Adult Content

[Craig T Gustafson]

This is nearly off-topic, but not quite.

I work with a group that performs old time radio shows for a retirement home in Oak Park. I'll be transcribing & directing a show in late spring, and they're letting me do a double header of crook catching: The Shadow (melodramatic) and Dragnet (realistic).

So I've been listening to a lot of Dragnet episodes. This was when TV was starting to destroy radio, so radio had nothing to lose by going a bit more Adult in content. If you saw the 1960s campy TV version, you don't know Dragnet. The radio show was great. The last episode I heard before going to bed last night was The Big Canaries, a very creepy one about a teenage girl who knifes her mother to death. It's actually disturbing. I found one I want to use - The Big Badge, about a lover's lane bandit who goes to parked cars, beats up the boyfriends and rapes the girlfriends. It has action, a bad guy that you really want to see stomped, great writing and a policewoman who's hot for Joe Friday. Not a lot of people had actually seen Jack Webb at that point, so on radio it was plausible.

Anyway, the reason for bringing this up is the starting narration for The Big Love, about a woman who runs away with her lover, taking her two year old daughter with just to spite the father. The little girl is brutally murdered. The first words in the program:

"Ladies and gentlemen, this program is for you, not your children!"

I just want to bronze that and put it over the door for 70% of the shows I direct.

Craig

[The Voice9317]

Have to jump in on this one. I recently auditioned for a show that would probably be considered "adult" in its situation and language. The director proceeded to explain that he had changed all the "offensive words" to make it more family appropriate!

I was offended by the liberty he took with the playwright's work.