Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel
| Other names | Beagle, Shyster, and Beagle |
|---|---|
| Genre | Situation comedy |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| Home station | NBC Blue Network |
| Starring |
Groucho Marx Chico Marx |
| Written by | |
| Directed by | Nat Perrin Arthur Sheekman |
| Recording studio |
WJZ, New York City RKO Pictures, Los Angeles |
| Air dates | November 28, 1932 to May 22, 1933 |
| No. of series | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 26 |
| Audio format | Stereophonic sound |
Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel is a situation comedy radio show starring two of the Marx Brothers, Groucho and Chico, and written primarily by Nat Perrin and Arthur Sheekman. The series was originally broadcast in the United States on the National Broadcasting Company's Blue Network beginning November 28, 1932, and ended May 22, 1933. Sponsored by the Standard Oil Companies of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Louisiana and the Colonial Beacon Oil Company, it was the Monday night installment of the Five-Star Theater, an old-time radio variety series that offered a different program each weeknight. Episodes were broadcast live from NBC's WJZ station in New York City and later from a sound stage at RKO Pictures in Los Angeles, California, before returning to WJZ for the final episodes.
The program depicts the misadventures of a small law firm, with Groucho as attorney Waldorf T. Flywheel and Chico as Flywheel's assistant, Emmanuel Ravelli. The series was originally titled Beagle, Shyster, and Beagle, with Groucho's character named Waldorf T. Beagle, until a lawyer from New York named Beagle contacted NBC and threatened to file a lawsuit unless the name was dropped. Many of the episodes' plots were drawn from Marx Brothers films.
The show garnered respectable ratings for its early evening time slot although a second season was not produced. It was thought that, like most radio shows of the time, the episodes had not been recorded and the episodes were thought lost until 1988, when 25 of the 26 scripts were rediscovered in the Library of Congress storage and republished. Adaptations of the recovered scripts were performed and broadcast in the UK on BBC Radio 4 in 1990. In 1996, some recordings of the original show were discovered, including a complete recording of the last episode to air.
...
Wikipedia