Continued from Part Four

Her father was dead.

Roberta Goodwin had come to accept this It’d been nine years since she’d seen him. She’d tried to find her dad, Bob Bailey. She’d contacted all his friends, the studios, the talent agencies. No one knew where her father was. There were many things that could have happened to a prematurely aging alcoholic in his fifties who’d lost everything, and none of them bore thinking about. She moved on with her life, got married, and started a family.

One day in the early 1970s, she got a phone call.

The voice on the other end said, “Hello, this is your dad.”

“This is not funny, whoever’s playing this joke on me—!” 

“No, it’s me.”

Bailey convinced her. He’d drifted around for many years until finally going a rehabilitation center in Antelope Valley in North Los Angeles County and getting clean. And for two years, his life was going well. He found renewed purpose in life at the rehab center, helping others to recover from addiction and get on their feet again.

Then in 1973, Bailey suffered a debilitating stroke that left him paralyzed on his right side and confined to a convalescent hospital for the rest of his life.

What About Bob?

During most of his final years, Bob Bailey thought his radio work had been forgotten. We don’t know if he actively was bothered by this, but there was no doubt he thought this. Old time radio programs were never intended to be replayed forever. It was assumed once broadcast, they were gone forever. Even after transcription recording disks were sent out to stations, it was expected that they would be destroyed. The idea of reruns was rarely considered. More often than not, when a radio series wanted to reuse a script, it would have actors perform the same script over again rather than rebraodcast a previous performance. It was only late in the Golden Age of Radio that Television programs began to see the value of reruns and series like Dragnet and I Love Lucy  began syndicating their old episodes.

Of course, there were first-run syndication programs that aired at various times and on various stations with local or regional sponsors. Yet, most syndication of Golden Age Radio drama had stopped by the early 1960s domestically. The networks archived a handful of their own recordings and would trot out a few clips here and there, mostly of old comedy programs. Those programs which the networks didn’t save were destined to be lost forever

This is where Old Time Radio collectors took a hand. Thousands of individual collectors, large and small acquired transcription disks and tape recordings of old time radio programs. Fanciful stories about how this happened arose. However, the truth was far more mundane. Super collector David Goldin explained how he accumulated his collection: “Most of the transcriptions over the years have been bought, usually ten or twenty at a time, from record stores, radio stations, syndicators, advertising agencies, the performers who were on the programs and some special situations as well. Many people involved with these programs have allowed me access to personal collections

These sort of stories are told hundreds and thousands of times by many collectors both large and small in many places through the sixties and seventies. Taken together, they explains how golden age radio programs have survived the fickleness of networks.

In the 1970s, there would be renewed public interest in old time radio. It would be one of many trends in the 1970s. It was fed by genuine nostalgia. In an era defined by Vietnam and Watergate, the old-fashioned patriotism and innocence of many old time radio programs were certainly appealing during a difficult era.  There also was some appreciation for radio as a comedic and dramatic medium that would lead to many radio revival attempts (see parts one, two, and three of my look at the 1970s.) Of course, the fact is that so much of the golden age of radio had such enduring quality. Listeners got to enjoy the radio works of comedians like Jack Benny and Red Skelton who’d remained active on Television long after radio ended while also discovering or rediscovering Fibber McGee and Molly, The Shadow The Mercury Theatre of the Air, Suspense, X Minus One, Sam Spade, and of course, the Yours Truly Johnny Dollar serials.

In the 1970s, there would be old time radio rebroadcasts throughout the U.S. and radio shows where old time radio stars were interviewed. The seventies also saw the formation of collectors clubs. Organizations began long histories of preservation The Society to Preserve and Encourage Radio Drama, Variety And Comedy (SPERDVAC) was founded in 1974, and in 1976, the first Friends of Old Time Radio Convention (FOTR) was held in 1976. SPERDVAC would begin hosting its own conventions in 1984. The Conventions brought together collectors, fans, and surviving cast and crew from the golden age of radio. There would be interviews and panels with surviving performers and crew from the Golden Age of Radio. Recordings were often made, capturing living history while it was still alive. These conventions would also feature recreations of old-time radio programs with the original actors when possible.

Many fans wondered what had happened to Bob Bailey. Bailey was far from the only old time radio figure to drop off the radar. In those days before the Internet, it was far easier to lose track of people. Yet Bailey was the most notable radio figure who couldn’t be accounted for. Other figures from the Golden Age of Radio who knew Bailey best were asked about him, but if they knew anything, they weren’t telling.

Denver-based old-time radio host John Dunning, who would go on to become one of the Golden Age of radio’s foremost historians, was well aware of the mystery. He had played all of the available Yours Truly Johnny Dollar serials from start to finish on his programs twice. Bailey became quite popular with listeners in Denver who asked Dunning if Bailey was alive, what he was doing, and if they could write for him. Dunning could give his listeners no answers. Then in the early 1980s, he sent copies of the serials to a radio station in Grand Junction which played them for the first time. The Grand Junction radio station got a call from a woman who identified herself as Bob Bailey’s daughter, Roberta Goodwin.

Dunning got in touch and arranged an interview which occurred on February 7, 1982 and is probably the most quoted interview about the Golden Age of Radio. Goodwin shared keen insights into not only her dad’s career challenges but also her perspective on the Golden Age of Radio from someone who saw it up close and personal. She’d called her dad when after speaking to Dunning to set the interview and he was excited that she knew something he’d done was still being listened to.

. Towards the end of their time, he brought up Goodwin’s statement that he’d disappeared from her life for nine years and asked if that was something he could ask her about. She said that in most cases she would have said no, but that, it might help someone, and she told the story of her Dad’s struggle with addiction and his disappearance. On the air, Dunning provided the address for his listeners to send a card or letter to Bob Bailey.

In June,  Representatives of the Board of SPERDVAC made the journey to the convalescent hospital; om Antelope Valley to and surprised Bailey with a birthday cake and a card for his 69th birthday. They also sent him materials for honorary membership and tasked a local member of SPERDVAC with going back to visit him just to make sure the material was received. Bailey told the man how much the birthday celebration had meant to him. Bailey hadn’t realized that he hadn’t been forgotten.

For about a year and a half, fans who enjoyed Bailey’s work could contact him with a letter, a card, or a large print book, although he was unable to write back due to his paralysis. On August 12, 1983, Bailey became sick and was moved to the hospital and died the next day on August 13, 1983 two months after his seventieth birthday.

