Theater Five - Single Episodes
Old Time Radio Researchers Group
THEATER FIVE
Theater Five was ABC's attempt to revive radio drama during the early 1960s. The series name was derived from its time slot, 5:00 PM. Running Monday through Friday, it was an anthology of short stories, each about 20 minutes long. News programs and commercials filled out the full 30 minutes. There was a good bit of science fiction and some of the plots seem to have been taken from the daily newspaper. Fred Foy, of The Lone Ranger fame, was an ABC staff announcer in the early 60s, who, among other duties, did Theater Five. From the Old Time Radio Researcher's Group. See "Note" Section below for more information on the OTRR.
This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.
Chapters
Reviews
'Discotheque' is my favorite one
bippy
I've listened to half of the shows and considering this was a daily broadcast the quality is pretty good. The best show so far I would say with no doubts was 'Discotheque'. This one would have made a great Rod Serling Twilight Zone episode. Whoever wrote this particular show was brilliant, I listened to it four times and kept catching more insight and nuances each time.
Quit complaining
Dementia43
Like really, if you want to download all of the episodes then go to the http://www.archive.org/details/OTRR_Certified_Theater_Five page to download all of the episodes. Now to the show. I really find this show quite fun to listen to, it's not as good as Golden Age'd Radio classics such as Suspense, Escape, Gunsmoke, ETC but it is fun to listen to, some of the stories can be quite engrossing.
Hits and misses
Mycroft Hallowman
I've been listening to the entire series recently, and I have enjoyed it very much, most of the time. I always appreciate a competent and engaging audio play. But there are a few rather notable flaws, the most apparent and egregious being the music. Even the incidental music bed during the play can be disrupting when it swamps the dialogue (and it does many times over the course of the series), but the intro, bumper and outro music is just plain wrong. I'm not saying it's bad music or poorly done, because for one thing, it is done quite well, certainly no less accomplished than any such music at the time of its popular use in the industry, and for another thing, I enjoy music from all eras and kinds and genres and styles, and to me cheesy music is where you slice it, so to speak, and one man's cheesiness is another man's perfectly-suited-to-its-time-iness. I made up that phrase. But for this series the music is blaringly wrong -- bombastic, overwrought, fit for television ads and cartoons, not dramatic productions. It tends to disrupt mood and atmosphere in some way in just about every episode I've heard thus far, which is about 80% now. It robs some episodes of their power and punch at the end, that is how badly it fits this series. Also, I find the writing very hit and miss, and a few episodes had me wanting to kick my computer across the room for the sheer illiteracy and ignorance of the writing. Most of this series is just fine, but some may turn off listeners of radio drama who know what good writing sounds like. The acting is almost always consistently competent and for the most part just plain good. I have been enjoying the surprise appearances of radio stalwarts of the era such as Robert Dryden, Ralph Bell, and Norman Rose, when they pop into an episode. Some of the most prolific and respected names in voice acting were used here and I always appreciate hearing them. I am happy to find this series and enjoy it, surely, but its flaws are egregious enough to me to only give it a 3 on the scale.
Good stories, good acting, and I can hear everything!
Carly Corday
Who left those 2 shameful 1964 Let's Heat Up the Cold War promotions in "The Manor House," a story as pointless as the Vietnam Conflict, with the same sort of DUH-WHAT, delayed ending? Next (spoiler!), and this moved me to remove a star from my rating of this favorite series: "World Enough and Time" did in fact make me feel like kicking poor Mr. Desktop PC across the room, even dragging myself out of my comfy bed to do it! The insistence of lower-brow fictional tales on pretending that hospitals can hold patients prisoner, forcing them to devise nerve-tingling escapes in terror of consequences too frightening to even be KNOWN to any of us, is so dumb!! This episode of Theater Five carried it so far, it left me as confounded as the poor man who wanted only to leave and go board his bleeping plane! AWFUL STORY. They should have just staged it on a different planet, to account for the ridiculousness of holding someone prisoner in a hospital in case a bump on his head had caused a concussion. And for not having him just WALK OUT. I've yet to be intruded upon by music DURING these stories, but the intro theme is jarring, unmusical, and ear-splitting, though no worse than the deafening scream of rusty hinges that go on and on at the start of CBS Radio Mystery Theater, or the screeeeeeeeeeeching door leading to the Inner Sanctum, or the continuous, monotonous WHISTLER intro, and MOST of the noises that open the most worthwhile radio dramas, not to mention the million commercials left intact in most of them (for the OTR aficionado princesses to swoon over). But regarding music, I was wondering, is Theater 5 the series with an episode about two deadly spies, a woman and a man, traveling in a cross-country bus? If so, it had the most memorable music I've ever heard in a radio mystery. Just one little child, deep in the background, singing "On Top of Old Smoky" as passengers fell asleep for the night. (Thank you for reply on that, newdickmorris. I can find it now and hear it again! That doesn't happen much. :o)
Awesome show. Discovered it by accident.
