Meet Me At Parky's, 640 Old Time Radio Sitcom Comedy Shows mp3 DVD

Don't be fooled by other collections that claim to contain more episodes.  Many of these shows were aired on multiple dates in reruns, so you have plenty of sellers out there padding their collections with reruns!  We feature all known episodes in existence and do not add "fluff" to our collections to increase our claimed episode count like many others. 

NOTICE: This collection is all in MP3 format supplied on DVD.  You play this in your computer and then can copy all the MP3 files to your MP3 player of choice.  This DVD will NOT play in a regular CD player in your car, or your TV's DVD player, it is intended for your computer only which will allow you to transfer the MP3 files to any device that can play MP3's.  This collection remains the largest most original collection.

Take It From Here:

Take It From Here (often referred to as TIFH, pronounced — and sometimes humorously spelt — "TIFE") is a British radio comedy programme broadcast by the BBC between 1948 and 1960. It was written by Frank Muir and Denis Norden, and starred Jimmy Edwards, Dick Bentley and Joy Nichols. When Nichols moved to New York City in 1953, she was replaced by June Whitfield and Alma Cogan. The show is perhaps most famous for introducing The Glums. Through TIFH Muir and Norden reinvented British post-war radio comedy — amongst other influences, it was one of the first shows with a significant segment consisting of parody of film and book styles, later used extensively in programmes such as Round the Horne and many television programmes.

Frank Muir had been writing material for Jimmy Edwards's appearances at the Windmill Theatre, and later wrote material for Edwards's radio character, a seedy public school headmaster; Denis Norden had been staff comedy sketch writer with the Kavanagh agency, and had written material for the Australian comedian Dick Bentley. The radio producer Charles Maxwell had contracted Edwards, together with Joy Nichols and Dick Bentley, for the final series in 1947 of the radio show Navy Mixture for which Muir had provided some scripts, and after this show ended Maxwell received a commission for a new weekly comedy series to star Edwards, Nichols and Bentley. He introduced Muir to Norden, and asked them if they would collaborate to write the scripts.

The result was Take It From Here and the start of one of the most enduring comedy writing partnerships. Muir and Norden were to continue collaborating for nearly 50 years, writing such comic masterpieces as Peter Sellers' sketch Balham, Gateway to the South, and appearing together on radio panel games My Word! and My Music.

Meet Me At Parky's:

Harry Einstein (born 1904) was just a kid from Boston who loved to make people laugh. He got his big break on the February 11, 1934, broadcast of The Chase and Sanborn Hour. Einstein offering Eddie a job with the Boston Symphony would have been funny enough, but when he did it in the character of the English-mangling Greek, Parkyakarkus, he brought down the house.

At the time, no one blinked an eye at the "political correctness" of ethnic humor, and the Parkyakarkus (full name, Takacharrin Parkyakarkus) character became Eddie's regular second banana. Einstein appeared in 11 movies as Parkyakarkus, and the character was popular enough that he was given his own show on NBC.

The premise of Meet Me at Parky's revolves around the restaurant which Parkyakarkus has owned for the last eighteen years. As far as classiness goes, Parky's makes Duffy's Tavern look like Sardi's. When it comes to mastering the English language, Parkyakarkus makes Chester Riley of The Life of Riley sound like Lionel Barrymore!

Regular's at Parky's included singer Betty Jane Rhodes, who was more of an assistant than a waitress, band leader Opie Cates with his hillbilly drawl played second banana, and announcer Bob Williams worked pitches for Old Gold Cigarettes into the action.

The scripts were mostly written by Einstein. The show opens with a couple of short sketches of people getting angry and Williams advising them to "don't get irritated, light up an Old Gold and Meet Me at Parky's". Parkyakarkus has a short monologue which which has the studio audience rolling in the aisles by the time singer Betty shows up to help Parkyakarkus with this week's problem. After the restaurateur begins to get upset and is advised to "don't get irritated", Betty gives us a song. Opie Cates is drawn into the plot and sets the boss up for more laughs with his twisted logic before an instrumental swing tune. By the time the show wraps, we will have heard that there will be more Old Gold's available, now that the War is ending and the military needs less cigarettes.

Meet Me at Parky's ran from June, 1945, until November of 1948. Harry Einstein had invested wisely in real estate, and no longer had to perform to make a living, but he did make a few appearances as Parkyakarkus, especially at the famous Friar's Club Roasts. On November 24, 1958, the guests of honor at the Roast wereDesi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Harry was to be the second to last speaker, and everyone agreed that his toast was the funniest of the night. After his speech, he sat down and slumped over on Milton Berle. Berle called out asking if there was a doctor in the house, and it immediately became obvious that it was no joke.

There were five doctors in the audience, including the chief of surgery at City of Hope. Parky was carried off stage and the doctors attempted to revive him with cardiac massage (operating with a pocket knife) and a defibrillator improvised from an electrical cord. As the doctors fought to save Parkyakarkus's life, Art Linkletter, George Burns, Berle and Tony Martin tried to distract the crowd. When Martin was told to sing, his unfortunate selection was " There's No Tomorrow".

A Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1708 Vine Street honors the contributions to Radio made by Parkyakarkus. It is the character, not Harry Einstein's name which appears on the Star.

And more Bonus Radio Shows:

As a sampler of our old time radio library, we are including these classic old time radio shows on this DVD-ROM at no extra charge: