Listen to Benchley Perform The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

December 8 is the birthday of James Thurber (1894, Columbus, Ohio), so what a perfect time to listen to Robert Benchley and a full cast perform Thurber's most-popular work, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty? It was recorded in December 1944 for CBS. Thurber loved this adaptation of the story from The New Yorker. This is the complete broadcast, not abbreviated. To celebrate Thurber today, let's share this with our friends, and try to get 100 listeners for both Benchley and Thurber!

All Comedy Radio Comes to Boston, Other American Cities.

According to a post on Radio Insight, Clear Channel Communications will be launching about a score of all-comedy radio stations over the coming weeks. Here in Boston, the formerly all-talk AM 1200 has already switched to Matty's Comedy 1200. The website has a search engine where you can enter the name of the comedian to get more information. A search of Benchley yielded Nat's recordings of his grandfather's stories. However, I could not find a play list with times to expect particular artists.

Another Remarkable Wireless Talking-type Benchley Show

We thank Christopher Morgan of the Boston "We've Come for the Davenport" Chapter of the Robert Benchley Society and Steve Russell, practitioner of "Juggling, Comedy and the Art of Oomph!" (http://www.incapablehands.com/) for passing on this information about Benchley on Radio.

There are several examples of Robert Benchley's radio work available on Old Time Radio Cat at the website http://www.otrcat.com/. The site even offers a free sample of Bob Benchley on the Fred Allen Show. While you're on the site you can even buy Another Remarkable Wireless Talking-type Goon Show.

Other places to find Benchley on Radio are:

• The Vintage Radio Place ( http://otrsite.com/) and
• OTRN (http://www.otrnow.com/).