Customer Reviews

The Smithsonian Collection: Old Time Radio: Comedy & Laughter

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Thank You to the people who decided to recover all these great memories of the past.When I was a child we sat in front of the radio for hours and listened to these wonderful broadcasts!
WONDERFUL!

This is a wonderful and excruciating collection.

If you've read the biographies of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, you know how much loathing they had for the work they did on these programs. Hammett took his timeless hard-boiled detective, Sam Spade, and made him a commercial smoothie for more than a few of the programs on these CDs. Chandler wrote a few, too.

Like their protagonists, these authors did it for the money, which they needed for liquor. What's tough about listening to these works is that the brilliance is still there, but in between terrible cliches, hackneyed and contrived plots, and, in a few cases, really bad radio acting.

But you cannot do without this collection if you have any serious interest in 20th Century American history and culture. If you only view this as a compelling argument against the commercialization of art, so be it.

But it's funny as heck to hear independent filmmakers today bemoaning the levelling effect of popular media. It was just the same way in 1945 as in 2005, and we're somehow still producing great art in so many venues.

Like Talking Heads used to say, "same as it ever was."