onesmedia Store HOME | BOOKS | JEAN SHEPHERD | MOVIES | OLD TIME RADIO AUDIO CD | OLD TIME RADIO mp3 CD ROM | OLD TIME RADIO mp3 DVD ROM ARCH OBOLER PLAYS (1939-1948) Old Time Radio - CD-ROM - 51 mp3 Arch Oboler (December 7, 1907 – March 19, 1987) was a playwright, screenwriter, novelist, producer and director who was active in radio, films, theater and television. He generated much attention with his radio scripts, and his work in radio remains the outstanding period of his career. Praised as one of broadcasting's top talents, he is regarded today as a key innovator of radio drama. Born in Chicago, Illinois, to Leon Oboler and Clara Oboler, Jewish immigrants from Riga, Latvia, Arch Oboler briefly attended the University of Chicago prior to dropping out to pursue a full-time writing career. Radio Oboler sold his first radio scripts while still in high school during the 1920s and rose to fame when he began scripting the NBC horror anthology Lights Out in 1936. He later found notoriety with his script contribution to the 12 December 1937 edition of The Chase and Sanborn Hour. In Oboler's sketch, host Don Ameche and guest Mae West portrayed a slightly bawdy Adam and Eve, satirizing the Biblical tale of the Garden of Eden. On the surface, the sketch did not feature much more than West's customary suggestive double-entendres, and today it seems quite tame. But in 1937, that sketch and a subsequent routine featuring West trading suggestive quips with Edgar Bergen's dummy Charlie McCarthy helped the broadcast cause a furor that resulted in West being banned from broadcasting and from being mentioned at all on NBC programming for 15 years. The timing may have been a contributing factor, according to radio historian Gerald S. Nachman in Raised on Radio: The sketch resulted in letters from outraged listeners and decency groups... What upset churchgoing listeners wasn't the Biblical parody so much as the fact that it had the bad luck to air on a Sunday show. When Oboler took over Lights Out in 1936, the show was already a sensation because of creator Wyllis Cooper's violent, quirky scripts, and Oboler continued in a similar vein, announcing during the opening of each episode: This is Arch Oboler bringing you another of our series of stories of the unusual, and once again we caution you: These Lights Out stories are definitely not for the timid soul. So we tell you calmly and very sincerely, if you frighten easily, turn off your radio now. One of Oboler's best remembered scripts for Lights Out was Chicken Heart, first broadcast March 10, 1937: Dr. Calvin: I tell you that mass of flesh was a chicken heart... the tissue of which for some reason is undergoing constant, rapid, accelerating growth. With every passing hour its growth is doubling. Do you know what that means? If it is now one block in size, within 30 hours that cannibal flesh will have increased in size to one square block to the 30th power. In 30 hours every inch of this whole city will be crushed under that moving flesh. Within 60 hours it will have covered the entire state. Within two weeks the entire United States. You ask for the National Guard. I say call out the entire army. Blast this thing off the earth. Curiously, in the 1960s, "Chicken Heart" became more associated with comedian Bill Cosby than Oboler. Cosby's retelling of the radio drama with humorous vocalized sound effects became one of his most popular comedy routines, recorded on Cosby's Wonderfulness (1966) and available today on both YouTube and a CD reissue. In 1939, Oboler introduced another series, Arch Oboler's Plays, on NBC. In addition to horror tales, the dramas on this series often employed more topical material, especially regarding early World War II events, and the cast featured many leading film actors. After a year on NBC, it returned for a short run on Mutual in 1945.The series was syndicated in 1964. EPISODES LIST 390401 Mirage 390415 Ways of Men - Past, Present, Future 390429 The Cliff 390506 Engulfed Cathredal 390513 Baby 390520 Crazy Town 390603 Steelworker 390610 Neros Wife 390708 TheIvoryTower 390729 Another World 390916 Suffer Little Children 391118 Bathysphere 391125 Miss American 391216 Nobody Died 391230 This Precious Freedom 400224 The Women Stayed At Home 400309 Johnny Got His Gun 440524 An Excercise in Horror 450405 Strange Morning 450426 The House I Live In 450503 Love 450510 Holiday 1940 X 450517 Mr Ten Percent 450531 Double Feature 450607 Night 450614 Mr Pyle Starring Brugess Merideth 450621The Naked Mountain 450628 The Truth 450705 Dr Bluff 450712 A Galler Big Shots 450719 Special To Hollywood 450726 My Chicago 450802 Parade 450809 History of a Mug 450900 The Day The Sun Exploded 450906 Mirage 450913 A Gallery of Big Shots 450920 Rocket from Manhattan 450927 Family Nagashi 451004 Mr Miller 451011 This Living Book 480309 Johnny Got His Gun 641017 Special to Hollywood 641031 Come to the Bank 641114 Big Ben 641128 African Story 641205 Revolt of the Worms 641212 Bathysphere 641219 Mirage 641226 Him or Me xxxxxx The Dark Stereo HERE'S HOW YOU CAN PLAY mp3 FILES FROM THIS CD: 1 - WITH YOUR COMPUTER USING YOUR FAVORITE PLAYER (Windows Media Player, Winamp, Real Player and many more) 2 - WITH THE LATEST CAR CD OR HOME DVD PLAYER CAPABLE TO READ mp3 FILES (Please Check your player manual) 3 - WITH YOUR mp3 PLAYER, JUST UPLOAD THE FILES TO THE DEVICE THIS CD WILL BE DELIVERED IN WHITE PAPER SLEEVE FULL REFUND IF NOT SATISFIED THE FINE PRINT - PUBLIC DOMAIN MATERIAL Public domain work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived. 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PUBLIC DOMAIN NOTEThis item is the public domain and was created between January 1, 1923 and December 31, 1971This item is in the public domain due to failure to comply with required formalities