Month: September 2013

EP1065: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Salt City Matter, Parts One and Three

Bob Bailey
Johnny is hired to keep a gangster alive until the insurance company can break the policy.

Original Air Dates: April 2 and 4, 1956

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What My Parents and Grandparents Never Told Me About the Golden Age of Radio

Over the course of doing the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio, I’ve been pleased and surprised to find people 40 and under discovering Old Time Radio. Of course, I began really listening to old time radio when I was 26 and discovered Dragnet on the radio. But for others, it came to them through parents and grandparents sharing old time radio tapes and records, or listening to one of those rare old time radio rerun shows.

My own personal encounter with radio growing up was limited and little of it was from my parents. He usually talked more about movies again in general terms. His favorite story was how he could go to a triple feature and eat hamburgers for less than seventy-five cents. (What can I say? The stereotype about cheap Scotsmen is true!)  I think he may have given me the image of many people gathering around the radio to listen. He did mention Abbott and Costello and who knows? He may have listened to their kids radio show, which may explain his lifelong attachment to the two characters.

The one thing I got from him was that radio was good. Of course, he was under ten years old when radio began its fade and in his teen years, had heavier things  going on in his life than catching the latest episode of Crime and Peter Chambers.  

My mom was too young to remember much at all about it, and I never talked to my grandparents about the topic. It never occurred to me. That was another time and I had no idea that there was any way to access it on any mass basis.

I do remember when I was about nine, my dad while shopping in the Salvation Army found an old set of old time radio tapes and bought it for us. We heard Duffy’s TavernBurns and Allen, Fibber McGee and Molly, and of course Abbott and Costello. We heard an old Cosby record where he talked about the  Chicken Heart.  We went to a home school convention where four kids performed as characters from Fibber McGee and Molly with one 14 year-old doing a fantastic Great Gildersleeve.  But still, I knew that old time radio was good and old time radio was gone.

Then comes the 21st Century where the proliferation of high speed internet and CD burners and have spread tens of thousands of hours of programming across the Internet where listeners can hear them. It was more than just the quaint comedy, it’s a world in which innovators such as Welles, Corwin, Webb, and countless others made magic.

The comedy is there, of course, and it’s in all varieties. There’s the biting satire of Fred Allen (who manages it with gentlemanly grace), the  perfectly executed timing of Jack Benny, the sublime silliness of Gracie Allen, and the unpredictable ad-libs of Bob Hope. Then there are guys you love even though their doing the same routines slightly rewritten show after show (Abbott and Costello) or even if some of their jokes’ whiskers have whiskers (Jimmy Durante). There’s something so wonderful about them as people and as performers that it doesn’t matter.

There are the sitcoms: Fibber McGee and Molly, The Great Gildersleeve,  The Life of Riley, and Our Miss Brooks who worked charm in theri somewhat formulaic shows decades before it all became so tired.

But then there was drama. Yes, that includes  the ones most people recall: The Shadow, Superman, The Green Hornet, and The Lone Ranger.  However, there was more, there was Jimmy Stewart starring in a show called The Six Shooter, there was Gunsmoke, and then there were the movie adaptation shows: The Lux Radio Theater, The Screen Guild Theater, and the Screen Director’s Playhouse. You could have heard most of the great movies released from the mid-30s until the early-40s on those three programs.

Of course, on the more avante garde side were the experimental radio theater programs which tried all sorts of new and innovative things. Most notable is Welles Mercury Theater of the Air, but there was also The Columbia Workshop, Studio One, and the CBS Radio Workshop which tried so many experiments pressing the limits of radio and the drama.

Radio was also education and in a way that didn’t make education a dirty word. Calvalcade of America  spent fifteen years educating us intimately on the history of America in many chapters, telling us not only about the most famous men in history, but those people whose great deeds had faded from the public memory.

There were radio adaptations of  great short stories, great novels, and great plays.  There was the Family Theater, a show that ran for 10 years and was sponsored by the family prayer. It was as if radio wasn’t just seen as entertainment, it carried the weight of the preservation of culture.

Then there were the mystery programs including the ever-memorable Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, and of course Yours Truly Johnny Dollar.   There was the realistic and  groundbreaking Dragnet and there were some other great procedurals before that such as This is Your FBI. 

Then there were the other suspense and science fiction shows. Programs like Suspense, the Whistler, and Escape featured the type of suspenseful twist storytelling that would lead programs on television like The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Outer Limits. 

And don’t get me started on the music from crooners like Crosby,  to Gordon MacRae performing a musical every week on The Railroad Hour, to the great orchestrations of Meredith Willson, and the sweet Southern voice of Connie Haines, the golden of age radio had fantastic music with lyrics you could actually understand.

