Posted on October - 18 - 2011
Old-time radio convention meets for last time
NEWARK, N.J. — For one weekend a year, the ghosts and survivors of Jack Benny, Benny Goodman, Goodman Ace and hundreds of other legends of the old days of radio hold court at a hotel across the road from Newark Airport.
The annual Friends of Old-Time Radio Convention has been meeting for 36 years. But when it signed off Saturday night, it was for the last time. The reason is simple, says Jay Hickerson, a musician who has been running the show from the beginning: the march of time.
“Lack of OTR (old-time radio) guests. And the committee is getting older,” he said.
The gathering, humble as it is, used to be able to call on a constellation of stars from the early days of radio.
Now it’s down to former child stars in their 80s and 90s. Arthur Anderson, 88, who acted as a teenager with Orson Welles, is an honored guest. Grandsons of 1930s song and dance star Eddie Cantor and Brace Beemer, the voice of the Lone Ranger for most of its run on radio, are on the program.
Collecting old-time radio shows and trivia has never been a young person’s game. But most of the convention-goers are too young to have firsthand recollections of the shows they’re buying, recreating and discussing on panels.
Gary Yoggy, 73, has been to all 36 of the conventions.
“It’s my favorite weekend of the year. It tops Christmas,” he said.
Yoggy, a retired history teacher from Corning, N.Y., is part of the committee that puts on the
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