sides. But the Lady Esther Screen Guild broadcasts from 1939-40 are clearly on three minute 78s. Whatever the source or the format, we're lucky this material exists at all, and even luckier that so much is now available for free on the Internet.