Category: OTR Christmas

An OTR Christmas, Day 2

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Today’s broadcast from Christmases Past is an episode of Command Performance, a program produced by the War Department for the enjoyment of our men and women serving overseas. The service men and women requested which stars and songs they’d like to have featured, and the producers of the show did their best to accommodate them.

This program, which originally aired on Christmas Eve, 1942, features Bob Hope as emcee and a variety of guests, including, among others, Ethel Waters, Bing Crosby, and Dinah Shore, all performing popular hits of the day.

It’s a lot of fun, and we hope you’ll enjoy it.

Command Performance, starring Bob Hope—Christmas Eve, 1942 (1:00:11)

An OTR Christmas, Day 1

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We’re going to take it easy for a few days following Christmas, but until then, we’ll keep our noses to the grindstone. And we’re pleased to present you with a few surprises in the coming days. Each day this week, we’ll share with you a Christmas episode of some of our favorite old-time radio programs.

Today, it’s an episode of The Jack Benny Program from December 20, 1936, entitled “An Old-Fashioned Christmas Party.”

We love Jack Benny, and if you’re not familiar with him (so strange to think that anyone might be unfamiliar with Jack Benny, but such is the passage of time), we think you will, too. To our ears, his humor seems less dated than so much humor of the 1930s and ’40s.

Give a listen and see if you don’t agree!

The Jack Benny Show: “An Old-Fashioned Christmas Party”—Dec. 20, 1936 (28:56)