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Bob Bailey & Virginia Gregg in front of an old Microphone

Bob Bailey & Virginia Gregg

Welcome to the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio! A podcast featuring the best vintage detective radio programs. Each week from Monday through Saturday, we feature six of Old Time Radio's great detective series from the beginning of the show to its very last episode. And as a bonus, twice a month we also post a public domain movie or TV mystery or detective show video.

Along the way, I'll provide you my commentary and offer you opportunities to interact.

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- Your host, Adam Graham

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EP0429: Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Carpathian Horror

Tom Conway

Holmes is hired by a count with a family history shrouded in mystery who fears he’s going insane.

Original Air Date: April 14, 1947

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EP0428: Let George Do It: The Floaters

Bob Bailey

On an urgent two a.m. call, George and Brooksie travel to a rundown hotel and find an apparent double suicide.

Original Air Date: January 23, 1950

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EP0427: Rogue’s Gallery: Little Drops of Rain

Dick Powell

A beautiful woman hires Rogue to get her husband to help her get her husband to come back to her. They find her husband dead.

Original Air Date: November 7, 1945

Quote of the show: “I left Liza burning Like Mrs. O’Leary’s barn.”

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The Nero Wolfe Movie that Guaranteed There Would be No More Nero Wolfe Movies

This is the first 7 minutes of the last of two Nero Wolfe Films,The League of Frightened Men (1937) which was a sequel to, “Meet Nero Wolfe” and was posted on YouTube by a company selling an out of print DVD.

Rex Stout decided not to allow any more movies to be made based on his books, displeased with Lionel Stander’s portrayal of Archie Goodwin. The punchdrunk Archie Goodwin portrayal we see in the clip seems to justify the conclusion..

On both the level of the artist and of business, it’s understandable why Stout didn’t want to make any more films. If films like this made their way into the cultural bloodstream, it would have turned people off to the books. And these movies came very early in the Wolfe franchise.

EP0426: Barrie Craig: Microfilm in the Fishtank

William Gargan

When Barrie’s tailor is killed and and a fire is set to the tailor’s shop. TO find the murder, Barrie investigates the rackets.

Original Air Date: October 24, 1951

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The Man Who Asked, “Why Me?”

A good autobiography requires a truly interesting life and a willingness to share it. By both accounts, William Gargan’s, 1969 memoir Why Me is a masterful example of how an autobiography ought to be written.

I knew Gargan for his TV and radio detective work with I Deal in Crime, Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator, and Martin Kane, Private Eye. The Martin Kane series was Gargan’s best known role. Along with Ralph Bellamy’s Man Against Crime, it was one of the first successful TV private eye shows, enjoyed by fans if for nothing else than the novelty of doing a live TV detective series.

However, Gargan’s life was a lot more than TV and radio glitz.  Gargan’s acting career included stage work in the 1920s and movies in the 1930s and 1940s. Gargan’s varied life included  assisting his bookie father when he was a kid, being thrown out of high school, working as a store investigator/collector and a private detective, and being a bootlegger during prohibition.

In Why Me, Gargan shares inside stories in Hollywood: How his best-supporting actor Oscar  nomination for They Knew What They Wanted came out of a frustrating shooting experience with the hammy Charles Laughton. He tells a more fond story of actor hammyness when he and John Barrymore staged an epic battle with Lionel Barrymore to stop Barrymore from stealing a scene. You’ll also run into fun stories about James J. Corbett, Leslie Howard, Bing Crosby,  John F. Kennedy, and others.

Gargan’s life included meeting both famous and infamous people, some thanks to his father’s connections.  Gargan tells the story of a man operating a protection racket in Chicago who was shaking him down for $10 a week. He called his father. One of his dad’s friends contacted him about it. A friend by the name of Al Capone.  Gargan was never bothered after that, but did worry about what had happened to the wildcat shakedown artist.

Gargan knew there was a “dark side” to his father’s life and underworld connections, however in his youth, Gargan was mostly shielded from that side and had mostly fond memories of his father and mother. Gargan was endowed with an incredible love of family and zest for life. One of my favorite stories was about his mother’s funeral. The funeral director told him they planned a slow procession from the church to the cemetary. Gargan rejected the idea of a slow mournful procession, telling the undertaker, “She was a spirited woman. Go like hell.”

