Arch Oboler - Drop Dead!

Artist : Arch Oboler (1909-1987)

Album : Drop Dead! (1962)

Genre : Spoken Word, Comedic Horror

Rating : ***** ** (out of 10*)

This Week I Converted...
    Arch Oboler was old, even when I was young. He was a writer, producer, and director in the 1930's-60's, working in TV, movies, and radio. He is best-known for his performances on early radio. ANAICT, he only ever put out one LP album - Drop Dead! in 1962. I became acquainted with it in 1969, when a friend at college occasionally played it while we sat around and ...erm... drank and partook.

    It has eight tracks, each a different type of horror story. You have a psychopathic cannibal ("I'm not psychotic, I'm just hungry!!"); a car stuck on the railroad tracks as a train's a-coming; a creeping darkness that turns humans inside-out ("organs hanging"); and a proto-Crichtonesque science-gone-awry tale (a piece of chicken-heart that doubles in size every hour). You won't find Drop Dead! on CD; and you will probably never find it at a Used Record store.

    I was pleasantly surprised to find out my friend still had the vinyl, and I coaxed him into letting me convert it to CD. For a 45-year-old record, it's in excellent condition, which is not surprising, given that its owner is an audiophile. There were no skips or warps; just a bunch of small scratches that are inevitable on any used-LP. I edited most of them out when converting it.

What's To Like...
    DD! is a glimpse into old-time radio. You have a team of people doing the voices; and a whole slew of innovative sound-effects to add to the story. Think of it as a trip to Universal Studios, but in audio format only. The stories are not particularly scary, but there is a subtle humor underpinning the whole album. The sound-effects are amazing. One of the "team" on this album was Bea Benadaret, who shortly after this was to star as the mom on the TV series Petticoat Junction. You say you never heard of that show?! (Heavy sigh, look of nostalgia). Whippersnapper!

What's Not To Like...
    At 37 minutes in length, the whole album is short, even by 1960's LP standards. If you don't have an active imagination, you might find DD! to be a trifle tedious. And as with any spoken album (even when it's hilarious satire, such as Firesign Theatre), it may grow boring after a few listens.

Why should I care about an old fart like Arch Oboler?
    For starters, radio shows are a lost art-form. You can get an aftertaste of it in modern stand-up comedy, particuarly if the comic makes use of sound-effects. But that's a pale shadow of radio shows in their heyday. More importantly, Arch Oboler was one of the first to tweak the noses of the establishment. His plays and films were downright weird. Read, for instance, Wikipedia's recap of his 1956 play, Night Of The Auk.

    Wiki also relates an anecdote about a radio skit that he wrote in 1937 for the Chase & Sanborn Hour. Performed by Don Ameche and Mae West, it was a take-off on the Garden of Eden story, with Ms. West supplying a plethora of double-entendres. The sketch created an uproar, resulting in West being banished from further radio performances, and NBC even blacklisting the mention of her name. Oddly, it wasn't the content of the skit that infuriated the Fundies way back then; it was the fact that C&SH had the audacity to broadcast it on a Sunday afternoon.

    But I digress. Arch Oboler is a forgotten artist, in a forgotten medium. Drop Dead! is great, clean, tame-by-today's-standards fun; good for a listen every so often, especially around Halloween. Long before Lenny Bruce and Norman Lear were breaking out of the stale confines of mainstream comedy and Puritan morality, Oboler was there blazing the path. If you run across it at the used record store, buy it (price is usually around $5). If you don't have a turntable anymore (what's a turntable?), come by my place and we'll share a glass of wine and listen to it on CD.