Month: July 2013

EP1013: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Flight Six Matter, Parts Three and Four

Bob Bailey

Johnny finds a web of intrigue around Marvel Terrance as his suspects take a change of venue.

Original Air Dates: February 1 and 2, 1956

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EP1012: Mr. Moto: Escape

Mr. Moto searches for a kidnapped American Sportswriter who has been accused of assassinating an Italian Anti-Communist politician.

Original Air Date: July 22, 1951

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EP1011: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Flight Six Matter, Parts One and Two

Bob Bailey

Johnny investigates the bombing of a small plane in Mexico where three passenger took out accident policies.

Original Air Date: January 30 and 31, 1956

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Radio Drama Review: Powder River, Season Two

Season 2 of Powder River finds Britt MacMasters (Jerry Robbins) having resumed his role as a US marshall, a new sheriff  (Joseph Zamberelli) in town, and the continued process of Chad MacMasters (Derrick Alerud) coming of age.

As the season begins, Sheriff Dawes takes over as the town’s full time law man and immediately clashes with the town’s  people, arresting the town’s best shot Doc (Lincoln Clark) for carrying his pistol on the city streets. Dawes also seems uncomfortable with having a US Marshal in town and wants to assert his authority. However, the coming of Indian raids forces him to abandon these pursuits in order to ensure the town is protected.

While the first season of Powder River (originally intended as a limited series) was good, Robbins and the Colonial Theater players really stepped it up a notch, producing a  consistently great Western adventure series.  The highlights for me:

  • Jenny White singing: Due to an Indian attack on the Overland stage, a great singer from back East ends up stranded in Clearmont and she agrees to perform at the local saloon while she’s there.  The singing was authentic and the sound quality on the musical performance: superb. It’s fantastic for a series that really didn’t deal much in music.
  • Chad MacMasters kidnapped:  This four part story arch has so much going for it. The basic premise of Chad being kidnapped by a vengeful enemy of the Macmaster clan has a very old school feel to it.  Colonial really took their time on this and developed this story perfectly.  It’s one of the most emotionally engaging radio stories you’ll ever find. The drama and suspense reach high levels as the villain drags Chad into the unforgiving Eastern Montana winter, with Britt and friends right on their trail. This is a story that works on every level from start to finish.
  • General Custer shows up:  The appearance of General Custer in Clearmont is a great story. Chad is grabbed by the idea of becoming an Army Scout under Customer, but as a former Army man that served under the egotistical general, Britt knows better. My favorite scene in this three part story was Britt’s confrontation with General Custer.
  • The Stunning Season Finale:  The last two episodes of the second season really created a fantastic contrast. The fourteenth episode of the season found Clearmont celebrating America’s Centennial in grand fashion. The season finale, “Nothing Lasts Forever” is about the day after as the citizens of Clearmont learn of General Custer’s defeat at the Battle of Little Big Horn. The contrast between the celebratory mood of one episode and the mournful feeling of the other was striking.  The programs originally aired in 2005, and the reactions of the people of Clearmont to the news seemed similar to how Americans felt on September 11, 2001 with the terrorist attacks. Chad decides to take a dramatic new step in his life, but his father doesn’t approve, leading to a tense conclusion that reveals a lot about the tough as nails US Marshal. In many ways, the whole season led up to this moment, particularly a shooting contest that father and son competed in earlier in the series.

I’m not a huge fan of westerns, but Season 2 of Powder River is just a very well-produced radio drama that’s worth a listen. If you’re curious about Powder River, I’d probably recommend starting with this season first as it’s a higher quality production and it’s not necessary to listen to season one to understand the series.

Overall, Season 2 has plenty of action, adventure, and drama and is a must listen to for your radio drama library.

Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars.

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EP1010: The Line Up: The Elsner Case

William Johnstone
Guthrie and Grebbs investigate the seemingly senseless murder of a 60 year old woman.

