Golden-age radio, back in the living room.
WBW Theater presents classic old-time radio inside a fixed frame: a spoken invitation into the theater of the mind, then a sign-off that promises thrills, comedy, westerns and gangbusters. The recent run covers The Blue Beetle, Dimension X, Big Jon and Sparkie, a Martin & Lewis Show audition and morning talk from Breakfast With Dick and Dorothy.
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WBW Theater is a home for golden-age radio, and it makes no secret of it. Each episode in the recent run begins with the same spoken welcome. That welcome recalls the days when families gathered around the living-room radio and invites the listener into the theater of the mind, listing dramas, comedies, mysteries, thrillers and westerns as the fare. Then the vintage broadcast plays. At the end comes an equally fixed sign-off that promises thrills and adventure, rip-roaring comedy, shoot-'em-up westerns and gangbusters. The frame stays fixed while the contents vary widely. Pulp heroics are one strand. The Blue Beetle follows Dan Garrett, a rookie patrolman who fights the underworld in chain armor. In the stretch heard here he traces a bullet to a French machine gun, confronts a collector named Philip Radin, and signals his arrival with the sound of his magic ray machine. The broadcast even ends by crediting the character as a Fox feature from Mystery Men Comics magazine. Science fiction is another strand. Dimension X contributes 'Mars is Heaven', in which a ship's crew keeps looking for a logical explanation after landing on Mars, until Lieutenant Lustig runs off down the street and finds himself greeting his grandparents. Children's radio gets its turn too. Big Jon and Sparkie calls out to the boys and girls with a chapter titled 'Over The Falls In An Airplane'. In it the characters swap stories about glider records while their aircraft loses altitude, and the episode ends with talk of a secret meeting of the Order of the Glorious Knights of the Mystic Secret Circle. Comedy comes through the Martin & Lewis Show, heard in an audition with Bob Hope as guest. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis bicker over which half of the team matters, with a nod to Fibber and Molly along the way. Breakfast With Dick and Dorothy offers a quieter pleasure. In one episode Leo Durocher recalls turning back to argue with gendarmes carrying bayonets in Cuba. In another, Florence Pritchett fills in while the regular pair vacation in Bermuda, and the pitches run to Dreft suds and a Hanscom's coffee cake swimming in honey. Those commercials are worth hearing in their own right, because they carry the rhythms and assumptions of their time as clearly as any script. For a first listen, 'Mars is Heaven' shows the dramatic side, and a breakfast episode shows what an ordinary morning on the radio once sounded like.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants vintage radio as it originally sounded, with network cues and sponsor spots included, and who enjoys moving between pulp heroes, space fiction, children's serials and breakfast chatter.
What sets it apart: Its selections go beyond radio drama to include a comedy audition, a children's adventure serial and old morning talk programs. The period sponsor pitches are still audible, and a recurring nostalgic welcome and sign-off hold everything together.
Recreations and original audio dramas coming from and inspired by old time radio, Way Back When imagination ran wild.
On Mars, dead grandparents return; then a Wheaties pitch interrupts your existential crisis.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis turn rehearsal-room tension, a song, and a conducting bit into nimble comic friction.
A rehearsal built around Martin and Lewis turns the radio microphone into a tight little stage for bruised pride, fuzzy arithmetic, and musical interruption.
A genial breakfast broadcast where baseball talk, travel stories, and one stubborn argument with bayonets keep the table lively.
A New York apartment turns into a modest breakfast broadcast as Dorothy and Dick welcome Leo DeRocha and Lorraine Day, letting baseball talk, neighborly ease, and Leo's run-in with Cuban gendarmes do most of the comic work.
A murder gun sends the Blue Beetle from Dr. Franz's shop to Philip Radin's missing French machine gun and a dope racket.
Dan Garrett, rookie patrolman and secret Blue Beetle, tracks a murder gun into a dope racket controlled by a shadowy underworld ring. The trail runs through Dr.
Florence Pritchett brings polish, wit, and period charm to a substitute breakfast-radio turn
Breakfast radio turns into a small public stage when Florence Pritchett fills in for Dorothy and Dick during their Bermuda vacation. Around Dan, she keeps the talk light but pointed, moving through cars, men, cooking, and weekend food with the ease of someone who knows how to…
Vintage radio cases, clipped and crooked.
Smoking guns, dead worms and a sidekick with jokes.
Serialized pulp radio drama: Red Panda battles android-army supervillain Captain Clockwork in 1930s Toronto.
Deborah Treisman and a guest writer read and dissect one archival short story monthly.
Mike Muncer and a different guest dissect two horror films per episode, by subgenre.
Florence Pritchett and Dan McCullough spend much of WBW Theater trading jokes around a 1898 cookbook from the Church of the Epiphany in Danville, Virginia, including a poem for "Sidney Smith's Recipe for Salad Dressing." She also describes winning a singing contest at "The Old Nick" on Second Avenue, where participants tried to sing "By the Sea" in 11 seconds without missing a word.
Leo Durocher describes being escorted out of a Cuban ballpark by gendarmes and bayonets in 1940.
The Blue Beetle follows Joe Bugs Magotti to a waterfront warehouse packed with dope cans and armed men.
Bob Hope turns the Martin and Lewis rehearsal into a rapid-fire insult exchange about Jerry Lewis's hair and age.
Lieutenant Lustig greets grandparents he believes died 30 years earlier, while Captain Black demands the crew return.
A live play-by-play broadcast of a college football game between Wisconsin and USC, presented as part of a retro radio drama series.
A live play-by-play broadcast of a college football game between Wisconsin and USC.
A recreation of a classic radio sports broadcast from the golden age of radio, featuring a football game between Wisconsin and Southern California.
This episode introduces WBW Theater, a series of radio dramas and comedies inspired by old-time radio, aiming to preserve the golden age of radio.