Burns & Allen, Fred Allen

REPS Presents Featuring George Burns,Gracie Allen and Fred Allen.

My goodness, here we are in the month of December already and it won’t be too long and we’ll be ringing in the new year.  This week,  REPS Presents an episode of George Burns and Gracie Allen.  I really enjoy this program and this particular show is especially cute.  It’s from November 25,1948 and centers on a turkey swallowing a wedding ring that Gracie was entrusted with.   I heard this program last week while returning from a rather enjoyable Thanksgiving gathering and felt in the spirit to listen to a show that featured a turkey as the centerpiece of the comedy.   I truly enjoyed it and ’tis the reason this program appears in this weeks edition of REPS Presents.

In the second half of this weeks REPS Presents, The Fred Allen Show is featured.  In this broadcast from April 24th, 1949 Basil Rathbone appears to spoof Sherlock Holmes  ( the character Basil most famously portrayed in the 1940s movie series ).  Allen clearly loves to parody hard boiled private detectives, police inspectors and the Sherlock Holmes tradition but  Allen’s clear favorite for spoofing was the Chinese Detective ( Charlie Chan ).   Allen created the One Long Pan character in 1935 to the amusement of radio listeners who were quite familiar with the then popular Charlie Chan films starring Warner Oland.  Allen was still spoofing Charlie Chan in 1949 and in this broadcast he clearly enjoys bringing out the character of One Long Pan one more time opposite Basil Rathbone.

Enjoy an hour of radio comedy at it’s its finest in this edition of REPS Presents . . .

REPS Presents as broadcast on the Radio Theater Channel on  December 3rd, 2016

Jenn Ollivier “The Red Head Diva”