NOTE: THIS WILL ONLY REMAIN UP UNTIL JANUARY 1, 2015. This is the last podcast.
Welcome to his vorpal sword‘s TENTH annual podcast of our original old time radio drama, performed live (in front of an invisible audience of, potentially, trillions.)
I used to be a radio pundit on the old Air America affiliate here in Eugene, Oregon. But, for a change, I wrote, produced and directed a little Christmas Special in 2005. This marks its tenth annual “broadcast/podcast.” (2005-2014: count it on y0ur fingers, including 2005).
For a special treat, The KOPT Radio Theater Players appear herein in the 2005 production of “The St. Nick Case,” in wide-spectrum, full color stereo. The radio play was broadcast live on Eugene’s Air America affiliate KOPT-AM 1600 on December 23, 2005.
The St. Nick Case — a Sebastian Cole Mystery*
Right click and “save as.” It’s an mp3, 20 minutes, 4.4 megs. Professionally produced, and just as you heard it on the radio in 2005.
NOTE: As it is a radio play, there are no visuals. You will be required to supply them from your own imagination.
[* NOTE: Some screenwriter had a movie a few years back called “The Adventures of Sebastian Cole,” but I have Cole mysteries in print as far back as 1985 (“The Girl in the Cellophane Wrapper” published in ADAM Magazine), and he can’t have the name. Sorry, dude.]
Starring scintillating Host Nancy Stapp, protean producer Shelly Gaske, McGruff-voiced Mac McFadden and radio newsman extraordinaire Rick Little as the detective, with yours truly adding miscellaneous voices and sound effects, The KOPT Radio Theater Players presented their first and last production on Christmas Eve Eve, 2005.
Sadly, Mac passed away in October 2012, and to him this airing is dedicated. Requiescat in Pace, my friend.
My friend, the late Mac McFadden
I wrote this during the amazing Summer and Fall of 1986, when I wrote two books, two screenplays and a slew of short stories and essays in my Hollywood office on Kingswell, in what turned out to be Walt Disney’s original studio. There, he produced silent “Alice in Cartoonland” one- and two-reelers.
Disney Studio on Kingswell (click to enlarge)
Walt and Roy Disney pose in front of the
Kingswell Studio with wives+friend.jpg
(OK: He originally started in his garage,which was two blocks down the street. I used to walk by it, nights.)
1923 Walt Disney garage
Inside Walt’s garage
As Christmas approached, I had this idea of a “film noir” radio play, a kind of Sam Spade meets Miracle on 34th Street deconstructing Milton Friedman. So I wrote it.
Tried on and off to get it produced. It never was. Nineteen years would pass.
In the mid- 1990s, I booked time with a local studio, and enlisted some actors to do the play, and, while the actual recording went great — very little need for second takes — the fellow who owned the studio completely screwed up the cross-channel tracks (we’d been recording it on discrete channels, so that we could intercut the parts, rather than as an ensemble recording) and the bleed-through made editing all but impossible. The local public radio station was going to broadcast it, and we spent a long, frustrating night in the producer’s basement trying to fix it with the then-new miracles of digital editing and DAT.
OK: Impossible. I’ve still got the 16-track master tape, though, but it’s mostly good for a paperweight.
I had a local non-profit theater producer interested, that we might do it as a reading for Christmas, but he and the script vanished. That was about 1999.
We move on. But then luck decided to start acting like a lady, and a chance appeared.
Fast forward to 2005. I was a regular “pundit” on Fridays on the local AirAmerica affiliate, KOPT. And I thought it might be fun to broadcast it live, as a Christmas special. I suggested it. The host said … ‘GREAT!’ And it was the easiest casting call I’ve ever done.
And this we did. It was well-received.
It takes place during the Depression, and seems particularly appropriate for hard financial times.
So: my Christmas gift to you.
Here’s the complete Christmas Radio Play for you for FREE, originally broadcast on KOPT-AM in Eugene, Oregon on December 23, 2005.
Merry Christmas.
Courage.
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.