Radio was a whole different and amazing world, something I never got from conversation with people who lived during that era and listened to it. The reason why is that our memories fade over time. The television shows and movies we tend to remember most are those we watch over and over again.

When I think back to my childhood and shows I’ve watched once but never saw on reruns, I find similar brain freezes.   All I can remember about the show Hey Dude is that it was set on a dude ranch in New Mexico and there was a Native American  guy (I think his name was Danny) and a blonde girl, and the owner of the ranch was bald (or was it the manager?). And it wasn’t a bad show at least I don’t think.

It’s most likely that way for people who heard radio shows the first if they never heard them again. The 1950s was really the era of progress, of onward and innovation, without thinking much of what might be left behind in the march forward. It was out with radio and in with television. The programs were gone and details of what all that went on and what shows were truly amazing faded away and was left with a general feeling of nostalgia that radio had been good and fun.

Of course, may come flooding back with the sounds of an unfamiliar program. The re-emergence of radio programs in wide circulation on the internet has made it possible for my generation to rediscover and for people who heard it long ago to listen again and rediscover how great the golden age of radio really was.

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Radio Drama Review: The Thinking Machine

The period between Sherlock Holmes and the coming of iconic characters such as Hercules Poirot, Nick Charles, Philip Marlowe, and Nero Wolfe is littered with a series of mostly forgotten detectives. One of these Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen created by Jacques Futrelle. Van Dusen appeared in one novel and fifty short stories between his creation in 1905 and the tragic death of Futrelle aboard the board the Titanic in 1912.  Colonial Radio Theatre has brought Van Dusen back to life in its new series, The Thinking Machine.

In the early 20th Century were viewed primarily as puzzles and the two mysteries in the first volume of stories released by Colonial falls firmly into this category and they’re quite good puzzles: The Problems of Dressing Room A” deals with an impossible disappearance from an actress from backstage during a performance in attire that could hardly be worn on the street. The second, “The Phantom Motor” deals with a motor car that impossibly disappears when passing between two police officers across a road known as, “The Trap.”

Professor Van Dusen (Lincoln Clark) is a genius (which he’ll gladly let you know) but he is not a detective. His process for solving mysteries is not so much deduction as thinking through the problem and finding a way to the solution. That’s one of the great highlights of the stories is how Van Dusen and newspaper reporter Hutchinson Hatch will hash out nearly all conceivable solutions with incisive and clever logic. Then Van Dusen thinks through a way to find the solution that most of the professionals have missed.

If there’s a downside to the production, it’s this: Van Dusen, like  many amateur detectives during this period,  knew they were smarter and better than you and had no qualms about letting others know it. In the early 20th century, readers were kind of tolerant of this as long as the detective  got the job done.  We live in an age where really don’t like people being better than us, and we certainly don’t like them making a point of it. Hercule Poirot has this problem to an extent but he makes up for it with a ton of charm. Van Dusen has no such endearing qualities. With Clark’s solid acting, the character could grow on listeners, but with only two mysteries in this first set, it’s kind of hard to gauge how successful he could be.

However, Clark ad the rest of the cast are solid, showcasing the high production values I’ve come to expect from Colonial Radio Theater. Overall, these are well- acted well-produced puzzle mysteries that’s worth a listen particularly if you’re curious about forgotten detectives of the early 20th cenury.

Rating: 3.75 out of 5.0

Disclosure note: The reviewer received a free review copy for an honest review of this production.

The Thinking Machine is available as an audible download here.

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EP1064: The Line Up: Bentley’s Boo Boo Case

William Johnstone

An elderly man is murdered in a liquor store robbery and Guthrie searches for the killer.

Commentary indicates the title of this episode is the Pitiful Patricide case but the file I used was mis-labeled.

Original Air Date: October 15, 1952

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EP1063: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Lamar Matter, Part Five and Dr. Tim Detective: The Second Alarm

Bob Bailey

Johnny thinks he founds the killer but is in for a surprise.

Original Air Date: March 30, 1956

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EP1062: Nick Carter: The Substitute Bride

Lon Clark

A friend of Nick Carter’s suspects his fiancee’ may be an imposter.

Original Air Date: November 17, 1943

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EP1061: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Lamar Matter, Parts Three and Four

Bob Bailey

Johnny fights his emotions while trying to find out who killed

Original Air Dates: March 28 and 29, 1956

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EP1060: Amazing Mr. Malone: Appearances Can Be Deceiving

Gene Raymond

A man is murdered and then a jealous husband is killed. Malone is called in by a guy with a Southern accent.

