From the University of Wisconsin’s WHA radio series of the 1970′s comes EARPLAY, a collection of contemporary audio plays that were originally aired on NPR.  Tonight you hear a now famous actress, Kathy Bates, when at the age of 30 she starred in an EARPLAY production entitled “The Porch.”  The play is set in th backyard of a middle-class Texas home. Pearl, the younger sister, is preparing a going-away party for her older sister, Jewel, a beautician who is bored with small town life and is heading off hopefully to the big city. As the two bustle about setting out food and putting up decorations, their conversation reveals progressively more and more of their differences and dreams…and of the emptiness which has pervaded both their lives.  This is an extremely well-done play by writer Jack Heifner.  It originally aired on February 12, 1978.  It runs 55 minutes.

Mr. Vincent Price as Simon Templar, “The Saint” - Originally a series of novels by Leslie Charteris, Simon Templar, better known as The Saint, also starred in seven RKO movies in the late 1930s and early 1940s.  The Saint was known as the “Robin Hood of Modern Crime.”   He’s usually sharp enough to stick to slinging witty words like arrows, but sometimes thugs required a few slugs that were readily delivered by The Saint.  Tonight listen to a show originally broadcast on April 8th, 1951 entitled “The Ghost Who Came To Dinner.”

Fannie Brice stars in her most well-known role on radio, Baby Snooks.  Hanley Stafford plays “Daddy” Lancelot Higgins in a skit heard during the Maxwell House Coffee Time Show on February 12th, 1942… two years before Fannie Brice got her own show… this skit is entitled “Tent in the Living Room.”