First folks a little "housekeeping"; I appreciate all the emails you are sending to the blog site, keep 'em coming, but FYI for unknown reasons I when I respond to some of you folks I get a failed to be delivered message. It does not occur very often, but I want to let you all know that I answer every email sent to me, so if you haven't heard from me within a couple of days please try again, or better yet email me at the XM site radioclassics@xmradio.com (That's if you fail to hear from me here).
Okay, Christmas In July voting was quite intense, but friendly. Between all the comments and the numerous email votes, it appears that continuing the tradition wins the vote by roughly 2/3rds to 1/3rd. Ah but this is the nation of compromise, right? So here's what I will likely do; the weekly long Christmas In July celebration will be broadcast from Monday July 14th to Sunday July 20th but it won't be wall to wall nothing buy Christmas OTR shows. About 1/3 of the 2 hour blocks will be traditional fare.
Once the printable schedule is posted, you can see how they rotate as the Christmas themed shows will be highlighted in blue. RadioClassics Grid 2008-07-14 Christmas In July etal.xls (27.00 kb) This is a tentative schedule. I have a number of Christmas series that have not been broadcast on the channel before and the others have not played for more than one year (meaning they were not part of last Christmas In July or broadcast last December).
Now on to this week's shows;
We have an hour long radio version of Alfred Hitchcock's thriller motion picture Strangers On A Train. Filling in for big screen leads Farley Granger and Robert Walker are Ray Milland and Frank Lovejoy. It debuts today (Monday) at Noon ET and repeats this evening at 8pm ET.
Ray Milland Frank Lovejoy
To mark this Friday Independence Day celebration here in "The States" (my Canadian listeners are free to join in if they like :) ) we are bringing back Yankee Doodle Dandy starring James Cagney as presented on The Screen Guild Players. That is followed by Bette Davis in The Cavalcade of America episode An American Is Born.
It runs all week but I'll highlight Friday's broadcasts; Noon ET and again at 8pm on The Fourth of July. Greg.
Jimmy Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy Bette Davis