Bulldog Drummond: The Island of Death (EP4516)


Today’s Mystery:

Captain Drummond and Denny pursue an escapee from a mental asylum with homicidal intentions across an isolated island.

Original Radio Broadcast Date: May 12, 1948

Originating in New York

Starring: Ned Wever as Bulldog Drummond; Luis Van Rooten as Denny

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The Falcon: The Case of the Broken Fingerprint (EP4515)

Les Damon

Today’s Mystery:

A man who is having an affair is murdered.

Original Radio Broadcast Date:June 20, 1951

Originating from New York

Starring: Les Damon as The Falcon; Chuck Webster as Sergeant Corbett

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Old Time Radio Snack Wagon Smorgasboard (EP4514e)

In August 2023, we launched the Old Time Radio Snack Wagon, featuring a variety of short old time radio programs. In this episode, we offer five samples of the type of programs we feature on the Old Time Radio Snack Wagon.

Family Doctor: False Witness

“Hello there, this is the Family Doctor….”

Join us as we travel back in time to a small town, where Doctor Grant Adams dispenses medicine for the body and common sense advice for the soul, in this little-known family drama series from the 1930s.

In this first episode, a teenage girl becomes the subject of gossip after some church money turns up missing. Can Doc Adams prevent a tragedy?

Potential series air dates for the series vary from 1932-38. The earliest I can find a record of the series being aired was in the fall of 1937.

 

Unsolved Mysteries: The Borden Mystery

On this first syndicated episode of the 1930s series Unsolved Mysteries, we take a look at the mysterious slaying of Andrew Borden and his second wife Abby in 1892 and how suspicion fell on Andrew’s daughter, Lizzie. Unsolved Mysteries not only explains the case in a nutshell but also offers a solution to the crime.

While Unsolved Mysteries was a syndicated true crime series in the 1930s, it didn’t start out that way. We take a look at the series’s origin and the original program’s sponsorship by Ken-Rad, a Kentucky-based firm selling radio tubes.

The series originated from Station WLW in Cincinnati, and we talk about the station’s forgotten role in the Golden Age of Radio as America’s superstation, and why it was called that.

 

Cecil B. DeMille interviews Walt Disney about Snow White

Two Hollywood legends share a stage in this listener-inspired Snack Wagon.

The year is 1937. A young filmmaker is about to release a groundbreaking new work, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Walt Disney was invited on the Lux Radio Theater to be interviewed Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille about the film and about what future projects he was working on.

The interview took place on December 20, 1937 in Hollywood, the day before Snow White‘s premiere.

 

The Adventures of Babe Ruth: Babe Takes the Blame

While on the road in Chicago, Babe tries to help a young boy who was pressured to steal from him by an older boy, and finds himself in plenty of trouble.

Originally Aired in 1949

Sponsored by US Navy Recruiting; the announcer is Jackson Beck

 

Jack Benny and Fred Allen Patch Up the Feud for Christmas

For the special Command Performance Christmas Eve show, a serviceman requested that Jack Benny and Fred Allen patch up their feud, and this is their answer.

The segment is introduced by Bob Hope who hands the show to Fred Allen and Jack Benny in New York.

Original Radio Broadcast Date: December 22, 1942

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Book Review: Bulldog Drummond

H.C. McNeile’s novel Bulldog Drummond (originally Bull-dog Drummond) successfully re-introduced the character of Hugh Drummond to the world (following a little-regarded short story in The Strand in which Drummond was a policeman). In the novel, Drummond is a veteran officer of the First World War who finds himself bored with peacetime living. He puts an ad in the London Times advertising for adventure and gets it when a young woman’s concern about his father’s business acquaintances puts Drummond up against a dangerous of ruthless gang of international conspirators.

