Risultati Editore "Brilliance Audio" in Commedia e umorismo

Julia Einstein knew that being a stay-at-home mom had a lot in common with her former job as a celebrity publicist - endless, irrational demands, little to no appreciation, and constant hustle. But it isn't until her husband is laid off from his job and she's forced to go back to work and resurrect screen legend Mary Ford's career that Julia realizes how very much she prefers an actual child to a formerly famous client.

Versatile actor/comedian Jack Benny had a long career (1911-1974) and was truly a star of stage, screen, and radio. Recognized as a leading 20th-century American entertainer, Benny often portrayed his character as a miser, playing violin poorly, and claiming to be no older than 39, regardless of his actual age. His radio and television programs, popular from 1932 until his death in 1974, were a major contribution to the sitcom genre. We’ve carefully chosen 11 radio episodes starring Jack Benny from our master archives for this collection.

This collection contains 12 of the greatest Christmas shows ever broadcast during the Golden Age of Radio! You’ll hear Edmund Gwenn and Natalie Wood reprising their roles from Miracle on 34th Street; Dick Powell as Detective Richard Diamond narrating A Christmas Carol; Eve Arden in a yuletide comedy on Our Miss Brooks; Hal Peary as The Great Gildersleeve; Joel McCrea as lawman Jase Pearson on Tales of the Texas Rangers; Jim & Marian Jordan as Fibber McGee & Molly plus many more!

When real life husband and wife George Burns and Gracie Allen worked together in vaudeville, George was the comic and his wife Gracie had the straight lines. They switched their roles upon discovering that Gracie’s delivery got a bigger laugh than George’s punch lines. Eventually, they starred in a show as husband and wife, The Burns & Allen Show, which became a huge hit and eventually made a successful transition to television.

Much more than a knack for snappy comebacks, wit is the quick, instinctive intelligence that allows us to think, say, or do the right thing at the right time in the right place. In this whimsical book, James Geary explores every facet of wittiness, from its role in innovation to why puns are the highest form of wit. Geary reasons that wit is both visual and verbal, physical and intellectual: there’s the serendipitous wit of scientists, the crafty wit of inventors, the optical wit of artists, and the metaphysical wit of philosophers.

Eleanor Merritt, a do-gooding American family-planning worker, was drawn to Kenya to improve the lot of the poor. Unnervingly, she finds herself falling in love with the beguiling Calvin Piper despite, or perhaps because of, his misanthropic theories about population control and the future of the human race. Surely, Calvin whispers seductively in Eleanor's ear, if the poor are a responsibility they are also an imposition.

Greg Behrendt and Amiira Ruotola stumbled right out of the wedding gate. Their choices in the early years, they’ll tell you, nearly bought their marriage a one-way ticket to Suckville. The New York Times best-selling authors explore all the adventures of early wedlock, from the moment one of you gets on one knee to the day when sex starts to feel like work instead of play. In this guidebook, Behrendt and Ruotola explore their own marriage and, with gleeful candor, tremendous warmth, sharp humor, and piercing insight, look at what we hope to get out of our most lasting relationship.

Milo Slade, a 33-year-old home healthcare aide, is witnessing the rapid dissolution of his three-year marriage to a polished, high-powered attorney named Christine. Though Milo doesn't quite know the root of his marital problems, he inevitably blames himself, or more specifically, he faults the demands his obsessive compulsive personality place upon him. Yet Christine is still none the wiser about these inexplicable quirks as Milo has painstakingly hidden them from her and everyone else for years. No one knows the true Milo, and such is the root of his profound loneliness.

For sheer unpredictable brilliance, Gogol may come to mind, but no author alive today takes a listener as far as Helen DeWitt into the funniest, most yonder dimensions of possibility. Her jumping-off points might be statistics, romance, the art world’s piranha tank, games of chance and games of skill, the travails of publishing, or success.

Jack Benny liked to portray himself as a skinflint but his generosity as a comic allowed other characters to get their fair share of laughs...usually at his expense. Benny got more laughs playing the straight man and didn’t care if he was the butt of the jokes. With his brilliant timing, smooth delivery, and trademark mannerisms, Benny was a huge influence on the development of the radio sitcom. References to Benny’s reputed stinginess, vanity, and infirmities were expected and weekly running gags established the program’s memorable characters.