Bob Bailey Travels the Information Super Highway

Old Time Radio persisted as a major hobby but it faded from the public imagination. Over time, many radio stations dropped old time radio replays or played them late at night or in the wee hours of the morning. Conventions continued to be held but there were fewer old time radio stars to attend as the years went on.

The Internet came and brought major changes and challenges to the old time radio hobby as it did to so many things. While we could go on at length about both the good and bad, there were two things that made a huge difference to Bob Bailey.

First, is how the Internet made collaboration easier across geographic lines. With the increasing prevalence of broadband, it made working with large files (ex: a high quality digital version) of an old time radio program) easier. It became far easier to come together, pick through possible versions of performance and choose the best ones to release to the public.

Secondly, broadband and increasing storage limits made it easier for the average listener to enjoy the full breadth of Bailey’s work. In the 1980s and 90s, if you were a retail old time radio fan, you were limited to a relatively small selection. You could buy a cassette with old time radio programs on both sides. Or maybe you might find an album with five or ten cassette tapes with ten or twenty programs in it. Of course, you listen for free to what was played on the air. But even then you were limited to what the radio station had. For example, John Dunning in 1982 had a very good collection for the time. In the interview with Goodwin, Dunning offered to share tapes of Bailey’s performances with him. He said he had all but five of the Yours Truly Johnny Dollar serial episodes,forty or fifty episodes of Let George Do It, and about fifteen of the later Yours Truly Johnny Dollar half hour episodes.

Today, anyone can listen to all of the Yours Truly Johnny Dollar serial episodes (although four are missing an episode in the middle), they can listen to two hundred episodes of Let George Do It, and more than 180 episodes of the Yours Truly Johnny Dollar half hours.

And listen they do. Bailey’s performances are uploaded to so many places online that it’s impossible to track it all: YouTube video plays, archive.org and other old time radio download sites, podcasts, and more. Not all of the places his work is posted provide an easy way of calculating downloads and hits, but those that do show millions of interactions. Bailey’s work is not just remembered by people who heard it when it first aired, but also by people from all around the world who were born after he died.

Bailey’s enduring popularity explains why Radio Spirits released The Bob Bailey Collection. in 2020. As part of the collection, Radio Spirits reached out to super collector Jerry Haendiges and obtained rare recordings of obscure programs Bailey appeared in. The interest Bob Bailey is such that nearly 40 years after his death, people would buy an album of old time radio shows containing episodes of the Public service show Illinois March of Health just because Bailey appears in them!

While there were many solid actors who played detectives during the Golden Age of Radio, there was something really special about Bailey’s portrayal of Johnny Dollar that resonates with listeners to this day and causes to stand out from his peers.

Conclusion

In the end, Bailey was a creative and talented person who dreamt big and had a lot of disappointments. He never landed a great film or television role and he never got close to becoming a director.

Yet, Bailey also achieved many goals that others would envy. He got to act with Laurel and Hardy, he wrote a story that became a movie, as well as a dozen TV episodes. He also spent twelve years as the star of two very successful network radio programs, both are listened to and enjoyed forty years after his death.

The last third of his life was filled with sad and tragic turn of events that you wouldn’t wish on anyone. But at the same time, unlike many, he escaped addiction. He got to try to rebuild his relationship with his daughter, as well help others find their way back. He lived long enough to know that his best work and hadn’t been lost and for his grandchildren to hear it.

Bailey’s work is an essential part of the American Golden Age of Radio. As long as it’s remembered, Bailey’s work will be as well.

Acknowledgment

John Abbott provided some really great insights as I was researching this series of articles. His Bob Bailey page has a lot of great characters of Bailey throughout his career as well as a very good breakdown of his radio and screen work. John also gave a fascinating presentation via Zoom to the Metropolitian Washington Old Time Radio Club. on the life of Bob Bailey from start to finish. The presentation features a lot of great details, including a whole story about Bailey’s color career as a young man around the Chicago World’s Fair that I just couldn’t fit in here.

Continued from Part Three

“You’re not Johnny Dollar.”

The words had to sting. According to Bailey’s daughter, Roberta, Bob Bailey was given this message by CBS Television producers who had flown him across the country to New York to talk about a pilot for a Yours Truly Johnny Dollar television program. Bailey was taken aback. “I am. I’ve been.”

He was then told that Johnny Dollar was six foot tall and 200 pounds. Bailey stood at five feet, nine and a half inches tall, and weighed all of 150 pounds. Unlike the previous Let George Do It pilot, CBS didn’t even bother with any test footage but instead sent Bailey packing. The TV pilot had been announced in Billboard on November 17, 1956, after the end of the serial run, with a script by E. Jack Neumann. But Bailey not fitting the expectations of how a TV hero should look, and the paradoxical fact that Bailey’s radio performance is what made a TV show plausible, essentially ended the project for the time being. In 1962, Blake Edwards, who wrote for the radio series during the Lund era, would produce a TV pilot, but it would never be aired.

Bailey was not the only talented radio actor to be shafted for looks. William Conrad was brilliant as the voice of Matt Dillon on radio’s Gunsmoke but TV executives rejected Conrad and the rest of the radio cast in favor of a completely new cast led by James Arness. The TV cast was talented and lived up to Hollywood’s superficial expectations. Conrad didn’t land a lead role on 1971. In the intervening years, he got away from the superficial life in front of the camera by forging a career as a successful TV producer/director, as well as being a narrator on various shows, including The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and The Fugitive.

As we talked about in the previous installment, this was the sort of career change Bailey wanted for himself, and he thought that writing scripts would get him there, and, after his disappointment with Johnny Dollar, he hadn’t quite let go of the idea. He and writing partner Hugh King wrote nine scripts of the Canadian TV series Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans, which was also syndicated in the US. The series is remembered for having a more realistic view of America and Native Americans than most other programs of the time.  In addition in a 1957 interview with Zuma Palmer, there were two other projects* mentioned that were not discussed in Part Three.

First, it’s stated that Bailey and King had written thirteen episodes (or one third of a typical syndicated TV season of the time) of a series called The Phantom Pirate. The odd thing about this is that there was a pilot for a series called “The Phantom Pirate” which starred Robert Stack and was produced back in 1952** but no record of a latter project. It’s possible that there had been an attempt to revive the concept that fell through. Regardless, whatever work Bailey and King did on the series didn’t make it to screen.

