The run
[Updated 6/26/20 to add 1 new episode] This upload contains 381 episodes of the Carlton Morse classic, One Man's Family, an old time radio show that ran from 1932-1959. One Man's Family was the longest-running uninterrupted drama in American radio history. It is unfortunate that only about 11% of the 3,256 episodes appear to have survived. Hopefully more episodes of this fantastic show will become available to add to this collection. The dates, episode numbers (book numbers and chapters in this case), and titles are believed to be correct based on available sources, but any corrections are welcome. Disclaimer: By uploading these files, I make no claim to ownership or copyright. These recordings have been acquired from publicly available sources on the Internet, and my goal has been to put together a collection of every available episode where possible. Digitised by the Old Time Radio Researchers and streamed from the Internet Archive item “one-mans-family-1959-04-01-b-134-c-03-big-news-for-pinky”; these recordings are in the public domain.
Source collection
Internet Archive audio collections
Rights
Public domain — no renewed US copyright
Cataloguing
Air dates and notes from the Archive item record
The shape of the run
12 dated broadcasts across 19 years on the air, with 13 years where nothing is known to survive. Brightness is transfer quality; empty cells are months lost to time.
Episodes
Start here
Restored broadcasts from 1941, in original transmission order.
7 Dec 1941 · 29 min
Originally broadcast on Syndicated, 7 December 1941. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
25 Jul 1949 · 28 min
Originally broadcast on Syndicated, 25 July 1949. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
19 Mar 1950 · 13 min
Originally broadcast on Syndicated, 19 March 1950. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
1 Sep 1950 · 13 min
Originally broadcast on Syndicated, 1 September 1950. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
17 Oct 1950 · 13 min
Originally broadcast on Syndicated, 17 October 1950. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
30 Nov 1950 · 14 min
Originally broadcast on Syndicated, 30 November 1950. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
16 Jan 1951 · 14 min
Originally broadcast on Syndicated, 16 January 1951. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
16 Apr 1951 · 14 min
Originally broadcast on Syndicated, 16 April 1951. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
Same night on the air
Everything else the archive still holds from the night of 7 Dec 1941.
7 Dec 1941 · 29 min
Transferred from the Internet Archive item “OTRR_American_History_Singles”, part of the Old Time Radio Researchers public-domain collections.
Originally broadcast on Syndicated, 7 December 1941. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
Also on NBC
Other series the network carried while One Man's Family was on the air.
Same seasons
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
What it became
Fifteen minutes a day, the same family for years, and a story that never quite resolves. Ma Perkins and Stella Dallas invented serialised character audio.
Lineage is written by our editors, not inferred from listening data.
Descendants
Modern series carrying this form forward.
If you liked this
Chosen by the same editors.
