Drinking, Drunks, and Drunkenness in Old Time Radio

The seeds of Western Civilization were planted in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East when ancient man began cultivating the grasses which would yield grain. A readily available source of grain eventually led to the development of leavened and unleavened bread and noodles, and this is where traditional anthropologists would have us believe Civilization has its roots. Long before the technology of bread making was developed people were consuming grains in the form of porridge. To make porridge, grains are first processed to remove the hulls from the seeds which are then cooked by simmering in water. The heat and moisture encourage the work of enzymes in the grain which convert the starch in the seed bodies to convert to sugars.

It is very easy to imagine that a cook in a small village, somewhere in the ancient Middle East, would have left a pot of porridge outside to cool, but forgot about it when a sudden storm blew through. The rainwater not only thinned the porridge, it introduced microbes to the mixture, including strains of wild yeast. The yeast organisms would have consumed some of the converted sugars in thinned porridge, yielding carbon dioxide gas and alcohol. This would have been the very first beer, and contemporary thinking in anthropology believes that civilization was not built on bread, but rather on beer.

Biblical evidence shows that wine and "strong drink" were commonly used by the ancient Hebrews, and stories from the Holy Text tend to show excessive intoxication as a bad thing. Examples include Noah (Genesis 9:21), Lot (Genesis 19:33,15), Nabal (1 Samuel 25:36), Uriah made drunk by David (2 Samuel 11:13), Amnon (2 Samuel 13:28), Elah, king of Israel (1 Kings 16:9), Benhadad, king of Syria, and his confederates (1 Kings 20:16), Holofernes (Judith 13:2), and more. Although excessive intoxication tends to lead to bad results in the Bible as well as in modern life, the use of alcoholic drink as a "social lubricant" during celebrations seem to contradict interpretations of Scripture which call for any prohibition of drinking.

Prohibition can have as many or more adverse results as drinking. The organized crime syndicates which inspired Gangbusters developed from bootleggers who made a profit from prohibition. On Fort Laramie, a Committee On Moral Improvement eliminates beer from the remote outpost with terrible results for the soldiers and the settlers they are protecting. The end of National Prohibition was a recent memory when Town Hall Tonight began airing, and Fred Allen explores the results in his discussions. In Dodge City, a widow wants to protect her son from the evils of drink by burning down all the saloons in town on Gunsmoke.

One of the most important results of drinking is a loss of control and the lifting of social inhibitions. This loss of control can be fatally dangerous, however, if the drinker gets behind the wheel of an automobile. Walter Winchell made room in his Jergens Journal report in December 1948 to blow the whistle on a senator who was arrested for drunken driving, long before the Mad Mothers began their campaign. The Hour of St. Francis bemoans a situation where a teenager not only gets arrested for drunk driving but gets pregnant as well. Things get even more serious on Suspense when a pair of highway patrolmen give chase to an apparently intoxicated lady driver on a slippery, rain-soaked mountain road.

The mild silliness which results from the consumption of one or two drinks does not seem to be a big deal. The craziness resulting from a major bender rarely results in harm that cannot be overcome somehow. Drinking to the point of blacking out often results in tragic and irreversible consequences. Alcoholic amnesia or blackouts occur when some much alcohol is consumed that the brain is unable to form short- or long-term memories. At this point, the loss of inhibition is also so great that the subject is capable of doing nearly anything, including murder. On Radio City Playhouse an alcoholic is accused of murder, but cannot enter a plea because he has no recollection of the crime. This is one of the few instances when amnesia as a plot point is medically reasonable.

Blacking out is relatively rare simply because the subject begins to shut down and pass out before they can drink that much. A hangover resulting from over indulgence is much more common, and often amusing for those around the unfortunates drunk. The normally Happy Postman is in bad shape on the morning he delivers some bad news about George's automobile insurance on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. As "an ordinary couple who stumble across a murder or two each week", Mr. and Mrs. North are equipped to help out when friend Jerry wakes with a hangover and finds out he has been fired from his father-in-law's jewelry store.

As common as the affliction of alcoholism is in real life, soap operas deal with it more rarely than we would suppose. The Guiding Light dealt with the demons of Bill Bauer's alcoholism while the program was still on the radio. The Story of Doctor Kildare deals with teenage alcoholism as an isolated case in 1950.