Latest / Great Detectives of Old Time Radio Volume 2|Mystery Audio Dramas / The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio Season 6 Commentary

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The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio Season 6 Commentary · Great Detectives of Old Time Radio Volume 2|Mystery Audio Dramas

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Hello, this is Adam Graham with your season six commentary for the Great Detectives
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of Old Time Radio. In many ways, this season was one of the
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ones that had the fewest changes, with an entirely stable lineup Wednesday through Saturday
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and only one change on Monday. The big change that this season brought to
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the podcast as a whole was this is when I started using Patreon. I
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have to say it really was a game changer for the podcast, although it
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took a while to get going. My ideals starting out had been to acquire
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advertisers and sponsors so that I could focus on creative work. But through the
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first five years, I think we'd only had one actual sponsor of four episodes
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or something like that. We'd run the listener support campaigns, but there were
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a lot of dry months for individual one time contributions. We would generally do
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good with the listener support campaign, raise a decent amount of money that would
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get a few bills paid, and then we would have some donations come through
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in other months, and then we would have months where we wouldn't get hardly
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anything at all. I think January, June and July for months where hardly
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anything came in Patreon would solve a lot of these problems and give me a
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small, reliable source of income that would be very helpful when coupled with one
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time contributions and those occasional sponsorships. Crowdfunding is such a big part of so
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many modern content creators' lives. Even if you've got other revenue sources like advertising
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or merchandise, there's so many little vagaries beyond your control. Let you find
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the artist and the creators that you want to And I think that as a
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monthly commitment it was a lot more practical for many people because someone might not
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be able to afford to make a significant one time donation, but two dollars
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or four dollars a month is manageable for so many listeners. I'm glad we
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started Patreon, but I will warn you that the rollout episodes are of long
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winded. It might not actually be in the Patreon firms of service, but
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most creators act like there is a requirement that if you start a Patreon account
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and you set out to explain it to your people, you have to over
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explain it to them. I was listening to a podcast like a few years
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back and was hearing the same phenomena, and I found myself wondering was I
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that bad? Of course I was. I'll also admit that many of my
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rewards were based on review website patreons that I had been supporting and have never
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been anything that my patreon supporters have ever been interested in. The big thing
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is that I've gotten connected to so many wonderful people want to help support what
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we're doing, and I built connections and enjoyed some great feedback. And it
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all started right here in season six on Mondays. For most of the season,
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you're going to be listening to the Saint. We talked quite a bit
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about Vincent Price in the role in our season five commentary, but he continues
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to remain strong throughout this season and then is replaced by Tom Conway, who
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did find but I don't know, he just didn't really make an impression on
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me in the role. Maybe if we had more of his run to listen
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to, but again we only have a handful with Tom Conway in the league.
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Then we played Michael Shane Private Detective, which is the first of three
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different iterations of Michael Shane that we featured on the podcast. This one starred
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Wally Meyer, as Michael Shane with Kathy Lewis and Phillis Knight. And this
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was a series that there didn't used to be a lot of episodes of For
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many years. There were just around four or five episodes of this particular iteration,
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even while I was in the planning stages for future seasons of The Great
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Detectives. And then twenty six came into circulation, and then I think there
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were a couple more later on, and it required me doing some rescheduling for
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reasons that I will explain just a little bit. For me, this is
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just a fun series. It's definitely got a very strong focus on the mystery
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as a puzzle and on how the problem is solved, and there's a lot
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of really intelligent and interesting conversation about the mystery. Joe Forte is a nice
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supporting character as Shane's friend on the police force, Lieutenant Faraday, not to
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be confused with Inspector Faraday in Boston Blackie. We'll talk about him. Mourner
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season seven commentary. This is just a really fun series and kind of a
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what touch too. As I said before, Honey, it's springs and in
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the spring the sap rises. Oh oh hi inspector. Mean, okay,
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Dolly Saucilyito, first stop? What are they for? Motor boat? Ride
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by, Inspector, you're actually glowering? What's happening, Plenny? I think
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I got my finger on the guy at the bottom of this deal, a
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movie press agent with the name of Jim Fonde Another, that guy pulling his
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Hollywood shenanigans in my town. Why, Inspector, No, pirates, plenty
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of them, pill too many of them. A whole brig boat. There's
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two hundred of them. What you've already got two hundred pirates and jail.
