1950–1952 on radio · NBC

The Halls of Ivy

Ronald Colman as a college president — the most literate comedy on American radio.

The Halls of Ivy won the Peabody in its first year and is routinely cited as the best-written comedy of late network radio. Its television incarnation in 1954 kept the Colmans but lost the pace, which is the argument of this whole destination in miniature: the transfer was rarely neutral, and the thing that made the radio version work — language, timing, the listener's own imagined campus — was exactly what a camera could not carry.

On radio

Radio from 6 January 1950

On television

Television from 19 October 1954

The overlap

Ronald and Benita Colman played the Hallses in both

60 recordings · Hollywood

NBC network broadcasts, 1950–1952, held by the Internet Archive. Public domain (US network broadcast, copyright not renewed); no Creative Commons or non-commercial terms apply.