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The Apple Sisters Sing for Andy Richter on Conan
The Apple Sisters appeared on Conan this week, doing their best to help Andy Richter get out of work early. Check out The Apple Sisters and Richter fun at the 13-minute mark in the video below.
You can catch up with The Apple Sisters’ latest adventure by listening to the another “Boat Queen” episode here.
0 CommentsHarlow Van Voorhees’ Episode Guide: The Apple Sisters #15
The following is a message from one of our special contributors. Enjoy!
Hail, hail, radio fans!
Well, I know now that’s not a wholly accurate greeting. My niece Frances-Jean told me I need to call you ”Podcast Fans” or people were going to start thinking of me as a “silly, useless, old man.” Well, maybe she’s right, but I just can’t wrap my head around all this new technology. Back in my day, a “macintosh” was the type of apple you could eat and a “mouse pad” was what you used when your mouse was menstruating. And we were content. I try to keep up with this changing world, but it always backfires in old Harlow’s face. Last week I tried to buy a DVD for my niece’s birthday and apparently I got her a regular when she wanted a “blue ray”(?). And the week before that I participated in what I was told was a “flash mob” but turned out to be a legitimate riot.
No thank you!
Give this old man life’s simple pleasures. Like The Apple Sisters’ Variety Show. This week we’re just about half-way through their boat adventure. As you can imagine, when this show originally aired and I was just a young boy, it was very titillating to fancy the Apple Sisters on a boat, perhaps in nothing but their bathing gowns, swim scarves and water aprons. Their hands and feet completely exposed. You have to understand that the Apple Sisters were the Kardashian sisters of their day (even better because there wasn’t a plump one). So this series of episodes always holds a special place in my heart and my britches.
Let’s get into another excerpt from my Apple Sisters Episode Guide.
The Apple Sisters Episode #15 – Original Airdate: 9/12/1943
Plot Summary: A pirate boards this ship and is intent on pillaging and plundering. First Seedy helps him to meet his maker, and then she helps him to meet his maker. The girls go to the mail room to find out how their listeners get rid of unwanted guests. Then they sing a rousing rendition of their Shut-Up Song. Mayhem ensues.
Notes: The Apple Sisters boat shows were all recorded on a real boat at sea. It was actually less expensive to produce the shows on a boat rather than create splash sound-effects in the studio. This was, of course, a direct result of WWII bucket rationing.
We get to hear a little of Seedy Apple’s proselytizing in this episode. Coincidentally, this episode came out the same month that a well-intentioned but ultimately ill-conceived breakfast cereal she bankrolled was released in supermarkets. Sugar-Frosted Eucharist was marketed as having “a full day’s supply of niacin, riboflavin and salvation.” Despite these bold claims, the cereal never caught on. Consumers described the cereal as “bland” and “sacrilegious.” Eventually it was purchased by the Ralston Corporation. In the following years, they would make some significant changes to the brand. The first was to reduce the amount of riboflavin which, as it turned out, was at poisonous levels. They would then go on to add tiny chocolate bits to the recipe and give the cereal’s cartoon God mascot a wizard’s hat, renaming him Cookie Jarvis and the cereal Cookie Crisp.
This episode features Ptolemy Slocum as Captain Morgan. Most listeners were not familiar with him by that name, although many would be by his stage name Toffee Waffle. Starting in 1922, Ptolemy performed on the vaudeville stage as Toffee Waffle the Jolly Imbecile. His act consisted of crude songs, impressions of animal flatulence and his famed ability to “eat any shoe for 50 cents.” In the waning days of vaudeville, Ptolemy took his act to circus-sideshows where he was consuming anywhere from 6-10 shoes a day.