Original Air Date: February 26, 1950

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EP1059: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Lamar Matter, Parts One and Two

Bob Bailey
Johnny falls in love while on vacation in California and then is called back to investigate her father’s murder.

Original Air Dates:  March 26 and 27, 1956

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Book Review: Murder by Proxy (Brett Halliday)

Note: I picked up several Michael Shayne novels as a give away for our listener support campaign.  Shayne was popular in other medias including radio version starring Wally Maher and Jeff Chandler,  film version with Lloyd Nolan and Hugh Beaumont, and a television version featuring Richard Denning. I decided to give the books a whirl while flying from San Francisco to St. Louis so that I’d know of what I speak when we begin doing Michael Shayne on our program. Below is my review.

A gorgeous woman checks into a Miami hotel room and then vanishes. Her husband arrives five days later for a surprise visit and finds her missing and is outraged the hotel didn’t do anything about it until now. He turns to Michael Shayne to find her.

Murder by Proxy (1962) is a short engaging book that does what its supposed to. It’s been out of print for years and no one’s likely to bring it back, nor unlike a Philip Marlowe book is anyone going to be told to read it. Social commentary is limited. What were left with a good solid hard boiled mystery novel that uses just the right of description to paints meaningful and evocative word pictures that powerfully tell oft the  missing “stacked” woman.

The mystery is cleverly written and is a true puzzle on both a physical and psychological level. The obvious explanation adopted by the police is that the woman simply stepped out, but she seemed to really be in love with her husband. The husband may have had some motive for killing her, but why would he step out on such a beautiful wife plus Shayne thought his concern for his wife is sincere. The puzzle and the chase are satisfying with just enough red herrings along the way.

While not a classic, this is good solid mystery mystery writing at its finest.

Note: We have a small supply of Michael Shayne novels available through our listener support page

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Sample Saturday: An Ounce of Prevention

Here’s an excerpt from An Ounce of Prevention, my new mystery short available for Kindle for 99 cents:

Three days went by and everything had been quiet. Then the fourth day in the afternoon.I was reading over some reports from a security job at Boise Town Square mall. My desk phone rang. I picked it up. “Newton Investigations, this is Jerry.”

Pop. A low pitched male voice came over the phone. “Hello, boss. It’s Ustick.”

I cradled the phone. “Ustick, what is it? You’re not due to report until 5:30.”

Pop. “Durand’s car was bombed.”

I swallowed. Some security we were. I sighed. “Was he hurt?”

Pop. “Nah, the bomb was tied to the remote signal for unlocking the door. He was thirty feet away when the thing blew up.”

“Ustick, didn’t I tell you to check the car completely? That meant under the car, around the car, on top of the car, in the car.”

Pop. “Yeah, you did and I did like I do every time, boss. I went over the car twenty minutes before Durand came out. I sent the pictures of my inspection to your cell phone.”

I grabbed my cell phone off the table and pulled up the pictures taken of the SUV’s undercarriage, interior, and under the hood. No sign of a bomb. Another picture time-stamped fifteen minutes later showed the car in flames, and one minute after that with the fire burned out, and the car gutted.

I whistled.

Pop. Ustick spoke up. “Boss, any other questions?”

“First, I’ve told you to stop chewing gum on the job. I’m hearing a popping sound on the line.”

The line went silent for a moment.

Ustick’s voice came through clear. “We just have a bad connection.”

I chuckled. “It just cleared up. Are the police there yet?”

“They just pulled up.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.” I hung up the desk phone, stuck the cell phone in my pocket, went to the file cabinet, grabbed the three threatening letters, and placed them in a manila envelope.

After a quiet drive, I arrived at the elementary school parking lot. It was almost vacant except for a very busy corner. I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a package of latex gloves I’d stowed there years before. I put them on and walked to the scene. Police officers, firefighters, and haz-mat crews were all over the place. Some of them were gathering around some debris.

I ambled up to the crime scene tape where a dark haired police officer stood. “Sir, can I help you?”
I pulled out my license and business card. “I’m Jerry Newton, I texted Detective Weston that I was coming.”

She nodded. “Yes, sir. Please sign the log before entering the crime scene?”

I put the pen in my hand like I had a hundred times before and signed the sheet.

The remains of Durand’s Ford Explorer were charred from bottom to top. Cole Ustick was talking with my former partner, Detective Charlie Weston. Cole Ustick was all of twenty-three years old. He was five foot eleven, and his black ponytail stuck out from beneath his fuchsia fedora, which matched his suit.

