Friday, November 19, 2010

OTR Friday - Vic & Sade 1939 and The Jack Benny Program's Musical Side

It's time to smile again with radio's home folks!

As we work through the undated Vic & Sade episodes of 1939, our first segment today shows us more of just how treasured Vic's lodge, "The Dowsy Venus chapter of the Sacred Stars of the Milky Way" is to him.


Sade gets an offer from Mr Gumpox the trash man to store some of "the bushels of trash" in her house in an unused stall next to where Howard the trash horse sleeps. Vic is mortified that she should consider his lodge treasure trash and something to be stored in a horse stall, he is afterall the lodge president.


The items described seem pretty special to me. I can picture in my mind's eye perfectly the framed portrait of lodge founder R.J. Konk with the eyes that light up. Hell...I'd hang that in my living room...certainly not in a trash horse stall.

This episode is rife with Paul Rhymer's midwestern "vicandSadeisms"..."I was as grateful as a lion", "It's as clean as pie", "There's not enough room to shoot a snake" and of course my all time favorite running line and it's variations "Not enough time to choke Billy Patterson" and "Not enough room to choke Billy Patterson"!

I kept wondering, who the heck is Bill Patterson and in this wonderous digital information age it took me only a few minutes to find...


Dig in folks. This is a good one.




The second Vic & Sade undated 1939 episode for today centers around the age old issue of a boy maturing and his parents not acknowledging becoming a man. In modern sitcoms this would be a "very special episode" with lots of learning and hugging and maybe a special message about literacy from Nancy Reagan, but in Rhymer's expert hands it's funny to a 'T' and with genuine reality and warmth under it.

Favorite "VicandSadeism"? "It's no flesh off YOUR foot!".

Enjoy:



In "Speaking of Radio: the Jack Benny Program" part 11 of 12, the spotlight forms on the musical contributers of the show, most specifically on the personalities cultivated for the performers by Jack. This was never like the muscial act on SNL where you change the channel or go to bed, this was truly part of the show.

There was that loveable souse and ladies man, Phil Harris...


...who more of you may know from later in his career where he was the voices of "Little John" (Robin Hood), "Thomas O'Malley" (The Aristocats) and "Baloo" (The Jungle Book) for Walt Disney...


SIDEBAR: Remember when drunks were funny and not pitiable? sigh! I miss those days.

And simple minded and amiably boy-like, Irish tenor Dennis Day.


Another great 1/2 hour of insight into maybe the best show ever done.

Enjoy:




Talk to you soon!

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