Besides all the fictional private eye radio serials over the years, there were also dramatic series devoted to the real thing. Series such as Gang Busters and Dragnet focused on the lives of the cop. In 1929, there was a radio series that began over CBS that was based on one of the bigger pulp magazines of the day – True Detective Magazine.
The 1929 radio series was sponsored by the magazine and ran as a 30 minute once-a-week serial about real life crimes and the men who solved them. There followed several more runs of the series at different times either sponsored by True Detective Magazine or Listerine and O’Henry candy bar. The story I’ll be playing this week comes from a syndicated version of the radio drama transcribed by a company called TransAmerican for Radio Program Associates. These recordings though from the late thirties, are in excellent condition.
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Broke and without work, former art critic and journalist S.S. Van Dine burst onto the fictional detective scene with the publication “The Benson Murder Case” which featured wealthy connoisseur and man about town Philo Vance who was called in to solve the crime. The book, part one of a trilogy, was an instant hit.
This week – a look at probably the most well-known “media” detective – film, radio, fiction – Sherlock Holmes. You’ll hear some of the history of the radio programs over the years it was broadcast and a rarer episode from the earliest known copy – 1933 with Richard Gordon as Holmes and Leigh Lovell as Dr. Watson.
A look at radio detective Dan Holiday – Alan Ladd – from Box 13. “Adventure Wanted. Will go anywhere. Do anything. Box 13.” The series was produced by Ladd’s Mayfair Productions.
Finishing up our look at the radio detective career of Dick Powell I turn to his role as Richard Diamond, “the singing gumshoe.” By this time Powell had reinvented himself from “boy crooner” to tough detective both in film and radio.
Continuing our look at the radio career of Jack Webb, I look at an earlier series in which Webb starred – Pat Novak For Hire.
A return to detective author, Dashiell Hammett, and his last fictional creations – Nick and Nora Charles in The Adventures of the Thin Man. The series starred Les Damon (see photo) and Claudia Morgan. The duo starred together once more in a detective series call The Adventures of the Abbotts.
I return once more to Dashiell Hammett’s only fictional detective created exclusively for radio! Brad Runyon, the Fat Man. “The hard boiled, hard hitting adventures of a criminologist who tips the scale at 247 pounds…” J. Scott Smart stars in the episode called “The Nineteenth Pearl.”