One of the lesser known radio detective serials was The Amazing Mr. Malone also known as Murder and Mr. Malone. Yet this series had three separate runs, a television series and several movies all based upon the fictional detective mystery books by author Craig Rice, whose real name was Georgiana Ann Randolph Rice (right).
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Jeff Regan, Investigator saw its birth in July 1948 on CBS. The aural gimmick in the opening was that Regan worked for an international investigation firm run by Anthony J. Lyon. The series proclaimed him “The Lion’s Eye.” The owner, Anthony J. Lyon, played by Wilms Herbert with a voice sounding like a rather large man, would send his prime… (more…)
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The original characters were created by Jack Boyle, who first published a short story in “The American Magazine” in 1914 called “The Price of Principle.” Boyle went on to write several more Blackie stories that were collected into a book of short stories in 1919. The character as created by Boyle was a bit more hardened than the radio version.… (more…)
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Petri Wines, which at the time sponsored the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes over the Mutual Network, wanted a similar program to replace the show in the summer of 1946. The current writers of the Sherlock Holmes adventures, Denis Green and Anthony Boucher, were asked to come up with another detective drama which would fit into the framework created for their… (more…)
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When fiction writer Michael Arlen began writing it was the time of the “Roaring Twenties” and “the Jazz Age.” In 1940, he wrote a short story for Town and Country Magazine called “Gay Falcon” about a freelance adventurer and troubleshooter whose fullname was Gay Stanhope Falcon. The story was immediately purchased by RKO for a film starring George Sanders as… (more…)
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This week’s podcast will present a character from radio whose primary job was not an investigator, but rather an attorney who helped put criminals away. But radio audiences were already listening to Perry Mason. Yet even in that series, the element of investigation was paramount. This week I will present a woman, Martha Ellis Bryant, who was by vocation an… (more…)
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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 –… (more…)
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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. Not to be left out radio… (more…)
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In 1941, authoress Frances Crane wrote a mystery called “The Turquoise Shop.” In the course of the novel, private investigator, Patrick Abbott, enters the shop of Jean Holly. By the end of the novel the two had fallen in love. In future books involving the couple, they married and continued to solve crimes encountered as part of the plot. In… (more…)
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