The Senior Actors Theatre of Slidell (SATS) will transform Slidell
Little Theatre tonight into Radio City Playhouse. They will perform three shows from the golden
age of radio and WGSO 990 AM will broadcast the show over the internet and the
radio. The three shows SATS will perform
are Little Orphan Annie, Our Miss Brooks, and Stagecoach. These shows were very popular and eventually
turned into other mediums: one a television show and one had the honor of becoming
a movie and a Broadway production. Stagecoach
was originally a movie re-enacted for the radio.
Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie was a fifteen minute show that debuted in
Chicago in 1930 on WGN. It was adapted from the comic strip that was created by Harold Gray. Gray got the name from the 1885 poem Little Orphant Annie by James Whitcomb
Riley. The show followed the adventures
of Annie and her friends.
When the
show debuted there was not a coast-to-coast radio network established so two
casts performed the show. There was a
cast in San Francisco and one in Chicago.
In 1933 the coast to coast networking was established and the cast from
Chicago became the only cast to perform.
Shirley Bell was the voice behind Annie and was replace by Janice
Gilbert in 1940.
Ovaltine was the main
sponsor of Little Orphan Annie and if
you drank enough Ovaltine you could redeem the proofs of purchase for the
secret decoder ring and then you could decode the secret message at the end of
every show.
Little Orphan Annie went
off the air in 1942 but the comic lived on until 2010 and this show was turned
into a movie and into a hit Broadway production.
Our Miss Brooks was a comedy about an English teacher at
Madison High School, Connie Brooks. It
was a radio show on CBS from 1948 to 1957 and starred Eve Arden. The show was written and directed by Al Lewis
and would eventually be a television show.
Connie Brooks was clever, sarcastic and kindhearted and her character
was related to by many teachers across the country.
Arden would receive letters from teachers
who shared with her their experiences and Arden even had several job offers to
become a teacher.
Our Miss Brooks was
ahead of its time. It was the first show
who had a strong independent woman who was witty and held a professional job. The radio show did outlive its television
counterpart and still to this day the situations portrayed in the show are
relevant.
Stagecoach
 |
| John Wayne, left, and Ward Bond |
Stagecoach is the
tale of nine strangers traveling through Apache territory and the hardship they
faced on their perilous journey across the Wild West. The movie was John Wayne’s breakthrough
role. He played the character Ringo
Kid. The radio broadcast was adapted
from the movie and was converted to a half hour radio show that aired on NBC
Theatre on January 9, 1949. John Wayne and Claire Trevor and other members of
the cast reprized their roles for the radio show and the script was almost
identical to the movie.
Ernest Haycox
wrote the original story with Dudley Nichols writing the screenplay and John
Ford was the director of the movie. In
1986 Stagecoach got the remake
treatment from Hollywood. It starred
Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.
These three shows will make for a great night of
entertainment and will broadcast 7pm on WGSO 990 AM or you can be a part of the
audience and watch the performance. The
Radio City Playhouse is sponsored by Slidell Memorial Hospital.
