Daily Comedy Broadcasts

Daily Comedy Broadcasts is less a single show than a reel of old-time radio comedy, stitched together from several classic series. Recent episodes draw on Amos 'n' Andy, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, The Baby Snooks Show and It Pays To Be Ignorant, each with its own cast and its own brand of chaos. The broadcasts arrive with their announcer introductions and sponsor pitches intact. The Amos 'n' Andy episodes take place in a small, crowded world of lodge halls, barbershops and offices. In one, Amos and Andy note that they are now on CBS every Sunday, and the story looks in on the Kingfish and his wife, Sapphire Stevens, as the fall season rolls around. Shorty the barber reports that he kept his razor skills sharp over the summer by shaving three dozen goats, then admits no goat has come into the shop yet. Another finds the Kingfish on the lodge-hall platform, honoring Andy's 20 years of membership by recalling that everyone once considered him a bum. The brothers then present an electric clock that set them back $8.50. A third sits with Andy and the Kingfish after a string of failed business deals, as Andy wonders aloud whether his life has been a failure. The humor in these episodes leans heavily on period dialect, which marks them clearly as products of their time. The Baby Snooks Show moves the trouble to Sycamore Terrace and the Higgins family. Daddy has just won his battle with Mummy over a new Easter outfit when Snooks opens a second front, and his lofty excuse about remuneration only hands her a new word to question. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet starts its haunted-house outing with Ozzie rattling off National Guard facts and Harriet answering each one with a flat no, right up until the silver plate, which she already knew about. Then the narration makes the neighborhood around 1847 Rogers Road eerie: a friendly elm gone unfriendly, an owl on a bare branch, a weather vane that might be a witch on a broomstick. It Pays To Be Ignorant plays a different game entirely. A plain question about who invented the Singer sewing machine sets off a story about a machine falling from a four-story window onto someone's head, a pun about stitches and a mix-up over Edison being an inventor of the first rank. That episode goes by the title What is a Mother-In-Law Sandwich. The sponsor breaks are part of the texture, with laundry soap promising a whiter wash, Lifebuoy health soap, Tums at 10 cents a roll and 1847 Rogers Brothers silver plate all pitched perfectly straight. One Amos 'n' Andy episode opens as a rebroadcast for the American Armed Forces and their allies, and another signs off with the CBS station identification. For a first listen, Amos 'n' Andy - The Broken Clock shows the Kingfish at work, and The Baby Snooks Show - Easter Bonnet shows Snooks laying siege to the household budget. The back catalog is large, so there is plenty beyond these.