Here is a whole batch of Halloween fun with Lum and Abner comics and radio shows!
Cartoonist/character voices: Donnie Pitchford
Voice of Jimmy: Kyle Cage
Voice of Washington: Daron McDaniel
Music composer/performer: Marc Ridgeway
Closing announcer: Dr. Joe Oliver
Listen to our audio production here:
Cartoonist/character voices: Donnie Pitchford
Voice of Sivad from 1964: Watson Davis
Music composer/performer: Marc Ridgeway
Closing announcer: Dr. Joe Oliver
Listen to our audio production here:
SIVAD!
From 1962 to 1972, Sivad (Watson Davis), a hilarious vampire character, entertained viewers with his (sometimes twice-) weekly TV show, Fantastic Features, in Memphis, Tennessee! I watched his showwhen my family lived there, and loved his humor as well as the spooky films he ran, along with occasional scifi/horror/comedy romps with the Three Stooges and Abbott and Costello! I was pleased to pay tribute to the late Mr. Davis for Halloween 2014!
To see the real Sivad on YouTube, click: HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE!
The top photos are simulations of our Memphis “Monster of Ceremonies Sivad” and his TV series Fantastic Features using still frames and a 1969 photo of our actual TV set. Below left is a shot of your cartoonist being haunted as he reads a book about Sivad. The cartoon at right was done for the National Cartoonists Society when they met in Memphis.
I never got to meet Sivad, but around Halloween of 2014 I was honored to be booth neighbors with Oklahoma’s legendary movie host Count Gregore (John Ferguson) at OAF Con in Norman, Oklahoma! We had lots of great chats, and the Count read and listened to the Lum and Abner Halloween strip featuring Sivad when it was published that Sunday!
Cartoonist/character voices: Donnie Pitchford
Voice of Jimmy: Kyle Cage
Voice of Washington: Daron McDaniel
Music composer/performer: Marc Ridgeway
Closing announcer: Dr. Joe Oliver
Listen to our audio production here:
Cartoonist/character voices: Donnie Pitchford
Voice of Washington: Daron McDaniel
Voice of Jimmy: Kyle Cage
Music composer/performer: Marc Ridgeway
Closing announcer: Dr. Joe Oliver
Listen to our audio production here:
Click the blue names to learn more!
Cartoonist: Donnie Pitchford!
Audio cast in order of appearance:
Dr. Joe Oliver: announcer!
Marc Ridgeway: composer/musician!
“Singin’” Sam Brown: Dick Huddleston!
Donnie Pitchford as Abner Peabody
Tim Hollis: Lum Edwards!
Daron McDaniel: Washington!
Kyle Cage: Jimmy!
Here is our audio production:
The 40th Anniversary “Fear You Can Hear” KSAU Halloween Marathon!
On Friday, October 31, 1980, I was a student at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. Already a fan of Old Time Radio, I was excited about a seven-hour Halloween marathon being aired on the campus radio station, KSAU-FM. I hooked up my cassette recorder to a cheap receiver and captured as much as possible on tape. One of the offerings was the very first 15-minute episode of Lum and Abner I ever heard! All of that great Halloween programming was scheduled by SFASU Professor Dr. Joe Oliver.
40 years later, Dr. Oliver and I got together to recreate that marathon, kicking it off with an interview and presenting the programs from my old cassettes. Yesterday USA broadcast this program in 2020, and you can hear it today!
Click to download and/or listen!
Need some more “monstery” Halloween-type fun?
Here are links to three stories featuring Mousey Gray
and one starring Lum!
Each has a sort of Halloween theme!
“The Whisper”
#179-195, published November 2, 2014-February 22, 2015!
“Monster-Movie-Maker MOUSEY”
#332-345, published October 8, 2017-January 7, 2018!
“Mousey’s Monster Mash”
#483-494, published October 11-December 27, 2020!
“Dr. Gray and Mousey Hyde”
#519-532, published June 13-September 12, 2021.
Lum and Abner Comic Strip 