Old Time radio

[likethebeer]

Voyages of the Scarlet Queen: "Tattooed Beaver and Baby Food" 10/09/1947

A good reminder to Captain Phillip Carney that he shouldn't take on passengers (after all, the Scarlet Queen isn't Serenity): the woman says she's bringing cases of baby food and a minister (among others), and none of them are telling the truth. It turns out that the baby food cases actually hold heroine (I think - couldn't be cocaine) Someone gets murdered, the Captain almost gets stopped in a port, and it all turns out, well: what do you think?

Mercury Theater: "Seventeen" 10/16/1938

Oh, no - is this the one where Orson Welles is whiny the whole time?

... yup. Damn.

Orson Welles plays Willy, a 17yo who becomes lovestruck by Lola and *is* whiny all the time.

Oh, and I see that the girl that Willy has an obnoxious dog that she dotes all over. Man - dogs are so fricking annoying on Old Time Radio (cats are, too).

Well, the girl who is the object of Willy's affection (Lola) talks incessantly like a child. So she, and that dog, are incredibly annoying.

The one nice thing is that the mother had gotten something for Willy that she wants him to know, but doesn't want to tell him (because he'll be mortified that his mother did it for him). So she tells Willy's little sister (whose entire dialog appears to consist of repeating things she overheard, which she shouldn't) that she shouldn't tell him something, with the knowledge that this is what her daughter will promptly do.

"That face has more idiocy than I think I've seen yet." [this from the father who has had to put up Lola that summer, regarding Willy. One of the enjoyable interludes in this show is listening to the father going through the idiocy of Willy - and every other boy past puberty who lives in the town, apparently.]

I do have to admit that actually listening to the show (as opposed to half-listening, as I did previously) makes it less annoying.

Philip Marlowe: "Sound and the Unsound" 09/15/1951

Oh, ok: old ladies (or women who are maybe 50) snore.

So, Lucille has brought Marlowe to her apartment because she's heard a tapping sound in the next apartment and is worried about it, and she wants him to investigate. There are things they can't explain. The guy who had the tapping in his apartment was shot. Oh, and there was an appearance by the obligatory gay guy: fussy and liable to hysterics. Oh, and fainting.

Turns out that the girlfriend of Clint (the guy with the apartment) thinks there's money there, or something, and is going with someone to find it? But it turns out that Clint has some box with a news item for Rita ("In the event of my death, she will understand why I can't marry her") that his brother killed their father and escaped from the insane asylum (maybe everyone who kills a parent just goes to an insane asylum).

The Lives of Harry Lime: "Operation Music Box" 10/5/1951

1.) Harry Lime!!

2.) Exactly 62 years ago.

Harry Lime meets a woman who is buying/obtaining music boxes and smashing them. It turns out that the woman's uncle (who she'd never met) had smuggled a music box with jewels in it out of a country before it got swallowed under the Iron Curtain, and is leaving it to her. Unfortunately, the circumstances are that the music box was sold before she got the letter from the uncle, and so she's running around trying to find this. And, of course, Harry gets involved in it, with the hope of getting it himself. Which, on this show, means that this won't happen at all. No, it was sent (by the uncle) to a hospital, it was broken by accident, the rubies in it were found, and they used it to buy a new ward. Did it quite quickly, too.

X-Minus One: "Death Wish" 10/10/1957

Ah: fears about computers with personalities (HAL, say hello).

In this case, the ship goes off course and they ask the computer. It gives back the answer: a longevity serum that will let them live 2,400 years until they angle back into the solar system. Ah, well.