Month: May 2020

EP3152s: The Fourth Estate: Tip Off

Edmond O'Brien

A reporter (Edmond O’Brien) goes undercover to bust up a counterfeiting racket.

Audition Date:June 26, 1946

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Graphic Novel Review: Superman Smashes the Klan

Superman Smashes the Klan is inspired by the 1946 Superman Radio serial: The Clan of the Fiery Cross. 

Teenagers Tommy and Roberta Lee move to Metropolis with their parents after their father gets a job as Metropolis’ chief bacteriologist. Tommy is a good pitcher and gets picked for the Unity House baseball team that Jimmy Olsen is a manager of.  Tommy displaces the team’s existing pitcher, Chuck Riggs, who is kicked off the team due to his bad sportsmanship. Chuck tells his Uncle Matt, who is a leader of the Ku Klux Klan stand-in, the Clan of the Fiery Cross.  The clan burns a cross on the Lee’s front yard and it’s up to Superman to protect the Lees and Unity House and bring the clan to heel.

This is not an exact adaptation of the radio story, but it captures the spirit of it. The book manages to be mostly true to the era the story is set in but also make changes to fit a modern audience. Superman was written as much more of a boy’s adventure story, and Tommy’s sister wasn’t even named.

In the novel, she’s a central character and provides a lot of emotional insight.  She’s sweet but awkward. She reflects that she felt out of place and like she didn’t belong even in China. She’s wonderfully relatable and interesting as a character and she has a superb bond with Superman. 

This also has a good portrayal of Superman, though it took me a while to see what he was doing. For example, in the earlier pages, he had Superman still “leaping tall buildings” rather than flying, even though by 1946, Superman had been flying in both the comics and the radio show. However, as I read the book, I saw exactly what writer Gene Yang was doing.

Yang incorporates more recent ideas about what it was like for Clark Kent growing up when he started to manifest his powers, which led to people becoming afraid of him, and him becoming an outsider, and having to hide who he is and what he can do in order to fit in and have a normal life. 

It’s a different take on Superman that’s still very true to the character. Even many of the writers who write Superman don’t get him and it’s popular for many fans to cast Superman as this distant unrelatable character. However, Yang succeeds in giving Superman a solid character arc.

The basic plot does follow along the lines of the radio serial, though it does try to enhance it. Like many modern Superman stories, the writer wants to have Superman face a real threat, and the thing I least like about that is how they do that. The Atom Man (the most dangerous villain Superman ever faced over radio) is introduced and dispatched in the first section of the novel, but his technology is used as a plot device in the hands of the Klan. It’s a clunky way to raise the threat level, but I can forgive it because I’m satisfied with how the book plays out in the end.

The overall tone is preachy, but keep in mind i’ts based on a radio serial that was far preachier.  This one fleshes out the characters and helps the readers empathize with them in a way that works for modern audiences and it has  good light moments. The art is clean and kid-friendly as well.

The book is great for kids if you want to introduce them them to the story of the 1946 radio series or if you want them to understand the history of the groups like the Klan and how they operated and were ultimately defeated. It’s also a well-done adaptation of a classic Superman radio story that does the original creative team behind the radio story proud.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

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EP3152: Dragnet: The Big Rush

Jack Webb

Friday and Smith investigate a series of tavern robberies.

Original Air Date: July 5, 1955

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EP3151: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Henry J Unger Matter

Edmond O'Brien
Johnny his hired to keep an eye on a released convict who he sent to prison.

Original Air Date: July 20, 1950

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EP3150: Mystery is My Hobby: The Walking Corpse

A wealthy man calls Barton because he suspects an unidentified corpse is that of his ninth wife.

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AWR0119: Top Secret: Night Train to Berlin

Amazing World of Radio

Baroness Karin Geza has to intercept a Gestapo Agent carrying a weapon that could turn the course of the War aboard a train to Berlin.

Original Air Date: June 11, 1950

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EP3149: The Man Called X: Swindle in Honolulu

George Raft

Several returned servicemen have been swindled with the promise of a house in Hawaii and the Man Called X has been implicated.

Original Air Date: June 5, 1947

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EP3148: Casebook of Gregory Hood: Fifth Avenue

Eliot Lewis

While on a tour bus, Gregory Hood encounters a beautiful brunette with a .32 automatic who leaves a package behind her.

Original Air Date: May 5, 1947

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Video Theater 180: Man Behind the Badge: The Case of the Priceless Passport

Two immigration agents go undercover in Mexico to find the source of counterfeit passports.

Season 2, Episode 8

Original Air Date: February 26, 1955

EP3147: Box 13: Hunt and Peck

A man on death row asks Dan to clear him less than 48 hours before he’s due to die.