The same would be true of a film project for RKO, Below the Timberline. There’s no record of the film being made, but that’s no surprise. The situation at RKO had deteriorated. Six months after the release of Underwater! and after a lot of corporate drama, Hughes sold RKO to General Tire, who did their best to revive the studio. But by 1957 General Tire had begun a slow process to shut down and sell off existing productions to Universal. It’s quite possible that Bailey and King had sold another story to RKO, but in all the chaos, it never made it to the production stage.

From all appearances, Bailey’s scriptwriting efforts petered out. He wrote the 1957 Yours Truly Johnny Dollar Christmas radio episode, “The Carmen Kringle Matter”, under the pen name Robert Bainter and wrote one more script for Fury in 1958. There’s no record of him writing further.

In the interview with Palmer, Bailey wondered if he’d have had more success if he’d had greater focus. Bailey was a creative person, but that creativity flowed in a lot of directions. He built early American furniture and even sold some pieces. He’d painted and been encouraged to show work at an art gallery. He’d often take over the kitchen on a whim to try out a recipe. Bailey wasn’t cut from the same cloth as Hollywood workaholics like Jack Webb, who put in ridiculous hours on all the TV and film productions he made. Bailey, at least in 1957, was content with this.  “If I would concentrate on one field, I would probably go further, but being creative in several, I feel, enriches my life.”

The radio show continued as a mostly self-contained half-hour series airing on Sunday evenings, but with several recurring characters both in terms insurance agents and eccentric company clients that wanted Johnny Dollar’s services. The series didn’t land a sponsor and the show’s budget was reduced, which meant that the series eventually couldn’t pay for the high caliber of writers who wrote the serials. Eventually, Jack Johnstone, who didn’t have any writing credits prior to Johnny Dollar, began scripting all the episodes. CBS moved away from the single-sponsor model to taking multiple commercial sponsors. While this would pay the bills, the number of commercials led to a reduction in the actual space to tell a story. Sometimes, Johnstone struggled with only 18-19 minutes. He liked stories that featured little details that made them realistic, having interesting characters, comedy, and heartfelt moments. Sometimes, Johnstone couldn’t do everything he wanted and tell a compelling mystery story too. Still, the audience came back and much of that came down to Bailey, whose performance never faltered.

As Bailey’s scriptwriting waned, he took on more screen acting work. He had a small part in the 1958 film The Line Up, a noir that was connected to the TV and radio show of the same name. He also made his first two confirmed television appearances*** in two separate anthology series. In 1959, Bailey appeared in the first episode of the Mike Connor-led crime drama Tight Rope, and in 1960, he appeared on M Squad.

September of 1960 would mark Bailey’s fifth year as the star of Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, and the series did something unusual: it turned the episode “The Five Down Matter” into a celebration in which several of the series’ recurring characters threw a party for Johnny. The uninformed observer who listened to the episode out of its context could be forgiven for finding it cheesy and self-indulgent. It was also unusual for the Golden Age of Radio, where if an honor or a milestone were honored, it would be marked by the announcer or occasionally a guest giving a thirty-second presentation and the star saying a brief thank you.

Yet, in context, it was entirely appropriate. The past five years had been an achievement Golden Age radio programs were beginning canceled left and right. New programs had struggled to get started. The idea that the relaunched Yours Truly Johnny Dollar would still be standing in 1960 was worth celebrating. The series also stood out because it was neither a Western nor a daytime soap. “The Five Down Matter” was a love letter to loyal listeners, to the supporting players who created memorable recurring characters, and of course, to Bob Bailey himself.

Also, if “The Five Down Matter” seemed like a lot of pomp and circumstance, it may have been because Johnstone knew that if the show ended, it would be unceremonious. I doubt that, when Johnstone wrote the script, he knew what fate exactly awaited the series. However, the brief recession of 1958 had hastened the end of the Golden Age of Radio and led to lots of discussions about the future. In September, there was an affiliates meeting and then CBS management began to discuss how to enact a new plan.

In October, the producers of all of CBS’ soaps were given a month to resolve all of their long-standing storylines and bring their shows to a conclusion. Have Gun Will Travel and Suspense were canceled. The radio version of Gunsmoke would continue. Yours Truly Johnny Dollar would also continue, but in New York rather than in Hollywood. Bob Bailey declined to move his family to New York. Given the general trajectory of radio that would lead to the end of dramatic radio less than two years later, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where he’d have agreed to the move. On November 27, 1960, the last Hollywood episode of Yours Truly Johnny Dollar aired. It ended with no acknowledgment of Bailey’s years on the show or notice of a new actor taking over the role next week.

The casual radio listener who didn’t pay attention to radio news would tune in the next week to find a young man named Bob Reddick playing Johnny Dollar.

After Radio

Bailey continued to work on-screen though less so than many of his former radio peers. According to IMDB, Bailey made three TV guest appearances in 1961****. Compare that to nine for Gerald Mohr or more than a dozen by Herb Vigran. In 1962, Bailey had a short uncredited role in the film The Bird Man of Alcatraz and also made a guest appearance on 87th Precinct. In 1962 and 1963, Bailey had his only recurring TV role, playing a judge in three different episodes of NBC’s legal drama Sam Benedict, which starred fellow former Johnny Dollar Edmond O’Brien.

The radio listener who had been a fan of Bailey and caught one of his early 1960s TV appearances might have smiled on hearing Bailey’s familiar voice and imagined he was doing well after the end of the Golden Age of Radio. This couldn’t have been more wrong. Bailey was dealing with more than career disappointments.

His life was falling apart.

In 1961, his nine-year-old son died. In 1962, his quarter-of-a-century marriage came to an end. Bailey, who was secretly an alcoholic, and had been an AA member for twenty-two years, gave up his sobriety and began to drink heavily. We don’t have enough information to understand how each of these things fed into each other. What we do know is that Bailey’s life headed downhill fast.

His daughter Roberta lost touch with him after the divorce. But that wasn’t the last the world heard of Bob Bailey. He made one final uncredited appearance in the 1964 Disney film A Tiger Walks. The film began shooting on May 13, 1963, a month before Bailey’s 50th Birthday.

