Originally broadcast on Mutual, 1 May 1945. Restored from the Old Time Radio archives.
The run
- Network
- AFRS
- Years active
- 1943–1949
- Surviving broadcasts
- 45
- Genre
- variety
Mail Call was an Armed Forces Radio Service variety programme built around letters from servicemen overseas, recorded in Hollywood from 1942. Like all AFRS output it carried no sponsors and was pressed to transcription discs for shortwave and overseas station use. The surviving discs are public domain.
1949 · 11948 · 11947 · 11946 · 31945 · 181944 · 151943 · 6
Restoration quality — measured from the surviving files
Clean transfer · 45 of 45
Source collection
Internet Archive audio collections
Rights
Public domain — no renewed US copyright
Cataloguing
Air dates and notes from the Archive item record
Every broadcast below carries its own provenance sheet — transfer quality, file source and rights.Archive record: MailCall
The shape of the run
What survives, year by year
28 dated broadcasts across 7 years on the air. Brightness is transfer quality; empty cells are months lost to time.
JFMAMJJASOND
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
Clean transferListenableRough but complete No surviving recording
Episodes
Start here
Listen to the run in order
Restored broadcasts from 1943, in original transmission order.
- 1. Groucho Marx, Betty Grable, Judy Garland · 9 Jan 1943
- 2. George Jessel, Paulette Goddard, Tommy Dorsey · 30 Jun 1943
- 3. Edward G Robinson, Dick Powell, Ann Miller · 15 Jul 1943
Frances Gifford, Danny Thomas (assembled program)
25 Apr 1949 · 13 min
Transferred from the Internet Archive item 'MailCall' (public domain).
Peggy Knutson, Orson Welles, Betty Grable
13 Oct 1948 · 29 min
Transferred from the Internet Archive item 'MailCall' (public domain).
Gloria DeHaven, Groucho Marx, Bing Crosby (assembled program)
22 Jan 1947 · 29 min
Transferred from the Internet Archive item 'MailCall' (public domain).
Yvonne De Carlo, Fred MacMurray, David Street
3 Jun 1946 · 30 min
Transferred from the Internet Archive item 'MailCall' (public domain).
George Murphy, Virginia O'Brien, Burns & Allen
20 May 1946 · 30 min
Transferred from the Internet Archive item 'MailCall' (public domain).
Groucho Marx, Kenny Baker, Kathryn Grayson
27 Mar 1946 · 31 min
Transferred from the Internet Archive item 'MailCall' (public domain).
Betty Grable, George Jessel, Mills Brothers
16 May 1945 · 30 min
Transferred from the Internet Archive item 'MailCall' (public domain).
Bob Hope, Clark Gable, May Whitty, Margaret O'Brien
1 May 1945 · 30 min
Transferred from the Internet Archive item 'MailCall' (public domain).
Same night on the air
1 May 1945
Everything else the archive still holds from the night of 1 May 1945.
Originally broadcast on Mutual, 1 May 1945. Restored from the Old Time Radio archives.
Transferred from the Internet Archive item 'OTRR_Words_At_War_Singles' (public domain).
Also on AFRS
AFRS in 1943–1949
Other series the network carried while Mail Call was on the air.
Same seasons
variety on the air then
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
What it became
Friends in front of a microphone
Jack Benny and Fibber McGee sold intimacy: recurring characters, in-jokes, a house style. The modern hang-out show is the same trick without the script.
Lineage is written by our editors, not inferred from listening data.
Descendants
Working in the tradition of Mail Call
Modern series carrying this form forward.
If you liked this
More to explore
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