Old time radio

Been listening to a lot of radio shows. None of them are all that good. I thought I'd like the soap operas---they were better suited for radio with long conversations, but they weren't operatic enough. One, Aunt Mary, had a long scene of a guy eating breakfast and talking about his lousy job prospects. 

I heard a clip from another episode where Aunt Mary discusses a relative who's on trial for murder, so I thought it would be better than it was.

Radio episodes of Dragnet were surprisingly violent. In one, a disturbed high school boy had been slashing girls with a knife in the crowded hallways between classes. He somehow managed to do this dozens of times without anyone spotting him. Things were very different back then and this had gone on for weeks before the principal deigned to call the cops.  

Dragnet episodes were based on real cases. I heard that you can search old newspapers and find the ones that ended in death sentences.

You might not want to binge-listen to 15-minute radio serials. There's a certain amount of recapping every episode which means that they explain everything again every several minutes.

I guess radio was an easy gig. You just stand there and read your script. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall had a show, as did James Stewart, Dick Powell and other stars who, today, would be too big for television.

There was an NBC radio series of plays by Arch Oboler including one based on Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun and The Family Nagachi broadcast in 1945 about a Japanese-American family imprisoned in internment camps during World War Two while their son was fighting the Nazis.

Here's a source for free downloads.