Get this and get it straight...crime is a sucker's road...Listen to radio's famous gumshoes and well-remembered cops. From the fog-bound shores of San Francisco to the insurance investigations of radio's famous expense account investigator.
"In the name of the Law, we bring you another of the thrilling stories in this exciting series, taken from actual police case files." This episode from 1936. Who killed Frances Baumhold? A complex family relationship. Poor Aunt Frances?
Intrigue. September 11, 1946. CBS net, WABC, New York "Satan Was A Salesman". Sustaining. An excellent tale of wartime espionage and murder. Joseph Schildkraut, Charles Vanda (director).
“Riabouchinska” is an unusual tale from the pen of Ray Bradbury. Not a name normally associated with the detective genre. However, this tale published in 1953 in The Saint Detective Magazine was first heard in 1947 on the radio program Suspense when the script was created from the original Bradbury story outline. The author had not even actually written the story yet! That would come six years later. Even though Ray Bradbury is one of America’s best fantasy and science fiction writers, this tale with its theme of the ventriloquist haunted by his own dummy’s personality involved murder and a detective who wanted to get to the bottom of the reasons behind the killing. From radio then to print and finally to television, first on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and later re-written by the author himself for his Ray Bradbury Theatre, the theme is one later played out in the Hollywood film Magic starring Anthony Hopkins in an early role.
You can view the Hitchcock version at Hulu.com.
Intrigue. August 21, 1946. CBS net, WABC, New York "Great Inpersonation". Sustaining. An excellent tale of wartime espionage and murder. Joseph Schildkraut, Charles Vanda (director).
Another visit with Cornell Woolrich, considered the father of noir fiction. I’ll look at one of his short novellas, Dime A Dance, published in 1938 and its adaptation on radio’s Suspense on January 13, 1944 starring Lucille Ball. The adaptation works for the most part and has the twists and turns of a good noirish suspense story.
Music under is Sonny Rollin’s rendition of “Poor Butterfly.”
This week, I begin looking at the noirish radio dramas based on the stories of Cornell Woolrich. First off is The White Rose Murders from the radio series Suspense. It is based on a story by Woolrich called The Death Rose and is one of the best examples of a taut noir radio drama.
Music under is first: Blind Spot by 3rd Man followed by Soothe Me by Shea Breaux Wells.