Original Air Date: December 27, 1951

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You Ought to be on DVD Revisited: What’s New in Old Movies

Last year, I wrote a series of posts about TV series and movies that were due a DVD release and hadn’t received one. I’m pleasantly surprised to see some movement on this thanks largely to the efforts of Warner Brothers and their Warner archives collections. Here are some long lost treasures that can be brought home on DVD mostly due to the efforts of Warner Archives:

Perry Mason Movies: Before Raymond Burr made Perry Mason a television icon in the late 50s and early 60s, actors such as Warren William, Ricardo Perez, and Donald Woods took their turn playing the iconic lawyer in the 1930s. Warner Archives has released all six movies on DVD which will give audiences a chance to enjoy a Perry Mason closer to Erle Stanley Gardener’s hard-boiled intention.

Philo Vance Movies: Warner Archives is out with a sampler of Philo Vance movies covering several actors. There’s the Bishop Murder Case with Basil Rathbone, The Kennel Murder Case with William Powell, The Dragon Murder Case with Warren William, The Casino Murder Case with Paul Lucas, The Garden Murder Case with Edmund Lowe, and Calling Philo Vance with James Stephenson. There’s actually three more Powell entries and another William entry that I hope will see release.

Lone Wolfe Movie: This release of the Vance and Mason movies may be tied to a recent book about Warren William. That also will explain why one entry in the Lone Wolfe series has finally seen the light of day with the release of, The Lone Wolf Meets a Lady.

While I didn’t mention the relatively short Nick Carter detective movie series with Walter Pidgeon, those have also been released.

It’s not just Mystery Series that Warner Brothers is releasing, but also standalone mystery classics. We played the Screen GUild Theater presentation of, The Mask of Demetrios for one of our specials and at last this film has earned a DVD release. The thriller is rare as it stars Peter Lorre as a hero not named Moto and Sidney Greenstreet plays a heavy.

On the comedy front, the Great Gildersleeve movies with Harold Peary have seen release along with one movie (Seven Days Leave) in which Gildersleeve is a supporting character for Lucille Ball’s lead.

Finally, while I haven’t gotten my wish about more Dr. Kildare movies making their way to DVD, the first season of the Dr. Kildare TV series starring Richard Chamberlain has been released.

Overall, Warner Archives deserves a debt of thanks from fans of classic golden age entertainment. There’s still much more unreleased material that’s part of America’s cultural heritage. From Johnny Midnight to Dick Powell’s To the Ends of the Earth, but Warner Brothers has taken some great steps by making so many productions available to a mass audience. Well done. I’ve added many of these movies to my Amazon wish list and hope to see them very soon.

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EP1009: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Duke Red Matter, Part Five and High Sky Hoodoo

Bob Bailey

Johnny nears the solution to the mystery of the missing trainer and what really happened to Duke Red.

Original Air Date: January 27, 1956

Whitney Kent takes a test flight—and this time he’s sober.

Original Air Date: Week of December 20, 1957

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EP1008: NBC University Theater: The Purloined Letter

Adolphe Menjou

A blackmailing count steals a compromising letter from a noble lady.

Original Air Date: September 17, 1948

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EP1007: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Duke Red Matter, Parts Three and Four

Bob Bailey

Johnny’s search for the truth behind the death of a race horse leads to an investigation of a missing horse trainer.

Original Air Date: January 25 and 26, 1956

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EP1006: Mr. Moto: Sabotage

Mr. Moto matches wits against Communist saboteurs.

Original Air Date: July 15, 1951

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EP1005: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Duke Red Matter, Parts One and Two

Bob Bailey

Johnny Dollar is called in to investigate the destruction of a race horse and begins to run into resistance.

Original Air Days: January 23 and 24, 1956

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A Look at Nick Carter

In in a little less than two weeks, the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio will turn its attention to an almost forgotten character who appeared in books, radio, and movies for over a century.

Nick Carter made his debut in 1886, the year before Sherlock Holmes came on the scene in London. That’s where the comparison ends.  None of Carter’s mysteries or adventures were in the ballpark of the greatest detective of them all, but what Carter didn’t have in quality, he made up for (as best he could) in quantity with hundreds of novels and short stories being written.

