The Old Gold Comedy Theater - "The Nervous Wreck" (04-22-45)

The Nervous Wreck (Aired April 22, 1945)

 

 

The Old Gold Comedy Theater was an NBC series that aired for the single 1944-1945 season, Sundays 10:30 - 11:00 pm. It was hosted by comedy star Harold Lloyd, of silent film fame, and featuring some of the biggest names from film and radio. In October 1944, Lloyd emerged as the director and host of The Old Gold Comedy Theater, an NBC radio anthology series, The show presented half-hour radio adaptations of recently successful film comedies, beginning with Palm Beach Story with Claudette Colbert and Robert Young. Some saw The Old Gold Comedy Theater as being a lighter version of Lux Radio Theater, and it featured some of the best-known film and radio personalities of the day, including Fred Allen, June Allyson, Lucille Ball, Ralph Bellamy, Linda Darnell, Susan Hayward, Herbert Marshall, Dick Powell, Edward G. Robinson, Jane Wyman, and Alan Young, among others. But the show's half-hour format — which meant the material might have been truncated too severely — and Lloyd's sounding somewhat ill at ease on the air for much of the season (though he spent weeks training himself to speak on radio prior to the show's premiere, and seemed more relaxed toward the end of the series run) may have worked against it.