Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | RSS
Today’s Mystery: Vance investigates an impossible murder. A gangster was killed in a house surrounded by mud but no footprints were found inside.
Original Radio Broadcast Date: July 4, 1950
Originated in: New York City
Starred: Jackson Beck as Philo Vance, George Petrie as District Attorney Markham
Today’s program was provided by Radio Archives. Email detectives@radioarchives.com to get a free audiobook, a free ebook, and free old time radio collection.
Listerners to the GDOTR can get 50% off on a subscription to receive 600 transcription transfers per month for the next five years through Radio Archives. You can try a sample month for $59.98 (proceeds go to the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio) and support the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio at this link.
Support the show monthly at patreon.greatdetectives.net
Support the show on a one-time basis at http://support.greatdetectives.net.
Mail a donation to: Adam Graham, PO Box 15913, Boise, Idaho 83715
Take the listener survey…http://survey.greatdetectives.net
Give us a call 208-991-4783
Follow us on Instagram at http://instagram.com/greatdetectives
Become one of ourfriends on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter@radiodetectives
Join us again tomorrow for another detective drama from the Golden Age of Radio.
As is my habit, I listen to the Great Detectives at bedtime to help me fall asleep. Generally, I catch up in the morning to find out who the culprit was if I doze off.
Right after Vance and Markham hammered home the point “thirty feet of mud and no footprints” four or five times, I was right out. Fast forward through your intro and the listened material, into the mystery and it put me to sleep again (at 6am), after some guff about “state college”. Try again after coffee and I fast-forwarded too far, into your summary. Push the button to rewind and I accidentally reboot the player.
Finally get it to the right location and what do I hear? A POLE VAULTER?
He can start on dry land, make his run, stick the pole IN THE MUD and leap over the quagmire!
Some problems and plot-holes come immediately to mind.
The housekeeper looked out the window after the gunshot.
Didn’t she see a sixteen foot pole leaning against the house. Didn’t hear a 40-year-old man crashing onto the porch. And most importantly, HOW DID HE GET BACK? He left no footprints coming OR going.
It must have been a long wrap-around porch to give him room to come to speed and launch for the return flight.
I won’t even go into him appearing on the porch again to shoot at Vance and the housekeeper. Must have dozed off again. Did he vault over mud again or just walk to the porch over dried ground?
Anyway, fare-thee-well, Philo Vance.
As the poet Ogden Nash said,
“Philo Vance needs a kick in the pance.”
Hi, Adam!
I enjoy your airing of vintage radio programs, this via my email. The quality is superb, surprisingly given their age and being originally on transcription discs. I’m particularly involved in “Philo Vance”, my collections dedicated to the character quite extensive, even to having the original tour de force Clark Agnew painting used for the early presentations of S.S. Van Dine’s “The Dragon Murder Case” (1934) — the magazine serialization cover; the d/j for both the Scribner’s first edition and the Grosset & Dunlap initial reprint; also the German paperback from the Thirties. I put on a “Philo Vance” film program for New York’s annual Cinefest, and wrote the liner notes for Radio Archives “Philo Vance” CD box sets (these can still be seen online at the announcement of the second such collection). Et al. It’s in regards to the latter that I’m writing this. I interviewed Jackson Beck, having been given his phone number and address by comic Soupy Sales (one of his characters being a spoof of Vance!). My experience with Beck started off poorly. Before making contact, I mailed him a copy of a book I’d co-written (Citadel’s “The Films of Peter Lorre”). Then, after waiting a few days, I phoned him. When I asked if he’d gotten what I’d sent, he responded most angrily, in that rough voice of his: “Yes, I got it! And it’s garbage! Garbage!” And hung up. I was truly taken aback, the book having gotten such good reviews, and was literally walking around my kitchen in circles! Finally, I got up my courage, and phoned him again. “Mr. B-B-Beck, you didn’t l-l-like the Peter Lorre book I sent y-y-you?” “Oh!” he responded. “I’m SO SORRY! I mistook you for a salesperson who’s been pestering me!” After that, my interview went well, providing me with the exclusive material I worked into my Radio Archives liner notes!
Cordially,
Ray
OOPS! LOOKS LIKE I’D WRITTEN PRETTY MUCH OF THIS IN A PREVIOUS EMAIL! MY MEMORY GETS WORSE WITH TIME! SORRY, ADAM!
APOLOGETICALLY,
RAY C.