old_broke_lawyer
One of my all time favorite OTR-type programs. There is so much I want to say. First, a very odd show, in a way. For example, the plot was often left deliberately unresolved, and sometimes the bad guy got away with some awful crime. I am utterly shocked that, in 1964-65, it was able to be broadcast in the afternoon ("drive time"), since many episodes dealt with extremely controversial topics: rape, racism, teen pregnancy, child abuse, corporate greed and wrongdoing. There were episodes that revolved around situations "torn from the headlines" (e.g., the infamous '60s murder of a teen girl, witnessed by dozens of apartment dwellers, yet no one called the police or did anything to help). There are also episodes that were just plain unusual: "Flights of Angels" is unquestionably an attempt at portraying a drunken Orson Welles, at the height of his oratory, while having a conversation about acting, while sitting at a bar. "The Gandy Walker" is loosely based on the life of Woody Guthrie after he was hospitalized with Huntington's Disease, including his brief encounter with Bob Dylan while in the hospital. Oh, and finally, I need to mention "The Underdeveloped Nation", in which a U.S. Air Force pilot survives a plane crash, and despite numerous clues, he does not seem to be able to realize that he has landed in Oz. Have I given enough bits and pieces to grab your attention? Seriously, I can't say enough good things about this series. Give it a listen. You will love it. P.S.: In every episode, they asked listeners to write in, and they gave their address. I bet they got some fascinating letters! I don't think a similar show could get on the air today.
Highly Entertaining & Provocative Tales -- High Quality Productions
FrontTooth
As another review noted, many of these 20-minute tales are gritty. I've only listened to about 50 programs so far and I'm eager to hear them all. If you enjoy X-Minus One, Dimension X, Twilight Zone, CBS Radio Mystery Theater, among others, then relish these Theater Five productions. Some are disturbing in their focus on the dark side of human nature. So far, the series reminds me of Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert A. Heinlein, and Ayn Rand style of story telling. The stark lack of sentimentality stands out among other "feel good" programs. Of note, episode 51, All The Bright Young Ones, a story about a future society in which those age 41+ are forcibly retired to old people's centers on edges of society so the world can be managed by the young. The "old people" are forced to live in hiding. Episode 47, The Last Land Rush, tells the story of a future over-populated world where citizens turn on one another violently as they stake out a patch of open ground in a surviver style government land program. The production quality is superior and the writing is stellar. Highly recommended for your listening pleasure.
Your Time is Up
Mariana_UF
Although I usually enjoy happy endings rather than realistic endings, I liked the story line a lot. It was confusing at first because I felt as though I was just starting to listen to the story five minutes in but the repetition of events and names done by the main character made everything much clearer by the middle of it. The sound effects going on with the story-line were good but at times were too loud or didn’t go along with what was happening. In one part in particular I could barely hear what the main character was saying over the sound effect. But overall I enjoyed listening to this. I especially like the heartfelt conversation that the husband and wife had over the phone because it gave the reader a personal touch before killing a character which made the ending a much bigger event that it would have been otherwise.
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newdickmorris@yahoo.com
I really don't think there is anything wrong with the music. The various music played during most of the episodes is better than average, imo. I also think the intro music is kind of cool, honestly. My top 5 episodes are: Skeletons, Your Time Is Up Discotheque (dated music but it works for the story) Incident on U.S. 1 A Little Game on Saturday Mornings. Other ok episodes: Two Came Back (Also done on Escape. Escape's version is a little better, imo.) The Imposters (Also done on Suspense. Both suffer from revealing the major twist in the story a bit too early.) Mama's Girl Noose of Pearls Congratulations, Mr Mayor The Protective Circle Snow in April A Dream of a Scheme In Time of Trouble The Underdeveloped Nation (Dated humor but still fun)