Line #20 Radio/LetsPretend


1	A radio series that ran from 1934 to 1954, with each episode serving as a retelling of a classic (and occasionally obscure) fairy tale. Some episodes are in public domain [[http://archive.org/details/Lets_Pretend and can be heard here.]]
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4	!!The series provides examples of:
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6	* AbusiveParents:
7	** The witch threatens to beat Rapunzel when she displeases her, and the episode makes it clear that she's not just all bark and no bite.
8	** The wicked stepmother in ''The Twelve Months'' also tries to whip her stepdaughter Marushka.
9	* AdaptationExpansion: Some of the shorter fairy-tales get this. For example, ''[[Literature/TheElvesAndTheCobbler The Elves and the Shoemaker]]'' adds a subplot of a nasty landlord threatening to evict the shoemaker's family [[AndNowYouMustMarryMe unless his pretty daughter marries him]] and of a good duke who eventually falls in love with the daughter and stops the villain.
10	* AdaptationNameChange: In ''The Yellow Dwarf'', the princess's name is changed from Toutebelle to Margo, and in ''The Enchanted Frog'', the youngest prince and the frog princess are named Yan and Dierdre instead of Ivan and Vasilisa.
11	* AdaptationalHeroism: ''Rumpelstiltskin'' deals with the problem of the heroine marrying the greedy king by portraying the king as not greedy, but deep in debt to another country and worried that failure to pay will mean war, and by making it clear that he truly falls in love with the heroine and she with him.
12	* ArtifactTitle: The title originally referred to the fact that the scripts were acted out by child actors. This might be surprising to modern listeners, as most of the surviving episodes are from the end of the run when the actors had grown into their teens and 20s, and the later records from the '70s just hired adult actors.
13	* BittersweetEnding: While most of the tales adapted have HappilyEverAfter endings, there are some bittersweet exceptions: for example, ''Literature/TheLittleMermaid'', ''Princess Moonbeam'' (based on ''Literature/TheTaleOfTheBambooCutter'') and ''Literature/TheYellowDwarf.''
14	* CompressedAdaptation: Typical for the longer fairy-tales. For example, ''Literature/{{Thumbelina}}'' [[AdaptedOut leaves out]] the toads and instead has the bumblebee [[AdaptationalSpeciesChange (originally a beetle)]] kidnap Thumbelina from her foster mother, while ''Literature/BeautyAndTheBeast'' gives Beauty only one sister and [[TimeSkip skips]] straight from her first night in the Beast's castle to the day she asks to go home a year later.
15	* {{Expy}}: In ''[[Literature/SnowWhite Snowdrop and the Seven Dwarfs]]'', one of the dwarfs is prone to loud, funny sneezes, just like [[WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs Sneezy.]]
16	* GenderFlip: The Sea Witch in ''Literature/TheLittleMermaid'', becomes a male Witch Doctor instead, probably because there are so few male roles in the story as written.
17	* [[HalloweenEpisode Holiday Episode]]: A few of the fairy tales were meant to serve as holiday specials. ''Fairer-Than-A-Fairy'' meant to serve as a Halloween special, ''Ceres and Proserpina'' served as a Thanksgiving special. ''The Leprechaun'' served as a St. Patrick's Day special. An original play called ''The House of the World'' and an adaptation of ''Literature/TwasTheNightBeforeChristmas'' both served as Christmas specials. The 1947 broadcast of ''Literature/{{Thumbelina}}'' also included a 4th of July-themed AudienceParticipation game between the story's two acts, since it aired a few days before the holiday.
18	* MerchandiseDriven: Remember folks, radio was the TV of its time. There was a comic, picture books, and records based on the series.
19	* NeverSayDie: Played With. Animal deaths tended to be retained (i.e. the death of the goat in "One Eye, Two Eyes, Three Eyes"). Human deaths tended to be censored, at least for non-villainous characters, such as in the show's adaption of ''Literature/{{Bluebeard}}'', where the wives are merely held prisoner in the chamber, rather than killed. Averted in ''Literature/TheLittleMermaid'', however, which retains its original BittersweetEnding: the words "die" and "dead" are explicitly used for the mermaid's fate. Also averted in ''King Arthur'', which features the death of Uther Pendragon.
20	* ProductPlacement: In the show's later years, Cream of Wheat became its sponsor and in each episode the cast both figuratively and literally sang its praises.
21	* ShownTheirWork:
22	** The series tended to be very faithful to source material. It featured one of the few adaptions of ''Literature/{{Rapunzel}}'' to remember the witch is the heroine's godmother, and one of the few adaptations of ''Literature/TheLittleMermaid'' not only to keep the original ending, but to feature the mermaid's grandmother as a major character.
23	** In ''The Golden Touch'', King Midas's sister teases him by reminding him that their uncle used to say his ears were as long as a donkey's. This alludes to another, lesser-known legend about Midas, where he offended the god Apollo, who turned his ears into donkey's ears.

Context Radio / LetsPretend