Good News of 1938
Volume Number: 1

Episode Count: 14

Catalog # C-GN38-1

Good News of 1938 was announced as the most spectacular radio show ever launched, though the finished product fell somewhat short of preshow hyperbole. It did, as Newsweek pointed out, mark the "first major collaboration of a movie studio and a broadcasting system in behalf of a commercial sponsor." The result cost Maxwell House $25,000 a week for a series that drew lukewarm critical response.

The idea was, simply put, to "dazzle'em with glitter". Metro Goldwyn Mayer would produce it, making every star in its fold ("except Garbo") available for the air. It would be bigtime variety, with stories and songs, musical comedy, and intimate glimpses of Hollywood with its hair down. Each week a new MGM filem would be previewed in fully dramtatized capsule versions, with the original stars in the radioroles. One of the features, "Backstage at the Mmovies," would let listeners in on executive conferences at MGM; listeners would get audio tours of favored stars' dressing rooms. It was seen as a splashy successor to the Maxwell House Show Boat, which had had five successful seasons in the Thursday-at-9 hour and was now being dropped. John Dunning

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