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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Adventures of Frank Race was purely a radio series with no connection to other media. It’s first star was Tom Collins whose suave (but fake) British sounding accent provided some well crafted narrative to the series. The second star was Paul Dubov who was more hardboiled. This week, a look at the international detective whose primary business was following insurance… (more…)
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While one might not think of Big Town as a detective series, it wasn’t as much in its first run with Edward G. Robinson. But by 1942, the cast had changed and so had the theme. Managing Editor Steve Wilson of the Illustrated Press (portrayed by this time by Edward Pawley [right]) spent more time on the street investigating crime… (more…)
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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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