The first half of the twentieth century was a golden age of American storytelling. Mailboxes burgeoned with pulp magazines, conveying an endless variety of fiction. Comic strips, with their ongoing dramatic storylines, were a staple of the papers, eagerly followed by millions of readers. Families gathered around the radio, anxious to hear the exploits of their favorite heroes and villains. Before the emergence of television as a dominant - and stifling - cultural force, storytelling blossomed in America as audiences and artists alike embraced new mediums of expression. This examination of storytelling in America during the first half of the twentieth century covers comics, radio, and pulp magazines. Each was bolstered by new or improved technologies and used unique attributes to tell dramatic stories. Sections of the book cover each medium. One appendix gives a timeline for developments relative to the subject, and another highlights particular episodes and story arcs that typify radio drama. Illustrations and a bibliography are included.

During the first half of the 20th century, when radio reigned supreme in the living rooms of America, the medium's hunger for captivating characters and stories could not be sated. Three national networks and dozens of independent stations created a vast expanse of air time that had to be filled with comedy, adventure, mystery, drama and music, night after night. It's no surprise that radio's producers and writers looked to outside sources for inspiration, drawing some of old-time radio's most beloved characters (e.g., Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Hopalong Cassidy, and Buck Rogers) directly from the pages of literature and popular fiction.This book examines individual characters that jumped from prose to radio, and also looks at a number of anthology programs that specialized in dramatizing short stories or novels. It begins with an exploration of mystery and detective shows, followed by evaluations of adventure stories, westerns, and science fiction. Later chapters focus on anthology shows, such as Orson Welles' ""Mercury Theater on the Air,"" that adapted classic novels by Twain, Steinbeck, Dickens and other great authors. Each chapter explores how the writers and producers approached the source material - what they changed, what they kept and what they left behind. The results of their efforts were almost always highly entertaining radio, examples of a form of storytelling much more engaging and satisfying than much of that with which it has been replaced.