A Special Ma Perkins Tribute
An original Ma Perkins radio episode was re-enacted live, on the air during our Those Were The Days broadcast of Saturday, May 29, 1971.
A cast of radio professionals from the Chicago area was assembled for the occasion in the small studio of WLTD, Evanston. It may have been the first time since the demise of original daytime drama on radio that such an event took place. As such, the event was noted in the radio-TV columns of the leading Chicago newspapers:
CHICAGO TRIBUNE, Friday May 28, 1971
IN THE AFTERNOON, MA PERKINS
BY CLARENCE PETERSEN
A live re-creation of an old Ma Perkins radio broadcast will be heard on Chuck Schaden’s Those Were The Days program between 1 and 4 p.m. tomorrow on WLTD (1590 k.c.)
Schaden, the knight of nostalgia got hold of the Jan. 2, 1941 script of “Oxydol’s Own Ma Perkins – America’s Mother of the Air” and invited some local personalities to produce the re-creation. In the cast are Rita Ascot Boyd, who played Ma’s daughter Fay in the original series, Viola Berwick, who acted in the series and in other dramas of radio’s golden age, Johnny Coons, who was “Uncle Johnny Coons” on early TV and Bob Kennedy of channel 7’s Kennedy & Co., who is much too young to remember the days those were but has developed an affinity for them anyway. Phil Bowman, who directed Ma Perkins for several years, will direct the re-creation.
CHICAGO DAILY NEWS, Friday May 28, 1971
SPECIAL NOTE: From 1-4 p.m. Saturday, Chuck Schaden’s radio nostalgia show on WLTD (1590 AM) will offer a salute to radio soap operas, which will include a loving re-creation of an old-time radio soap opera.
Some of the original Ma Perkins cast will re-assemble to read once again the broadcast of May 2, 1941, when Fay Perkins wedding was stopped because Evey Perkins’ had refused to attend. The cast for this special occasion will include Rita Ascot Boyd, who played Fay; Viola Berwick, who often played Ma; Johnny Coons, and WLS-TV’s Bob Kennedy. And we’ll hear Paul, Fay’s fiancé say, “Kiss me and tell me that someday our day is going to dawn…”
Here’s the Re-enactment Cast in a Photo Slideshow
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