Adventure Parade was a 15-minute daily radio anthology series which was broadcast on Mutual from 1946 to 1949, [1] produced and directed by Robert and Jessica Maxwell.
An anthology series is a radio, television or book series that presents a different story and a different set of characters in each episode or season. These usually have a different cast each week, but several series in the past, such as Four Star Playhouse, employed a permanent troupe of character actors who would appear in a different drama each week. Some anthology series, such as Studio One, began on radio and then expanded to television.
The Mutual Broadcasting System was an American commercial radio network in operation from 1934 to 1999. In the golden age of U.S. radio drama, Mutual was best known as the original network home of The Lone Ranger and The Adventures of Superman and as the long-time radio residence of The Shadow. For many years, it was a national broadcaster for Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and Notre Dame football. From the mid-1930s and until the retirement of the network in 1999, Mutual ran a highly respected news service accompanied by a variety of popular commentary shows. During the late 1970s, Mutual pioneered the nationwide late night call-in radio show and introduced the country to Larry King.
Contents
The show opened with announcer George Hogan calling, "Adventurers attention! Fall in for Adventure Parade!" With liberal doses of action and adventure, the program adapted such classics of literature as Moby-Dick , The Last of the Mohicans , and Swiss Family Robinson , with each tale lasting about a week.
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is sailor Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, the white whale that on the ship's previous voyage bit off Ahab's leg at the knee. A contribution to the literature of the American Renaissance, the work's genre classifications range from late Romantic to early Symbolist. Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as a "Great American Novel" was established only in the 20th century, after the centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner confessed he wished he had written the book himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of the sea ever written". Its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael", is among world literature's most famous.
The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 is a historical novel written by James Fenimore Cooper in 1826.
A WMIK Radio-Gram for January 17, 1949, noted:
- An hour of entertainment for the kids: Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island is air adapted on the Adventure Parade this week. Also there is Superman, Captain Midnight and Tom Mix. [2]
Radio Life magazine stated that host-storyteller John Drake brought "compelling suspense" to the program. Drake did all the voices in each serialized drama while organist John Gart provided background music.
