The disc we had of this show was quite dirty, requiring careful hand cleaning, and some trickery with the tonearm to preserve dialogue that would have been skipped over due to some heavy scratches. Then we found we had another copy of this show, in wonderful shape! What are the odds of that happening?
This encoding of Mail Call 119 is in better shape than that in current circulation, so if you appreciate the hard (volunteer!) work that goes into the storage, production, encoding, and delivery of these shows, please make a pledge or donation to help us remain in our building and continue bringing these shows to you.
Mail Call 119
Joan Crawford (M.C), guests: Bob (Robert) Benchley, Ida James, Red Skelton, Harriet Nelson, Ozzie Nelson
First Song Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho (Golden Gate Quartet)
During WWII there was a musician strike.. but some special recordings of music were made to be sent to the solders overseas.. and the records were supposed to be destroyed.. but some one somewhere saved a set… has anyone heard of this and know where copies can be found etc etc. 73 Marc
Thanks for your comment. I think you are speaking about V-Discs, which are different from this Mail Call show.
I can recall reading in the liner notes of a commercial release of some V-Disc recordings that while the masters of the recordings were destroyed, enough of the distributed V-Discs survived that they’ve been released on cd. (This entry in Wikipedia seems to confirm this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Disc)
Very popular and well-known artists did V-Discs: I bought a 2-cd set of Frank Sinatra V-Disc recordings at a local cd store. I also remember seeing an original V-Disc being sold in the used bin of another store.