To be Continued is a word fraught with mixed emotions for many television viewers. When their favorite Television show embarks on a muliple episode story line, viewers are guaranteed more complex, more involved, and perhaps developed stories. On the downside, there’s the long wait to find out what happened next week or in some cases, next season.

Many radio detectives began as 15 minute serialized programs in the 1930s and 1940s. Programs such as I Love a Mystery, Charlie Chan, A Man Called Jordan, and Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons began as 15 minute serials. However, most went to half hour format. And in the half hour format, each episode was a self-contained story with very few exceptions.

What were these rare multi-part episodes of half hour programs?

Generally, adapting a novel as a half hour radio series guaranteed the novel would be condensed beyond recognition, so a few mystery novels were adapted to radio in multiple parts. In the 1930s, several Charlie Chan novels were adapted this way. In addition, the  Adventures of Sherlock Holmes radio franchise adapted three of the Holmes’ Novels in the midst of doing half hour adaptations of Doyle’s stories as well as original stories based on suggestions in the stories. Only one of these (from the Rathbone-Bruce perfomance) is in circulation.

Another detective story to get the multi-part adaption was Wilkie Collins’  The Moonstone considered by many to be the first detective novel, it was adapted in four parts by NBC’s series The World’s Great Novels and then in two parts for Suspense, both of which are in circulation.

Beyond these literary adaptations, there were some detectives that ventured into the land of To Be Continued…

Adventures of Sam Spade (1946):In November 1946, CBS tried what had to be one of the boldest ratings plays ever in making a radio sequel to The Maltese Falcon called the Khandi Tooth Caper. The original movie was an all-time classic, so this radio version was against tough odds. Still, CBS must have gotten good reaction, because when Suspense expanded to an hour, CBS smashed the two scripts of Sam Spade together to make one hour long episode of Suspense.  Thus, while the original Sam Spade episodes aren’t in circulation, the one hour Suspense story is about the same thing only with a cameo by Philip Marlowe.

Sherlock Holmes (1949) : In John Stanley’s second season of Holmes, Mutual experimented with doing multi-part stories in “The Elusive Agent” trilogy which as the title implies was much more of a spy story than a traditional detective mystery. It appears that they didn’t quite get the reaction from the public that they heoped for to the experiment as they’d hoped for, as it wasn’t repeated.

Candy Matson (1950): According to Digital Deli, Candy Matson’s attempt at the two part episode was a bit of fiasco. To begin with, without any notice to its audience NBC moved the show leading, a local newspaper to print, “Don’t tune for Candy Matson tonight on KNBC, because she will not be present. In a last minute move, KNBC put the show on last night at 7 o’clock. ”

Then an episode with a cliffhanger with Candy praying the 23rd Psalm as an airplane was crashing into a lake. The show didn’t air the next Monday, but that was because NBC movied it back to Tuesdays. Under such circumstances, getting one parters done was hard enough. Sadly, the episodes are not in circulation.

Dragnet (1950-53): Jack Webb did a grand total of six two part episodes out of Dragnet’s first two hundread and six. These were more elaborate story lines that allowed for a more-in-depty portrayal of criminal investigations. None of the episodes were cliff-hangers. With the exception of “The Big Mask,” the two parters showed Friay and his partner capturing accompliaces, but still in need of getting Mr. Big. The two parters fell out of favor in the final third of Dragnet’s run. This may be because viewers had not reacted well to the only Dragnet two parter to air over television and by mid-to-late 1953, the radio show had become the source for future scripts to the television series, so if it couldn’t be used on television, it wasn’t much good to do it.

Yours Truly Johnny Dollar (1957-59): Johnny Dollar in the Bob Bailey era was best known for its five part serials from 1955-56, after which it shifted to the half hour format. However, the show also turned out one two part episode a year from 1957-59. This included “The Mason-Dixon Mismatch Matther” and “The Dixon Murder Matter” from 1957 and the two part “Mojave Red Matter” (1958)  and “Buffalo Matter” (1959). The multi-part matters became more necessary as CBS became more aggressive in selling ads, thus cutting the amount of time for plot down to a minimum. Two two part episodes may have only had a little more plot than what used to be single 30 minute shows.

Matthew Slade, Private Investigator (1964): Just past the traditional endpoint for Old Time Radio (September 30, 1962), this show was a solid radio revival entry which attempted to recreate the feel of hard boiled detectives. It began with a three part serial, The Day of the Phoenix. While Parts 1 and 2 are available everywhere, Part Three is hard to lay its hands on.