Bulldog Drummond fits into a continuity of adventure and mystery literature. The catch-and-release game that Drummond and his foes play calls to mind books like The Lone Wolf and its protagonist, Michael Lanyard, a well as many other adventure books of the era. The concern about sensational conspiracies threatening civilization originated from Anarchist activity prior to World War I, the war itself, and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. A shadowy conspiracy overthrowing the established fo made for a good villain. It also called to mind several later works. Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence would use a similar newspaper ad to find adventure in The Secret Adversary two years later. While reading about Drummond’s escapades and the activities of the men who joined him, I couldn’t help but be reminded of The Saint novels by Leslie Charteris.

What sets Bulldog Drummond apart is the titular character. Drummond is unusual in that one of his most noted characteristics was that he was utterly unattractive. (This was an element that films forgot when casting actors like Ray Milland to play him.) The other key point is that Bulldog Drummond came out in an era when many literary adventurers were various shades of gray with criminals and ex-criminals like Boston Blackie, The Saint, and the Lone Wolf. By contrast, Drummond is a heroic figure, whose decision to delay involving the law reflects honor and love, not attempts to acquire boodle. Drummond is proficient and resourceful, but no genius, which means the spots he gets himself into believable and relatable.

Drummond comes off as a simple, likable hero. He defends the world from forces that seek to overthrow it, not because he believes in the status quo, but because he thinks that evolution, rather than revolution, is key to solving society’s ills.

Beyond that, Bulldog Drummond is a good solid mystery adventure story. If you enjoyed the other stories I’ve mentioned and are in the mood for something fun that’s similar to those, this is worth checking out.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Bulldog Drummond is in the Public Domain and can be read for Free at Project Gutenberg

Dragnet: The Big Youngster (EP4514)

Today’s Mystery:

Joe Friday and Ben Romero investigate when a young lawyer’s office is vandalized.

Original Radio Broadcast Date: August 17, 1950

Originating from Hollywood

Starring: Jack Webb as Sergeant Joe Friday; Barton Yarborough as Sergeant Ben Romero; Herb Butterfield

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Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Heatherstone Players Matter (EP4513)

Bob Bailey

Today’s Mystery:

Johnny is called in to protect a Shakespearean actor and producer who is hated by everyone in a Shakespearean radio festival he’s putting on.

Original Radio Broadcast Date: July 14, 1957

Originating from Hollywood

Starring: Bob Bailey as Johnny Dollar; Virginia Gregg; Lawrence Dobkin; Richard Crenna; Sam Edwards; Frank Gerstle; Herb Vigran; Hans Conried

Article on Yours Truly Johnny Dollar returning to the air in Iran.

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Mr. and Mrs. North: The Contagious Confession (EP4512)

Joseph Curtain and Alice Frost

Today’s Mystery:

Lieutenant Weigand calls the Norths in on the case of the murder of a wealthy man where multiple conflicting confessions have gone him baffled.

Original Radio Broadcast Date: September 22, 1943

Originating from New York City

Starring: Joseph Curtain as Jerry North; Alice Frost as Pamela North; Frank Lovejoy as Bill Weigand

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Broadway’s My Beat: The Eugene Bullock Murder Case (EP4511)

Larry Thor

Today’s Mystery:

A visitor to New York is found dead in a rundown sanitarium, and he is missing $5,000.

Original Radio Broadcast Date: November 19, 1949

Originating in Hollywood

Starring: Larry Thor as Lieutenant Danny Clover; Charles Calvert as Sergeant Gino Tartaglia; Jerry Hausner; Bea Benaderet; Alan Reed; Tony Barrett; Joseph Kearns; Georgia Ellis

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Guest Appearance on Adventures in Compliance Discussing the Hound of the Baskervilles

Bulldog Drummond: Murder Has an Open Mind (EP4510)


Today’s Mystery:

A woman feigns a horseriding accident to get Bulldog Drummond’s help and tells him to go to a Penny Arcade and speak to a mentalist.