Original Air Date: Sometime in 1948

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Audio Drama Review: Sherlock Holmes Theatre

In 2005, the Hollywood Theatre of the Ear released a series of Sherlock Holmes plays starring Martin Jarvis as Holmes, and Kristoffer Tabori as Watson.

First up is Sherlock Holmes. The play is written by William Gillette and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and its performed (as far as I can tell) unabridged from the original text. The play is solidly acted, but the main reason to listen to it is to hear the play exactly as it was performed when it was first written.

From a modern listener’s perspective, the play’s a mixed bag. On one hand, it is delightful to see how many bits from the Holmes stories get mixed into this play. On the other, it has a very slow pace and quite a few scenes that are not that interesting. The opening scene in particular seems to go on forever. This is a play that goes on well over two hours. Orson Welles took the text of the play and condensed it back in 1938 for the Mercury Theater, and I think that version is more entertaining.  This version is more authentic as it has so much in it.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is, while Holmes still does his deductive bits, the play makes him into a swashbuckling romantic hero. Doyle was not  proprietary about the character or canon and went places that many Holmes purists would frown upon to make a commercially successful play.

Next up is The Speckled Band. This play was written by Doyle alone and it expands on one of the best Holmes short stories.  The play changes the name of the woman who comes to Holmes for help from Helen Stoner to Enid Stoner for reasons that aren’t clear.

The play begins after Enid Stoner has died under mysterious circumstances just before she was about to marry. Much of the information about the elder Stoner sister’s death that was relayed in the client consultation in the short story, we get to hear discussed at a coroner’s inquest.

Perhaps the highlight of the play is that we get to hear more of Doctor Grimesby Roylott. Next to Professor Moriarty, he’s the most memorable villain in Holmes but we only get to see him for one scene in the short story and otherwise learn about his actions second hand.  In the play, we get to hear him in action. Dwight Schultz (A-Team and Star Trek) does a great job bringing to life this dangerous, maniacal, manipulative villain in a really unforgettable performance.

The play does have its weak points. A lot of the material does come off as fluff and padding. One of the silliest parts was where Enid needed someone to tell her to go and see Holmes and Watson, even though the play has her meet Doctor Watson at the inquest. Also, Roylott is undermined after he asks her to sign over her money to him and she refuses and he tells her this is her last chance and she’ll be sorry, and then comes back later in the play to make the same offer and once again is clear that it’s her last chance.

Like with the first play, The Speckled Band’s biggest selling point is its authenticity to the original Doyle play.

The collection concludes with Ghastly Double Murder in Famed Detective’s Flat, a one-act comedy play by Yuri Rasovsky. It’s essentially a three-hander with the premise that Holmes, Watson, and Mrs. Hudson are unlikable, amoral, hypocrites who secretly despise one another. When Holmes announces he’s going to retire to beekeeping and give up his rooms at Baker Street, leaving Watson without a meal ticket to help retire his gambling debts and Mrs. Hudson without a tenant. So the only thing to be done is for Watson and Mrs. Hudson to frame Holmes for murder. Rasovsky also inserts that Holmes and Mrs. Hudson had an affair.

In my opinion, this isn’t funny at all. Comedy is possible in Sherlock Holmes  but good comedy works when its consistent with the characters and draws its comedy from who the characters are. In this case, this is a cynical play that’s far less clever than it thinks it is. I question the decision to include it in this collection. The first two plays are going  to appeal to fans of Holmes and Watson who’d love nothing more than to hear the original Victorian plays. A lot of people interested in that would be turned off by Rasovsky’s one-act play and I doubt those who would be interested in Rasovsky’s play would be into 4 hours of Victorian Melodrama. The best thing about Ghastly Double Murder in the Famed Detective’s Flat is that is mercifully short, adding up to about 45 minutes. Although, it does feel considerably longer. If it were longer, it would seriously downgrade the set.

Overall, I’d recommend this collection if you’re interested in hearing full cast Victorian Sherlock Holmes plays. If you’re not interested in the final play, you can skip it and your life won’t be the poorer for it.

Rating; 3.75 out of 5

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EP3146: Dragnet: The Big Convertible

Jack Webb

The only clue Friday and Smith have to a check forger is he left the scene of the crime driving a late model Ford convertible.

Original Air Date: June 28, 1955

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EP3145: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Calgary Matter

Edmond O'Brien

Johnny is called up and offered a chance to solve a larger robbery.

Original Air Date: July 13, 1950

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EP3144: Mystery is My Hobby: Blackmail

Barton Drake and Inspector Danton investigate the murder of a female blackmailer.

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AWR0118: Abbott and Costello Show: Costello Invited to Join the Yankees (Old Time Radio Baseball)

Amazing World of Radio

Because Joe DiMaggio is sick, the Yankees call for Lou Costello.

Original Air Date: April 17, 1947

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