Taking a break from Politics and think pieces this Friday night and heading into an Americana direction with an episode of The Rex Allen Show, as it was broadcast over CBS Radio on September 22, 1950 (also a Friday night).
And if you think this half-hour slice of homespun humor and Sons of the Pioneers songs went along with a certain bucolic life provided by the era of the 1950s, you ‘d be dead wrong. Listening to an episode of Rex Allen, who was a regular feature on Friday Night radio from CBS was a form of escapist therapy, and soothing balm for the uncertainty of those days in 1950.
The uncertainty that China was pledging arms and troops to North Korea, while North Korea was making a last-ditch assault effort on Seoul struck nervous chords all over the U.S.. Organized Crime was winding up a week’s worth of Capitol Hill testimony and the web of corruption was becoming more complicated by the minute. Down the hall, Congress passed a $4 Billion defense bill and there was a critical shortage of recruits signing up. The U.S. Navy had some 82 ships from the 6th Fleet patrolling the Mediterranean waters, the largest such assembly of Sea power since World War 2.
Polio was the new scourge sweeping across America. U.S. Jets crossed the Atlantic non-stop for the first time. Rioting between East and West Berlin was undergoing a shaky truce. United Nations mediator Ralph Bunche was to receive a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Middle-East; another flash point in world unrest. Soviet spies were being uncovered and dragged out in the open by the FBI.
And President Truman vetoes the Anti-Subversive measure introduced by Congress a few weeks earlier. His major reason was a decided loss of civil liberties of the average American citizen.
So it was only natural that, with the then-current state of affairs, a little breezy nonchalance and a “boots n’ saddles” romp into a world of nostalgia that didn’t actually exist, even in the world of 1950 – although Western themes and the virtually endless reservoir of Cowboy TV shows, films and radio made it a natural. almost imperative escape.
And Rex Allen, along with The Sons Of The Pioneers filled the bill quite nicely.
And so to remind you that escapism is a national pastime and always has been, here is the September 22, 1950 episode of The Rex Allen Show from CBS Radio.
Giddyup!
