The structure is basically “Trent’s Last Case”:
the title, the love angle where the detective suspects the one
he/she loves, draws all the wrong conclusions, accepts the
explanation (and her comeuppance) with good grace,
vows to renounce detecting in favor of love.

EC Bentley’s spoof charmed Dorothy Sayers and infuriated
Raymond Chandler. Bentley is also remembered as the
inventor of the Clerihew, the biographic four-line poem,
with bumpy meter, but always a surprising rhyme of the
subject’s last name.

Candy Matson
would never be seen driving a Datsun.
She’d cross the Bay Bridge with Rembrandt Watson
and look below, scanning the waters for flotsam.

My only quibble is with the photo: a tight-lipped Natalie Masters in western garb.
Widder woman or schoolmarm, from an old Gunsmoke or Bonanza.
Not the mental image of Candy Matson I’d imagined.

The history of it all went like this — Around 1985 the newly formed Bantam Audio Publishing wanted to do some of my Dad’s stories as a audio book product. They were very cautious, he was their first foray into the business, and wanted to start with short stories (why this was safer still makes no sense to me). He thought his old short stories didn’t offer enough value and, as a compromise, the idea of dramatizing them was born. After the first couple of shows were produced he was “unhappy with the quality of the actors” and asked me to look into it. My take, after some investigation, was that the actors were as good as any we could possibly hire, New York professionals who were doing film and TV and ads and theater every day. The problem was the writing.

Now since they were exact transcripts of Dad’s stories that bit of information went over rather poorly at first. Eventually, however, I convinced him that prose and performance were two completely different mediums and I convinced the people at Bantam to pay for writers, screen writers, film students, playwrights, myself … whoever we could get. Some were better than others. The medium of audio/radio is laden with stereotypes. Same with the Western genre. Both reduce the IQ of writers phenomenally. Getting good scripts was very challenging. At the same time the original team was also continuing to produce scripts in the original “transcript style.” There were a couple of series about certain characters (like Texas Ranger Chick Bowdrie) that had been started as transcripts so we continued them that way to maintain the style. So, anyway, the sources of scripts, transcript and adaptation, are all mixed up in time … there is no one moment when we clearly changed over.

Though I worked on many shows in many different roles I am particularly proud of Merrano of the Dry Country and (though the sound effects production is wimpy) Unguarded Moment. The last program we did came out in 2004 and is called Son of a Wanted Man. It is longer and I like it even more. Now, being as arrogant as anyone, I like my own work … and being as insecure as anyone, I’m embarrassed with it’s many faults. The last thing I would do is to suggest that what we do is superior to anyone else’s efforts, that’s up to the listener to decide. I would suggest that the inclusion of a Narrator is like the difference between black and white or color, it may appeal to some people’s taste or be appropriate to certain creative choices but it doesn’t make or break a story. I freely admit that if I could always achieve my storytelling and acting performance goals while NOT using a Narrator I would accept it as the higher expression of art. I am in awe when it works well but I cringe when it doesn’t. We all approach projects differently. That’s what makes horse races.

We are still producing material, albeit at a vastly slower pace. We are currently working on our first non western since Unguarded Moment 20 years ago. It is called The Diamond of Jeru and is based on both a L’Amour novella and the screenplay I wrote for a USA Network movie of the same name. We only get about 9 weeks a year to work on it (both Paul O’Dell and I have other careers now) so it’ll be a year or more before we are done with it.

For a great deal more info go to –

http://www.sonofawantedman.com/

http://www.louislamourgreatadventure.com/LiteraryAdventure08-Movie.htm

http://www.theraider.net/features/interviews/beau_lamour.php

Best,

Beau L’Amour

It was interesting to see how in the second TV series, Rosa’s personality changed a lot from what it was, at least on the radio show. On the radio show she couldn’t string together a complete sentence in front of Luigi–she was so shy that she’d just giggle helplessly most of the time. Also Pasquale in the radio version, while he was cheap most of the time, would never had denied Rosa a new dress if it’d help her chance at getting a husband.

