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.