Arthur got bumped this morning for a timely interview about the end of combat forces in Iraq. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything about the reschedule of this interview.

This coming Thursday, 2 September, my friend Arthur Anderson will be in conversation with my friend Bob Edwards on his XM Satellite Radio show. (Geez, dude, namedrop much?) From the show’s promo:

In the film Me and Orson Welles, Zac Efron plays a young actor who stumbles into the role of Lucius in the 1937 Broadway production of Julius Caesar. The young man actually cast in the role was Arthur Anderson. Now eighty-eight years old, Anderson went on to have a long career in radio and television, probably best-known as the voice of the Lucky Charms leprechaun. Anderson is the author of Let’s Pretend and the Golden Age of Radio, and most recently, An Actor’s Odyssey: Orson Welles to Lucky the Leprechaun.

Air times for the show are, in eastern daylight time, 8 am, 9 am, 10 am, 3 pm, 8 pm, 10 pm, and Friday 4 am and 9 pm.

If you aren’t a subscriber to XM Satellite Radio or Sirius Satellite Radio with the Best of XM package, you can still hear The Bob Edwards Show on the on-line service (better sound quality than from the satellites anyway) by signing up for a free trial.

Veteran journalist Daniel Schorr, whose hard-hitting reporting got him on Nixon’s ‘enemies list’ in the 1970s, dies at 93. More as I find it.

Edit: The New York Times obit.

Edit: For those who missed it, my trip to Politics and Prose to meet Mr. Schorr (includes photos and a short cell-phone video).

Looks like AOL is rejecting the Digest (or at least the most recent issue) across-the-board; if you are an AOL subscriber and received Vol. 2010 #114, let me know, please.

In the meantime, please complain to them, not to me…there isn’t anything I can do about it at this point. No other system seems to cause as much trouble as AOL…

Not sure quite why, and it is not all AOL addresses that are bouncing, but each recent issue had a subset of addresses that are bouncing with a hard (500-level) error. The error message implies the problem is with the recipient address, but it wouldn’t be the first time an AOL misconfiguration caused the error message to be wrong.

Not sure what to do other than monitor the situation, since the error is definitely in the AOL servers, not the Digest server. But in the meantime, if you’re not receiving issues and AOL is having trouble getting mail to me, feel free to use the Contact the Webmaster button over on the sidebar to get ahold of me. (Hum…I should change that to “Contact the Curmudgeon…”)

From The Paid Death Notices at the New York Times: HIMAN BROWN Paid Death Notice

From the paid death notice: “(He) died peacefully at his home in Manhattan on Friday June 4th 2010 at 8:13pm.”

Much thanks to Doug Douglass for posting the info to the OTR Digest.

From The New York Times: Art Linkletter, TV Host, Dies at 97

From the article: “Art Linkletter, whose ‘People Are Funny’ and ‘House Party’ shows entertained millions of TV viewers in the 1950s and ’60s with the funny side of ordinary folks and who remained active as a writer and speaker through his ninth decade, died Wednesday. He was 97.”

Over the past week I’ve been forced by unpleasant and uncomfortable circumstances to think a great deal about Eddie Carroll…don’t misunderstand me, remembering Eddie isn’t distressing at all, in fact it has been the one bright spot in an otherwise unfortunate and frankly unnecessary sequence of events.

During this introspection it occurred to me that many of you were not able to see Eddie (yes, we were on a first-name basis…he told me at our first correspondence that being called Mr. Carroll made him think he had to fill out a form) perform one of his best-known roles, that of Jack Benny. I am reluctant to call him an “impressionist,” since that doesn’t really do his performance justice; those of us who were lucky enough to attend a performance would become completely lost having Jack return for a while. Yes, it was that powerful.
(more…)

From CNN: Archie Comics announces new gay character

Riverdale High School, the stomping ground of comic book legend Archie Andrews, will open its doors to its first openly gay student. Hal Stone would not have liked this a-tal…

Last year, at the Cincinnati Old-Time Radio and Nostalgia Convention, I had the great honor to be asked to host Eddie Carroll for an hour of stories and fun. As I always do, I did some research ahead of time, but asked my daughter Katie to research Eddie’s work as Jiminy Cricket…both as a learning exercise and to involve her with the hobby. She did a wonderful job, reading and researching, so during the discussion I thought it only fair to have her ask the questions, since she was the one who was prepared.

From my high-definition master recording of April 25, 2009, here is Eddie Carroll and my daughter Katie in a short “one-on-one” session.