Was looking at your OTR Links and noticed you didn’t have “Old Time Radio in Texas”, the only site I’ve found with Detective Harry Nile (Jim French Productions, and probably not licensed for any broadcasts). Check it out, as this is a Primo OTR site. Please don’t read the Harry Nile reference on-air, don’t want to get anyone in trouble.
Thanks for hours of enjoyment.
Gerald, Arkansas

Odd how things seemed to “migrate” from NBC to CBS over the course of a year

One has to wonder how many Radio Listeners of 60 years ago noticed the “coincidence” where the original broadcasts were over 15 months apart.

But this story involves a half witted criminal, a drunk old woman that stunk of fish, the cormorant was not trained but slightly domesticated and everyone got caught and nothing hushed, so no attempts will be made to steal Holmes’ records.

Oh well, I guess the writing cant always be attentive to as many details as I would like. Anyway sorry about the rant, but I know feel better.

Love the podcast,
Javier

Powder River on the other hand follows the basic concept of what makes a full cast audio work. The shows tells its stories through the voices of the people, the music and the sound effects. No omnipotent narrator is heard. We’ve carried the show for around 4 years now on a once a month basis and of all the series we broadcast, and we’re on the air 52 weeks a year for over 15 years, Powder River is our third most popular. There are a LOT of people who enjoy it.

Also, something called Zorro: The Legend Begins has been, or is being produced by American Radio Theater. So CRT and Mr. Rasovsky’s productions are not the sole audio presentations. Your comment on CRT not casting Duncan Regehr reminds me of a write in campaign that was attempted when we announced the production. I will also add this comment reads almost exactly like some of the other posts I have seen, but under different names. Sorry you don’t like POWDER RIVER – cheers

I’m sorry to say that I cannot agree with the announcer in his conviction that Holmes’ burial will not be for many years yet. It’s pushing believability that both are still alive even at this point in time. Surely the producers can’t keep up this illusion for much longer….

Jerry’s absolutely correct, CRT’s Zorro is fun but it doesn’t quite hit The Mark and neither does he when he states “it seems like everyone and his brother is doing a ZORRO audio production.” There’s only one other group who has made a Zorro audio production and that was Hollywood Theater of the Ear. HTE’s production of The Mark of Zorro is easily one of the best radio dramas ever made. CRT’s ZORRO productions though nicely done could have taken a giant step toward greatness had they cast Duncan Regehr in the title role of their shows. And for those who’d like to know how it was Zorro came to return to the world of audio drama, it’s thanks to a gentleman named Daryl McCullough. He has worked hand in hand with Zorro Productions to return the original caped crusader to this wonderful entertainment medium.

I’ll add that CRT’s Perry Mason productions are quite good. Those who like good radio drama will definitely want to add Captain Blood and Buck Alice to their collections. If you like westerns CRT’s Little Big Horn is very well done and among the best. However, Powder River leaves much to be desired. I’m sure there are those who enjoyed it. However, for those who like their westerns to have that authentic western feel the Louis L’Amour radio dramas were highly entertaining, great productions.

CRT is certainly working hard to expand their library of productions. Chan would have been a nice addition but the owner to Chan is a tough nut to crack. As is the owner to Christie’s works. Though the rumor on the street is there’s a deal in the works for the Christie stories the BBC didn’t produce to be made by someone other than CRT.

I’d also second the fact that Jim French’s IMAGINATION THEATRE and Angelo Panetta’s RADIO REPERATORY COMPANY OF AMERICA produce some great adventures. You can also add to these great radio drama groups and producers to the list: Yuri Rasovsky (Hollywood Theater of the Ear: The Mark of Zorro, The Maltese Falcon), David Rapkin and Charles Potter (Louis L’Amour Western Theater), Dirk Maggs (Perfectly Normal Productions: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Superman, Batman), Peggy Webber (California Artists Radio Theater), L.A. Theatre Works, Enyd Williams, Michael Bakewell and Bert Coules from the BBC (Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes) , John Ainsworth’s Big Finish Productions (Dr. Who).

