"Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. . . ."

The run of children's radio programs and some adult programs back in the late 1930s and into the 1940s often featured classical music as their theme songs, along with other classical music behind the announcer as he set the scene for "this week's thrilling episode."

The theme song for "The Lone Ranger," everybody knows was the "galop" section of the overture to Rossini's opera, William Tell (definition of a "highbrow:" someone who can hear The William Tell Overture without automatically thinking of the Lone Ranger). Incidental music in the LR (backing the announcer's narrations) was Franz Liszt's Les Preludes. Very dramatic! "The Lone Ranger" was aired three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7:30 p.m. and ran a half-hour. Most shows told a complete adventure, but sometimes a monumental adventure might run for the whole week.

Between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. on weekdays was a block of fifteen minute kids programs, such as "Little Orphan Annie," who, in her ramblings, managed to have all kinds of exciting adventures, "Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy," who traveled with another kid or two and his explorer uncle. "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" had a bit of a run in this time slot,with Space Force Colonel Wilma Deering as his side-kick as they battled space pirate Killer Kane and his hench-girl friend, Ardala (Killer Kane was a stumble-bum, Ardala was the black-hearted brains of the pair). Then there was "The Phantom Pilot" and his sidekick, a tail-gunner with an Irish brogue, and later "Captain Midnight" who also had his entourage.

The entourage of many of these hero types generally consisted of a young (early teens) boy and girl, usually brother and sister, who where the niece and nephew of the main hero. The idea was to give the eagerly listening kids someone nearer their own age to identify with, but I think most kids were like me—we identified with the main hero.

"The Phantom Pilot's" theme song was "The Ride of the Valyries" from Wagner's opera Die Valkyrie, and all of the other programs used classical music from various sources as themes and incidental music. Can't remember who all used what at this late date, but hunkered down in front of the big console radio, I developed an early familiarity with and appreciation of a lot of classical music this way.

And "The Green Hornet." His theme song was (of course) Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee." He had a Japanese houseboy and sidekick named Kato—who miraculously morphed into Filipino when World War II started.

Did you know that Britt Reid, the Green Hornet, was the great nephew of the Lone Ranger? The Lone Ranger was John Reid, the only survivor of a group of Texas Rangers who were sent out to capture the Cavandish Gang, but who rode into an ambush and got caught flat-footed. Then, this Indian, Tonto, came along, found the carnage, and discovered that one of the rangers, although badly wounded, was still alive. Tonto nursed him back to health, then Tonto and the "lone ranger," concealing his true identity behind a mask, went after the Cavandish Gang and brought them to justice. Then, the adventures went on from there. After some years worth of cleaning up crime in the Old West, the Long Ranger and Tonto were joined in their crime-fighting escapades by Dan Reid, John Reid's young nephew. Britt Reid (the Green Hornet) was Dan Reid's grandson. As a crusading, crime fighting newspaperman, Britt Reid, having heard stories about his great-uncle, created the persona of the Green Hornet.

Dramatic sounding classical music seemed to be the favorite for theme songs and incidental music for these shows. Exciting stuff!

Movies, too, back in the 1940s. "The Phantom of the Opera" (long before Andrew Lloyd Webber) with Claude Rains behind the mask and Nelson Eddy and Suzanna Foster providing the singing. "The Desert Song" (Romberg's operetta, complete with mysterious masked rebel leader, The Red Shadow (singer Dennis Morgan). "Song of Sheherezade" with Jean-Pierre Aumont as Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov when he was a cadet in the Russian navy (true) having all kinds of hairy adventures when the training ship he was on stopped over in Morocco and the cadets were on shore leave, romancing the young Spanish dancer (Yvonne de Carlo) and getting into a bull-whip fight with fellow cadet, the snobbish Prince Mischetsky, while he composing reams of music. Far out "bio-pic," but all of the background music was by Rimsky-Korsakov. Very lush and dramatic stuff. Another movie intitled "Tonight We Sing" about impresario Sol Hurok, with well-known singers and dancers playing performers from a previous time, such as Ezio Pinza portraying Russian basso Fyeodor Chaliapin, Metropolitan Opera soprano Roberta Peters (cute little critter) as Elsa Valdine, ballerina Tamara Toumanova as Pavlova, others. . . .

I also heard Alan Lomax's folk music programs on "American School of the Air," along with both radio programs and movies with Burl Ives (before "Big Daddy," when he played a character much like himself and sang a lot—and Susan Reed.

I grew up on this stuff.

You remember radio, don't you? It was like television without pictures. You made the pictures yourself, in you imagination.

Don Firth