Dr. Mike Biel informed me this evening, and the website http://www.eddiecarroll.com/ confirms, that Eddie Carroll, Jack Benny impressionist and the voice of Jimney Jiminy Cricket, died this morning (Tuesday, April 6). The only information I currently have is posted to the above website; additional information, as well as links to published obits, will follow as soon as I get them.

Eddie Carroll and Katie Summers Go figure; after having had dinner with Eddie and Carolyn Carroll the evening before, and interviewing him, she suddenly got shy asking him for an autograph.

From the Washington Post’s Post Mortem blog: Actor Robert Culp Dead

From the article: “Actor Robert Culp, 79, best known for his work in television’s ‘I Spy’ in the 1960s and more recently in ‘Everybody Loves Raymond,’ died this morning after a fall at his Hollywood home, authorities said.”

For the wonderfulness of himself…if I can find it, I’ll run his old-radio debut on the podcast.

The Cincy Convention has moved hotels, so we have a new informational flier. Download, print, and register.

 Cincinnati Convention Flier Version 2: Download

It looks like an issue of the Internet OTR Digest vanished off the face of the earth. I’ve manual recreated the issue from the inbound logs and released it, but if anything you sent to the Digest doesn’t appear in the next day or so, please resend.

Today we’re making something of a departure from the usual Old-Time Radio podcast; these recordings were made earlier today, March 17, 2010 from various radio stations around the country. They all feature interviews with my friend Arthur Anderson, best-known as the original Lucky Charms Leprechaun. Understand, all of the interviews here are from various “morning zoo” programs, so the local talent may or may not be particularly knowledgeable about Old-Time Radio.

There are three interviews here; KZPS in Dallas, Texas, Ocean 98.1, The Best of Rock in Ocean City, Maryland, and WGTY Great Country 107.7 out of Gettysburg/Hanover, Pennsylvania.

You may stream the program using the player below, or download it with the link. Remember, by subscribing to this blog with any podcasting client (Juice, iTunes, etc.) the shows will be automatically downloaded to your computer or MP3 player!

 Arthur Anderson St. Pat's Interviews [22:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

From The New York Times: Panic in Georgia After a Mock News Broadcast

An independent television station in the republic of Georgia panicked the populous by running a satirical “mocumentary” depicting a Russian invasion, drawing comparisons to Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” broadcast. Everything old is new again…

In an apparent attempt to get their Live365 radio station canceled, the hosts of Radio Once More, Ken Stockinger and Neal Ellis, have invited Your Obedient Servant and the Worst Voice in Internet Audio to guest on their program this Friday evening, January 22nd, at 9:00pm Eastern Standard Time, 6:00pm in the west (and in Baltimore it’ll be 9:42).

Please join us at that time, when we will attempt to answer the question, “What the heck is he doing here?” Check out http://www.radiooncemore.com/ for complete details and to listen in.

I realize this is a little early to be thinking about next October 21-24 Friends of Old-Time Radio Convention, but if you’ve considered attending (and you really should), now would be a great time to make hotel reservations.

Louise at the Ramada Plaza (formerly the Holiday Inn) tipped Jay Hickerson off to a great deal…don’t know whether it’s a typo, they are treating the seperate wings of the hotel (old and new) as different or what, but…

Head to the Ramada web-based reservation system and do a hotel search for Newark, NJ. You will find two listings for the Ramada Plaza…one that lists at $79.00/night, and another for the same building that lists for $49.00/night. Obviously, pick that latter one, which is the best price on this hotel I think I’ve ever seen! No pre-pay is required, and reservations can be canceled up to 6:00pm the first night.

This just in from our friend Jim Widner; a clip from Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show where he (as usual) picks on Sean Hannity. What could possibly be old-time radio-related about that? Well, check out the “young producer” Jon introduces at the end of the bit…folks who attend the Friends of Old-Time Radio Convention will certainly recognize him…

This is the second version of the Mercury Theater presentation of The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells and adapted for radio by Howard Koch, provided to me by Martin Grams, Jr. and possibly from the collection of Terry Salomonson, proprietor of Audio-Classics.com. We will refer to this, for the sake of discussion only, as program #2.

I haven’t really had the chance to listen to this yet, so we’re going to explore the similarities and differences of the two versions together. I apologize for taking so long to get this posted, as I received it quite a few days ago from Martin, but life frequently gets in the way of our “best-laid plans.”

So for those of you are interested in comparing this to the other copy Martin provided to continue the discussion on the Internet OTR Digest, well, here it is.

You may stream the show using the player below, or download it with the link. Remember, by subscribing to this blog with any podcasting client (Juice, iTunes, etc.) the shows will be automatically downloaded to your computer or MP3 player!

 Mercury Theater - The War of the Worlds Program #2 [60:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download