Scores of Carter’s books from his first 37 years are in the public domain.  The Nick Carter Collection from  Halycon Press for Kindle has one and only one virtue: you can find all the books therein  without having to search for them in online. Otherwise, most of these can easily be obtained off Project Gutenberg for free.

Nick Carter was a corporate property with multiple authors writing the stories and what exactly Nick’s adventures liked really seemed to depend on who was writing the story and probably the trends of the day.

Looking at the novels in the  Nick Carter Collection,  The Crime of the French Cafe and Nick Carter’s Ghost Story are both somewhat typical classic mystery stories. The solutions aren’t amazing, but they’re not weak stories either.

The Mystery of St. Agnes’ Hospital adds an element of the macabre and wasn’t as good a story. The Great Spy System decided to become an espionage adventure acting on behalf of the President (then Theodore Roosevelt) to track down some Japanese spies.  Both of these stories contained an inordinant amount of racial stuff with on World Wars to even justify it.  The  racism seemed to be more or less isolated to these two novels, at least among the ones I read.

The novel, The Link of Steel  was only a so-so detective adventure story.  The final book in the collection was actually the best which is unfortunate if you’re buying the collection as many people will have stopped reading hundreds of pages before they arrive at this one. In A Woman at Bay, Nick Carter goes undercover to capture the king of a criminal empire of hobos to find out the king is actually a teenage girl named Black Madge. He’s able to capture her, but that’s just the beginning of the story.  She won’t stay captured.  If you want a really fun adventure story, A Woman at Bay is actually a diamond in the rough.

The Carter stories were discountinued in 1915, brought back from 1933-36, then in 1939 and ’40, there were three movies made. In 1943, Carter came to radio with Lon Clark as the star. The main thing the radio series borrowed from Carter was the Nick Carter brand that people had read in their childhood, for the better part of sixty years. They also borrowed the name of Nick’s assistants from the books, but made a key change. The Patsy introduced in the 19th century was a male detective, Patsy in the radio series was a female assistant. The series for an amazing 12 years.

But the Nick Carter brand wasn’t done. Nick Carter-Killmaster became a very successful spy series that would last from 1964-1990 and publish 260 paperback books.

For more than 100 years, Nick Carter brought excitement and action to Americans. There was little of what we call continuity. The Carter character like so many corporate properties was made and remade to suit the tastes of the public.  The Nick Carter I read about had very little relation to the one I heard on the radio. The only continuity in Nick Carter was action and adventure.

However,  by 1990, the Spy Genre was in decline and the Carter series was cancelled for good. Thus, the end of the Cold War succeeded in doing was hundreds of criminals and madmen around the world had failed to do:

Kill Nick Carter.

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TV Series Review: Banacek

More than a decade prior to becoming universally associated with the character of Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith, George Peppard played Thomas Banacek, a Boston-based Polish proverb-spouting insurance investigator who made a comfortable living solving cases the insurance company couldn’t crack and collecting ten percent of the insurance company’s savings.

The series aired from 1972-74 and it focused on classic impossible mysteries. How does a football player on the field disappear in front of thousands of fans? How does a million dollars in cash vanish from behind a locked display case? And how does $23 million in paintings vanish from a truck transporting it? These are just a few of the stories that occupied Banacek’s time and how he made his money. Banacek takes no case where the missing item is less than a million dollars in value. While a murder usually happens in the course of the investigation, it’s not guaranteed. The focus is on the big property crime, not on violence.

Banacek was part of NBC’s Mystery wheel, so its original running time with commercials was 90 minutes, with the shows themselves running a shade over 70 minutes in length. This allows for plenty of development, particularly in the early episodes, without a lot of fluff. A grand total of 13 films were recorded.

Throughout the series Peppard was supported by Ralph Manza who provided the comic relief as Banacek’s chauffeur and erstwhile sidekick who would occasionally take a crack at the solution that would be invariably offbase. Murray Mattheson played Felix Mulholland, a book store owner that seemed to know everything about everything.

In addition to the mystery, Banacek was portrayed as God’s gift to women, at least those who weren’t looking for a serious relationship. Among the Banacek women was future Lois Lane Margo Kidder. However, actual scenes in bed were avoided throughout the series, as mere verbal hints were all that would be allowed.

