Introducing...
Classic RadioKits from the generic radio workshop
Want to produce your own old-time radio show? This is the easiest way to do it. A Radiokit contains everything you'll need except actors! Ideal for:
- Community Theatres
- School Drama Classes
- Senior Centers
- Churches
- Audio Drama Groups
...or anyone who wants to see how radio drama used to be done, and try it themselves.
Each Radiokit is shipped to you with all the materials you need to produce a 30 minute or 60 minute recreation of a classic radio show from the Golden Age of Radio. We've gone back to the actual original scripts from the archives of the Generic Radio Workshop, never made available to the public, added all the music, sound effects, and advice you need to get started, enclosed in a sturdy leatherette 3-ring director's binder.
You create the show as your cast and talents permit. Use all the included sound effects and music, or add your own live FX for an authentic radio studio experience. Explore the imaginative possibilities of the Golden Age of Radio, taking advantage of the Generic Radio Workshop's 40 years of producing and reproducing Old Time Radio to jumpstart and simplify your show. It's educational. It's historical. It's fun!
EACH RADIO KIT CONTAINS...
- A precisely reproduced copy of the decades-old original script used by cast & crew, complete with handwritten notes and edits
- A formatted, printed, and punched copy of the script for performance
- Background information on the series
- Advice on creating your own sound effects
- Notes regarding virtual and in-person production
AND A USB FLASH DRIVE WITH...
- Sound files for all music cues
- Sound files for key sound effects
- MS Word and PDF editions of the script, in original and as-broadcast versions when available
- Recordings of the original broadcast series and episode (if it exists)
- MacOS and Windows software for editing and playing sound files
Questions about the kits? Contact us!
CURRENTLY AVAILABLE RADIOKITS
Suspense:
”Murder Through the Looking Glass”
The CBS radio show Suspense was known as “Radio’s Outstanding Theatre of Thrills,” and delivered plenty of those during a 20-year run that starting in July 1942 and ran until September 30, 1962 - what is often thought of the last day of the Golden Age of Radio. As long as the story “promised to keep you in…suspense!” almost anything could happen on this anthology show - but murder was the most common theme.
$35 with Free Delivery Hear the Original Show
Category: Suspense Thriller
Length: 30 minutes
Original Airdate: 1949-03-17
Cast: 5+ men, 1 woman
Writer Jeffrey Bruno (played by Gregory Peck in 1949) seems to be suffering from bouts of amnesia. Worse, everyone thinks he is someone named John Blake — and John Blake is wanted for murder! The friends who want to help him aren’t what they seem. Sponsored by Autolite; includes commercials.
Screen Directors’ Playhouse:
“Wuthering Heights”
Several vintage radio series condensed popular Hollywood movies into audio versions, putting Tinseltown’s biggest stars and directors on the air. Screen Directors Playhouse ran for three years on the radio and a single season on TV. This adaptation, despite the hour-long length, is not especially difficult, although it could keep a sound effects person busy with all the footsteps.
$45 with Free Delivery Hear the Original Show
Category: Romantic Drama
Length: 60 minutes
Original Airdate: 1951-08-09
Cast: 7-10 men, 3 women
Adapted from Emily Bronte’s novel. Orphaned gypsy boy Heathcliff is adopted by the wealthy Earnshaw family and moves into their estate, Wuthering Heights. He falls for his foster sister, Cathy, who responds in kind until, due to social convention, she marries Edgar Linton, a man of means. Heathcliff vows to win her back, while Cathy’s ne’er-do-well alcoholic brother wishes to ruin their lives. Sponsored by RCA, Anacin, and Chesterfield cigarettes; with original commercials
Children’s Adventure Serials:
“Jack Armstrong” and “Skippy”
Two 15-minute children’s shows from the early age of radio. Like soap operas, but for kids, featuring storylines where children outsmart the adults in amazing adventures that continued for weeks or months. “Jack Armstrong” was up there with “Orphan Annie” and later shows like “Superman” in popularity, and was the original inspiration for the TV cartoon “Jonny Quest". “Skippy” was a radio spinoff of a massively-popular newspaper comic strip which by 1934 was a media juggernaut, appearing in books, radio, and even an Oscar-winning movie. Unfortunately, not even a single episode of the radio show has survived in audio form - only a handful of scripts including this one.