Bailey’s fifth decade had begun with a family trip to Hawaii and a promise of an exciting new career in screenwriting. Even though that hadn’t worked out, he’d done the best work of his career, but two and a half years after he left Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, Bailey had lost everything: career, family, home, and car. Reviewing stills of Bailey, it was clear that the hardness of the years had taken a toll, as he looked far older than fifty.

Around the time of his fiftieth birthday, in the few weeks that A Tiger Walks was in production, Bob Bailey went to the Disney movie lot and filmed his last acting role, likely in one day, certainly no more than two.

And then, as far as anyone who cared about him knew, Bob Bailey dropped off the face of the Earth.

Concluded in Part Five

Next time: A comeback, another tragedy, gratitude, and then comes the Internet.

*Palmer’s article also mentioned The Big Rainbow and Underwater! as separate projects when “The Big Rainbow” was the story that was adapted into Underwater!

**One source suggested that producer William Broidy intended to make a series about the history of piracy. In Pioneers of B Television by Richard Irvin, it’s stated that the Phantom Pirate “fought for justice and thwarted criminals on the high seas’: which suggests a slight lack of understanding of the nature of pirates!

***Prior to 1958, IMBD credits Bailey as appearing in a 1954 episode of Mr. and Mrs. North, but the character listed did not appear in that episode. It also lists a 1957 episode of the TV version of The Line-Up, but that appearance has not been verified.

****One of the three programs Bailey appeared in during 1961 was the pilot episode of the short-lived crime program The Asphalt Jungle. Additional footage was shot to extend the runtime and turned into the movie The Lawbreakers which was released in Europe and Mexico starting with West Germany in August 1961. An earlier version of this article stated Bailey made four TV appearances in 1961.

Continued from Part Two

A Career Change

A November 30, 1953 item in the Los Angeles Evening Citizen announced that fellow Chicago radio alum Olan Soule had succeeded Bailey as George Valentine on Let George Do It. The item states that Bailey had left the role after seven years to focus on scriptwriting. Soule would play George Valentine for the final ten months the series was on the air.

To Bailey, scriptwriting was a means to an end, He didn’t view himself as a great writer according to a 1957 interview, but rather viewed writing as a “bridge” to his real ambitions: becoming a direction on television or the movies

Bailey may have started down the writing path walk working on Let George Do It. Thirteen circulating episodes of the series from 1951 and 1952 give as a writing credit a Lloyd London, an obvious pseudonym that references the Lloyds of London auction house. There’s no record of the name being used on any other series. As Bailey’s daughter Roberta Goodwin explained in a 1982 interview, the use of an alias by an actor who also wrote a script is to get rid of network policies that would rather not pay the same person the salary for writer and actor even if the person happened to do work for both. This is why Bailey wrote his one Yours Truly Johnny Dollar script under a pseudonym (the more obvious Robert Bainter). We can’t say for sure that Bailey was Lloyd London, but given the direction of Bailey’s career and the fact that television was enticing many writers with much higher pay, it seems a logical inference that he probably was.

Bailey had an evident plan of attack based on events. Instead of having a regular radio program, he’d focus on screenwriting and do a little bit of acting to supplement his income. He makes his second film appearance of the 1950s in a small uncredited part in the star-studded medical noir Not as a Stranger. Beyond that, his guest appearances were on radio: He appeared on Stars Over Hollywood, he did several minor guest roles on The Lux Radio Theater just as he’d done a decade before when he came from Hollywood, and even guest starred in another detective drama starring John Lund called Yours Truly Johnny Dollar.  He also recorded his best work outside of the detective genre in the anthology series Romance. While some might assume that Romance only was doing light fluffy romantic comedies, that was definitely not true in 1950s. His May 28, 1954 performance in “Affair at Aden” is without a doubt the drama highlight of his radiography outside of the detective.

Life Isn’t Always Better Where It’s Wetter

The writing side of things had moments of promise, but there were disappointments. Bailey and writing partner Hugh King sold their story “The Big Rainbow” to RKO. It became the movie Underwater!, an undersea adventure film that was going to star the very bankable Jane Russell in lead role. Newspapers reported that Bailey took his family on a Hawaiian vacation in the summer of 1953 as he was turning forty. It’s possible that Bailey did something related to the film (which would start filming a few months later), but we have no information that indicates that.

Underwater! was produced by corporate tycoon and aviation legend Howard Hughes (who had effective control of RKO at the time) and that made the difference between Underwater! being a good solid adventure story that would launch the Bailey and King writing duo as capable of writing for the movies, and an infamous debacle. With Hughes involved, it could only end one way. Russell hated doing the project and was fairly and rightfully disgusted by Hughes at this point in his career for all the creepy things he had done. Hughes decided the perfect time to start filming this thing in Hawaii was in November…during the rainy season. There was an explosion on set that led to higher production costs. Hughes wanted to use live sharks to shoot a scene and an extra nearly lost his leg. The whole filming had to be stopped and relocated to the Bahamas at great cost and it took eight months from start to finish for filming to be completed. The film had a $300,000 budget but came in at more than $3 million.

The film’s trailer tried to lean into this to get people to show up at the theater, boasting that it’d taken three years to make the movie (this likely included pre-production time) and cost three million dollars to film. This might have impressed an unwary filmgoer. But anyone who knew anything about movies knew that a film by Howard Hughes taking that long and costing that much didn’t get into that condition because it took that long to make it perfect. The trailer was an invitation to a trainwreck (or boatwreck if you’d rather).

The film premiered at a Florida resort in January 1955 twenty feet under the water. Twenty-four reporters actually swam out in deep sea diving gear led by Russell. Hughes provided fodder for waggish journalists. UP’s Aline Mosby opined, “I was too busy to keep from drowning to see the film.”  Add to that that the film was the first film released in Superscope and that release had some major bugs that needed to be worked out by local theater operators, and Underwater! was a weird, controversial release and a horrible vehicle for a first-time story writer looking to gain a foothold in movies.

Beyond that, Bailey and King also wrote an episode of the television anthology series The Ford Television Theatre called “The Legal Beagles.” Like many anthology program episodes of the era, “The Legal Beagles” has the feel of a backdoor television pilot. The series features two stars who could carry a television program in Richard Denning (who’d just spent two seasons starring in the TV version of Mr. and Mrs. North) and Laraine Day, two telegenic stars who were definitely what television executives were looking for. The story is about a couple of married lawyers (Denning and Day) who have successfully gotten an impatient’s client case delayed so they can have a second honeymoon, only for the wife to take an interest in helping an indigent boy who faces potential reform school time over a poaching complaint from a grumpy old woman.

