Video killed the radio car
by Peter Kenter
National Post  
Friday, April 18, 2008

Old-time radio programs are an odd medium. How else can you explain the popularity of the Edger Bergen/ Charlie McCarthy Show featuring the talents of a wisecracking ventriloquist who might very well have been moving his lips for all the audience could tell? Set aside any incredulity, because the adventures of Bergen (Candice's dad) and puppets McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd stuck to the roof of the radio ratings for almost 20 full years between 1937 and 1956.

But, for all its strangeness to 21st century swells, radio listeners did have the advantage of being tuned into a medium that stimulated their mental muscles, conjuring potent images out of words, music and carefully crafted sound effects. Pictures and places were manufactured out of thin air without the use of specially equipped cameras, video filters or CGI effects.

Even hardened veterans of today's attention deficit disorder television programming are bound to sit up and take notice as the announcer of the popular radio series Gang Busters (1936-1957) calls Americans to "war on the underworld," as tires squeal and police car sirens wail amid a hail of machine gun fire. (Ever wonder why people use the phrase "coming on like gangbusters?" This is it.)

But, in addition to pulling characters and settings straight out of the ether, radio also created a slate of popular cars, which drove across the radio airwaves during the golden years of old-time radio. Although these three vehicles were later recreated for film and television, they have the strange precedent of first being created entirely in audio-only format.

JACK BENNY'S 1923 MAXWELL
                                                                  
The Jack Benny Show ran on radio from 1932 to 1955 on the simple premise that vain Benny was the world's stingiest man, selecting shoelaces as gifts for cast members or thinking carefully about his answer while accosted by a crook who demands, "Your money or your life."

Benny's junk heap car fit the character to a T-- a 1923 Maxwell driven by chauffeur Rochester Van Jones, played by Eddie Anderson. The car was so decrepit that Rochester avoided rinsing dirt off it: "Don't you remember the last time I used the hose on it, boss?" asks Rochester. "The fender fell off."

The old Maxwell had the advantage of sound effects created by supporting cast member Mel Blanc, who produced a full range of sput-sput-coughing noises simulating the car's failing engine. Though it appeared in publicity photos, the car was later depicted on Benny's TV series. Fans of Saturday morning cartoon series will recognize Blanc's characterization re-in-car-nated as Speed Buggy.

THE GREEN HORNET'S BLACK BEAUTY

The Green Hornet started life as a Detroit radio series featuring Britt Reid (Al Hodge), a distant relative of the Lone Ranger, fighting crime with his butt-kicking Filipino chauffeur Kato (Raymond Hayashi) from his secret headquarters.

Announcer: "Though supposedly abandoned, this building served as the hiding place for the sleek, super-powered Black Beauty, streamlined car of the Green Hornet. Britt Reid pressed a button. The great car roared into life. A section of the wall in front raised automatically, then closed as the gleaming Black Beauty sped into the darkness." The series ran on radio from 1936 to 1952, with the Black Beauty later depicted in film and comic books.

The Hornet's car is probably best remembered from the short-lived 1966-'67 TV series starring Van Williams and Bruce Lee. The monolithic Black Beauty was depicted there as a modified 1966 Chrysler Crown Imperial that appeared on the flip side of a reversible concrete slab in Reid's garage.

AMOS N' ANDY'S FRESH AIR TAXI CAB

White comedians Charles Correll and Freeman Gosden played Amos Jones and Andy Brown, two black characters from Atlanta who moved to Chicago to find a better life. The immensely popular radio sitcom ran for thousands of episodes between 1928 and 1955, with forays into film and television along the way. To move up in the world, the entrepreneurs established the Fresh-Air Taxicab Company of America, Incorporated, an enterprise consisting of a single, beat-up, open-air taxi cab.

The Louis Marx toy company issued a wind-up tin model of the vehicle in 1930, including such finely honed details as patched-up tires, dents and mud splotches as inspired by the radio program. Fully operational, the toy drives, stalls, violently shakes its occupants, then continues on its journey. Toy collectors are getting the last laugh as the beat-up cab now fetches prices approaching $1,000.