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Holy smoke, Brigantine is a pirate vessel, my right, Inspector, Right,
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they might as well be in jail. Well, that anchor doesn't budge
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until I give the word Laffitte's man, I suppose from around the whole nothing
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so romantic, my dear Captain Kidd's men from Central Casting in Hollywood. There's
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a movie company about the ship, and they're getting ready to sail down the
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coast on location. When I climbed down. Oh, aren't you a bit
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rough on them, Inspector? After the old press agents have to have their
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fun or you know something I don't know? No, not a thing,
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Mike, I guess I lost my sense of humor on Tuesdays. After finishing
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off Easy Money, we moved on to Crime and Peter Chambers. Peter Chambers
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was the lead character in a series of novels by Henry Kine, who also
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served as producer for the radio series. It starred Dane Clark, who'd been
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a moderately successful leading man in the nineteen forties. The series launched in nineteen
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fifty four, but in many ways it felt like a throwback to the hard
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boiled programs of the late forties and early fifties. It was a decent series
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that if it had come along sooner, would have probably been more successful.
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As it was. It's an entertaining program that has a majority of its episodes
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intact. Thank you even had someone Missus Buckley, I'm using my maiden name,
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Irene CORDONI I thought it was Krauss, should have been, but it
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ain't. I was in show business before I got married. How would you
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like this? And now, ladies and gentlemen, Miss Irene Krause, black
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hair, black eyes and a loose red mouth. Young and quite a figure.
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She's wearing high heel lounging shoes, white shorts and a white bandana.
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And that's about it. Like a drink, mister Chambers, Peter Chambers,
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did you like it a little drinking handsome? Well, it's a little too
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early in the morning for me. Oh look, miss CORDONI, I wish
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you'd talk to your father. Father. Oh, what's with him? A
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couple of attempts were made on his life last night, the old man,
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somebody somebody near to him, or to tell him one of two things like
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what Either he goes to the police or of stays hold up at least until
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this thing clears. Man from Homicide featured one of our harder edge detectives,
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Lieutenant Loudena, played by Charlie McGraw in the audition and Dan Durier in the
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series proper. He as the title of the series implied, wasn't Homicide,
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chases down murderers and has an unsurprisedly and unabashedly negative view of murderers in general.
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How much you enjoy this series may depend on how much you enjoy rough
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Edge detectives in general. We only had three episodes in this season, although
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more would come along in later seasons. Somebody saw you when you drove in
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and when you left. I think so. Yes, the movie is close
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to here, fairly close walking distance. What is this? You can both
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give me the plot of the movie, Well, I think so, one
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about the talking mule Francis goes to the races. Who will want a resume?
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It's after two now you left the movie at twelve. We had a
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few drinks and people saw you having the drink. Yes, look, Danie,
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I imagine you both can hazard a guess as to what this concerns my
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husband. Somebody threw him a spear, he caught it. You're now the
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sole possessor of nine million dollars. So he did do it? Who did
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do what? Nobody? You'd have trouble convincing the late mister Kelso can I
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see him? He's not very nice to look at. How bad do you
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want to see him? Speaking of episodes coming along later, we then revisited
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two series played in season five but which had more episodes come into circulation,
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The Lineup and Police Headquarters. The Lineup was a mess of a series when
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I started playing it, with episodes with unknown dates and episodes known by two
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different titles, and some genuine repeated episodes thrown in just to make it confusing.
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Police Headquarters was much simpler. We'd had thirty seven of the thirty nine
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to fifteen minute episodes and I found the other two and we were able to
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finish up. We were nowhere near as lucky as the lineup would be revisited
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again in season seven as more episodes came in and more research was completed.
