Golden Radio Theater
Home/Comedy/The Old Gold Comedy Theater
Comedy · NBC

The Old Gold Comedy Theater

October 29, 1944 – June 10, 1945 · 32 broadcasts

Old Gold cigarettes wanted a comedy answer to Lux Radio Theatre, and went after Preston Sturges to host it. Sturges was busy -- so he handed the job to a friend, and in October 1944 Harold Lloyd walked into an NBC studio as director and host of the only radio series he would ever front. The format was simple and expensive: take a recent screen comedy, cut it to half an hour in three acts, and hire whoever had been in the papers that month. Across thirty-two Sunday nights the guest list ran to Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Lucille Ball, Joseph Cotten, Fred Allen, Edward G. Robinson, Paulette Goddard and Burgess Meredith, Randolph Scott, Gene Tierney and June Allyson. The screwball comedies dominated -- fast talk, mistaken identities, couples losing and finding each other in twenty-eight minutes flat. It did not work well enough. Ninety-minute farces lost too much on the way down to half an hour, and Lloyd -- a man who had built a career on being watched -- was frightened of the microphone and audibly learning on air. The sponsor cancelled after one season. That the show exists at all is Lloyd's doing. He kept 78rpm copy discs of his own broadcasts in his basement, and twenty-nine of them were still there decades later. One more survives as an Armed Forces rebroadcast. Two have never been found.

Collection status: 30 of 32 held (94% complete)
◆ ◆ ◆

Episode Spine

Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.

1944

October 29, 1944 The Palm Beach Story Listen (MP3)
A broke Manhattan couple come apart over a stranger's gift of $700, and the wife heads south toward a quick divorce, a smitten millionaire and his alarmingly predatory sister. Claudette Colbert and Robert Young open the series in Preston Sturges's farce.
November 5, 1944 Ball of Fire
November 12, 1944 True to Life Listen (MP3)
Two radio writers whose daytime serial has gone stale go hunting for real people to borrow from -- and one of them moves in with a family he cannot help falling for. Dick Powell, Victor Moore and Rosemary DeCamp.
November 19, 1944 Vivacious Lady Listen (MP3)
A mild university professor is sent to New York to retrieve a wayward cousin and returns instead with a nightclub singer he has married on three days' acquaintance, and no nerve at all to tell his very proper family. Lee Bowman and Linda Darnell.
November 26, 1944 Clarence Listen (MP3)
A newly discharged soldier turns up to do one odd job for a rich and thoroughly rattled household, and ends by running the place -- handyman, referee and confidant to every unhappy person under the roof. Joseph Cotten, from Booth Tarkington.
December 3, 1944 Take a Letter, Darling Listen (MP3)
A painter who cannot pay his bills takes work as secretary to a formidable woman advertising executive; chasing a tobacco account together takes care of the rest. Susan Hayward and John Hodiak.
December 10, 1944 Louder Please
December 17, 1944 Lucky Partners Listen (MP3)
A sidewalk artist wishes a neighbour good luck, her luck promptly turns, and she proposes they split a sweepstakes ticket. He agrees -- with a condition attached that her fiance likes not at all. Herbert Marshall, Jane Wyman and Sheldon Leonard.
December 24, 1944 Bachelor Mother Listen (MP3)
Fired from the department store the day before Christmas, a shopgirl picks up an abandoned baby and finds nobody will believe it isn't hers -- least of all the owner's son, who sets out to make an honest mother of her. Brenda Marshall and Louis Hayward.
December 31, 1944 Room Service Listen (MP3)
A producer with no money barricades his entire company in a hotel and bluffs, stalls and stage-manages his way toward a backer before the management works out that nobody can settle the bill. Jack Oakie, Stuart Erwin and Donald McBride.

