The Red Book Drama Radio Program

Background

Magazines and syndicated newspaper features often made their way into Radio during the Golden Age of Radio. One of vintage Radio's most prized canons is The Shadow, which first came to Radio from Street & Smith's pulp periodicals of the era over the Love Story Drama Hour (1931). Throughout the Golden Age Radio era listeners were treated to some of their favorite magazine and recurring newspaper features such as:

• 1928 Mary and Bob’s True Stories [True Story Magazine]
• 1931 Liberty Magazine Hour
• 1931 Love Story Drama Hour
• 1931 Love Story Magazine
• 1931 March of Time [Time Magazine]
• 1932 George Bruce’s Air Stories [Aces Magazine]
• 1932 Redbook Drama [Redbook Magazine]
• 1932 True Story Hour [True Story Magazine]
• 1934 Love Story Dramas [Love Story Magazine]
• 1935 Cosmopolitan Magazine
• 1936 Modern Romances [Modern Romance Magazine]
• 1936 Voice of Liberty [Liberty Magazine]
• 1937 American Scene [American Magazine]
• 1937 Love Story [Love Story Magazine]
• 1943 Liberty Magazine's Short, Short Story
• 1947 Puck's Comic Weekly
• 1957 Life and the World

Red Book Magazine, while ostensibly a fiction journal targeted to female readers, published many of the finest fiction stories of the era. Much like Colliers and The Saturday Evening Post, the magazine often introduced rising stars in the literary world. From 1930 on, Red Book Magazine changed its name to Redbook Magazine. Redbook's stories ran the gamut from romance serials to mystery dramas and adventures to light comedies. Redbook's traditional fire engine red covers represented some of the most beautiful illustrators' art of the era. The solid red covers eventually gave way to other themes in the early 1930s, though red continued to remain the predominant color theme.

In 1931, Redbook Magazine's Editor, Edwin Balmer, negotiated a series of twenty-six, transcribed dramatizations of short stories from Redbook Magazine. We know that the series was transcribed in 1931, because a young Florence Halop, sister of Billy Halop, and later fondly remembered as Bailiff Florence Kleiner in Television's long-running Night Court (1984-1992) appears as 'Betty'. Florence Halop is announced as having turned 8 years old the day of the recording. Florence Halop was born on January 23, 1923, which would date the recording session of the Redbook Drama episode, The Kid, to January 23, 1931. We can therefore reasonably assume that the series began recording between late 1930 and early 1932, assuming Ms. Halop didn't fudge her birth date.

Dating the actual broadcasts or their original recordings has been something of a detective story of its own. NBC Blue first aired Redbook Drama in 1932 over its affiliate KWK. Only a handful of the titles for that run, usually broadcast late Saturday afternoon, were announced in the newspapers. The series was often replaced with other NBC Blue offerings. The only other outlet we could find airing the series was in Texas, a Sunday run beginning in the Summer of 1932--again with only a handful of announced titles.

Both the announcer and Edwin Balmer, Redbook's Editor, cited the broadcasts as reflecting stories from then current issues of Redbook Magazine. And indeed, about half of the recorded series of stories did come from then current issues of Redbook. The other half of the stories were published in Redbook as early as 1930. Apparently the announcer and Mr. Balmer felt justified in exercising a bit of literary license in the announced ties to current issues of Redbook.

Edwin Balmer, beyond serving as the Editor for Redbook Magazine was also a prolific writer himself, specializing primarily in Science Fiction stories. Nine of of his stories and novels were translated into Films, most notably, When Worlds Collide (1951). When Worlds Collide has been updated and is currently under production for a 2010 Film release. Balmer announces the stories throughout the Redbook Drama series, as well as providing a bit of exposition on the history of the stories and their authors.

Redbook Drama production notes and details

By 1930 and beyond, Redbook Magazine was becoming as popular as Colliers and The Saturday Evening Post. The magazine attracted many of the better fiction authors of the era. It comes as no surprise that many of the stories selected for the series hold up quite well to today. Many of Louis Joseph Vance's 'Lone Wolf' stories were introduced in the pages of Redbook. Edgar Rice Burroughs also wrote for Redbook along with Sinclair Lewis, Ellis Parker Butler, Roy Cohen, Paul Gallico, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Booth Tarkington, Lord Dunsany, Rube Goldberg, and Frederic Dannay & Manfred B. Lee, better known as Ellery Queen.

The selections for Redbook Drama comprised adventure, mystery, western, and comedy fiction. The canon holds up well. The dramatizations, albeit edited for a twelve-minute format, were well performed, well directed, and, for recordings from the early 1930s, preserve a great deal of fidelity. Redbook's fiction stories were an ideal source for Redbook Drama's fifteen-minute format, as engaging today as they must have been during Post-Depression America.

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

The most helpful provenances were the log of the radioGOLDINdex and newspaper listings.

What you see here, is what you get. Complete transparency. We have no 'credentials' whatsoever--in any way, shape, or form--in the 'otr community'--none. But here's how we did it--for better or worse. Here's how you can build on it yourselves--hopefully for the better. Here are the breadcrumbs--just follow the trail a bit further if you wish. No hobbled downloads. No misdirection. No posturing about our 'credentials.' No misrepresentations. No strings attached. We point you in the right direction and you're free to expand on it, extend it, use it however it best advances your efforts.

We ask one thing and one thing only--if you employ what we publish, attribute it, before we cite you on it.

We continue to provide honest research into these wonderful Golden Age Radio programs simply because we love to do it. If you feel that we've provided you with useful information or saved you some valuable time regarding this log--and you'd like to help us even further--you can help us keep going. Please consider a small donation here:

We don't pronounce our Golden Age Radio research as 'certified' anything. By the very definition, research is imperfect. We simply tell the truth. As is our continuing practice, we provide our fully provenanced research results--to the extent possible--right here on the page, for any of our peers to review--or refute--as the case may be. If you take issue with any of our findings, you're welcome to cite any better verifiable source(s) and we'll immediately review them and update our findings accordingly. As more verifiable provenances surface, we'll continue to update the following series log, as appropriate.

All rights reserved by their respective sources. Article and log copyright 2009 The Digital Deli Online--all rights reserved. Any failure to attribute the results of this copywritten work will be rigorously pursued.

[Date, title, and episode column annotations in red refer to either details we have yet to fully provenance or other unverifiable information as of this writing. Red highlights in the text of the 'Notes' columns refer to information upon which we relied in citing dates, date or time changes, or titles.]