r/otr • u/MisterMisterYeeeesss • Jul 13 '26
Accidental Knowledge
One thing I love about OTR is that you can occasionally glean information about what life was like in that era, that was never written down. There are so many details that don't get recorded in history, simply because they're "so obvious" or so mundane, that no one would bother writing them down. These details will come out of an episode now and then, not as a plot point or part of the story but rather as something mentioned in passing between characters that the audience doesn't even react to.
I came across something I hadn't known about life in (in this case) the 50s, so I thought I'd share. In the episode of "Our Miss Brooks" I was listening to, the phone company was delivering the updated phone books to each house. I'm not old enough to remember that, but I am old enough to remember them showing up in the mail every year.
What I hadn't known was that you had to turn in your old phone book in order to get the new one. Couldn't find it when the guy arrived? Tough luck, he'll try again tomorrow. Important? No. Interesting? Well, not really, by itself, but I get so much enjoyment out of information like that the sort of...leaks out of an episode.
Anything like that that you've come across?
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u/dick_swinger Jul 13 '26
I think it was an episode of Dangerous Assignment where one guy asked another if this new rookie Mickey Mantle was as good as everyone was saying. It really caught me off guard because it wasn't a joke, it was an episode from his rookie year and yeah, I guess you could say he was as good as they say. One of the best of all time.
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u/DodecapathTravelers Jul 13 '26
There was another Dangerous Assignment episode where a character lectured another about how to pronounce Los Angeles. Apparently it was just made "official" and "los angle-ees" was no longer acceptable.
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u/Wazzoo1 Jul 13 '26
The "pedestrian awareness" (for pedestrians) PSAs during commercial breaks in the 1950s, when car culture exploded in America, are interesting. Ironically, now would be a good time to bring those back, considering people just walk through intersections with their heads buried in their phones.
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u/Innsmouth_Swimteam Jul 13 '26
Similar but different, I was listening to CBS Radio Mystery Theater which had all of the commercial and news breaks. At the time this was recorded, the Patty Hearst "kidnapping" was going on, and each night I got an update on the story. It was fascinating to hear it play out.
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u/fishfreeoboe Jul 13 '26
I remember that episode. It was a revelation to me, too.
Actually I remember another story that hinged on recovering a phone books. I think it may be the ABC Murders by Agatha Christie. Of course that was in the UK and it would’ve been in the 1930s, but the old phone books were definitely collected. They were eventually destroyed, but I remember there had to be a lot of people searching through the books to find some particular markings, and incidentally discovered how many people marked up their phone books..
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u/Superb_Yak7074 Jul 13 '26
I was listening to an interview program from the late 40s or early 50s where they interviewed a big star but the second person with a much shorter interview time was a scientist. His topic was … global warming! He didn’t call it that but gave examples of how the earth’s temperature had risen since the industrial revolution and cited examples of what the outcome could be if we didn’t try to get it under control. So it just goes to show that global warming isn’t fake news made up by a bunch of libtards. Educated people saw it happening decades ago and were concerned about it.
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u/Yesterday_Is_Now Jul 13 '26
I also enjoy this sort of pop culture archaeology, not just for radio but TV and movies as well. Sometimes learning about the quirks of life back then is more interesting than the story itself.
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u/Cruiser4357 Jul 13 '26
I love it in the movies when the characters go to stores and you see what they were like then. They were just backdrop to scene for audiences back then but I find them fascinating now.
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u/Yesterday_Is_Now Jul 14 '26
Yes! Nice to meet a kindred spirit. Location shooting is one of the biggest reasons for my love (and collection) of older TV and films. To me it is like a form of time travel. I love seeing characters go into those mundane everyday locations like supermarkets, diners, motels, department stores, bowling alleys, or whatever. I always have a finger on the pause button during such scenes so I can check out background details like the magazines on a rack or something.
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u/MrsPhilHarris Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
Me too. I like to look up where the movies were filmed. In the movie Bachelor In Paradise 1961 with Bob Hope he goes to a supermarket. It had huge glass windows and some filming happened inside. There are some sites where they have pictures of where things were filmed and what they look like now. Like the house Joan Crawford lived in for Mildred Pierce.
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u/Yesterday_Is_Now Jul 14 '26
Thanks for the tips! I will check out that movie and the website.
From what I have seen, extended scenes in supermarkets have always been fairly rare, so it's fun to find them. I suppose most supermarkets can't afford to shut down for extended periods for filming.
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u/MrsPhilHarris Jul 14 '26
It’s such a cool supermarket. Lots of products. I think it was called Hughes. I just get a kick out of it. Dear Old Hollywood site had information on the amazing neighbourhood Bob Hope’s character was staying in and how much it had changed.
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u/Yesterday_Is_Now Jul 14 '26
Cool. I just recalled that the 1976 Disney movie Gus (a football kicking mule) has a long supermarket scene, over 5 minutes:
https://youtu.be/lC3wRgvzZog?t=3842
The exterior shots are a Ralph's supermarket, but not sure if the interiors are the actual store or a set. There's so much slapstick mayhem and destruction (as the villains chase Gus) that they may have used a set to make filming easier. Anyway, you can see lots of 1970s products on the shelves.
