yesteryear

[Page Stephens]

Wilson,

FYI:

"Starring William Conrad as Matt Dillon, Parley Baer as Chester, Howard
McNear as Doc and Georgia Ellis as Kitty." You may remember William Conrad
later on as Cannon and Howard McNear as the barber on The Andy Griffith
Show. Conrad had one of the greatest radio voices ever. Ken Curtis who
played Festus on the tv version actually had a great voice and for several
years sang lead for The Sons of the Pioneers. He was also in his earlier
days a handsome cowboy in the movies.

I don't remember if I have ever put this up but it might be of interest to
someone on this list so this is as good a time as any.

Many years ago a friend on mine and I wrote a series of half hour radio
comedies for a local PBS station entitled, "I Stepped in Adventure."

In the process we learned that it takes as many pages to write a hal hour
radio script as it does to write an hour and a half tv program although
sitcoms might be an exception.

The problem with radio is that you can't have any dead time. In other words
since you lack the visual aspect you can't just write something like, "This
is the City. (pan a picture of Los Angeles)" etc. etc. etc., and chase
scenes are for the most part out and even if you include them you have to
include all sorts of bells and whistles (literally) in order to make them
interesting to the listener which is the reason that Richard and I included
a musical break in the middle of all our shows just to give the listener a
chance to relax.

Accents and dialects were also important so that you could break up the
monotony. The greatest American radio actor on this level was probably
Edgar Bergen who spoke not only as himself but Charlie McCarthy, Mortimer
Snerd and Effie Klinker although no one could ever do this as well as Peter
Sellers on the BBC "Goon Show".

The nature of the medium thus has a lot to do with linguistic usage.

I personally prefer radio comedies and dramas to tv if only because the
listener has to pay attention to what is going on.

Page Stephens

> [Original Message]
> From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: 1/7/2006 12:30:04 AM
> Subject: Re: yesteryear
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
-----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: yesteryear
>
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>
> I, too, remember well "those thrilling days of yesteryear" from radio
> days, to the extent of being able to recall that "Cheerioats"[sic] was
> the sponsor. I was never interested in the TV verssion because the
> voices were different, ditto "Gunsmoke." That "Chester" had the same
> voice was barely enough to git 'er done for me. When Chester was
> replaced by "Fester" or whoever, that
> was the end.
>
> Until I read this post, the possibility that "yesteryear" might mean
> merely "last year" and not "at least as far back as the days of the
> Old West" had never occurred to me. OTOH, I've always felt that
> "antan" was merely "last year," barring an uncanny prescience on the
> poet's part of today's vanishing snowcaps and glaciers and the
> concurrent extiction of species.
>
> General Mills vacillated between "Cheerioats" and "Cheerios" before
> settling on the latter.
>
> BTW, has anyone else the increasing number of semi-educated writers
> who think that "latter" is a sophisticater way of expressing "last"?
>
> -Wilson
>
> -Wilson
>
>
>