06 « October « 2012 « The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio

6Oct/120

Nominate Us in the Podcast Awards

It's that time again, time for the Podcast Awards nominations. I encourage you to nominate us in the Arts and Culture Category and nominate any other podcasts you enjoy. The deadline is February 15th.

We've had a fantastic year with a growing audience. We've brought you some extraordinary episodes and specials including:

Orson Welles in "The Murder of Roger Akroyd"
Glenn Ford in "The Thirty-Nine Steps"
Charlton Heston in "Captain Carey USA"
Our first modern radio podcast "The Quick One" (with permission wfrom our friends at Colonial Radio Theater.
A Special marking the 50th Anniversary of the end of the Golden Age of Radio that we aired on the day it occurred.

We also honored the passing of some radio greats in the past twelve months:

For radio writer Norman Corwin, we played, "Murder in Studio One" a play Mr. Corwin wrote for the Columbia Worskhop.
For the famous newsman Mike Wallace, we presented two pilot episodes for a radio detective series called, "Crime on the Waterfront"

We've also featured a wide variety of short but entertaining shows including Candy Matson, Leonidas Witherall, Pete Kelly's Blues and the Fat Man.

In addition to that, we've supplemented the site, with dozens of articles on a wide variety of topics including Detective book reviews, reviews of golden age music collections, a countdown of the top Perry Mason movies, reviews of old time radio programs, and our current series on Radio's Most Essential people.

If you've enjoyed the podcast and would like to nominate us, go to http://www.podcastawards.com before October 15th in the Culture/Arts category.

Thank you so much for all your support over the past year.

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6Oct/120

Telefilm Review: Thirteen At Dinner

In Thirteen at Dinner, Jane Wilkinson (Faye Dunaway) , an actress who is associated with a "dumb blonde" persona wants to divorce her husband, Lord Edgeware and asks Poirot (Peter Ustinov) to try and reason with her husband who she says is refusing her a divorce. Poirot, finds to his surprise that Lord Edgeware has long since dropped his objection.

When soon after this, Lord Edgeware's murdered, suspicion falls on Wilkinson who has an airtight alibi, having been at a dinner with twelve other guests. Poirot has to unravel the mystery and find out who really killed Lord Edgeware.

Ustinov had portrayed Poirot in two motion pictures and this was the first of three outings for Television. The decline in overall quality is noticeable. The program is supposed to be set in the 1980s, but it feels like it was only half way updated, giving it a feel that's neither contemporary nor old style.

Faye Dunaway is okay, but not at her best in this film. The appearance of David Suchet as Inspector Japp was a treat, although he doesn't quite fill the bill with this Japp being quite a bit more grumpy and less trusting of Poirot than he's been elsewhere portrayed and much more like the typical police detective. Amanda Pays made a brief appearance. The rest of the supporting cast was no help at all with Jonathan Cecil turning in a weak performance as Captain Hastings.

What ultimately saved the production was the story and the performance of Peter Ustinov as Poirot. And even then, the overall package is mediocre at best.

Rating: 3.25 out of 5.0

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