1945

January 7, 1945 The Lady Eve Listen (MP3)
A brewery heir who cares for nothing but snakes comes home from a year up the Amazon straight into the hands of a card sharp and his daughter. She falls for him, he throws her over -- so she invents an entirely new woman and makes him do it again. Ralph Bellamy, Betty Field and Guy Kibbee.
January 14, 1945 Nothing but the Truth Listen (MP3)
A young stockbroker bets ten thousand dollars that he can go a full day without a single lie. He has not thought through what that will cost him, or how many other people it will cost along the way. Alan Young and Anne Baxter.
January 21, 1945 The Show-Off Listen (MP3)
A Brooklyn braggart talks his way into a family that cannot abide him and keeps right on talking after the job funding all that swagger disappears. Fred Allen leads a New York company -- Alice Frost, Joseph Curtin and Claudia Morgan -- during the program's three-week run from the east.
January 28, 1945 Appointment for Love Listen (MP3)
A playwright is affronted when a doctor falls asleep during his play, and charmed enough to pursue her anyway. They marry in a rush, and only then does she explain her theory of modern marriage: separate apartments. Paul Henreid and Virginia Bruce.
February 4, 1945 My Favorite Wife Listen (MP3)
Declared legally dead after seven years lost at sea, a wife walks back in on the very day her husband has remarried -- and it emerges she did not spend those seven years alone. Joel McCrea, Gail Patrick and Constance Moore.
February 11, 1945 A Girl, a Guy and a Gob Listen (MP3)
A shy shipping executive falls hard for his temporary secretary, who is already spoken for by his own Navy friend -- and the friend is due back on shore in days. George Murphy and Lucille Ball, in a film Harold Lloyd himself had produced.
February 18, 1945 The Milky Way Listen (MP3)
A meek milkman flattens the middleweight champion by pure accident, and the champion's manager sees money in building the milkman up through fixed bouts, just far enough to knock him down again. Robert Walker, James Gleason, Eve Arden and Nat Pendleton -- in an adaptation of one of Harold Lloyd's own pictures.
February 25, 1945 You Can't Ration Love Listen (MP3)
With the war leaving barely a handful of men on a campus full of women, the students of Adams College put courtship on a strict points system. Dick Haymes, with Betty Jane Rhodes back in the part she played on screen.
March 4, 1945 Standing Room Only Listen (MP3)
A businessman and his secretary arrive in wartime Washington to chase a government contract, discover she has cancelled the only hotel room in the city, and hire themselves out as a married pair of servants instead. Burgess Meredith and Paulette Goddard.
March 11, 1945 The Magnificent Dope Listen (MP3)
A self-improvement academy going broke tries a publicity stunt: locate the least successful man in the country and reform him. The winner turns out to be perfectly happy as he is, and starts winning the paying students over to his side. William Gargan, Janet Blair and Tom Drake.
March 18, 1945 A Lady Takes a Chance Listen (MP3)
Riding a sightseeing coach out west to escape her Manhattan suitors, a young woman meets a rodeo hand who would rather keep company with horses and regards marriage as a trap. She takes that as an invitation. Randolph Scott and Gene Tierney.
March 25, 1945 Brewster's Millions Listen (MP3)
To collect eight million dollars, a young man must first get rid of one million in sixty days, may explain himself to no one, and must stay unmarried -- while everybody who knows him concludes he has gone mad. Dennis O'Keefe, Helen Walker and Mischa Auer.
April 1, 1945 The Major and the Minor Listen (MP3)
Short of the fare home, a working girl dresses as a twelve-year-old to buy a child's ticket, gets found out, and has to keep the performance running inside an army major's compartment. Joan Fontaine and Sonny Tufts.
April 8, 1945 A Slight Case of Murder Listen (MP3)
With Prohibition over, a bootlegger goes straight and brews legal beer. Being a teetotaller himself, he is the last man in New York to discover that it is undrinkable and that nobody dares tell him. Edward G. Robinson and Allen Jenkins.
April 22, 1945 The Nervous Wreck Listen (MP3)
A hypochondriac carries his medicine chest off to a dude ranch for his health and turns up crooks, a jealous rival and a nurse worth every symptom. Jack Haley and Martha O'Driscoll.
April 29, 1945 Scatterbrain Listen (MP3)
A studio publicity man plants his girlfriend with an Ozark family so the boss can dramatically discover her -- and the boss goes to the Ozarks and discovers entirely the wrong girl. Judy Canova, in the Republic picture that made her a star.
May 6, 1945 Hired Wife Listen (MP3)
An advertising man marries his secretary purely as a technicality, to shelter his money through a deal. Once it closes he wants out; she has other ideas, having meant it. Joan Bennett and Robert Paige.
May 13, 1945 She Loves Me Not Listen (MP3)
A nightclub dancer who saw a murder goes to ground rather than testify, and hides out in a Princeton dormitory in borrowed men's clothes and a very severe haircut. Maria Montez, Tom Drake and Freddie Bartholomew.
May 20, 1945 Boy Meets Girl Listen (MP3)
Two runaway studio writers, ordered to find a vehicle for the lot's cowboy star, build an entire picture around the unborn baby of a waitress from the commissary. Chester Morris, Lee Tracy and Ann Sothern.
May 27, 1945 June Moon Listen (MP3)
A small-town hopeful rides the train into New York to write song lyrics and falls in with a Tin Pan Alley veteran whose best years are well behind him. Jack Carson and Frank McHugh, from the Kaufman and Lardner play.
June 3, 1945 Having Wonderful Crime Listen (MP3)
A lawyer whose two friends keep dragging him into murder cases finds their latest has left all three wanted by the police -- so he goes along on the honeymoon to stay out of a cell. Pat O'Brien, June Duprez and Tom Conway.
June 10, 1945 Tom, Dick and Harry Listen (MP3)
A telephone operator with three suitors -- the steady one, the rich one and the odd one -- dreams her way through married life with each in turn before she has to choose. June Allyson and Reginald Gardiner close the series.
The Story

Old Gold cigarettes wanted a comedy answer to Lux Radio Theatre, and went after Preston Sturges to host it. Sturges was busy -- so he handed the job to a friend, and in October 1944 Harold Lloyd walked into an NBC studio as director and host of the only radio series he would ever front. The format was simple and expensive: take a recent screen comedy, cut it to half an hour in three acts, and hire whoever had been in the papers that month. Across thirty-two Sunday nights the guest list ran to Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Lucille Ball, Joseph Cotten, Fred Allen, Edward G. Robinson, Paulette Goddard and Burgess Meredith, Randolph Scott, Gene Tierney and June Allyson. The screwball comedies dominated -- fast talk, mistaken identities, couples losing and finding each other in twenty-eight minutes flat. It did not work well enough. Ninety-minute farces lost too much on the way down to half an hour, and Lloyd -- a man who had built a career on being watched -- was frightened of the microphone and audibly learning on air. The sponsor cancelled after one season. That the show exists at all is Lloyd's doing. He kept 78rpm copy discs of his own broadcasts in his basement, and twenty-nine of them were still there decades later. One more survives as an Armed Forces rebroadcast. Two have never been found.

Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
Gallery
Art pending