I’ve seen the episode and, as backdoor pilots go, it’s middle of the road. It had the potential to be a solid program with a very likable performance by Day, but it also had rough spots. Of course, many TV pilots have elements that need to be fixed and the right producer might have been willing to make the show work. Legal Beagles as a series I could have imagined being greenlit but I can still understand why it wasn’t.

Beyond this, Bailey (without King listed as co-writer) wrote an episode of the Peter Graves-led children’s Western Fury. As far as we can tell, two TV episodes and a single movie are all Bailey had netted from his scriptwriting focus.

Bailey’s Best

Bailey’s struggles would be CBS’ gain. CBS had the idea of turning one of their existing half-hour detective programs into a prime-time Monday-Friday fifteen minute serial. They’d tried this concept with Mr. and Mrs. North and Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons. They’d also recorded an audition for Rocky Jordan (which had begun as a serialized program) to be done in this format. None of it had settled.

They’d decided to try again with Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, a series that followed a freelance insurance investigator who went wherever insurance investigators sent him and narrated his adventures through the device of reading his “action-packed expense account.” Three other actors had played Johnny Dollar on the air from 1949-54 during its original 30-minute run. Gerald Mohr, best known to old time radio fans as the voice of Philip Marlowe and who’d recently played Private Detective Mike Malloy in serialized adventures for ABC, recorded an audition for the role in August 1955 and, according to the radio researcher Stewart Wright, at least one trade publication had prematurely reported that Mohr would star in the new serialized Johnny Dollar.

Either Mohr or CBS decided against going forward and so CBS proceeded with an audition to be the next Johnny Dollar. Potential Johnnys would have 20 minutes to convince producer Jack Johnstone, and then do a five-page audition script with veteran radio actress Lillian Buyeff. Among those who auditioned were actors who had starred in detective mystery programs: Jack Moyles (Rocky Jordan and O’Hara), Larry Thor (Broadway is My Beat), and Paul Dubov (Frank Race and Jeff Regan) auditioned, along with several talented veteran radio actors, and also former baseball and basketball star Chuck Connors, a few years before he would star in the TV Western The Rifleman. 

While the audition is standard practice, until reading Wright’s article, it never occurred to me that this had happened. To most old time radio fans, Bob Bailey as Johnny Dollar is a no-brainer.* No one else could have taken the roll. This is all down to his performance.

The serial era of Johnny Dollar went for a glorious run of 280 episodes from October 1955 to November 1956 comprising fifty-five serialized stories. All but two were five episodes in length, the “The Kranesburg Matter” being a six-episode story and “The Phantom Chase Matter” being nine episodes long.

To be clear, Bailey wasn’t the only key to the series’ success.  The series was blessed with some solid writing talent in E. Jack Neuman (writing as John Dawson.), Les Crutchfield, and Robert Ryf. The five-episode length of most of the serials represented a sweet spot for writing quality stories. It allowed more space for more character and more fleshed-out storytelling than 30-minute self-contained episodes but also didn’t allow for the overly-padded storylines that many earlier serials featured that often created a glacial pace.

The series had one of the best directors of the Golden Age of Radio in Jack Johnstone. He brought a real creative force and direction to the series that all the writers implemented in their own way that put Yours Truly Johnny Dollar years ahead of television in terms of continuity and character development. Bailey was also supported by a sort of radio rep company of versatile character actors like Buyeff, Virginia Gregg, Howard McNear, Herb Vigran, and Barney Phillips.

And yet Bailey’s portrayal of Johnny Dollar was superlative. His take on Dollar is one of the most human, relatable, and likable characters in the Golden Age of Radio. His Dollar could be a relentless force, both in terms of tough-guy tactics, as well as putting heat on subjects, but he also was kind and empathetic. He had a sense of justice and a sense of humor. Bailey’s performance was compelling. He created his own take on Johnny Dollar that audiences embraced. He played well off so many actors and played the role as if he was born to do it.

While many had given up on radio as anything other than a source of news, sports, and music, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar showed all that radio drama could be. For Bailey, it was the best work of his career and showed the full range of his talent.

To be continued in Part Four

Next time.. disappointments and tragedies mount and end in a real-life mystery.

Continued from Part One

The Accidental Detective

Bob Bailey’s big break came in a most unexpected way. He recorded multiple auditions for the Don Lee Mutual Network and station Lost Angeles radion station KHJ for a series called Let George Do It, a comedy in which he played an ex-GI turned private detective named George Valentine whose hasty mouth gets him, his secretary Brooksie (Frances Robinson), and her brother Sonny (fellow Chicago radio alum Eddie Firestone). Bailey recorded three different auditions in the Spring of 1946, and the series went to air in the Fall of that Year.

Depending on the episode, program quality varied greatly, somewhere between bad and slightly above average. While the comedy was a mixed bag, Bailey did a good job when getting a few moments to play the detective role in a more straightforward manner, as happened in the episode “The Robber.” The network decided to junk the sitcom angle but keep Bailey and Robinson and turn the show into a straight mystery detective program with a few humorous touches here and there.

For years, it’s been a mystery to fans as to when exactly the show changed its tone. There’s a large gap in circulating recordings between the last available sitcom episode (November 29, 1946) and the next available episode, by which time the show had shifted to a detective mystery format (October 3, 1947). However, signs point to the change happening in late 1946, as seen in Press descriptions. For the launch of the series on September 20, 1946, the Valley Times referred to Let George Do It as a comedy based on the “misadventures of an overzealous ex-GI.” In the Hollywood Citizen News for December 6, 1946, a picture of Frances Robinson appears and says, “Frances Robinson, who played the secretary-helper role to various radio detectives, now aids Bob Bailey in KHJ’s Let George Do it.”

While I might be reading into it, the difference is striking. The September piece emphasized the show as a comedy without a whiff of mystery, while the December picture emphasized the show as a mystery with no indication of comedy. That indicated the network was getting ready to transform Let George Do It. The show’s initial comedic form annoys many fans. Yet the show’s original format may have been one of the most serendipitous moments in the Golden Age of Radio. Had the show begun as the sort of detective drama it became, there’s no way Bob Bailey would have been cast. Nothing in his career of soap operas, comedies, and light dramas would have made him a likely casting choice for a radio private eye. If not for the original format, we not only don’t hear Bob Bailey as George Valentine but he would have been cast as Johnny Dollar, either.

