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Today’s Mystery:
Johnny goes to a small town in Montana to investigate the death of an insured rancher.
Original Radio Broadcast Dates: November 28 and 29, 1955
Originated from Hollywood
Stars: Bob Bailey as Johnny Dollar. Lillian Buyeff, Irene Tedrow, D. J. Thompson, Herb Ellis,
Marvin Miller, Forrest Lewis, Bob Bruce, Russ Thorson
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Join us again tomorrow for another detective drama from the Golden Age of Radio.
“EEF the sheriff”: no, that doesn’t look right. I listened closely to see if Johnny was saying “Leif,” like Leif Erikson or Leif Garrett, a teen heartthrob from long ago that is probably collecting Social Security now. No, not Leif.
I find that when a word has too many Z digraphs, like ‘Szczeszin,’ known to the Prussians as ‘Stettin,’ it’s probably Polish. A double-K? Finnish. Too many vowels together? French. Too many vowels and the consonants are way different than an English speaker would expect? Irish.
There is a fairly common Irish woman’s name AOIFE — eeeee-fa. Singer Aoife O’Donovan and Aoife, the beloved of the mythical Irish hero Cuchulainn (pronounced Coo – hoo’ – linn). Might be anglicised to Eva. And don’t forget Effie Perine.
Given that the women’s names Alberta, Huberta, Marcia, Olga, Lucia show the trend of adding an “a” sound to an existing man’s name, then there must be an Irish man’s name of “Aoif,” pronounced EEF.
Excellent hypothesis, but Google let me down. Even Bing came up dry. No such name as spelled. Too bad.
To get a definitive answer, you’d need a peek at the script. They’re at the Thousand Oaks library in California, aren’t they? Or consult that Johnny Dollar reference book to see if there are character lists. Or maybe The Henderson Matter script has been digitized and is available at the Cobalt Club.