Old-Time Imagination

The radio was always on in our house when I was a kid. Some of my earliest memories are of playing on the kitchen floor while my mom was ironing or fixing a meal - and listening to the radio. Even now I can clearly remember listening to DON McNEAL'S BREAKFAST CLUB and ARTHUR GODFREY.
In my 4-year old imagination, Don McNeal really was hosting breakfast for a bunch of ladies every morning- probably in one of the big department stores downtown.
Arthur Godfrey was so laid back that I imagined he and his cast were sitting around on a front porch somewhere and everything they did was completely spontaneous.
In an earlier post, I mentioned that I checked out 30 hours of old-time radio shows from the library. I've been listening to an hour or two of them before bed for the last few nights. Unfortunately, many of them aren't very good and I confess to falling asleep more than once before the CD was finished.
Nonetheless, I think it's interesting how well some of the material has held up over the last 50-60 years since many of the radio scripts were written. Last night, I was listening to a program starring Bob Hope and Judy Garland. In one skit, Bob was playing a kidnapper and Judy was his victim. In one scene, Judy is pleading for her life and says, "I appeal to you on bended knee!" To which Bob replied, "You appeal to me in ANY position!" A little later Judy tries to avoid Bob's advances by telling him that she's engaged to be married. She says, "I've promised my hand to someone else." Then Bob says, "He can have it, I'll take the rest!" I think those are pretty funny lines, even by today's standards.
DRAGNET was another well written and well produced show. They effectively used pauses, and background sounds to keep the "feel" of the show authentic. Of course, Jack Webb was perfectly cast as Joe Friday. That helped.
Edgar Bergen was always funny. He must have written his own dialogue.
FIBBER McGEE AND MOLLY was well written and always funny. One of the cleverest episodes was written around a character to spoke in sentences that were constructed to sound like he was saying something other than what he meant. Does that make sense? For example, in one scene he said, "Normally, I'm a potato clock." Huh? Eventually it became clear that he was saying, "Normally, I'm up at eight o'clock".
GUNSMOKE was superb.
The list goes on.
Even though the "golden age" of radio drama was winding down just about the time I was getting old enough to enjoy listening, I still have fond memories of laying on the living room floor at night, with the only light in the room coming from the radio dial and a little 4-watt lamp in the decorative base of a floor lamp, and listening to the LONE RANGER or SUPERMAN!
"Look, up in the sky, it's a bird. It's a plane. It's time to ignite your imagination!!!"