The Aldrich Family was a popular teenage situation comedy that was heard on radio and seen in films, television and comic books. The creation of playwright Clifford Goldsmith, teenager Henry Aldrich was an endearingly bumbling kid growing awkwardly into adolescence. Episodes revolved around Henry’s misadventures with girls, his family and his friends. Portrayed on radio by 20-something Ezra Stone, The Aldrich Family launched as a summer replacement program for Jack Benny in NBC’s Sunday night lineup, July 2nd, 1939, sponsored by Jell-O.

Created by Don Quinn, the co-creator of Fibber McGee & Molly, The Halls of Ivy was a situation comedy series that ran on NBC radio from 1950 through 1952. Originally slated to star Gale Gordan and Edna Best, the lead roles went to British husband-and-wife actors Ronald and Benita Colman. The Colman’s were well versed at comedy and already a hit with radio fans having played Jack Benny’s next-door-neighbor on The Jack Benny Program for years. Ronald Colman played William Todhunter Hall, the urbane president of small, rural Ivy College.

These are the voyages of the starship A.S.F. Willful Child. Its ongoing mission: to seek out strange new worlds on which to plant the Terran flag, to subjugate and if necessary obliterate new life-forms, to boldly blow the... And so we join the not-terribly-bright but exceedingly cock-sure Captain Hadrian Sawback and his motley crew on board the Starship Willful Child for a series of devil-may-care, near-calamitous and downright chaotic adventures through "the infinite vastness of interstellar space".

Fibber McGee & Molly had a long and successful run on radio (1935-1959). The program showcased terrific comic and musical talent, headlined by its creators and stars, married couple Jim and Marian Jordan. Living in the fictional Midwestern town of Wistful Vista, Fibber was an American teller of tall tales and a braggart, usually to the exasperation of his long-suffering wife Molly. Fibber's weekly schemes would be interrupted, inspired by, and often played upon the people of Wistful Vista, a set of regular players and characters.

Created by Irving Brecher, The Life of Riley starred William Bendix as Brooklyn-born Chester A. Riley, a family man who worked as an airplane riveter at the fictional Cunningham Aircraft plant in California. The stories were usually set at home, with Riley cheerfully disrupting life with his malapropisms and ill-timed intervention into minor problems. His stock answer to every turn of fate “what a revoltin' development this is!” became a popular catchphrase.

Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll made their radio debut January 12, 1926, as the comedic, blackface characters Sam 'n' Henry. On March 19, 1928 they introduced Amos 'n' Andy, which went on to become one of the most popular and longest-running programs in radio history. During the height of its popularity, almost the entire country listened to the 15-minute, Monday through Friday adventures of Amos 'n' Andy. Department stores open in the evening piped in the broadcasts, so shoppers wouldn't miss an episode.

This collection contains 12 of the greatest shows ever broadcast during the Golden Age of Radio—including episodes of The Jack Benny Program, Burns & Allen, Gunsmoke, The Amos ‘N’ Andy Show, Philip Marlowe, The Green Hornet, X Minus One, Sherlock Holmes and many others. Radio’s finest actors perform before the microphones, including: Jack Benny, Frank Sinatra, Danny Kaye, Groucho Marx, Ozzie Nelson, Harriet Hilliard, Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Jim and Marian Jordan, Hal Peary, Eve Arden, George Burns, Gracie Allen and many more.

Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve was a popular character appearing regularly on The Fibber McGee & Molly Show. On August 31, 1941, the character landed his own situation comedy show, The Great Gildersleeve, becoming radio’s first spin-off. Gildy moved from the town of Wistful Vista to Summerfield, where he raised his orphaned niece and nephew, Marjorie (originally played by Lurene Tuttle and followed by Louise Erickson and Mary Lee Robb) and Leroy (Walter Tetley). The household also included a cook named Birdie (Lillian Randolph).

The Lux Radio Theatre was one of the most prestigious and longest running shows from Radio’s Golden Age. It featured the greatest stars in Hollywood appearing in hour-long radio adaptations of their biggest motion pictures. Cecil B. DeMille was the host (from 1936-1945) for a lavish production of what was to become a veritable checklist of many of Hollywood’s best films from the mid-1930s through the mid-1950s. The stars of the movie usually appeared in their audio counterparts, although sometimes contracts or schedules meant that another actor took the part.

Mad Jack is in reality Winifrede Levering Bascombe, who, happily, has her name changed very quickly in the story. She arrives in London with the aunts, Mathilda and Maude, of Lord Cliffe, Grayson St. Cyre, to beg his assistance. He welcomes the aunts, briefly spots the valet, Jack, and proceeds very quickly after their arrival to fall down the rabbit hole.