Again, interesting interview with Jerry Robbins.

See http://t-i-m-b-a-b-w-e.blogspot.com/2009/12/deep-thoughts-on-monk.html
for the complete essay.

I spent last weekend avoiding 9/11 footage. I’ve become inured to the
collapsing towers, and the panicky crowds running to outrace the smoke cloud,
like some horrible marathon, but the sight of the leapers still fills me with dread.

The image of the slaves going over stuck with me all week. This was the
real method that african slavers used after importation was banned in 1807.
They were still smuggled into Charleston, but if the captain saw a revenue cutter advancing, he’d cut the anchor cable and send his human cargo to
the ocean floor.

That said, this was a great story, horrifyingly told, but not exploitatively,
a worthy choice for your five-hundredth episode. Well done, GDoOTR!
The script really brought out the world-wide scale of drug production and
distribution, without the hollywood tendency to include exotic locations
just for novelty’s sake, like in the later James Bond movies. The maguffin
of having the little chinese girl (with the thick California accent) being Mr. Big
was ridiculous, but you learn to ignore trivial things like that in Hollywood
productions and concentrate on the details. Again, this may have worked better in the film, with an oriental face to match the americanized voice. Hollywood can analyze important world issues, provided there are
attractive caucasians in the lead roles to interest the audience and that
they marry in the last reel.

Harry Anslinger, mentioned repeatedly as Dick Powell’s boss, really was
the head of the Narcotics Bureau, so this production must have been
made with the support of the US government. Anslinger, to listen to
the history as re-written by the Hemp lobby, comes across as something
of a clownish figure. I’ll need to study him some more, take him a bit
more seriously.

I have enjoyed listening to each of the great detectives of old time radio pod casts for about a year- and watching less television. Although I have liked them all, Sherlock Holmes has become a particular favorite. I especially like to listen while shaving the old fashioned way with a brush and double edge razor- perhaps like what might have been the case with some listeners when the shows were first broadcast. I’ve grown fond of your commentary and find it to be an integral part of my enjoying the shows.

Keep up the good work!

Doug

I will find this book and read this weekend. Can’t wait.

Thanks for letting me know about this book.

- John

Zorro Rides Again is also well produced featuring a bevy of swashbuckling action which is kept inline with the original story. This story’s dastardly plot to do away with Zorro keeps the listener glued to the story.

Both stories feature good voice acting and great sound effects. One major deviation from the original stories is the use of Sgt Garcia rather than that of Sgt Gonzalez. Arneson made the name change based on the popularity of the Disney Zorro series. As pointed out in the main article above, McCulley’s first three stories Zorro did have a ‘fighting legion’ who called themselves “The Avengers”. However, in the Disney series Zorro fought alone as he did in The Mark of Zorro [1940] and in the New World Zorro series featuring Duncan Regehr. Interesting to note is the fact that McCulley himself worked closely with Walt Disney on his version of Zorro.

Also fans of Zorro will be sure to enjoy another Zorro radio drama production that is now available. The Mark of Zorro (originally titled The Curse of Capistrano) from Hollywood Theater of the Ear. This production features a outstanding cast which includes Val Kilmer, Ruth Livier, Elizabeth Peña, Armin Shimerman, Meshach Taylor and a host of fine actors. This too is an outstanding production which presents not only an incredible story but some of the best acting ever heard. The story stays true to the book in nearly every instance with the exception of the ending. However, it is understandable that the ending was slightly altered. McCulley in all honesty should have changed the ending when his book was re-released as The Mark of Zorro. The slight change in the ending to the audio version makes it possible for the next two Zorro stories in McCulley’s Zorro chronology (Pirate Raiders and Zorro Rides Again) to take place with a smooth transition.

Whether fans of Zorro or swashbuckling adventure radio drama fans should thoroughly enjoy all 3 Zorro full-cast audio presentations.

Nancy

But J. David never got any of Webley Edwards’ “Hawaii Calls” shows, did he???