Thankfully, things worked out as they did, and the series became a hit. Lou Larkin writing in the Los Angeles Daily Mirror in 1950, declared, “The airlines are swarming with mystery programs, but a neatly tied little radio package called, “Let George Do It” aired over KHJ, gets the heaviest listenership of all on the West Coast.”

Bob Bailey became a Los Angeles area minor celebrity with his family vacation to Lake Mead becoming a news item. Bailey played George Valentine for seven consecutive seasons, which was unprecedented for a West Coast-based detective program. John Abbott found an issue of Radio Life Magazine on May 4, 1947 with an item that referenced Bob Bailey appearing on the cover. (Although the cover itself is missing from every copy of that issue that Abbott has found.)

After Let George Do It started, Bailey got the starring role in a daytime serial called Bob and Victoria, in which he played a man who raised his best friend’s eleven-year-old daughter after his friend died in an accident. The series only ran for five months. He also had a major role in The Story of Holly Sloan, which aired during the 1947-48 radio season. In his Encyclopedia of Old Time Radio, John Dunning also indicates that Bailey had a recurring role in the long-running daytime soap Aunt Mary. Just as was the case with Bailey’s Chicago performances and recordings, only one verifiable recording from Bailey’s soap opera appearances is available. (This is sold by Radio Spirits.)

Meanwhile, Bailey settled into becoming an active pillar of the local community. The memorial for his grave by Lowell Thurgood describes Bailey as having a very active life in the community as Chairman of the local American Red Cross and the Boys and Girls Club as well as being a regular parishioner at the Presbyterian Church.

In addition to this, you would have expected him to be in demand in the same way that emerging stars like Jack Webb and Howard Duff were. However, that’s not what happened. In fact, after 1947, the number of circulating guest appearances for Bailey dwindled for many years, and those that he got played into the sort of light comedy background that he’d brought from Chicago or random short cameos. For my money, the best thing he did outside of detective programs was a 1949 Screen Director’s Assignment version of, The Perfect Marriage. While it is typical of the sort of light comedy, Bailey did a lot of, The Perfect Marriage was adapted from a movie script that starred David Niven and gave Bailey pretty good material to work with.

Bailey ran into frustration in his efforts to appear on the small screen. According to his daughter, Roberta Goodwin, there was a proposal made to bring Let George Do It television profgram. Some footage for the pilot was shot. However, filming for the pilot didn’t finish. The product team had seen enough. Despite his success on the radio, he didn’t look the part.

The superficial judgment of 1950s Television producers would be important to Bailey’s future because the Golden Age of Radio was headed toward its twilight years. While Bailey’s Private Detective George Valentine outlasted legendary radio sleuths like Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and the Fat Man, he couldn’t go on forever. Bailey’s career would need a new direction.

This series continues in Part Three…

Next time: A new chapter, Howard Hughes takes a hand, an undersea disaster, and the greatest work of Bailey’s career.

Bob Bailey is a bit of an outlier among old-time radio stars. He led not one but two long-running detective programs for a total of twelve years (seven on Let George Go It and five on Yours Truly Johnny Dollar.) Yet the rest of his career is a bit of a mystery.

Gerald Mohr wasn’t just Philip Marlowe, Mike Malloy, the Lone Wolfe, and Bill Lance. He also played a recurring role on Our Miss Brooks as Mister LeBlanc, and he played multiple evildoers who got their comeuppance on The Whistler. He starred in a movie series and played Mister Fantastic on the 1960s Fantastic Four cartoons. Frank Lovejoy wasn’t just Randy Stone or John J Malone, he played multiple villains in Boston Blackie and Philo Vance, appeared in the Columbia Workshop, and starred in several films as well as the TV series The Adventures of McGraw.  Jack Moyles wasn’t just Rocky Jordan, O’Hara, or Douglas of the World, he was a versatile character actor who had major recurring roles in The Line Up, while appearing everywhere from The Whistler and Suspense to Fibber McGee and Molly.

Bob Bailey’s surviving radiography was different. While other detective stars were not just doing the radio detective show, but also taking on a constant stream of guest projects, Bailey wasn’t, and when he did, it was often in very minor and brief “Let your mind wander and you’ll miss it” small roles. When an experienced Old Time Radio listener hears Gerald Mohr on another program, it’s a common occurrence. With Bailey, it’s noteworthy and sometimes a bit random. (Why did they hire him just to deliver two lines?)  Bailey never appeared on many of the great anthology programs like Whistler, Escape, or even Favorite Story. He was never the feature star of Suspense, even in the late 1950s when bit actors like Vic Perrin were taking their turns.

What was the story of Bailey’s career and was there more to it than meets the eye? Let’s take a look. It’s an intriguing story that involves characters like Laurel and Hardy and Howard Hughes.

Second City Star

Bob Bailey was born into show business.  He was born into an acting family, with his father also being a director. The story goes that he first appeared on stage when he was ten days old. Future Academy Award Winning Actress Faye Bainter was his godmother. Be that as it may, Bailey told Zuma Palmer in a 1957 interview that he made his first theatrical appearance in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. In his childhood, he went on a tent show circuit and also was part of a Wild West show. He held various jobs in Chicago before his mother helped get him his first job in Chicago radio, where he quickly caught on with a variety of radio programs.

In 1935, he went to St. Louis and became the dramatic director of a local St. Louis station. In 1936, he returned to Chicago to get married to model Gloriana Royston. In July, a month after his 23rd birthday, a smiling Bob Bailey appeared beside actress Suzanne Shayne on page 40 of the Chicago Sun-Times. The two were Mr. and Mrs. Chicago on a morning daily radio program. According to John Dunning’s Encyclopedia of Old Time Radio, Bailey would be cast as the titular character in the comedy series Mortimer Gooch in November of that year. In 1957, Bailey reflected that he’d come up too soon and had to learn humility.

Bailey’s Chicago career was incredibly prolifigate, but like so much Chicago radio of the era, very little of it remains for modern listeners to enjoy. However, newspaper reports show him being involved in a variety of projects, such as the series Wings for America, about fifth columnists sabotaging America’s aircraft; a dramatization of the life of American Red Cross founder Clara Barton; the Cavalcade of Bankers; and daytime serials such as Kitty Keene and Fortunes of Emily.