The second season did see some changes. In the first season, the insurance company was more than happy to hand over six digit checks in order to avoid seven digit losses. However, in the second season, an insurance company exec tried to thwart Banacek with the help one of his own investigator Carlie Kirkland (Christine Belford) who tried to maintain an on-again, off-again romance with Banacek while trying to beat him out of his exorbitant fees.

This was a bad move, as it tampered with the show’s dynamic, slowed down the stories and didn’t add anything to the plot. Kirkland wasn’t particularly likable. In one story, she wormed her way into an investigation asking to learn from Banacek while on a leave of absence from the company  and then tried to sell him out to her insurance company. The character didn’t appear in the last two episodes of the second season which were set outside of Boston.

The second season disc for Banacek contains the original pilot which shows a bit of the original conception. The insurance company executive who began using Carlie as a foil for Banacek in the second season was played as respecting Banacek to an uptight investigator who hated Banacek horning in on their cases even though Banacek managed to solve them. In the original conception, Banacek only worked cold cases that hadn’t been solved in sixty days and the executive commented on how much money the insurance company has squandered on investigators’ pay and expenses searching for millions of dollars in gold. Perhaps this is why the producers went with a format where Banacek came on with a promise of reward soon after the items were stolen. It made more economic sense. In the case in the pilot, they ended up out all the money they paid the investigators plus the reward.

Peppard played Banacek differently in the pilot. He was quieter, less flip character. He spent a good fifteen minutes straight on screen at one point saying nothing. He spoke with conviction explaining why he didn’t change his last name to something less obviously Polish.

Jay and Carlie were also in the pilot. Jay was quite different. He owned a limo rental business based in Dallas rather than being Banacek’s employee and simply drove him around. He also pulled a classic doublecross when he bribed the operator to listen in to Banacek’s phone call and overheard a key clue which he used in hopes of collecting the reward. Definitely a different conception than the loyal, albeit dimwitted character who’d appear in the rest of the series.

Carlie was staying in Banacek’s hotel room and was pretending to be asleep. She’d wormed her way into the room with use of feminine wiles and then tried to pounce on the lead just ahead of Jay. At the scene of the dig, Banacek (prematurely) congratulated Jay. She asked why Banaceck didn’t congratulate her. Banacek replied that all he and Jay had shared was a limo.

At least, the Carlie character was consistent.

Overall thoughts:

Banacek is certainly not an essential mystery series. Unlike Columbo or Monk, Banacek is one of those shows you can take or leave.

Peppard is at his best as the wise-cracking detective who stays one step ahead of cops and official insurance investigators while hunting down items of unbelievable value.

The first season is a solidly performed series with great mysteries, solid plots, and great solutions. The second season has too much airtime taken up by Carlie Kirkland and that drags down the stories. Still, even that season has the great entry, “If Max Is So Smart, Why Doesn’t He Tell Us Where He Is?” as well as the fairly good, “Rocket to Oblivion.”

Overall, I’d give the series three 3.5 stars out of 5.0 with Season 1 getting 4 stars and season 2 getting a 3.

In terms of availability, the Banacek series has gone out of print, so the DVDs are absurdly over-priced. The best way to view the series is through a Netflix subscription.

If you don’t subscribe to Netflix, the best bargin as of this writing is the Best of Banacek DVD which is selling on Amazon for $6.05 plus shipping with a very limited supply remaining. The DVD comes with 4 episodes from the first season.  Given that the complete 17 episode series is selling for $150 + shipping on Amazon, it’s a decent deal-while it lasts.

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EP1004: The Line Up: The Holstedter Case

William Johnstone
Guthrie and Grebb search for a gang who committed a $100,000 bank robbery and shot a guard.

Original Air Date: December 20, 1951

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EP1003: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Ricardo Amerigo Matter, Part Five and High Sky Hoodoo

Bob Bailey

A second fiddle leads Johnny Dollar to the truth.

Original Air Date: January 20, 1956

Whitney plans to test pilot the next flight to rend himself of the “jinx” label.

Original Air Date: Week of December 20, 1957

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