Full disclosure, I don’t listen to the OTR comedies. Back when I first started getting into old time radio shows, I was listening on CBS Radio. They played a block of shows each weeknight that was right when I took my dog to the park. So it became my routine. In that block I got a lot of “Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar” (yes, the Bob Bailey era), “Dragnet,” and “Gunsmoke.” All of which remain my top favorite shows. But they also included Jack Benny. Gotta say, I could appreciate the performances and acknowledge, “Yes, I can see how people back then would have found that funny.” But I never laughed. So when I moved on to seek out other OTR, I never looked at the comedy shows. Now, after bingeing “Our Miss Brooks,” “Archie Andrews,” and “The Adventures of Maisie,” I’ve come to realize what doesn’t hit me about the old comedies.
Years ago a friend of mine said he hated “I Love Lucy” because, “I’ve seen all those jokes before.” Yeah… but she did them first. I do find a lot of that with the OTR comedies. And that’s not on them. Actually, it’s probably to their credit. A lot of the jokes have been stolen from the older series and rehashed in more modern shows over the decades, so when I step in as a first time listener to the OTR show, it feels like a rerun.
The set-ups for jokes is another bump in the road for me. And this is really a personal preference. But as someone who has studied, written, and performed comedy for three decades, dang it, I like a good set-up for a joke. And that comes from the school of hard knocks for me. One of my first attempts at writing a TV script (a spec script where you write an episode of an already established show) I gave it to one of the experienced/seasoned writers on the sitcom where I was working as a receptionist. She came back and said I had a weird quirk. One she’d never seen before. I had great payoffs for the jokes. The jokes themselves were funny. But my set-ups for the joke were flat! Usually it’s the other way around where the set-up gets you excited and then the payoff, the joke itself, is bad. So I had to learn how to do good set-ups. And in OTR comedies, their set-ups often are very contrived. Example: When dialogue doesn’t sound like something anyone would actually say, but they have to say it that way for the joke. I really hate dialogue that doesn’t sound like someone would ever say it in real life, especially when it’s just for a laugh.
And then there’s pop culture references. You may have noticed, I love making them. But I have no illusions that they don’t date my work. Pop culture jokes create an anchor to a place and time that don’t have a long shelf life. Think right now about COVID jokes. Do you want to hear those anymore? What was relevant in 2020 during the pandemic, now feels dated and old. Now go back 70 years! I think pop culture references are a great way to get audiences to laugh at something they all have collectively experienced. But a lot of those jokes in “Our Miss Brooks” are outdated and do not resonate in modern day. I put up on my social media the joke from the original. Miss Brooks puts on her rain slicker and Mrs. Davis says she looks “like the trademark from a bottle of cod liver oil” and Miss Brooks replies, “Quick, throw a halibut over my shoulder!” WHAT. I hunted that cod liver oil down and there is a fisherman in a rain slicker with a human sized fish over his shoulder. The studio audience went wild. Zero point of reference to modern day. So, like with Jack Benny, I acknowledge that was a joke, but I don’t have the life experience to find it funny.
Obviously the performances in the OTR comedies are done by some of the greats of the era, so there is absolutely a lot to get out of the shows. But I’m still a bigger fan of the dramas, which have aged a bit slower than the old jokes.
-Chrisi (aka Madison)