Dave, Parkinson’s got me!!! But I’m still living and praying to hear “HAWAII CALLS” via CDs or DVDs just to once again cry in sincere homesickness as Webley says to me, “Wishing you were here with us this (pause) fine (pause) day.”

Your old Cheap Bastard (You called me that -I have WRITTEN PROOF ! ! !

Fred Goldrup – 107 Shawmut St – Lewiston, ME 04240

At last, Virginia Gregg comes into her own as Brooksie in “Let George Do It.” After languishing in Frances Robinson’s shadow. Gregg finally asserts herself in “The Chair of Humanities” demonstrating unusual toughness and emotional insight. It certainly helped that the script for “The Chair of the Humanities” was among the most intellectually rich of the series, but there’s no doubt that it is Gregg’s forceful performance that gives the episode its surprising depth and texture.

I first encountered most of these actors in one-time
appearances on Bewitched, or Get Smart and such shows.
Parley Baer was a plump bald man, getting frustrated by Granny, or the Munsters.
Howard McNear was more Floyd the Barber than Doc Adams to me.

After several hundred Gunsmoke episodes, the radio voice has
taken over and he’s Doc now, through and through.

Love the shows! Cheers, Joe.

Firesign did not so much parody calvalcade as deconstruct it, long before professors were teaching deconstruction in universities. They employed the structure, the pacing, the voicings to build something much, much greater than their source. In Bozos, a former programmer at a Disneyland-style “Future Fair” hacks the presidential robotronic exhibit. Their previous album employed the structure of Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape”, transposing the setting to an old actor dozing in front of the TV, watching his life unfold in his Hollywood movies.

I do think you’re being somewhat unkind to Cavalcade in particular. They used historians to make sure their stories were accurately told.

As for these “parodies,” I don’t care much for them. Because they seem the work of small men determined to tear down and belittle the works of great ones.

A few shows transcended the genre.
Horizons West, a detailed re-enactment of
the journeys of Lewis and Clark;
http://www.archive.org/details/OtrHorizonsWest13Of13Eps

“Democracy in America,”
where de Tocqueville’s impressions,
first of the prison systems, then of
Americans in general are recounted
in “theek franche accsahnts”.
http://www.archive.org/details/OTRR_Certified_Democracy_in_America

Both series are written by historians
and educators and draw from the primary
source material. They last a full season of
a dozen episodes and can take time to develop
their subject.

http://www.archive.org/details/WhiteCoolies
“White Coolies” is an Australian tale of nurses in POW camps,
taken from the diaries of Bettie Jeffries.
Gripping, horrific, yet deeply affecting. You get to know all these
characters over the course of 52 episodes, share their joy discovering
a bar of soap, grieve when one dies, their isolation and
slow re-entry into society. The actual physical diaries become a
character themselves, with great effort
keeping them hidden from captors,
dry during monsoon rains and safe in shipwreck.

Oh yeah. Slip archive.org
a couple of e-bucks
for making all this available for free.

The Firesign Theater deftly parodied
the whole Cavalcade genre in
“I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus”,
during the Wall of Science section,
recounting the invention of the Pushover.

thanks

Fans of the TV version of Holmes, starring Jeremy Brett, will be saddened to hear of the death on Monday of actor Edward Hardwicke, who played Dr. Watson. He was 78 yrs old.

Keep up the great work with your podcasts.

Regards from England

The plot of DOA played a crucial part in the final episodes of MONK.

Again, a detective’s last case is to find his own murderer. Not plagiarism, more of an homage, like “Variations on a Theme by Paganini,” a nod to greatness, one master acknowledging another.

At the end of the first part, Monk opens Trudy’s last Xmas present to find a tape with crucial evidence, lost all these years. It struck me: “The Resurrection Stone!” from Harry Potter. Monk’s writers were certainly stealing from the best.

I thought the ending a bit hollow. Yes, all the minor characters were rewarded, the chief gets Virginia Madsen, Randy gets Sharona (and the job as Police Captain of Summit, NJ), Natalie gets her Navy pilot. But for Monk….a truer ending would be a simple death, surrounded by friends, his name carved on Trudy’s tombstone, joined together forever. Every cries, then pairs off and marries. Happy ending (sort of).