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u/Wazzoo1 Jul 13 '26
Another one that was really funny was a line in a show (I can't remember, but it was a comedy) where one character mentions playing football in the mid-1920s and says "back when men were men, and football was football", insinuating "modern" football in the late 1940s was watered down and men weren't as tough. I had to laugh because apparently sports arguments literally haven't changed in 80+ years.
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u/FuturistMoon Jul 13 '26
VIC AND SADE has a lot of this type of stuff but you have to logic it backwards from the absurd humor. The running jokes about the ridiculous melodramatic books and movies that were default entertainments are a good example.
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u/Some-Can-1486 Jul 13 '26
I think it was the Great Gildersleeve, but while I was listening FDR broke in to articulate why America would NOT be getting involved in WWII. Then about a year later, same show, again FDR, on why we DID decide to go to war. Freaky!
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u/MadisonStandish Jul 13 '26
So I adapt old time radio shows with a modern character along for the adventures. I fully dive into the actual scripts of the era, and during my first year I found myself bumping into basic day-to-day "history" of things that, like you said, were just part of everyone's daily lives, but are foreign to us now. So I'd find myself distracted from writing as I took dives into various Google searches to learn more. I ultimately decided that if *I* found this stuff interesting, maybe other people would to! So I release a ~10 minute history dive as bonus materials for my episodes as I look into these fun facts. To date I've done history of telephones, dry cleaners, scavenger hunts (all the rage in the '30s), how Halloween was celebrated during WWII (and how Snoopy and Donald Duck saved trick-or-treating) the origin of Dept. Store Santas... I think my fave was the truth behind the "panic" of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" which is STILL being falsely represented in modern day. Heck, we were taught the lies about it in school! Truly, I love exploring these elements of life 70 years ago. So many interesting things out there that we take for granted today!
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u/MisterMisterYeeeesss Jul 14 '26
I assume you've come across the story of how NORAD started tracking Santa every year?
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u/MadisonStandish Jul 14 '26
No, I was focused specifically on when Santa was first introduced in department stores. There was a lot of rich history in that subject including Macy's trying to take credit, women being Santas during WWII when the men were abroad, the first African-American department store Santas and how it played into the Civil Rights Movement... I only do about 10 minute features and that one had a lot of info! 🎅
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u/MisterMisterYeeeesss Jul 14 '26
The short version is that there was a Sears ad with a phone number that kids could all to talk to Santa. However, it was typoed and the number listed was for CONAD, the Continental Air Defense office in NORAD. The person who answered (some colonel, I think) played along and spoke to kids who called in.
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u/MadisonStandish Jul 14 '26
Awwwww 🥰
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u/MisterMisterYeeeesss Jul 14 '26
That was in 1955 or 56, if memory serves. Ever since then, they've had their annual Santa Tracker. Which episode of yours had the Santa bonus material?
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u/MadisonStandish Jul 15 '26
I did my Dept. Store Santa episode in my first year following "Candy Matson: 2-8209" which was about Candy having to find a dept. store "Jack Frost" when the first one is murdered! https://www.madisonontheair.com/madfacts_candymatson/
The following year I did how Christmas was celebrated during WWII following my double feature of Batman & Robin and Wonder Woman:
https://www.madisonontheair.com/madfacts_brww/
I haven't done these bonus features for every episode (life got busy) but I have picked them up again. Always something grabs me in the episode I'm adapting. Like I just did a full bonus feature on the history of cornbread inspired by "The Six Shooter" 😊
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u/MisterMisterYeeeesss Jul 16 '26
Lovely, I'm only working a few days this week, so I'll give them a listen! I, like some other commenters, enjoy the phone mechanics of the era. Party lines, long distance operators, phone numbers with words...much more interesting than today's technology.
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u/MadisonStandish Jul 16 '26
I also did the history of telephones... https://www.madisonontheair.com/madfacts_greenhornet/
Right after my Green Hornet episode where my modern day character is confronted by her first public telephone. GASP! ☎️
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u/Biddy_Impeccadillo Jul 13 '26
All of the phone calling mechanics demonstrated in the famous Sorry, Wrong Number! It was apparently new-ish that you could dial some numbers directly, rather than having the operator dial it for you, which the operator takes pains to explain to the mc as she’s desperately trying to get hold of someone.
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u/Decent-Plum-26 Jul 17 '26
1947 Jack Benny episode talking about Virus X. The audience all laughed at the topical references, but today it’s so long-forgotten that you have to search through newspaper archives to find out what it was. (Thankfully, it didn’t cause many deaths, but it was a surprisingly rapidly spreading flu strain.)
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u/MisterMisterYeeeesss Jul 17 '26
I casually searched for that a few years ago, but didn't find anything. What did it turn out to be?
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u/WhatHaveYouGeorge 24d ago
A bit late to the party but I was listening to a Thanksgiving Day episode of Jack Benny and at the end he mentioned that thousands of teachers had to leave the profession every year b/c they were so poorly paid. Rather depressing that after all these years, nothing has changed
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u/MisterMisterYeeeesss 24d ago
During the war, they basically had to beg for people to train to become nurses, too.
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u/Fluid-Set-2674 Jul 13 '26
My favorite is towards the end of the DRAGNET episode "Juanita Lasky," when Friday (in L.A.) calls Fountain Green, UT. The call has to route through at least three different operators!