We do have some samples of Bailey’s work from this era. In a circulating Chicago Theatre of the Air episode, he plays the speaking part of the hero in the musical Eileen. This was a common approach, with the seeming thought that with radio, there was no need for one performer to do both acting and singing, so they could get a great singer without having to worry about acting talent. Newspaper notices show that this was far from the only time Bailey did this. Bailey also had a recurring role on That Brewster Boy as Joey Brewster’s sister’s boyfriend. Brewster was played by Eddie Firestone, Jr. who would end up with a recurring role in the early days of Let George Do It.

Bailey also appeared in the Knickerbocker Playhouse, a series of light comedies and dramas, which worked on a similar formula to other programs like The First Nighter and Curtain Time, with Bailey playing a different role each week. The series was broadcast nationally and got the ear of  Hollywood. According to Karl Schadow’s program guide for Radio Spirit’s Bob Bailey Collection, Bailey initially refused the call to Hollywood in 1941, but relented in 1942 and would make the rest of his career there.

Hollywood Struggles

Bailey came to Hollywood, made movies, and began to work in West Coast radio. One of his first appearances on radio was as a guest star on the Lionel Barrymore-led comedy-drama Mayor of the Town. Bailey played a war correspondent who leaves a war orphan in the care of the mayor. Bailey also appeared in several wartime radio shows. But of course, it was a film contract that led him to “Go West, Young Man”. In 1943 and 1944, he appeared in seven feature-length films, one short film, and a Navy training film. The films weren’t bad, but there wasn’t a star-making role to be found in any of them.

Bailey’s best part came as a result of a meeting at his godmother’s house according to a memorial by Lowell Thrugood. There, he was introduced to comic duo Laurel and Hardy. They were impressed by him, and with Faye Bainter’s help they got him his start with his first notable screen role. In the film Jitterbugs, he played conman Chester Wright, the male romantic lead. He’d also appear in another Laurel and Hardy film, The Dancing Masters. After 1944, it’d be nearly a decade before Bailey appeared in another film.

If Bailey didn’t acquire the humility he needed before leaving Chicago, then doubtless this period in his career did it. According to a newspaper article found by John Abbott, Bailey suffered an unknown major illness and confined his work to radio. He still continued to get work over radio, appearing in projects for producer/writer Arch Oboler such as Everything for the Boys and Arch Oboler’s Plays, but the parts were not great and gave him little chance to shine. Probably the best plays Bailey got in this era were the 1944 wartime Easter Play, This Living Book and the 1945 Cavalcade of America presentation, “The Lieutenants Come Home“, where he starred with Marjorie Reynolds in a play about a couple navigating the challenges of courtship during wartime.

For the most part, Bailey’s mid-1940s roles would see him in supporting roles to major stars like Burgess Meredith, Gregory Peck, and Chester Morris. Yet, even while laboring in obscurity, Bailey’s big break was not far away.

This series continues in Part Two…

Next time: Bob Bailey becomes a success…by accident.

Last week, I wrote about the awful cancellation of A Nero Wolfe Mystery twenty-one years ago. This week, I want to continue the theme in a much more fun way. I’m going to imagine what Season 3 of A Nero Wolfe Mystery might have looked like had it not been canceled by A&E, and had they continued to produce solid adaptations of the works of Rex Stout.

I have no inside information. For the purpose of this exercise, I’m imagining that I were charged with the task, what books and short stories I think should have been adapted, and which I would have liked to have seen.

In Season 2, there were sixteen episodes made with four novels adapted in two parts, and eight short stories adapted in a single part.  I’ll assume we have the same length for our imaginary season.

The first thing I’d do is lead off with the novel Some Buried Caesar. In Season 2, the series had become far bolder about adventures that took Wolfe away from the brownstone with, “The Next Witness,” and “Immune to Murder,” two short stories. Why not take Wolfe away from the brownstone for a full-length novel, or, in the series, a two-part episode? Some Buried Caesar finds Archie and Wolfe on their way to exhibit Wolfe’s orchids in upstate New York when they have a car accident. When walking to a nearby house, the two are menaced by a prize bull. Eventually the body of a neighbor turns up, apparently gored, but Wolfe suspects murder. This would be a Wolfe story with an entirely different feel. The presence of Wolfe and Archie would be a constant, but the regular crew is mostly out of it as we take Wolfe and Archie out of their element to upstate New York. It would also be only the second pre-War Wolfe book adapted, and it features Lily Rowan, a character not served well on TV. Bringing this to life would be a standing achievement of the entire run.

A short story, set a couple of years later, is “Black Orchids”, when Wolfe once again leaves his brownstone, visits an orchid exhibition, finds himself near the scene of a murder, and a wealthy orchid fancier hires Wolfe, for a high price indeed. This would be a story that would require the crew of A Nero Wolfe Mystery to upgrade the plant room sets, and I’d definitely be there for it.

The short story adaptations of A Nero Wolfe Mystery would often be interlinked, so that when the series played in many European countries, the two episodes could be combined into feature-length packages. Based on that, “Cordially Invited to Meet Death” would be a great matching episode. It’s about a party planner who hires Wolfe because she fears someone’s trying to ruin her business. She then turns up dead. It’s not only the second story in the Black Orchids novella collection, it also has a linking plot element.

That brings us to the second novel of the season. I’d go with the 1956 novel Might as Well Be Dead. A Nebraska businessman comes to Wolfe to find his son, whom he exiled for stealing from the family business. The father has learned that someone else did it, and wants to reconcile with his son. Archie finds the son, but he’s been charged with a murder and doesn’t want his father to know, for fear of bringing shame on the family. This was a decent episode of the 1980s TV show, but expanded to two hours in the A Nero Wolfe Mystery style, this would have been an absolute gem, with its twisty mystery and great emotional throughline.

Our second novella pair would begin with “Murder is No Joke”, in which Wolfe and Archie on the phone are used as an alibi in a murder. This would be a good story because Stout actually expanded it for a magazine and retitled it “Frame Up for Murder.” So the writers would have a lot of choices as to what would work best on television. This would be good paired with “Instead of Evidence”, in which the co-owner of a novelty company is murdered after coming to Wolfe.

