On today’s show, we celebrate the life of Sam Mowry, who passed away in Portland last month. Sam was an actor, both on stage and behind the mic, a director, and an impresario of radio theater, especially in his role as Artistic Director of the group he founded, Willamette Radio Workshop. He was also a mentor and good friend to me, as well as many other folks in our radio theater community. And oh that incredible voice, sounding like Orson Welles himself in his Mercury Theater prime.
Our condolences go out to Sam’s wife Cindy McGean and his son Atticus Mowry. Sam leaves a body of work and a legacy that will live on in our memories. And, since radio waves travel forever through universe, the Voice of Sam will always be out there somewhere, on its way to who knows how many new and distant audiences.
I had the great privilege of talking with Sam several times for KBOO. Our first interview, and we’ll hear a rebroadcast of that today, was January 2017, for my previous KBOO show Mr. Jones’s Neighborhood. Sam joined me live in the KBOO studios, with John Barber of Re-Imagined Radio phoning in from his home in Vancouver, Washington. We talked radio theater, the Golden Age of Radio Comedy, and Sam and John’s joint production “Laugh Your Dial Off”, a live on-stage tribute to that Golden Age and stars like Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, W.C. Fields, Fibber McGee and Molly, Jack Benny and Fred Allen, and Abbott and Costello.
Now here, from January 2017, our show with the much-loved, and sorely missed, Godfather of Portland Radio Theater, Sam Mowry.
- KBOO