Instead, Monk is cured in a Deus ex Machina plot device. A long lost daughter appears, a clone of Trudy in her twenties. This can’t end well. Monk is twice her age and desperately in love with her mother. We’re getting into creepy Hitchcock Vertigo territory. Plus, Monk shot and killed her biological father. A good plotline for a classic Greek Drama, but not for a TV show.

Adam keep up the wonderful work. I love your joyful personality before and after such dark stories.

If they do pick up the show I hope they do more with Sgt. Tartaglia, or maybe a different actor or interpretation. He seemed kind of stiff using them, though–there wasn’t the human, slightly comical touch that Charles Calvert had. I would hope they’d have him talking about his family more.

I’d think they could add things to original episodes to make them fit the hour-long format, and write new episodes to fit with the 1950s.

I wonder if a 1950′s L.A. police lieutenant would have looked as casual as Danny did in this–the guys in Dragnet always were all buttoned up with their ties fastened securely and hats on most of the time, and their hair neatly combed. But whether or not Jon Jacobs attire was authentic to the times, it really fits Danny Clover, who seemed like he probably slept at the office several nights a week.

Anyway, it would be cool if this got picked up by a network.

Love your Great Detectives and Dragnet podcasts and all the background information you’re providing on your blogs!!

I was never a big Liz Taylor fan, but might have liked her more if
George and Brooksie were in the background of Night of the Iguana or
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, investigating a mystery and wrapping up a case before the curtain drops.

Lisa in Indiana

In the past year I’ve listened to the entire run of JB radio shows almost obsessively online, and amazingly a local station is currently running 2 JB tv shows every Sunday night. What I’ve discovered is quite often they just reworked a radio show, some from a decade or more earlier, and reshot it for tv – usually quite well – but it’s funny to watch the programs now with a firm grasp of their origins in radio.

I’ve also been branching out to other old time radio in the process, and I must thank you for the great detective shows and commentary – so few old time radio podcasts give any context for the programs and it is much appreciated. One show I’d like to recommend (which, like most others, I discovered at Archive.org) is Rocky Jordan. While not a straight detective series, it has all the elements of one, and the exotic locale of Cairo adds a certain something to the proceedings. Good stories, wonderful acting and great atmosphere make for a usually excellent listen. Thanks again, Nick

In this episode you talked about the different iterations of Sherlock Holmes, one that I haven’t heard you mention is the movie The Young Sherlock Holmes by Spielberg. Both my wife and I enjoy that movie, having not read any of the Sherlock Holmes novels I don’t know how well it captures the spirit of Holmes. I would be interested in your opinion.

John

I used to be Sherlock Holmes/Agatha Christie purist but I have started listening to Let George Do It, The Shadow and Thin Man. Anyway you could find some of the old Agatha Christies?

I blogged about you on my site too – http://taliashewrote.com

Thanks for doing this!

Your broadcast adds so much to the quality of my life!

Cam

Thanks

I absolutely love the set-up. Dan’s position is more original than a regular detective for hire and more interesting than an investigative journalist. It’s interesting how the emphasis on him being a writer seems to fade away in the later episodes. I’ve only been listening for a few months, but I went back and listened to the first few episodes to catch up.

In the beginning Dan talked to himself a lot, which was very irritating to me. (“Think Holiday, what would one of your leading men do in this situation?”) I’m glad that the writers strayed away from that later on. I think maybe Suzie was one of the reasons – she gave Dan someone to converse with besides the people involved with his cases.

In my opinion, the problem with Suzie is that she fits the ditzy sidekick role that so many women were in that era. Women always seemed to be either secretaries or malicious femme fatales. (That’s one of the reasons why I’ve learned to love Let George Do It – Brooksie breaks the mold and is a surprisingly strong character, even if she doesn’t get a lot of air time.)

Thanks for the great podcast. I’ll miss Box 13 but look forward to the next show. Keep up the good work!