Oscar-credentialed stars bring famous pictures to vintage radio.
The House of Squibb introduces the star and the Oscar record behind them, then a celebrated picture plays out as radio drama. Titles include 'My Man Godfrey', 'Lost Horizon' and 'Brief Encounter', plus Margaret O'Brien in her own screen role from 'Lost Angel'.
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Academy Award Theater collects vintage CBS radio broadcasts that went out under a shorter name, Academy Award. The premise is spelled out at the top. Well-known pictures are rebuilt as radio drama, and the stars who carry them arrive with their Oscar records read aloud. Greer Garson is introduced with six nominations and a 1942 win behind her. Olivia de Havilland comes billed as a two-time nominee. Margaret O'Brien is presented as the winner of a special 1944 award as outstanding child star of the year, and she is heard in her own screen role from 'Lost Angel'. The pictures bring honours of their own: 'Cheers For Miss Bishop' is billed as a 1941 nominee, and 'Brief Encounter' as the film voted best British motion picture shown at the International Film Festival in Cannes. Each introduction works like a short citation. The dramas cover a lot of ground. 'Cheers For Miss Bishop' is pitched as a tender love story, the story of an 'old maid', with de Havilland at its center. 'My Man Godfrey' has a comic exchange in which Miss Irene waits for a kiss from Godfrey, who answers that he does not approve of ladies kissing their butlers. He wants to keep his job, and says so. 'The Devil And Miss Jones', with Charles Coburn and Virginia Mayo, moves to a meeting of Neely store employees who insist they are not professional agitators. Their case in point is Tom Higgins, fifty-three, who came to work without the few cents for lunch and ate crusts another employee shared. 'Lost Horizon' goes somewhere else entirely. Its narration points up at the snow-capped peak of Karakal and down into the valley of the blue moon, where the pavilions of Shangri-La cling to the mountainside like flower petals. Wrapped around all of it is the sponsor. The House of Squibb talks up science, human health and a never-ending quest for perfection, then lands on the same promise of a name you can trust. That copy repeats almost word for word from broadcast to broadcast, and it becomes part of the period texture. Some recordings in the feed also carry modern ads around the vintage program. For a first listen, 'Lost Horizon' shows the descriptive side and 'My Man Godfrey' the comic one.
Made for: Suits a listener who enjoys vintage radio drama built around big Hollywood names and famous pictures, and who hears the old sponsor copy as part of the charm rather than an interruption.
What sets it apart: The hook is prestige: the announcer reads out a star's Oscar nominations and wins, or a picture's honours, before the drama starts, so the broadcasts arrive with their credentials attached.
Academy Award was a CBS radio anthology series that presented 30-minute adaptations of plays, novels or films. The program's title is listed in one source as Academy Award Theater. Rather than adaptations of Oscar-winning films, as the title implied, the series offered "Hollywood's finest, the great picture plays, the great actors and actresses, techniques and skills, chosen from the honor roll of those who have won or been nominated for the famous golden Oscar of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences."Listen to our radio station Old Time Radio https://link.radioking.com/otradioListen to other Shows at My Classic Radio https://www.myclassicradio.net/Podcast Service I Recommend http…
A butler dodges a kiss; you get movie-star performances with the dental-cream pitches intact.
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A radio anthology series presenting adaptations of Oscar-winning or nominated films, featuring child star Margaret O'Brien in 'Lost Angels'.
A classic radio drama adaptation of Robert Nathan's story 'Portrait of Jenny' starring Joan Fontaine and John Lund, presented by Squibb.
This episode presents a radio adaptation of the film Brief Encounter, starring Greer Garson, as part of a series featuring Oscar-nominated works.
A classic radio anthology series presents an adaptation of the Oscar-nominated film Night Train, starring Rex Harrison.
["Academy Award Theater's Watch on the Rhine stars Paul Lucas as Kurt Muller, a German refugee staying with Sarah's family outside Washington, D.C.", "The play turns on Kurt's explanation that he left engineering to work as an anti-fascist after the 1931 Nazi street fight in F\u00fcrth.", "Count de Brankovitz opens Kurt's briefcase, notices a gun, and starts probing for names like Max Freidank while the family tries to keep the visit calm.", "The stakes rise around a hidden $23,000 fund collected from supporters in the United States and Mexico, which Kurt insists must keep moving."]
A classic radio drama adaptation of the film 'Enchanted Cottage', sponsored by Squibb, featuring Hollywood actors.
A classic radio drama adaptation of the film 'Cheers for Miss Bishop' starring Olivia de Havilland, presented as part of the Academy Award Theater series.
Academy Award Theater presents a radio adaptation of Suspicion, centered on Lena and Johnny Asgard’s marriage, financial problems, and growing distrust.
Academy Award Theater presents a radio adaptation of Jezebel, with Betty Davis reprising her 1938 role as Julie Marsden and Ann Revere as Aunt Belle.
The Devil and Miss Jones places Charles Coburn's J.P.
Academy Award Theater presents William Powell in the 1936 comedy My Man Godfrey, a radio adaptation framed around America's Depression.
A dramatized adaptation of James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon, set in the mystical land of Shangri-La.
Ginger Rogers plays Kitty Foyle in this Squibb-sponsored Academy Award Theater adaptation, adapted for radio by Frank Wilson, in which Kitty must choose between Wynn Strafford and the doctor Mark Eisen.
Academy Award Theater presents a half-hour radio adaptation of the 1945 Oscar-nominated drama Guest in the House, starring Anita Louise, Kirk Douglas and Joan Loring.