Raised on Radio

by Gerald Nachman

For everybody "raised on radio"—and that's everybody brought up in the thirties, forties, and early fifties—this is the ultimate book, combining nostalgia, history, judgment, and fun, as it reminds us of just how wonderful (and sometimes just how silly) this vanished medium was. Of course, radio still exists—but not the radio of The Lone Ranger and One Man's Family, of Our Gal Sunday and Life Can Be Beautiful, of The Goldbergs and Amos 'n' Andy, of Easy Aces, Vic and Sade, and Bob and Ray, of The Shadow and The Green Hornet, of Bing Crosby, Kate Smith, and Baby Snooks, of the great comics, announcers, sound-effects men, sponsors, and tycoons.In the late 1920s radio exploded almost overnight into being America's dominant entertainment, just as television would do twenty-five years later. Gerald Nachman, himself a product of the radio years—as a boy he did his homework to the sound of Jack Benny and Our Miss Brooks—takes us back to the heyday of radio, bringing to life the great performers and shows, as well as the not-so-great and not-great-at-all. Nachman analyzes the many genres that radio deployed or invented, from the soap opera to the sitcom to the quiz show, zooming in to study closely key performers like Benny, Bob Hope, and Fred Allen, while pulling back to an overview that manages to be both comprehensive and seductively specific.Here is a book that is generous, instructive, and sinfully readable—and that brings an era alive as it salutes an extraordinary American phenomenon.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Music

535 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Gerald Weil Nachman is a San Francisco journalist and author.

Reviews

[Johnny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading Raised on Radio was simply supposed to be a pleasant diversion. I would be reminded of all of those old radio programs I used to listen to when KGO re-ran them as part of a regular late-night nostalgia show. I had been too young to experience “The Whistler,” “Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons,” or “The Fred Allen Show” when they were originally on the air and had only discovered “The Life of Riley,” “Father Knows Best,” “The Lone Ranger,” “Gunsmoke,” “Dragnet,” and “Sgt. Preston of the Yukon” through their television incarnations. I have since listened to dozens of old radio programs on cassette and CD (as well as digital streaming) and I enjoy them very much. But I was totally unaware of how many shows I’d never heard. Raised on Radio will be prompting me to look for some others.

This book was even better researched than I expected. I learned a lot that I didn’t know. I never realized that it was Kenny Delmar on Fred Allen’s “Gasoline Alley” segment who introduced “That’s a joke, son!” with his Senator Claghorn character instead of Mel Blanc with his Foghorn Leghorn character (p. 111). I didn’t know about the silver-haired (Nachman calls it the “Dorian Gray” version of the puppet) head for Charlie McCarthy that was apparently, never used or about Edgar Bergen dying one day after he had performed a farewell run at Caesars Palace (p. 138). I pretty well knew about the blacklist in Hollywood, but I didn’t know that Ozzie Nelson had refused to fire an alleged Communist actor from his radio show because we needed to have proof in “America.” However, as in many cases, the actor resigned rather than have the sponsor cancel the entire show and put everyone else out of work (p. 235).

I knew that sponsors had tremendous power in those days and I was amused to read how the Leo Burnett agency in Chicago disliked the idea of Digger O’Dell, the friendly mortician, in “The Life of Riley.” They demanded that he be taken off the show, but the producer refused and the public loved the bad puns (p. 247). Nachman didn’t cite any of those puns, but I’ll add a couple of discussions. Riley says, “Digger, I bet if all your customers were laid end to end…” and before Riley can finish, Digger says, “They are!” And, of course, I even remember my grandparents saying Digger’s tag line about how he must “…be shoveling off.”

I really enjoyed reading the announcer test quoted in Raised on Radio. It read: “Penelope Cholmondely raised her azure eyes from the crabbed scenario. She meandered along the congeries of her memoirs. There was kinetic Algernon, a choleric artificer of icons and triptychs, who wanted to write a trilogy. For years she had stifled her risibilities with dour moods. His asthma caused him to sigh like the zephyrs among the tamarack.” (p. 264)

While I knew about the crooked quiz shows in television’s early years, I didn’t realize that the radio quiz shows had an unwritten rule that civilians were almost never allowed to beat servicemen in uniforms. As one former uniformed contestant remembers, “The uniforms wouldn’t be visible to people listening on their radios, but radio shows drew their energy from the enthusiasm and applause of the studio audience, and back then, soldier was a synonym for winner. A guy in a suit meant nothing.” (pp. 348-9)

I was enlightened by what would, today, be considered a sexist comment, but which very much rings true to the daytime drama listener of the past. One of the dominant creators of many “daytime dramas,” Anne Hummert, once said, “Worry, for women, is entertainment.” (p. 381). And I really enjoyed David Mamet’s comment about what a great training ground it was to write radio drama: “Good drama has no stage directions…The better the play, the better it will fare on the radio.” (p. 500)

Nachman is less enthusiastic about most of these old radio shows than I am, but his research is rather delightful. At times, Raised on Radio reads more like a catalog than a celebration, but I empathize with the vast scope of his effort.