These multi-part episodes are fun when you can find them,  but in a way, I’m glad there weren’t more. With so many gaps in old time radio series, we benefit from having self-contained shows that don’t require two or three shows ahead of it be intact as well. The way radio worked out in the 1940s and 50s has made it possible to enjoy prograsms without having to worry about gaps.

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Todd wrote in with a question about lost episodes of the radio series, The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes:

How many episodes of The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes exist? This posting says that there maybe another 150 floating around. Is it true?

The Wikipedia article linked states that there are 150 episodes of the New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (with Nigel Bruce and Basil Rathbone/Tom Conway) in existence. Is this true? The answer is, “possibly.” On the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio, we played around 90 episodes of that run. In addition to that, I found one episode, “The Adventure of the Cardboard Box” that was so unintelligible and at such bad sound quality I couldn’t play it. I also discovered an intact episode, however it was one part of a six part telling of Hound of the Baskervilles. And I found fragments of a few other episodes with 10-15 minutes of an episode with poor sound quality.

But saying it could be true and saying it is are two different things. Indeed, someone updated the Wikipedia article to state that there was no evidence to back the assertion up (in which case, it would probably make more sense to delete the assertion.) While its true that any number of Sherlock Holmes episodes could exist, the poor sound quality episodes and fragments I’ve found higlights a big barrier to the episodes being listenable or available.

More than half the lost episodes come during World War II with all but one of the rest being pre-World War II. During World War II, the use of aluminum transcription discs was abandoned as aluminum was a vital war material. Instead, glass was used transcription discs and glass discs are far more likely to be damaged, and there’s also a possibility that metal transcription discs were given to various metal drives during the war. Of course, there are shows that ran during World War II that survive in listenable form, so it remains possible that a large number of episodes could have survived, but the odds are against the discs.

If episodes did exist in listenable form that are not available to the public or most collectors, where might they be? They could be either inaccessible or in the hands of people who don’t know what they have.

There are a large number of OTR collectors as well as educational institutions that keep their collections under wraps for a variety of reasons. For many shows, the number of episodes outstanding is quite substantial.

For example, we played the Adventures of the Thin Man, all eight playable and complete episodes in circulation. Dennis at the Digital Deli estimates that he has 30 episodes and that there may be 200-300 episodes in circulation. There are 125 episodes of Nick Carter in circulation online, the Radio Goldindex catalogs the existence of 350. Why might some of these episodes not be available to the public?

1) They don’t that anyone other than fellow collectors care: If you can find one person out of twenty who knows who the Great Gildersleeve or Fibber McGee and Molly are, you’re doing good. The idea that anyone other than fellow collectors care about it may seem odd. In addition, some may have given up the hobby but still have their collection stored.

2) They’re collectors: A g0od collection (regardless of what you’re collecting) has what no one else has. When it comes to radio shows, having programs that no one has or few people have is what makes a collection worthwhile and as long as they’re able to hold on to their collection, they’ll keep what they have under wraps.

3) Concern about Commercialization: Many collectors have been extremely piqued at commercial exploitation of Old Time Radio by OTR MP3 companies that will often take carefully preserved high quality mp3s and downgrade the audio so that they can fit 100 episodes on a $5 CD. It leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many collectors, particularly when you consider that there are some collectors who think the only real way to listen to golden age radio is right off the transcription disc. For people who have spent decades collecting, the shoddy packaging of these recordings is a big discouragement from sharing more.

For those who aren’t collectors, it’s easy to not know what they have. Golden Age radio programs are preserved chiefly on electronic transcription discs and reel-to-reel tape recorders. While the electronic transcription discs look a lot like vinyl records, they won’t play on a normal record player, and hardly anyone has a reel-to-reel tape player.

This means that items can end up in thrift stores, estate sales, or even thrown away with no one knowning what they are. If you happen to stumble on a transcription disc or golden age of radio reel-to-reel tape, contact a local Golden Age radio group or the Old Time Radio Researchers.

Will missing episodes of Sherlock Holmes and other programs be found? Yes, but many will be lost. Dennis at the Digital Deli warns fellow collectors regarding the Thin Man warning that uncirculated episodes of the Thin Man will either be digitized and appear, “or quite frankly they risk being lost forever…Despite everyone’s best efforts, those examples that remain undigitized simply continue to disintegrate or corrode beyond satisfactory recovery.”
A dire warning indeed. So we’ll see what emerges and what will be lost. In the meanwhile, we’ll enjoy the episodes that have surved to modern day.

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If you have an Old Time Radio, Classic Television, or Classic Cinema question you’d like me to research, email me and I’ll consider it for a future article.