Rip Van Ranger

The lights dim and rooms fill once again with the familiar strains of Rossini's William Tell Overture, theme music for The Lone Ranger. Or with Rimski-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee, accompanying another episode of The Green Hornet. Once more The Shadow purrs, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" Sergeant Preston of the Yukon hustles his huskies, Our Gal Sunday strives to find happiness with a wealthy, titled Englishman, and 15-year-old Speed Gibson of the International Police doggedly pursues his archfoe, The Octopus.

These and many other aural Rip Van Winkles have returned from a generation's oblivion to find themselves the heroes and heroines of a fast-growing, nationwide cult. Through clubs, catalogues and newsletters, tens of thousands of fans and some 4,000 active traders are collecting and listening to tapes and cassettes of programs from the golden age of radio-an era that lasted roughly from the 1930s to the early '50s.

The alchemy of oldtime radio goes deeper than nostalgia. "The charm of radio was that the individual was inspired to use his own imagination," says one of the buffs, William Andrews, in the same resonant tones that he once used to announce One Man's Family. Echoes Carleton E. Morse, who produced singlehanded, directed and wrote One Man's Family for the better part of its 28-year, 3,256-episode run, "Television destroys all power of appreciation. It tells you what is, and the mind can't get outside of what it sees."

Tape Trading. Copies of old programs are hard to find because wire and then tape recorders did not come into general use until after World War II. The only recordings of the earlier programs were 16-in. discs made by networks or syndicators. Many were discarded long ago or remain locked up to guard against possible lawsuits over residual rights. Nonetheless, original network transcriptions do show up occasionally in old radio shops or in the estates of onetime radio celebrities. When that happens, the discs are put on tape, and the programs are traded around the country by collectors and clubs.

Roger Hill, a San Francisco biology teacher who has 9,600 programs in his personal collection, organized the nonprofit North American Radio Archives (P.O. Box 13114, Station E., Oakland, Calif. 94661) last year to preserve and distribute tapes of old shows (rental price to members: 50-c- each). The Boston area's Radio Collectors of America (R.C.A.) (23 Winthrop Rd., Hingham, Mass. 02043) gathers programs and distributes tapes to libraries for the blind across the country. It also holds animated group discussions ("Would Henry Aldrich make it in today's sexy-dopey-violent teen-age world?").

Many buffs, says R.C.A. President Bernie Feitelberg, also "love the old commercials. Even in those days you had your laxatives, your cars, your gasolines, your soap powders." Indeed, members of Manhattan's Radio Library Society start each meeting by linking arms and singing one of the most famous commercials--the one that accompanied Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy: "Won't you buy Wheaties, the best breakfast food in the land! Won't you try Wheaties ..." The melody lingers on, but Jack--and Little Orphan Annie and Buck Rogers--are only memories. Recordings of their series have disappeared and, radio fans fear, are probably lost forever.

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