Our Miss Brooks: The Ultimate Collection - Over 180 Shows

By: Al Lewis

Narrated by: Eve Arden, Gale Gordon

Our Miss Brooks was a hit on radio from the outset; within eight months of its launch as a regular series, the show landed several honors, including four for Eve Arden, who won polls in four individual publications of the time. Arden had actually been the third choice to play the title role. Harry Ackerman, at the time CBS's West Coast director of programming, wanted Shirley Booth for the part, but as he told historian Gerald Nachman many years later, he realized Booth was too focused on the underpaid downside of public school teaching at the time to have fun with the role. Lucille Ball was believed to be the next choice, but she was already committed to My Favorite Husband and didn't audition.

Produced by Larry Berns and written by director Al Lewis, Our Miss Brooks premiered on CBS on July 19, 1948. According to radio critic John Crosby, her lines were very "feline" in dialogue scenes with principal Conklin and would-be boyfriend Boynton, with sharp, witty comebacks. The interplay between the cast - blustery Conklin, nebbishy Denton, accommodating Harriet, absentminded Mrs. Davis, clueless Boynton, scheming Miss Enright - also received positive reviews.

Arden won a radio listeners' poll by Radio Mirror magazine as the top ranking comedienne of 1948-1949, receiving her award at the end of an Our Miss Brooks broadcast that March. "I'm certainly going to try in the coming months to merit the honor you've bestowed upon me, because I understand that if I win this [award] two years in a row, I get to keep Mr. Boynton," she joked. But she was also a hit with the critics; a winter 1949 poll of newspaper and magazine radio editors taken by Motion Picture Daily named her the year's best radio comedienne.

For its entire radio life, the show was sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive-Peet, promoting Palmolive soap, Lustre Creme shampoo, and Toni hair care products. The radio series continued until 1957, a year after its television life ended.

Public Domain (P)2015 BN Publishing

Great And Hilarious Show/Collection

Our Miss Brooks is a great and hilarious show and is probably my favorite old time comedy. Now I wanna clear up something from another review that may be confusing for people. One other review states that Eve Arden leaves the show early on and the quality drops. I have no idea where this reviewer got this idea. Shirley Booth played Miss Brooks in the first audition show, which is track 2. After that Eve Arden took over for the 2nd audition show and never left the show, she was with it the whole run and the quality is top notch from that 2nd audition to the end. Now the quality of the shows is up and down in this collection. Most episodes are top notch but there are a handful that time was not kind to the recording. Also whoever put this together at points has episodes weirdly out of place at a few points and doubles the recording in a few spots. Overall though I think this is a great collection for an excellent show and I can't recommend it highly enough. Our Miss Brooks forever!!!!!!

Laughter is such a great thing!

Wow. First, when I say I’m listening to old radio broadcasts I heard as a child, I’m clearly dating myself! 😀 “Our Miss Brooks” (along with several other oldies but goodies, like George Burns and Gracie Allen, Lucille Ball, etc) just take me back to childhood, as I recall listening to these on the radio (and later, in the 1950’s, watching them as they transformed to tv). I was young then, but still enjoyed them.They are even better now, with some wonderful laugh-out-loud moments.

But this is caveat emptor for sure. Buyer: beware that this particular series has very poor audio quality. I have loved listening to them, laughed a lot! However, even though the audio improves with each year of the series, it is still not great. Worth the listen (to me) but I can only recommend the content, not the performance. But if you might be in the vicinity of my age, you’ll perhaps find it worth your while to struggle through the poor audio, to get to hear old jokes that are funny without offending, characters that touch your heart and memory-strings, and just hours of simple, clean fun. I’ve loved this. But admittedly, it has been challenging to hear it. (Audible: can you feel d a way to improve the quality? Maybe this is the best that can be done with really old tapes). I loved this. Someone else might—or might not—feel it worth the effort to hear them.

Great collection

Incredible price for such a large collection, includes pilot with Shirley Booth (Hazel) playing the lead role. The entire cast Eve Arden, Gale Gordon, Richard Crenna (Rambo films), Jeff Chandler (1st Phillip Boynton), Robert Rockwell (2nd Phillip Boynton), Jane Morgan, & Gloria McMillan work incredibly together. A couple of shows have less than perfect sound but most of the collection is very high quality, & is a great value.

Great Comedy that Stands the Test of Time!

"Our Miss Brooks: The Ultimate Collection" is a wonderful find. Still laugh-out-loud funny, Eve Arden, Gale Gordon, and the rest of the crew bring life to the inspired comedy writing. Much of the first section is marred, unfortunately, by uneven sound quality and repetitious versions of the episodes. Past that, however, there is plenty of material to keep you laughing through the dullest commute. Highly recommended!

Love Our Miss Brooks

I enjoy this collection of my favorite Old Time Radio Program. The quality is not bad.