Original Radio Broadcast Date: April 28, 1948

Originating in New York

Starring: Ned Wever as Bulldog Drummond; Luis Van Rooten as Denny

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The Falcon: The Case of the Sweet Swindle (EP4509)

Les Damon

Today’s Mystery:

An unethical competing detective tries to pass off a young woman as the long-lost daughter of a friend of The Falcon.

Original Radio Broadcast Date: June 13, 1951

Originating from New York

Starring: Les Damon as The Falcon; Florence Halop; Jackson Beck; Ralph Bell

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Campbell’s Playhouse: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Encore) (EP4508e)

Orson Welles

While trying to retire, Poirot investigates the murder of a rich man in the country.

Original Air Date: November 12, 1939

Originating in New York

Starring: Orson Welles as Hercules Poirot and Dr. Sheppard; Edna May Oliver as Caroline Shepherd; Alan Napier; Brenda Forbes; Mary Taylor; George Colouris; Ray Collins; Everett Sloane

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Telefilm Review: Gabriel’s Fire: Pilot

As I was researching the career of James Earl Jones, I found out he had a detective series from 1990-91 called Gabriel’s Fire. The series has not been officially released on DVD but the pilot has been posted on YouTube.

Gabriel Bird (James Earl Jones) is an ex-cop serving a life sentence for murder. A friend is murdered in the prison yard and his friend’s lawyer Victoria Heller (Laila Robins) wants Bird’s help to find the killer, but Bird refuses to cooperate. She decides she wants his cooperation and so sets out to have him freed from prison and gets his two-decade-old murder conviction thrown out on a technicality.

If Heller getting Bird released from prison and getting a murder conviction thrown out without his cooperation is so uncomplicated (compared to actual cases) that it calls to mind comedian Ryan’s George’s catchphrase, “super easy, barely an inconvenience,” Bird’s reaction is much more grounded. While Heller had hoped for gratitude and for Gabriel to agree to help her investigation, what she gets is anger from a man who had long ago given up hope of getting out, and now has to cope with an unfamiliar world he isn’t ready for.

Jones is compelling throughout the episode, capturing the range of emotions of a man who has forgotten what it’s like to be on the outside and is unsure of his place of the world, plagued by his own feelings of guilt, and his fear of being abandoned and forgotten. He’s a man in his 50s who’s trying to figure out who he is. It’s a difficult process, but with some highlights. One of the best scenes is shortly after his release, when he orders a hot dog. It’s a simple scene that shows Jones’s superb talent.

Beyond establishing Bird as a character, and also establishing some plot points that could be addressed in the series proper (his missing ex-wife and daughter, and the police having it in for him), the episode spends most of its time with Bird in the stage of “rejecting the call to adventure,” a stage of the hero’s journey. When he does finally take the case, he manages to solve it within minutes of screen time. The pilot probably would have benefitted from being TV movie length. Still, for as quick as the resolution was, it was still dramatically satisfying and moved Bird’s character forward.

All in all, it was a fascinating hour of television that left me eager to view more. It’s easy to see that Jones won an Emmy for his work on the series. I really hope that rights holders will make this series available on streaming or DVD.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Dragnet: The Big Actor (EP4508)

Today’s Mystery:

Joe Friday and Ben Romero investigate the theft of narcotics from a Catholic hospital pharmacy.

Original Radio Broadcast Date: August 10, 1950

Originating from Hollywood

Starring: Jack Webb as Sergeant Joe Friday; Barton Yarborough as Sergeant Ben Romero; Herb Butterfield

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Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Felicity Feline Matter (EP4507)

Bob Bailey

Today’s Mystery:

Johnny goes to Reno to find out who is trying to kill a cat whose owner left him $60,000.

Original Radio Broadcast Date: July 7, 1957

Originated from Hollywood

Starring: Bob Bailey as Johnny Dollar; Jack Edwards; Howard McNear; Edgar Barrier; Chester Stratton; Virginia Gregg; Will Wright; Joan Banks; Bill James

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