Elliot Lewis

[Maxwell]

^ I'm curious if the real Remley took exception or if the name change came with Phil leaving the Benny show?

Consider this.....the name change did happen when Phil left Jack's show, and Remley's name and off-air character stayed with Jack's show. Now Frankie Remley was a member of the group that Bob Crosby led on the Benny show, and the "drunk" jokes that Jack used to make about Phil were now aimed at Remley.

I suspect that the name change had more to do with Phil no longer being associated with Jack's show, and Remley still being part of the Benny organization, rather than the real-life Remley suddenly objecting to his name being used on the Harris-Faye program.

I've heard somewhere (I think it was Greg Bell on Sirius-XM) that Remley got tired of the way he was portrayed on the Harris-Faye show and requested (or demanded, not sure which) that his name no longer be used. It seems odd to me because as late as the '60s when Jack threw a party, Remley was under the table (unseen), so he obviously didn't mind the drunk jokes.

I honestly don't know what to believe, but your theory sounds as good as this one, if not better.

[Gerry O.]

I've heard somewhere (I think it was Greg Bell on Sirius-XM) that Remley got tired of the way he was portrayed on the Harris-Faye show and requested (or demanded, not sure which) that his name no longer be used. It seems odd to me because as late as the '60s when Jack threw a party, Remley was under the table (unseen), so he obviously didn't mind the drunk jokes.

I honestly don't know what to believe, but your theory sounds as good as this one, if not better.

Right....Remley was portrayed a LOT less attractively on Benny's show than he was on the Harris-Faye show, and the "passed out drunk" jokes about Remley continued with Benny years after the "Frankie Remley" name was removed from the Harris-Faye program.

[Tate]

As has been stated before, Elliot Lewis wore many hats in radio - both in front of and behind the microphone. One of his series was Voyage of the Scarlet Queen, the story of a captain of a 78-foot ketch in the China seas.

My favorite, though, was a series by Carlton E. Morse, of I Love a Mystery fame. Morse wrote Adventures by Morse which featured stories similar to ILAM. The main character Captain Bart Friday was a re-tread of Jack Packard from ILAM. The interesting thing is that Adventures by Morse was a syndicated program, which sold a year's worth of episodes in one package. All the program's were recorded at the same time and to save time, three different people played Bart Friday. One was Elliot Lewis. Another was David Ellis. The last was Russell Thorson, who played Jack Packard on ILAM.

Elliot Lewis starred in my favorite story of the bunch, The City of the Dead. This was the first story of the series and ran for ten episodes. Since this series was syndicated, any radio station that bought the series received the entire series on disks. The series survives in complete format because there were so many copies of the disks sent out.

[Maxwell]

This week would have been Lewis's 92 birthday. Today I caught a two-hour tribute to him on Greg Bell's Sirius/XM OTR channel. The tribute included an episode of "Arch Oboler's Plays" from 9/20/45 in which Lewis is one of three astronauts who return to the moon just as a nuclear war is destroying the world, an episode of "The Clock" from 3/30/47 in which he starred with his then-wife Cathy Lewis in which they suddenly find themselves in an inn in 1804 after their car is stuck in a ditch during a storm, an episode of the Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show from 12/5/48 in which Lewis as Frankie Remley convinces Phil to loan him the use of Alice, the kids, and the house to impress a rich aunt, and an episode of "Crime Classics" from 8/10/53 directed by Lewis about a murder in Pennsylvania in 1798.

[TheSportsmenQuartet]

"The City of the Dead" is one of my all-time radio favorites. Well written and acted I try to listen to it at least once a year and I still get sucked into the story.

[Maxwell]

I forgot to mention in my post about the Lewis tribute on Sirius/XM that Bell changed his story about the Remley name change (at least if it was Bell who told the version I related earlier). Following the Harris-Faye show he stated this time that Jack's show had the rights to use Remley's name, and that when Harris left the Benny show, his show stopped using Remley's name.

[Tate]

"The City of the Dead" is one of my all-time radio favorites. Well written and acted I try to listen to it at least once a year and I still get sucked into the story.

My next favorite Adventures by Morse story is Dead Men Prowl. Like other Carlton Morse stories, it's long on thrills, but the explanation in the last episode is somewhat unbelieveable.

A great example of the plot holes Morse covers up is in the I Love a Mystery's story, Bury Your Dead, Arizona. When the Maestro finally confesses how he achieved his "mysticism," he includes using makeup, vocal impressions, hypnosis, and (I swear this is an exact quote) "simple telepathy!"

Tate