$35 with Free Delivery HEAR AN ORIGINAL SHOW
JACK ARSMTRONG:
Original Airdate: 1935-09-12
Cast: 4 boys, 1 girl, 2+ males
As part of “The Van Dyne Mystery,” Jack and his friends arrive jut a moment too late to stop the villainous Gore from racing off to a local airfield to steal a valuable secret formula. Can they stop him in time?
SKIPPY
Original Airdate: 1934-07-18
Cast: 3+ boys, 1 girl, 2+men
Skippy’s pal Sooky is about to lose his house to a mean landlord, and some bank robbers passed through town. Skippy and his gang are hot on the trail of the bank robbers, who are planning on making a getaway by plane, while Skippy hatches a plan to Save Sooky’s house from foreclosure.
Life With Luigi:
"Luigi starts a Barber Shop"
A sitcom which focused on what Americans understood as stereotypical immigrant types, but quite charming stereotypes with broadly entertaining accents, Life with Luigi takes us back to a now-vanished America with pleasant patriotic pride. Small-town Italian Luigi Bosco (originally portrayed by the Irish-American actor J. Carrol Naish) tries to navigate the complexities of American life with his friends from Germany, Eastern Europe and Scandanavia. Plenty of opportunities to try out accents.
$35 with Free Delivery Hear the Original Show
Category: Situation Comedy
Length: 30 minutes
Original Airdate: 1950-11-07
Cast: 6+ Men, 2 Women
Luigi’s antique business is struggling and his neighbor Pasquale doesn’t want to renew his lease. So Luigi gets convinced to learn a new trade at barber college. Pasquale, as always, has other plans. Sponsored by Wrigley Spearmint Gum; includes commercials.
Broadway's My Beat:
“The Howard Crawford Murder Case“
In 1951 just like today, detectives and murder mysteries made great drama and came in many forms. The crimes of “Broadway’s My Beat" crimes were solved by Danny Clover a police detective with a cynical poet’s heart, keenly observing the goings-on in his part of New York "from Times Square to Columbus Circle, the gaudiest, the most violent, the lonesomest mile in the world.” The series ran for five years.
$35 with Free Delivery Hear the Original Show
Category: Detective Drama
Length: 30 minutes
Original Airdate: 1951-08-05
Cast: 5+ men, 2 women
A man is found drowned in a public swimming pool. Turns out it was murder, but who killed Howard Crawford, and why? Sponsored by Wrigley’s gum; includes original commercials.
Sky King:
"The Atomic Trap - Episode 7 - Chapter 126"
Although the TV version is better remembered, Sky King started out in 1946 as a daily 15 minute serial on the radio, then became a 30-minute show. Schulyer King lived on the Flying Crown Ranch, near the fictitious town of Grover, Arizona, but especially on radio, his plane (the Songbird”) could take him on adventures miles away. Highly implausible plots make for a fun show.
$35 with Free Delivery Hear some Original Shows
Category: Juvenile Action Adventure
Length: 30 minutes
Original Airdate: 1949-11-21
Cast: 7-9 men, 1 woman
Sky King, his niece and nephew have tracked down botanist Andre Bolton to a remote village in Central America. But the sinister Dr. Shade is nearby with an atomic cannon that can spew fatal radiation. It’s going to be tough for the gang to escape the invisible deadly rays. Sponsored by Peter Pan Peanut butter; includes original commercials.
Columbia Shakespearean Cycle:
"Henry IV"
In the 1930s, the Columbia Broadcasting System was the less popular but more prestigious radio network compared to NBC. The "Shakespearean Cycle" was quite a novelty at the time, both for presenting condensed versions of complete Shakespeare plays through radio and for casting famous stars in principle roles. Henry IV, which squeezed both Part 1 and Part 2 into a streamlined 60 minutes, included Walter Huston, Humphrey Bogart and Dame May Whitty among the stars in a large cast.
$45 with Free Delivery Hear the Original Show
Category: Shakespearean drama
Length: 60 minutes
Original Airdate: 1937-08-23
Cast: 28 men, 1 woman. Doubling is possible
While his son Price Hal spends time in the taverns, King Henry IV argues with his former ally Hotspur. Angry, Hotspur gathers a rebellion, and Henry and Hal go to battle to stop him. Henry's army wins the battle, while Hal redeems himself from his wild youth and kills Hotspur. When King Henry IV suffers takes ill and dies, Hal becomes King Henry V. He banishes Falstaff from court, ready to wage war on France.