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Then we got into the adventures of Ellery Queen. Ellery Queen is such a
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singular name in detective fiction. There were novels, movies, multiple TV series,
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and of course, multiple radio programs. Much like many other series such
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as The Thin Man or the Mister Malone series, most of Ellery Queen radio
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programs are lost, leaving less than twenty of three or four hundred episodes in
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circulation and only a small stamp of each actor to play the role of Ellery
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Queen. Still, we made the best of it. The Ellery Queen series
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really was about the puzzle more than anything else, and it wanted to puzzle
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your brain. It also had a particular feature, the armchair detective or detectives
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who would come on air at the end and be interviewed by Ellery and given
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a chance to solve the case. Several of the circulating episodes were missing the
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armchair detective segment. To make them more complete, actually brought on listeners to
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serve as the armchair detectives and gave them a chance to match wits with ellery
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Queen, only playing the episode up to the point where he gave the armchair
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detectives a chance to guess. And that nice, mister Queen, Well inspector,
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have you cleared up this mess? There were you three date this afternoon
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and at evening? Here I am I needed air. I was struling in
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Central Fall. Allow missus Canalla allout you, mister Cannelli. As a matter
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of fact, I took a walk myself down Fifth Avenue. Very upsetting business
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you know, made anybody are now mister canarff No, and you miss Cane.
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I took one of our cars and drove around town for a while,
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just two cool off. I'd had a phone call from dear dear Abbey in
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Boston. My daughter's fiancee told her they'd better wait about announcing the engagement until
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this this miserable affair blows over. I knew it, I just knew it.
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Aren't we getting off the track, No, alibis an enemy, ending
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to ask these three people before I take them downtown for real going over,
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No, but why do you want to take them to headquarters? Dad?
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Byway to find out which one of them bumped off the Kirby and Hazel girls
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and missus Kanell is made. That's why, Oh, I can tell you
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that Dad, right here and now and there, ladies and gentlemen, you
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have the mystery. I suppose you home arm chair to take this match wits
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with Aison's guests for this evening. Hearthstone of the Desk Squad was a series
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we played for three weeks as I continued to work through the programs of Anne
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and Frank Hommert, building up to eventually playing mister Keene, Tracer of Lost
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Persons. The series of Hearthstone of the Desk Squad existed on its own for
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only one season. However, when Mulay Mystery Theater had moved from NBC to
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CBS in nineteen forty eight, the Hammers were put in charge of it,
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and in February of nineteen forty nine, they introduced their own Detective Hearthstone of
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the Desk Squad, who became a recurring character who eventually started appearing in nearly
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every episode until the series was renamed for him. The series featured a familiar
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voice in Alfred Shirley, who was the first Doctor Watson on the John Stanley
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Sherlock Holmes episodes. All in all, it's a typical hummert series experience.
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Crime Files of Lemon was the last new series week feature, and you'll hear
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one week of the show in this volume. The central thing that makes Lamond
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different is that he's a psychologist who solves crimes, which actually isn't all that
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big of a stretch, as a number of detectives, including Poirot, used
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psychological clues to solve cases and made it a big part of their m What
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does make it more interesting is that this is the only series we played to
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originate from Chicago. Chicago was a significant radio town in the nineteen thirties and
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into the early forties, originating mini series like Amos and Andy, Loman,
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Abner, Fiber, McGhee and Molly, as well as many soaps such as
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Maul Perkins. Chicago provided the start for such noted radio talents as Bob Bailey,
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Betty lou Gerson, and Olin Soult. The problem was that most of
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their talented actors and programs were alert away to Hollywood by the ability to appear
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in film and be part of the wider acting and entertainment industry in Hollywood.
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So hearing the Chicago program is a treat. Well. Here multiple leads as
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Flmond, including yet another starring appearance for Future sixty Minutes News star Mike Wallace,
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who I believe is credited as Myron Wallace in this series. Now,
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as I said, there were no changes Wednesday through Saturday, but I did
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want to highlight one episode and this was from the Yours Truly Johnny Dollar series
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with Bob Bailey, and it's called The Price of Fame Matter and it was
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notable as a guest appearance by Vincent Price on Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, and
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it's part of the reason I spent a couple of years engineering the schedule so
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that we would be playing it at the same time that we had Vincent Price
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playing the Saint. It's a unique and fine guest starring appearance and hope you
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enjoy it when you get to it. In the process of listening to season
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six, little thing I picked up in London. It's called the old man
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in Red by Goya. I thought original yals by him were not only in
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the begining em and I've been pretty lucky in getting older comedy. Yeah,
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you know much. You were doing too, Like this called Fight was painted
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by kennethick Manner. A beautiful, beautiful, like all the ressome things.
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How about this one here at the end Night win By. I'm sorry,
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Vincent, I can't make out that name. You don't have this one lighted
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like the rest. No, that's to maintain it's sumber moods all and that's
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what made it possible for the substitution of this copy to go undetected. That's
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a copy. Yeah, that's my problem. One hundred thousand dollars a night
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wind by Zona Baptiste has been stolen. This was left in its place.
