Sit down, close your eyes and let your mind form the images as you relive the golden age of radio programs. Each week we'll feature a different and exciting program in MP3 format. Just click on the radio image below to be transported back in time.

This Week

Hop Harrigan

Danger From The Skies

March 11, 1943

Aviation adventures as a genre seems odd to us now, and that's probably for a few simple reasons. First, many of the kids listening to such aviation adventures as The Air Adventures of Jimmy Allen, Captain Midnight, and Hop Harrigan had watched their first plane flying overhead as a singular, wondrous thing droning high above across the sky. WWI aces, flying barnstormers and air explorers like "Lucky Lindy" and Amelia Earhart fired the imaginations of the 20's and 30s eras. Pylon racing, all but forgotten today, was as big as Nascar in some regions of America. Then, WWII had its civilian defense "plane spotter" awareness. But the jet took the human element out of flying, and the aviation adventure was quiet until we reached for "outer space."

The writing team of Burtt and Moore had created Captain Midnight, and in 1942 got together with Albert Aley to do a radio adventure based on the popular All-American comics star, Hop Harrigan. Hop Harrigan Radio Show is "America's Ace of the Airwaves," and he gets a lot of flying time fighting evil, and as the war developed, Hop in his radio adventures was in the thick of the real battles that were raging overseas. His flying buddy Tank Tinker is along for the ride and Hop actually is allowed a girlfriend, Gail Nolan, played by Mitzi Gould. Chester Stratton plays Hop, and Tank's role was first Ken Lynch, then Jackson Beck. Beck was the announcer on Superman after 1943 and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, played The Cisco Kid from '42-'45, Inspector Logan on Casey, Crime Photographer, Hood on The Casebook of Gregory Hood in '49, plus The Mysterious Traveler, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and many more. He's also beloved as the classic voice of Bluto on the Thimble Theatre Popeye cartoons.

Somewhat more adult than the earlier flying adventures, Hop actually gets out of the plane and does some WWII spy work behind the enemy lines in Germany, and later in the series went to the Pacific Theatre to Okinawa for the battle of Okinawa. During the war years, the announcer's war appeals stand in stark contrast to the comicbook-inspired adventures on the show.

After the war, Hop gets involved in episodic mysteries that remind one in plot of I Love a Mystery, as well as an adventure in Hollywood. Grape Nuts flakes was the major sponsor in the mid-1940s, with Glenn Riggs announcing throughout the run.

  Huntington Beach News