INSTALLMENT 57: 3 JANUARY 83

 

You are isolated on a remote plantation in the crawling Amazon jungle. And an immense army of ravenous ants is closing in on you…swarming in to eat you alive! A deadly black army from which there is no…ESCAPE!

Tired of the everyday grind? Ever dream of a life of romantic adventure? Want to get away from it all? I offer you…Escape! Designed to free you from the four walls of today for an evening of high adventure!

Next Wednesday night we escape to the Amazon jungle…and to a creeping, crawling terror as the Variety Arts Radio Theater presents the classic adventure tale, “Leiningen Versus the Ants” by Carl Stevenson, featuring in the title role…your terror-stricken columnist.

When you pass a record shop and see a sign in the window advertising the latest Who album for $1.98, and you dash in to save three dollars on the purchase, that’s called a loss-leader. When Cal Worthington shows you a 1982 Lancia Zagato with the fold-down rear-roof section on The Late Late Show, and he swears on his sainted mother’s name that it has only 3000 miles on it, was driven by a quadraplegic who only took it out to attend Agent Orange protest rallies, and it’s down there at Worthington Motors for $2395, that’s called a loss-leader. When a schmuck no sensible woman would go out with manages to con a traffic-stopper into a date by waving third row center seats to the Itzhak Perlman concert under her nose, that’s called a loss-leader.

In service of introducing you to the joys of the Variety Arts Radio Theater, a group that performs Golden Age radio scripts live all through the year, I have happily, willingly, even enthusiastically consented to be a loss-leader by performing in their production of “Leiningen Versus the Ants” next Wednesday in the Tin Pan Alley cabaret theater of the Variety Arts Center at 940 South Figueroa.

Let me tell you about the Variety Arts Radio Theater, the Center, and about this moment stolen from the past.

Some time ago I began receiving invitations from a nice man named Bob Farley, to come down to The Society for the Preservation of Variety Arts, to attend one of the performances of this talented group of actors and audial thespians who, for five seasons, have been recreating in the plush and charming environs of the Center, the lost thrills of attending a radio drama studio presentation.

Finally, on a Wednesday evening last November, in company with a few friends who were also curious about what a “live radio show” might be like, we drove down the Harbor Freeway, got off at 6th (and found ourselves close enough to The Pantry, which is catty-corner to the Variety Arts Center, to have a late night T-bone), and entered the sumptuous, festive building, which was worth the trip itself. The Variety Arts Center was built in 1926, in a much more elegant era, and was converted into its present form in the mid-Seventies. There is a spiffy Variety Roof Garden restaurant on the top floor, a W. C. Fields bar, an Earl Carroll Lounge, a library of irreplaceable theater tomes and memorabilia, the Tin Pan Alley cabaret theater where old films are shown, and a 1200 seat theater on the main floor.

It is a splendid building, oozing eclat, lustrous and gorgeous, resonating to memories of times gone by when the ash had not settled quite so thickly over good taste in this land. It’s the physical manifestation of scenes from Jack Finney’s superb novel TIME AND AGAIN. It is the sound of Louis Armstrong playing “One of These Days” with Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra on an 80-groove-per inch 1924 shellac disc. It is a world away from Chuck E. Cheese video game parlors and plastic paraphernalia. It’s the sort of place to which you would wear a Borsalino hat, where you’d sit quietly reading poetry by Hillaire Belloc, tales of archy & mehitabel by Don Marquis or a James M. Cain novel.

And it was there, one Wednesday night last November that my friends and I ascended in the little elevator to the third floor where, in the Tin Pan Alley cabaret theater, with its tiny bar set into one wall, we saw a splendid group of performers under the direction of Roger Rittner recreate episodes of Doc Savage and The Green Hornet.

We sat at the cabaret tables as Art Dutch and Daniel Chodos and Kimit Muston and Robin Riker stood before the blocky old-style mikes, holding their scripts; and David Surtees worked out of his cornucopial suitcase of sound effects, and once again as I had been pleasured as a kid, I was taken into the magic realm of radio drama. Once again the owner of the Daily Sentinel, Britt Reid, put aside his public persona, took up the mask and sleep-gas gun of the Green Hornet and, with his faithful Filipino assistant, Kato, cruised the streets in the Black Beauty, seeking evildoers beyond the reach of justice. Once again Doc Savage set out to unravel a baffling mystery: the enigma of the green ghost.

For my friends, who had grown up in the age of television, it was a wonder. If you doubt me, just call Lydia or Arthur at 986-6963 and ask them. They’ve become addicts of old-time radio, and consider an evening at the Center something rare and special.

Next Wednesday night, at 8:00, I am privileged to work with these dedicated and antic spirits, in presenting for the first time in more than thirty years, a live radio performance of one of the most memorable dramatic productions ever aired. Carl Stevenson’s “Leiningen Versus the Ants” is a program that no one who has ever heard it can forget. If you’d like a small sample, tomorrow night (Friday the 7th), I’ll be asking KPFK’s Mike Hodel to play a bit of the original show from the Forties program Escape, on Hour 25 from 10–12 PM. That’s 90.7 on the FM dial. Listen in, get hooked, and come out to the Variety Arts Center next Wednesday.

Dude up. Come early and have a good dinner in the Roof Garden restaurant, where former Musso & Frank’s chef Victor sets out a good meal for between nine and fifteen dollars (including beverage and dessert). Stop by and have a drink in the W. C. Fields bar, and then amble down to the Tin Pan Alley cabaret theater. It’s free. Won’t cost you a sou. One note of warning: The Tin Pan Alley cabaret is only a 99-seat theater. Right now, as you read this, you’d better call 628-7782 and make reservations for the 8:00 performance. Or you’ll wind up sitting on the floor.

But you will spend the sort of evening you mean when you mumble to your friends, “I want to do something different tonight, something exciting.”

It can’t get much more different and exciting than being trapped in the middle of the Amazon jungle as the voracious tide of the marabunta oozes toward you. In short, bored and exhausted readers, tired of the same old cable tv bullshit, what we are offering you, free of charge next Wednesday, is…Escape!