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Oh, I see, it's not a bad copy. He probably worth a
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couple of hundred dollars, but it's hardly a genuine vatique. Well when did
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you discover this substitution? We actually kick off the season with our fourteen hundredth
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episode special, which is a Mercury Theater adaptation of the thirty nine STAPs starring
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orson wells Now. If you've been listening to these for a while, you'll
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recall that we played one starring Glenn Ford back in volume one or The big
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difference is that one actually sticks much closer to the original novel by John Buckhan,
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as opposed to the Ford adaptation, which was much closer to the film
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Lady and Gentlemen. If you missed Medline Carroll in a stag version of thirty
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nine steps, the young lady in the movie, in common with almost everything
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else in that movie, was the child of its director's own unparalleled and unpredictable
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fancy. If you missed anything, you must blame mister Elfred Hitchcock. If
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you were surprised by anything, you must blame us. Then are one thousand,
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four hundred and fiftieth episodes special. We played Murder in the City Hall,
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which was a Molay Theater adaptation of a non Fellow Marlowe story by Raymond
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Chandler. And I always try to feature anthology work by writers who created great
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detective stories or feature great detective actors when I'm choosing specials, if those are
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available. Our fifteen one hundredth episode was part of the listener support campaign.
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Our one thousand, five hundred and fiftieth special was one of the most random
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things we played, and it's something I absolutely love. It's a comedy detective
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story. That's the only circulating episode of the nineteen forty two New York based
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Wor Summer Playhouse series, and the title of the episode is the Mystery of
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the Throw from Left Field and the Conga Dancers, and our detective hero is,
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of all things, a clown pire, a combination of clown and umpire.
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Insert a joke about your least favorite baseball umpire. However, that's not
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his day job, but you don't want to get into that with him,
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trust me. The runner was still out. Sorry, Joseph. The throw
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is perfect, but remember it was getting dark and there was a lot of
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do on the ground. The ball was hit a long way and it rolled.
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How was it when it came in? Right? An old amateur trick,
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Joseph, throwing and a ball you got in your pocket when you can't
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get after the ball. It was hit for observing, don't you. Yeah,
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that's important. You gotta watch those things, Joseph. You know what
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it takes to be a detective, That's what it takes to be an umpire.
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You're not a detective too, are you No? But I'm interested?
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Just what is your business? Chain stores? That's what I'm in town about.
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Well, I hired about this ball game, and I thought maybe they
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don't need an umpire. I always take my stuff with me, just in
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case, and sure enough, doesn Sam's fold. I have to get back.
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There was store before the game in Jovin. Oh, hello, chief,
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Well let's be this time. Burger is he is? Then? For
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our sixteenth hundred episode special, We've got an hour long episode of suspense from
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nineteen forty eight, starring future Oscar winner and Johnny Dollar lead edm and O'Brien
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as a pop psychologist who sits out to solve a murder. I won't say
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a lot about it, but it is a great story and one of my
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favorite of the hour long episodes of suspense. Our one thousand and six hundred
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and fiftieth episode is from the nineteen sixty four to sixty five radio series Theater
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Five, and one of only three broadcasts we featured from after the traditional end
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of the Golden Age of radio. I love Theater five, but the somewhat
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scant descriptions left me spending a lot of time finding if an episode would truly
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fit our podcast, because the resources out there led me to think, Yeah,
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this sounds like it could be a detective story, and it turned out
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not to be. But at last we found one that fit, and I
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hope you enjoy it. And then we have our seventeen hundredth episode special,
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which was another episode of Murder Clinic featuring the forgotten detective H. M.
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Merrivale. Or our listener support specials. In the spring, we did Played
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Again Adam, which led to us featuring three things that listeners had requested we
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feature. This included referring to two episodes we did previously, as well as
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something that was a bit outside the detective genre. It's an episode of Bold
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Venture that I think you'll like. Then for our fall specials, we featured
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three of my favorite specials that we'd ever done, and all of these were
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from the first three seasons. So it's been a while even for listeners to
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the Volume two series, and I think in some of these cases we may
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have had a sound upgrade at any rate. These are the type of programs
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worth enjoying again and repeatedly, and so I hope you enjoy listening to them
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as well as the rest of season six,