Gargan wrote, “Every morning to this day, I say a prayer for my parents. God love them. I love them.”

Gargan’s life included many ups as he made his way to a comfortable living making a lot of “B movies.”  and television. The title, “Why Me?” references the great turning point in his life. At age 55, while playing a dying ex-president in the stage version of The Best Man, he began to have pain in his throat.  He was diagnosed with cancer of the Larynx, which required surgery that would remove his larynx, silence his voice, and put an end to his acting career. When Gargan was brought home from the hospital, their TV repairman was fixing their set, and turned on the TV, and one of Gargan’s old films came on and he slammed his hand down on the table, wanting to scream to have it turned off, as pain and self-pity overwhelmed him for the moment.

Why Me is not a self-pitying book, rather it tells how Gargan came to answer the question.  It’s Gargan’s story of how he learned to talk again through esophagael speech and then began to work with the American Cancer Society: raising funds, making personal appearances, and helping scared patients as they prepared to go through the same process as Gargan did. It was in this that Gargan found an answer to the question, “Why me?” He’d gotten the cancer, so he could help others.

The book revealed the view that Gargan had taken of cancer as he listed one by one, every friend, and every great person who got lost to cancer. Cancer was an enemy and Gargan and the ACS were at war with it. Gargan, a former two pack-a-day smoker for more than thirty ended the book with an appeal for people to stop smoking cigarettes. Perhaps, the most surprising part of the book for twenty-first century Americans is that Gargan didn’t have any thoughts on how Martin Kane promoted tobacco use. Gargan took personal responsibility stating that even as a teenager, they’d referred to cigarettes as “coffin nails.”

Gargan’s faith also plays a part in the book. While he writes about his involvement with the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre and meetings with Pope Pius, the more interesting passages are those that show how his faith grew stronger through tragedy and helps him find new purpose in his 60s.

Mixed with honesty about his falings, and a fascinating life story, Why Me is an inspirational tour de force by Gargan. It is sadly out of print, but I was able to get my copy through an interlibrary loan and used copies are available on Amazon and Half.com.

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14 Carat Dramas

The mid-30s was an era in radio of forgetable and forgotten 15 minute syndicated radio programs. They were produced, put on transcription disks, and sold to a small number of stations with no name stars. Even those who research the shows may have little information as to where they actually originated or who starred in them.

While some shows are easy to forget, there are some good programs from this era that have survived as Diamonds in the Rough. (Pun Intended.)

I first learned of the Diamond Dramas series from the Digital Deli‘s definitive log. It was  a series of twenty-six programs produced between 1926 and 1927 and first aired in 1934 over KDYL in Salt Lake City.

Each installment included a diamond as part of the plot and was based on actual events in the history of great diamonds including the Mogul Diamond. The stories were tightly packed with a mix of romance, intrigue, and drama. Each 15 minute episode contained 4 minutes of Music (meant for local commercial fills) and an eleven minute self-contained story. The majority of the stories involved royalty: Kings, Queens, Empires, and a mix of love, hatred, and the lust for power. The program had a tremendous scope with episodes set in Russia, India, France, Hungary, and England.  Among those historic personages featured are Napoleon, Mary Queen of Scots, Marie Antoinette, the Marquis De Lafayette, a couple of King Louies, and Catherine the Great.

Some of my favorites in this series:

The Mighty Akbar:

The Mighty Akbar rules India and possesses the great mogul diamond.Despite his best efforts, his wife doesn’t love him and would like to leave him. She plans to escape to her father’s people with Akbar’s diamond. The story takes a surprising turn

The Queen’s Diamond Charm:

Mary Queen of Scots is in France where Charles reigns but is a weakling controlled by his mother. Can Mary outsmart Charles’ mother to save the life of a kinsman as well as her own?

The King’s Astrologer:

The cynical astrologer of the superstitious and ruthless King Louie XI tries to get the King to surrender a valuable diamond to him. Louie decides have the astrologer killed instead. Another great twist ending to this one.

The Diamond Necklace:

Napoloeon III offers a young woman diamonds and jewels, and everything but marriage.

25 of the 26 episodes of the Diamond Dramas are available at the Internet Archive.

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