Reviewed by: King Arthur and Robin Hood on the Radio: Adaptations for American Listeners by Katherine Barnes Echols Dan Nastali katherine barnes echols, King Arthur and Robin Hood on the Radio: Adaptations for American Listeners. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2017. Pp. vii, 207. isbn: 978–1–4766–6704–1. $35. The ‘Golden Age’ of radio lasted roughly from the 1930s to the mid-1950s when it was supplanted by television as the primary entertainment medium for American families in their homes. This study looks at how stories of King Arthur and Robin Hood, with bloodlines running from the British Middle Ages through literary embellishments in both Britain and America in the 19th century, found instructive, as well as entertaining, roles on radio. From its earliest days, radio was subject to political and educational forces which established codes for acceptable content, language, and behavior—especially for children’s shows. Those codes easily accommodated traditional Arthurian and Robin Hood tales which, Echols explains, embodied qualities derived from popular concepts of chivalry, and which were fostered by such social phenomena as the Boy Scouts and Arthurian youth groups of the early 20th century. The stories of knights and medieval archers projected suitable models for children, as well as entertainment for adults, many of whom were likely familiar with them from their own childhoods. A reader who expects a comprehensive account of King Arthur and Robin Hood material on American radio similar to Roger Simpson’s definitive Radio Camelot: Arthurian Legends on the BBC 1922–2005 (2008) will not find it here. The author instead has selected thirty-three works of every type, from children’s shows to westerns to [End Page 159] crime stories, and examines them for the chivalric virtues they convey and, to some extent, the social parameters which shaped their content. There is a problem with this approach: although the works themselves are called adaptations, the shows discussed can rarely be traced to specific sources. And while Echols acknowledges that there were many literary versions of both the Arthurian and Robin Hood stories available, she settles on those she deems most likely to have influenced radio scriptwriters: Eugène Vinaver’s edition of Malory’s Works (1947) and Howard Pyle’s illustrated King Arthur and Robin Hood books of the late nineteenth century. Pyle’s works are a questionable choice. Although his books were frequently reprinted in the radio era and continue to be so even today, there were dozens of retellings in the decades just preceding radio, many as likely as Pyle’s to have introduced the producers and scriptwriters to the traditional stories. Of the thirty-three shows discussed, at least a third can scarcely be considered adaptations by any measure. Some, like the episode ‘Lochinvar’ on Gunsmoke, trade on quasi-medieval associations, and some, such as ‘Knights of the White Carnation’ on The Adventures of Superman, depend on recognizing today’s hero as the modern equivalent of the knight errant. While several programs retell incidents from Malory or the old Robin Hood ballads, others, such as episodes of the comedy The Life of Riley, offer little more than allusions. Even retellings of such set pieces as Arthur’s sword in the stone and Robin Hood’s archery contest are adaptations of adaptations. A 1950 radio version of Connecticut Yankee was based on a 1943 revival of the 1927 Broadway musical by Herbert Fields, taking the listener quite a distance from Twain’s 1889 novel. With sources being questionable at best, the entry for each of the works is typically more descriptive than analytical. Echols has apparently relied on the internet, with its repositories of old radio shows, to locate the works she discusses, and, when the reader comes upon the chapter covering ‘lighthearted adaptations,’ with brief accounts of episodes of Mickey Mouse Theater, Red Skelton’s Avalon Time, and Abbott and Costello, it seems the search facilities of the websites must have been exhausted. Indeed, the author has had to stretch her readings to make connections between chivalric virtues and such programs as The Land of the Lost, Wild Bill Hickok, and Popeye the Sailor. Readers wishing to listen to some of the programs themselves will find...