[Rick Rapp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being a huge fan of old time radio, it is kind of surprising that I had this book for about 10 years before ever plunging into it. It is a nicely organized encyclopedia of all the major genres, shows, and performers of the Golden Age of Radio without ever becoming pedantic or "text-bookish." Nachman does a wonderful job of theorizing on why certain performers and shows became huge hits and why others failed miserably after only a short time, despite the big names involved. I would heartily recommend this book to any devotee of radio history or to anyone interested in the development of entertainment in the 20th century. You won't be bored or disappointed.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once upon a time, I was teaching some second-year law students. I wanted to suggest that a lawyer had over-coached his witness such that the words spoken by the witness were actually the words of the attorney. I attempted a simile: "Just like Edgar Bergen." The uniformly puzzled looks on my audience's faces said that they did not know the ventriloquist who partnered with his dummy Charlie McCarthy. Ending the uncomfortable silence which followed, one of the interns said, "I think he was Candice Bergen's father." As, indeed, he was.

The number of Americans who remember the Golden Days of Radio (1920-1950) grows smaller every year. Pop Quiz! How many of the following do you recognize? Edward R. Murrow, Walter Winchell, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Abbott and Costello, Fibber McGee and Molly, Amos 'n' Andy, Ozzie and Harriet, Our Miss Brooks, The Goldbergs, Spike Jones, Stan Freberg, Johnny Dollar, Sgt. Joe Friday, Dr. James Kildare and Dr. Leonard Gillespie, Irma Peterson, Kay Kyser, Hedda Hopper, Ethel and Albert Arbuckle, Bulldog Drummond, Lum and Abner, and Chandu. One strongly suspects that the score achieved is directly proportional to one's age.

SiriusXM is an audio streaming service which caters to the very precise interests of its listeners: 1970s pop, Hip-Hop, Willie Nelson, Broadway show tunes, Disney, Beatles, Contemporary Christian, Mary J. Blige, Latin Jazz, Bruce Springsteen, 1940s big band, New Orleans jazz, Grateful Dead, Bollywood, Classical symphony, R&B, Frank Sinatra, Hawaiian, Bluegrass, Coffee house, Yacht rock (!), Calming music for cats (!!). One of their many channels is devoted to the Golden Days of Radio 24 hours per day.

Author Gerald Nachman was literally "raised on radio." His ardour for the "golden days" of the medium is evident throughout his book. The result vacillates between memoir and academic history, each well-written for its genre. Nachman's reach is encyclopaedic; there are other texts which accomplish this better, e.g. John Dunning, On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. This is an excellent book for the aficionado of classic radio. The rest? Maybe not so much, unless you're an avid student of popular cultural history.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 30-year meteoric rise and fall of radio's influence on our lives may not appeal to readers who have not actually had the opportunity to listen to old time radio. For those OTR fans, however, this book is encyclopedic in its coverage. The "thematic" coverage for each chapter (comedians, soaps, news, etc.) helps avoid a confusing chronological description of radio's entire gamut of stars and events.

[Mary Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

From soup to nuts and everything in between! This book covers everything imaginable and more about the history of radio in America. From the beginning to the end, the topics covered were divided into chapters that were well researched and written. I found that I needed to take a break and read fluff to digest what I had learned. Not a quick read.

[Patrick Fero]

Terrific survey of the golden age of radio from about 1920 to 1962. Hit many of my favorites--I'm 82 and remember radio from WWII on--and several I didn't know about. It's hard to avoid repeating adjectives in such a subject treatment, but Nachman does a pretty good job of not repeating himself overmuch. I loved it and hated to read the last page, which I did at 3:30am.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provides an exhaustive overview of all the genres of radio programming from its golden age. Unfortunately though, it is riddled with errors on many details.

[Michael P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative and entertaining survey of Old Time Radio programs and how they came together. The book is marred by some copy editing misses, a couple of muddled statements, and a few factual errors. It is good enough to render previous surveys unnecessary.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

What starts as personal reminiscences about old time radio and the roll it played in the author's life turns into a very informative survey of the history of OTR.

[Matthew Perry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got lost in research. I enjoyed the personal stories of the radio stars, but it became cumbersome and hard to read the further along in the book.

[Andy]

nostalgic and somewhat politically incorrect but also fascinating. Radio seems underrated to me.