The third novel would be The Father Hunt, in which a young woman hires Wolfe to find out who her father was. This story came from the 1960s, an era that the production team seemed to love. It’s also a great mystery with a solid emotional core.

Next up, we’d do four short stories in two separate pairings. Here, I’m going to admit that in order to satisfy the European market, I’d want to have two great short stories adapted and two that are merely okay.

First up, I’d want to do “Bitter End”, in which Wolfe is drawn into an investigation of strange goings on at a candy company after getting a box of candy that was poisoned (albeit not fatally). This was adapted from a novel featuring another Rex Stout sleuth (Tecumseh Fox), so the writers could have additional material or elements from which to borrow for a TV adaptation. To match, “This Won’t Kill You” involves Wolfe being dragged to a World Series game 7 at the request of a client, and being charged with solving the poisoning death of a baseball player. This would be complicated and expensive but at least it would give the story a linking theme of poison for easy combination in Europe. Although, the baseball element might not be the best idea.

Our final pair would be “Kill Now, Pay Later”, in which Wolfe helps his bootblack, who has been accused of murder. This would link in with “Counterfeit for Murder”, a story from the same era, in which the cop-hating Hattie Annis (the greatest guest character Rex Stout ever created) storms into the brownstone and in her inimitable way asks Wolfe to help her return a paper bag full of $20 bills to the owner to collect the reward. These have some of the most priceless interactions between Wolfe and another character in the entire Wolfe corpus.

This season would conclude with “Please Pass the Guilt”, a story that would take A Nero Wolfe Mystery into uncharted territory – the 1970s. As I’m imagining one more season for A Nero Wolfe Mystery rather than several, I think this is a good story to end on. It’s a solid tale and it features some moments of Archie wondering about his and Wolfe’s relevance to a more modern world. It’d be good stuff and a nice note to close on.

In my ideal Season Three for A Nero Wolfe Mystery, the series would have gone from strength to strength, building on the success of the first two seasons while taking Nero Wolfe to places that were new and unfamiliar to most viewers.

Of course, there are so many more Nero Wolfe stories that could have been told. Stories like “Death of a Demon” or “Bullet for One”, or the novels The Final Deduction or Murder by the Book. Others might have their own ideas for what should have gone in to Season 3. What remains without question is that when A Nero Wolfe Mystery was cancelled, there was a lot of great television that was never made and which we’ll never see.

However, we can always imagine.

In 2002, owing to a shift in television in general and A&E specifically towards cheap (in many senses of the word) reality television, A&E canceled A Nero Wolfe Mystery. The program chronicled the adventures of Rex Stout’s most famous detective for two seasons. Perhaps, had this happened now, crowdsourcing and streaming services would have stepped in to offer canceled television programs a new life, as they have done with other beloved series. But this was 2002, and these phenomena didn’t exist yet.

When I first thought about the series recently, I thought that the premature loss of this series may be comparable to the premature cancellation of another series of that era, Firefly, an intriguing science-fiction/western that has since become a cult classic, but got canceled after a mere fourteen episodes, due to the horrific mishandling of the series by Fox. Yet, on reflection, I think the loss of A Nero Wolfe Mystery has had a much deeper and longer-lasting effect on mystery film and television projects.

It’s not just that there was never a continuation of the series. It’s not even that another Nero Wolfe series in the United States remains unlikely. Rather, the cancellation of the series marked an end to films and television programs that tried to capture the spirit of the classic radio and pulp fiction detective stories and faithfully adapt them to the screen.

A Nero Wolfe Mystery was a faithful adaptation, albeit not a perfect or slavish one. I’ve commented on the fact that while the books imagine Nero Wolfe’s plant room as a massive treasure trove of beauty that guests want to explore, A Nero Wolfe Mystery’s presentation of it was underwhelming and cheap. Of course, this was understandable, given how little action occurred in the plant room, and how much more occurred in other locations that were sumptuously decorated. In the books, Stout stated that his assistant Archie was from Ohio, yet in A Nero Wolfe Mystery,  Archie (Timothy Hutton) speaks with a very thick New York accent. Others have taken issue with the degree to which Maury Chaykin bellowed as Wolfe.

These are reasonable points, but shouldn’t distract from the fact that this was as faithful an adaptation as you’ll ever find.  A TV show or movie can’t simply be a scene-for-scene or word-for-word retelling of a book. Time, budget, and audience attention span won’t allow for it. Rather, a faithful adaptation tries to transmit the essence of the story into the visual medium.

By this measure, the series succeeded admirably. A Nero Wolfe Mystery utilizes the beautifully written dialogue from the Nero Wolfe books generously, preserving key plot points as much as possible. It also captures the complicated nature of the Wolfe-Archie relationship that often feels somewhere between employer-employee and surrogate father-son. The little touches and addition to the televised scripts are either in keeping with the ideas embedded in the Wolfe novels, or feel very compatible with them. The love and respect the entire production team had for the source material shows in every shot.

And, of course, the source material was great. While Rex Stout wrote genre fiction, he created very real well-rounded characters. The TV show brought Archie and Wolfe to the screen warts and all, and audiences embraced them. The success of the TV shows led many viewers to discover the Wolfe novels for the first time, and brought the novels a resurgence of popularity.

Two decades later, I think it’s safe to say we’ll never see a series like A Nero Wolfe Mystery made for a classic mystery character. Adaptations of classic characters and their stories in more recent years have little concern about the source material and little love for them. There’s a desire to sex up adaptations of old stories and add new political points which, whatever their merit, weren’t the original writer’s intention, and feel awkward in the context of the story. In addition, producers will throw in over-the-top Hollywood elements to make the films more popular to the mass market. Even the ITV series Poirot, which began with faithful adaptations of Poirot short stories in the late 1980s, succumbed to these temptations in the final five series.

Many lovers of various detective series eagerly jump at rumors of new adaptations. I tend to greet news of new adaptations with a bit of dread. After decades of classic detective fiction getting the same shabby treatment from the entertainment industry, I can’t help but wonder, “How are they going to ruin this story?”

What type of adaptation would I actually be interested in? I’d love a film or TV show by someone who just loves old mystery stories that have brought generations of readers joy, by someone who wants to find a way to translate that into a visual medium without imposing their own agenda upon it.

I won’t hold my breath, but I will hold on to my DVDs of A Nero Wolfe Mystery. Its original viewers knew it was a great series, but they couldn’t have known that it was the last of its kind.