Genre | Radio drama |
---|---|
Running time | 30 minutes |
Country of origin | United States |
Language(s) | English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Romanian, Polish, Korean, Persian, Japanese, Albanian, Greek, Macedonian, Turkish and Portuguese |
Announcer | Timothy Gregory |
Directed by | Timothy Gregory |
Recording studio | Chicago, Illinois |
Original release | September 23, 1950 |
Website | unshackled |
Unshackled! is a radio drama series produced by Pacific Garden Mission, in Chicago, Illinois, that first aired on September 23, 1950. [1] It is one of the longest-running radio dramas in history and one of a very few still in production in the United States. The show is aired over 6,500 times around the world each week on over 1,550 radio outlets, and is translated and re-dramatized into eight languages [2] on six continents.
As of January 2022, over 3,707 [3] episodes have been produced, each 30 minutes in length. Unshackled! is produced in the same way as shows during the Golden Age of Radio: Actors record dialogue live before a studio audience, an organist plays live incidental music, and a sound-effects person plays sounds in real time as the show progresses. The show has retained a consistent and distinctive quality throughout its years of production, established by Jack Odell's 40-year tenure as its producer/director from 1950 to 1990.
Each production dramatizes the testimony of someone who converts to Evangelical Christianity, sometimes, the person converts either during or after a visit to Pacific Garden Mission or the person converts after hearing Unshackled! on the radio. Episodes include the life stories of baseball-great-turned-evangelist Billy Sunday, himself a Pacific Garden Mission convert, and Dominic Mance, an international banker who became a homeless vagabond nearly overnight. Past members of the cast and crew range from current actors to Golden Age of Radio personalities such as Harry Elders, Bob O'Donnell, Jack Bivans, Stan Dale and Russ Reed.
With rare exceptions, the scripts are derived from actual testimonies and actual events. Beginning in the 1950s, comic book versions of many Unshackled! stories were also produced.
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John Randolph Webb was an American actor, television producer, director, and screenwriter, most famous for his role as Joe Friday in the Dragnet franchise, which he created. He was also the founder of his own production company, Mark VII Limited.
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The Jack Benny Program, starring Jack Benny, is a radio and television comedy series. The show ran for over three decades, from 1932 to 1955 on radio, and from 1950 to 1965 on television. It won numerous awards, including the 1959 Emmy for Best Comedy Show, and is generally regarded as a high-water mark in 20th-century American comedy.
Pacific Garden Mission is a homeless shelter which is located in the Near West Side section of Chicago, Illinois, it was founded in 1877 by Colonel George Clarke and his wife, Sarah. Nicknamed "The Old Lighthouse", it is the largest homeless shelter in Chicago and among the oldest in the city, and, according to the PGM website, "is the oldest continuously operating rescue mission in the country."
Earplay was the longest-running of the formal series of radio drama anthologies on National Public Radio, produced by WHA in Madison, Wisconsin and heard from 1972 into the 1990s. It approached radio drama as an art form with scripts written by such leading playwrights as Edward Albee, Arthur Kopit, Archibald MacLeish and David Mamet.
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In addition to the English broadcast, it is translated and re-dramatized in Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Romanian, Polish, Korean, Persian, Japanese, Albanian, Greek, Macedonian, Turkish and Portuguese.