I ambled over to Weston. The light of the late afternoon sun reflected off his waxed bald head.
Weston closed his notebook. “Okay, Mr. Ustick, I’ll let you know if we need anything else. Thank you for your time.”

I poked Charlie in the back. “Detective.”

Charlie turned and smiled. “Jerry, good to see you. Come this way.” Charlie led me over to a Black Crown Victoria. He stared at Ustick and pivoted back to me. “So they’re calling that a detective these days.”

I shrugged. “You joined the fashion police, too?”

Charlie chuckled. “No.” He frowned. “My biggest problem right now is your client. He just had his car bombed, he’s hired a bodyguard on a teacher’s salary, and he tells me he’s got no idea who’s behind this. Jerry, I think you got more sense than to sell me that line.”

I handed Charlie the envelope. He opened it, flipped through the letters, and frowned. “Mind if I keep these for a while?”

Like my permission mattered. “No problem.”

Charlie marched toward the former parking spot and I followed him over to my client, who stood by a fire truck.

Charlie rested his arm against the fire truck. “Mister Durand, why didn’t you tell me that you’d received threatening letters?”

The redness of Durand’s face deepened a shade and he glared at me. “Newton, what I told you was supposed to be in confidence.”

I put up a hand. “It is, but there’s a police investigation here, and it’s illegal for me to withhold information.”

Durand interwove his fingers and pushed on his knuckles. “I’d rather there not be a police investigation.”

Charlie furrowed his brow. “Sir, this is an arson investigation and we have to investigate every possibility.”

Durand squeezed his hands tight. “I understand, Detective. Now if there’s nothing else, Newton, will you take me to get a rental car?”

“Ustick will take you.” I pointed towards where I’d last seen Ustick. “He’s over that way.”

Charlie said, “Mr. Duran, I may have more questions later.”

Durand grunted. “You have my number.” He lumbered past us.

Charlie shook his head. “You got a prize client there.”

“You sound like you suspect him.”

“Wouldn’t you? It’s the easiest way to explain how a bomb got under there after your man checked it. It was already there. Maybe he encased it in part of the car and put it back on.”

I chuckled. “What’s the motive? How many guys torch cars for the insurance money? Plus if it was encased in the car itself, I think you’d have seen a lot more debris. This looks really professional. The bomb did just what it was meant to. Look at it, as pretty as you please, burned to a crisp.”

“Good point, but you expect me to believe this sort of professional job was done by a kid mad because Durand held him back a grade.” Weston shrugged. “Either way, The lab will find out. Of course, Ustick could have missed it.”

I shook my head. “Nah, he’s very thorough. “

He shrugged. “Well, even thorough people make mistakes. But neither explanation satisfies me which leaves me in a spot because it happened. Your client’s not telling everything he knows.”

I leaned in towards Charlie and spoke low. “I know he’s probably hiding something he doesn’t want you to find. However, that’s not my problem.”

Charlie grinned. “Jerry, you know this type of conversation makes me a little nostalgic. You were a good cop. Have you ever thought of-?”

I shook my head. “Nothing’s changed, Charlie.”

Read more in An Ounce of  Prevention.

Telefilm Review: Sad Cypress

Sad Cypress tells the story of a young woman named Elinor Carlisle on trial for murder. Through flashbacks we see Elinor speaking to her dying aunt who she inherits a fortune from. A girl named Mary had won a place in her aunt’s heart and subsequently steals her beau Rodney. When Mary dies at a party held by Elinor. She’s arrested for murder and Poirot steps in to investigate.

This is actually one of the best adaptations I’ve seen yet. The mystery had me guessing until the end, the producers did a great job creating plenty of misdirection, to make this one a puzzler. It also really worked on an emotional level helped by a top notch score that created the perfect mood. Suchet was fabulous as always, making this a nearly perfect production.

Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0

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EP1058: The Line Up: The Check Killer Case

William Johnstone

The murder of a man who works at a printer is tied into a forgery racket.

Original Air Date: March 6, 1951

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EP1057: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Jolly Rogers Fraud Matter, Part Five and Dr. Tim, Detective: The Man from Trouble Creek

Bob Bailey

Johnny confronts the killer and faces death.

Original Air Date: March 23, 1956

Dr. Tim searches for a missing man with tuberculosis.

Original Air Date: 1948

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EP1056: Nick Carter: The Drug Ring Murder

Lon Clark
A murdered man washes up on shore with the only thing to identify him being one of Nick Carter’s business cards.

Original Air Date: November 10, 1943

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