Ptolemy Slocum plays an interesting role in Apple Sisters history. He was introduced to Cora Apple a few days before the first Apple Sisters’ Variety Show was set to be broadcast. Cora mistakenly pronounced his name “puh-tolemy,” not knowing that the P was silent. The real Cora Apple, who is actually quite a bit dumber and more sensitive than the version of herself she plays on the radio, was devastated by this social gaffe. Vowing “not to be tricked by words ever again,” she began preemptively pronouncing all consonants silently, making her almost completely indecipherable and delaying the first episode by six weeks until her sisters could talk her out of it.
Sadly, Ptolemy Slocum would pass away in October of 1945 from a rare case of what doctors call “shoe-gut.”
Until next time…
HVV
0 CommentsHarlow Van Voorhees’ Episode Guide: The Apple Sisters #12
The following is a message from one of our special contributors. Enjoy!
Hail, hail, radio-fans!
Harlow Van Voorhees here. Permit me a brief autobiographical sketch. I am a sociologist, professor of radio history, proud American, human calculator and author of the unpublished book, Go Ahead and Fist Her: An Apple Sister’s Episode Guide. As a young man growing up in the Midwest, I would sit with my ear against the radio almost every night. I would thrill to the adventures of Johnny Dawson: Space Traveler, laugh along to the antics of Mr. Arbuckle & The Darkie and be confusedly aroused by Smokey The Bear and The Snuff-It-Out Gang. But for me, the greatest show was always The Apple Sisters’ Variety Show.
Flash forward 60+ years. I’m living in a one bedroom apartment and suffering from a deep depression after my wife, Pegeen, left me for a close-up magician. By luck or fate, the day the divorce papers were served to me, construction workers building the set for the delightful Greg Behrendt Show, uncover a cache of all the original Apple Sisters episodes. I’m contacted via my LinkedIn profile to catalog all the episodes, and while listening I’m transported back in time. I’m that little boy again, in my Citizen Kane pajamas, ear against the radio, and all is right with the world.
Earwolf has kindly asked me to provide excerpts from my episode guide for some of the upcoming shows. So, without further ado…
The Apple Sisters Episode #12 – Original Airdate: 8/15/1943
Plot Summary: In a very special episode, the girls get together to save lives by reading their new venereal disease PSAs. In the mailroom they find out the listener’s biggest “whoops” moments. And they sing their hit song, “Whoops Daddy.” Mayhem ensues.
Notes: This is the episode that popularized the phrase “Whoops Daddy” as a reference to sexual intercourse in American culture. Previously the term had been used only by the medical community as a euphemism for a prolapsed rectum. The phrase has evolved through the years, originally to “whoopsy daisy,” then, “makin’ whoopee,” later, “whoops,” and finally to today’s usage of simply “oops,” as in, “Let’s oops,” or “Listen, old man, you’re going to have to pay me a lot more if you want to oops on my face.” (For further information on the etymology of this phrase, consult the Flocabulary book, Word Up: Level Indigo.)
While this is a very funny episode, one thing that’s no laughing matter is venereal disease. In 1943, 1 out 5 women in the US would die from the following causes: hepatitis D, gonorrhea, scabies, shigellosis, black taint, weeping labia and malaria (which was mistakenly categorized as a STD in 1943 and left untreated in order to punish women of loose moral character).
This episode is a great illustration of the much more relaxed standards for content and decency that existed in the 30′s and early 40′s on radio. An even greater example was Cora Apple’s side project at the time: a weekly radio show called Miss Trixie, Frontier Whore. (As evidence of the Apple Sisters’ lasting influence on pop-culture — and the changing role of women in society — 50 years later this show was slightly re-written and brought to television as Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.) What you have to remember is it wasn’t until 1949 when the radio obscenity trials were held. It was during these trials that the seven dirty words you can’t say on radio and the four clean words you must include in every episode were delineated. The moment the trials are probably best known for was when Judge Beatrix famously said, “I can’t define obscenity…I also forgot what ‘ambidextrous’ means. Dear me…I think I’m having a stroke. Please get help!”
Until next time…
HVV
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