Massasoit Radio Players Present: Music and Comedy Dinner Theatre Featuring WBZ AM 1030 Radio Personality Jordan Rich

    BROCKTON, MA, January 13, 2011 /24-7PressRelease/ -- The Massasoit Radio Players Present: Music and Comedy Dinner Theatre, featuring WBZ AM 1030 radio personality Jordan Rich, will take place at The Conference Center at Massasoit Community College, [770 Crescent Street, Brockton, MA 02302] on Friday, February 11, 2011 from 6:30 - 9:00 P.M. In addition to Jordan Rich, performers will include the Massasoit Radio Players: Ed Krasnow, Rolly Blanchette, Elizabeth Morrell, Rosie Carey and musical director Charlie Savage plus the South Shore's favorite singer/songwriter/guitarists Paul Colarusso & Judy Pavadore. WXBR 1460 AM Morning Drive-Time Host Kevin Tocci will join Massasoit staffer Harris Bloomwald in creating crazy sound effects.

Tickets for this event featuring a 3-course dinner, music and comedy cabaret are $35.00 each and can be purchased by calling the Buckley Performing Arts Center box office at 508-427-1234 [24/7]. Tickets can also be purchased at the Buckley Performing Arts Center Box Office [located at Massasoit Community College off Route 27, Brockton, MA] from 9 AM - 5 PM on Thursdays or from 1 PM - 5 PM on Saturdays. The dinner menu will feature Greek salad, chicken marsala, oven-roasted potatoes, green beans almondine, chocolate mousse cake, coffee and tea. A cash bar will be available as well. For more information, go to www.massasoit.mass.edu.

Before e-mail, the Internet and Facebook, in the middle part of the 20th Century, people were entertained by radio and TV shows like Dragnet, The Bickersons, Duffy's Tavern and other live broadcast performances featuring live actors and hilarious studio-made sound effects. These programs were sponsored by commercials for products like Sal Hepatica laxatives and the Dandy Eight Way Stretch Girdle! On February 11, Massasoit Community College's Radio Players will present music and comedy in a cabaret format providing an intimate setting. Proceeds will benefit Massasoit scholarship funds.

Radio/TV Classics Live is a 20-year program at Massasoit Community College in Brockton, Massachusetts which raises scholarship money for students wishing to pursue a career in Radio and TV communications. Massasoit is part of the Massachusetts State College System; it is a two-year college whose student body comes primarily from multicultural, working class families. Massasoit Radio Players Present: Music and Comedy Dinner Theatre is a spin-off of Radio/TV Classics Live.

Created in 1990, Radio/TV Classics Live has raised more than $90,000 in scholarship money for Massasoit graduates going on to four-year colleges. Equally as important, Radio/TV Classics Live has provided students with the rare opportunity to meet, work with and learn from professionals - actors, writers, directors, sound effects people from the golden age of radio who were on the cutting edge of what was then the nation's primary communication and entertainment medium. The program was also designed to help reach out to the senior citizen community and provide them with evenings of entertainment and nostalgia.

Since Radio Classics began in 1990, the group has been fortunate to have many former and current radio/TV stars participate, including: Dick Van Patten, Alan Young, Gale Storm, Willard Waterman (The Great Gildersleeve), Ezra Stone (Henry Aldrich), Arthur Anderson, Parley Baer, Peg Lynch, Betsy Palmer, Donald Buka, Will Hutchins, Rosemary Rice, Robert Horton, William Schallert, Shirley Mitchell, songwriter Jay Livingston, Lon Clark, Arnold Stang, Fred Foy, Bob Dryden, Bob Hastings, Don Hastings, Mark Goddard and Tom Bergeron.

Additionally, many current and past Boston and national on-air radio/TV personalities have participated, including Rex Trailer (Boomtown), Jess Cain (WHDH), Boston's original Evening Magazine team Robin Young (WBUR) and Barry Nolan, Ron Della Chiesa (WGBH; WPLM), Jordan Rich, Gil Santos, Laurie Kirby, Diane Stern, Rod Fritz, Deb Lawler, Norm Nathan (WBZ), NPR's Carl Kasell, Kerry Connolly, Scott Wahle and Josh Binswanger formerly of (WBZTV4), Jonathan Hall (TV7), Charles Laquidara, Ben Parker (WEIM), Jerry Williams (WRKO), and Michele Hughes (WODS).

HISTORIC BACKGROUND

Dragnet was perhaps the most famous and influential police procedural drama in media history. The series gave millions of audience members a feel for the boredom and drudgery, as well as the danger and heroism, of real-life police work. Dragnet earned praise for improving the public opinion of police officers.

The show's cultural impact is such that even after five decades, elements of Dragnet are known to those who have never seen or heard the program: The ominous, five-note introduction to the brass and tympani theme music (titled "Danger Ahead") is instantly recognizable.

The original Dragnet starring Jack Webb as Sergeant Friday ran on radio from June 3, 1949 to February 26, 1957 and on television from December 16, 1951 to August 23, 1959 and from January 12, 1967 to April 16, 1970. NBC's radio and television networks carried all three series. There were also three Dragnet feature films, a straight adaptation starring Webb in 1954; a TV-movie produced in 1966; and a comedy spoof in 1987. After Jack Webb's death, two Dragnet revivals were attempted; one was for weekly syndication in 1989 and the other was for ABC in 2003. A newspaper comic strip version of Dragnet, written by Jack Webb and Joe Scheiber, ran in newspapers from about 1952 to 1955. A half-hour TV episode called "Big September" can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW0rn3L6cdU&list=SL.

The Bickersons was a radio comedy sketch series that began in 1946 on NBC, moving the following year to CBS where it continued until 1951. The show's married protagonists, portrayed by Don Ameche and Frances Langford, spent nearly all their time together in relentless verbal war. Here is a segment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm2Y80jSHi0.

Duffy's Tavern was a popular American radio situation comedy which ran for a decade on several networks (CBS, 1941-1942; NBC-Blue Network, 1942-1944; NBC, 1944-1951), concluding with the December 28, 1951 broadcast.

The program often featured celebrity guest stars but always hooked them around the misadventures, get-rich-quick schemes and romantic missteps of the title establishment's malaprop-prone, metaphor-mixing manager, Archie, portrayed by Ed Gardner, the writer/actor who co-created the series. Gardner had performed the character of Archie, talking about Duffy's Tavern, as early as November 9, 1939, when he appeared on NBC's Good News of 1940. A one minute clip can be watched here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKzRQtGj0qw.

Sue Auclair Promotions is a public relations and marketing firm based in Boston, Massachusetts. For more information, contact us at 617-522-1394.

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