I got most of my OTR collection through usenet, people are always posting.
If you like thrillers, give Escape a try.
Here are some sites with OTR on them:
Well, speak of the devil. I was browsing through my favorite del.icio.us popularity page and fond this:
http://www.related-pages.com/oldtimeradio/
Old time radio mp3’s for free download. Around 300+ Jack Benny shows!
Hit em up Whitta!
Some more good comedy shows that still hold up IMHO:
Fibber McGee and Molly
Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy
Lum and Abner
anything with W.C. Fields
Also, XM and Sirrus have channels devoted to old Radio Shows.
DLing is great, and I’ve it some with OTR shows. But man, you can’t beat the OTRCat collections. The guy’s a serious collector. He updates all the time with newly found shows, better recordings of old ones, etc. For $5 a CD or whatever it is, it’s worth it. You pretty much know that you’re getting everything that’s currently available, per show.
Sorry to sound like a shill, but OTRCat absolutely rocks if you’re into old-time radio. I like the fact that buying from the site helps fund the OTRCat collection, as well, as a lot of these shows have been lost or abandoned. Closest thing to an OTR library out there, as far as I can tell. Incredible number of rarities, too, including British and Australian shows.
Just got my 11 MP3 CDs from OTRCAT. Nearly 900 shows of Jack Benny goodness plus a whole disc of rare tributes, interviews, behind the scenes stuff, etc.
Brilliant.
Enjoy. The guy’s got an amazing number of shows, doesn’t he? I’d love to order more myself, and check out these Benny shows because I’ve always liked the guy, but I’m still working on the 1000 or so episodes of Suspense I’ve got. A lot of those shows are absolutely brilliant, btw. “The Hitchhiker” is the best suspense/horror radio show I’ve ever heard. Kind of a cliched plot now, but still brilliant largely because of Orson Welles. He was great in The Shadow, too. What a voice.
Orson Welles guest-hosted a few episodes of Benny’s show, too. Looking forward to hearing those; from what I’ve heard he could be a funny fucker when he wanted to be.
If you like the Hitchiker, you may also like Sorry Wrong Number. They were both written by Lucielle Wallop, a rather nice old lady I knew growing up. She also wrote a stage play of each, I believe. I can’t remember what her pen name was, though I am reasonably sure it was not Wallop…
Man, I HATE the episode of Sorry, Wrong Number with Agnes Moorehead playing the lead. It’s just screechy, frantic, whiny, by about 15 minutes in I’m really wanting someone to kill her.
They redid Sorry… a bunch of times on radio with Moorehead in the lead. OTRCat’s Suspense discs have six of 'em spread over 17 years, from 43 to 60. Wow. Then there was the stage play, the movie…that was one popular show.
Anyhow, I’ve listened to a few of the different versions, and IIRC some are really whiny, some more understated. I think the first one’s the most annoying. Never really like the show all that much, myself. Like Jeff said, Moorehead’s character isn’t exactly sympathetic.
Yeah, when she gets killed in the end, it’s really a relief. But then, the lead character in the Hitchhiker isn’t all that sympathetic either. The author also wrote a stage play about the Titanic that was never produced until the local theater troupe in our town, Oxford maryland, did it in the 90’s. Not many sympathetic characters there either. The male lead ends the show by turning around to a bunch of women in a lifeboat an showing that he’s disguised himself as the female lead in order to gain passage on a boat.