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21st Precinct was a police drama broadcast on CBS radio from July 7, 1953, to July 26, 1956. It was initially a summer replacement for My Friend Irma. The program was produced in cooperation with the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association of the City of New York and presented "adaptations from true criminal records in New York ... from the policeman's point of view."
Historically, the 21st Precinct had been located near Gramercy Park in Manhattan but in 1929 the department reorganized the precinct numbering, and the 21st designation was dropped from use. No such precinct existed during the show's run, nor does a 21st exist today.
Stanley Niss was the producer writer-director. The role of precinct Captain Frank Kennelly was played by Everett Sloane (for the first 109 episodes and briefly in episode 135). During episode 109 Captain Frank Kennelly was promoted to Deputy Inspector and reassigned out of the 21st Precinct. He was replaced by Captain Cronin James Gregory (1955–56) and Les Damon (1956). Other cast regulars were Ken Lynch (as Lt. Matt King), Harold Stone (as Sgt. Waters), Jack Orissa (as Sgt. Collins), and Santos Ortega (as Lt. Gorman). The program's announcer began the program's opening each week:
"21st Precinct. It's just lines on a map of the city of New York. Most of the 173,000 people wedged into the nine-tenths of a square mile between Fifth Avenue and the East River wouldn't know, if you asked them, that they lived or worked in the 21st. Whether they know it or not, the security of their persons, their homes, and their property is the job of the men of the 21st." (source: wikipedia)
A vintage radio drama series about a criminal psychologist, Dr Morelle, who solves murder cases which are too complex for the police. Morelle is played by English film actor Cecil Parker, and is alternately helped and hindered in his investigations by his secretary Miss Frayle, played by film actress Sheila Sim.
The series was created by writer Ernest Dudley, who conceived the character during an air raid in 1942. The curmudgeonly and sarcastic psychologist is thought to be based on Hollywood actor and producer Erich von Stroheim; and as played by Cecil Parker the character certainly has a touch of the aristocrat about him.
In a nod to the Baker Street residence of Sherlock Holmes, Morelle's London office is situated at 221b Harley Street. Most of the stories begin there, with his long-suffering secretary patiently enduring her employer's endless sarcasm.
Each of the stories is self-contained, with Morelle solving the mystery in the final scene. Unusually for the time, he solves each case not by hunting for clues in the manner of Sherlock Holmes, but instead through a psychiatrist's insight into the personality of the killer: using his professional experience to consider the suspects, in order to determine which of them matches the deduced personality of the murderer.
Thirteen episodes were broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in 1957, aired weekly from April 23rd to July 16th. (source: unknown)
Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator was a detective drama heard on NBC Radio from October 3, 1951 to June 30, 1955.
Detective Barrie Craig (William Gargan) worked alone from his Madison Avenue office. Unlike his contemporaries Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, Craig had a laid-back personality, somewhat cutting against the popular hard-boiled detective stereotype. Others in the cast included Ralph Bell, Elspeth Eric, Parker Fennelly, Santos Ortega, Arnold Moss, Parley Baer, Virginia Gregg and Betty Lou Gerson.
Don Pardo was the announcer.
Gargan also starred in the role in an unsuccessful 1952 TV pilot written and directed by Blake Edwards. It was presented on ABC's Pepsi-Cola Playhouse as "Death the Hard Way" (October 17, 1954).
A few years earlier Gargan had played a similar character in Martin Kane, Private Eye. (Source: wikipedia.org)
The Black Museum was a 1951 radio crime-drama program independently produced by Harry Alan Towers and based on real-life cases from the files of Scotland Yard's Black Museum. Ira Marion was the scriptwriter, and music for the series was omposed and conducted by Sidney Torch. Although often mistakenly cited as being produced for the BBC, the series was produced and syndicated commercially by Towers throughout the English-speaking world.
Orson Welles was both host and narrator for stories of horror and mystery, based on Scotland Yard's collection of murder weapons and various ordinary objects once associated with historical true crime cases. Walking through the museum, Welles would pause at one of the exhibits, and his description of an artifact served as a device to lead into a wryly-narrated dramatised tale of a brutal murder or a vicious crime.
With the story themes deriving from objects in the collection (usually with the names of the people involved changed but the facts remaining true to history), the 52 episodes had such titles as "The Tartan Scarf" and "A Piece of Iron Chain" or "Frosted Glass Shards" and "A Khaki Handkerchief". An anomaly to the series was an episode called "The Letter" as this was the only story not about murder, but about forgery.
In the United States, the series aired on the Mutual Network between January 1 and December 30, 1952. (Source: wikipedia.org)
Crime and Peter Chambers is an American old-time radio detective program. It was broadcast on NBC from April 6, 1954, until September 7, 1954.
Crime and Peter Chambers brought to radio a fictional private detective created by author Henry Kane, who also produced the show and wrote for it. Kane introduced Chambers in the 1947 novel A Halo for Nobody. and featured him in a series of novels, the last of which was Kill for the Millions (1972).
Chambers was based in New York City, and his fee was $500 per day. Unlike many private detectives on radio, Chambers usually coordinated his work with that of the police. In fact, his best friend was police Lieutenant Louis Parker.
Radio historian John Dunning described the program as "an undistinguished half-hour, filled with glib dialogue that played into Dane Clark's image as a screen tough guy."
Dane Clark starred as Peter Chambers, and Bill Zuckert played Lieutenant Louis Parker. Actors often heard in supporting roles included Fran Carlon, Roger DeKoven, William Griffis, Leon Janney, Bryna Raeburn, Elaine Rost, Everett Sloane, Edgar Stehli, Evelyn Varden, Patricia Wheel, Lesley Woods, and Lawson Zerbe. Fred Collins was the announcer, and Fred Weihe was the director. (source: wikipedia.org)
Crime Classics is a United States radio docudrama which aired as a sustaining series over CBS Radio from June 15, 1953, to June 30, 1954.
Created, produced, and directed by radio actor/director Elliott Lewis, the program was a historical true crime series, examining crimes and murders from the past. It grew out of Lewis' personal interest in famous murder cases and took a documentary-like approach to the subject, carefully recreating the facts, personages and feel of the time period. Comparatively little dramatic license was taken with the facts and events, but the tragedy was leavened with humor, expressed largely through the narration.
The crimes dramatized generally covered a broad time and place frame from ancient Greece to late 19th-century America. Each episode in the series was co-written by Morton Fine and David Friedkin, in consultation with Lewis, although the scripting process was more a matter of research, as the stories were "adapted from the original court reports and newspaper accounts" or from the works of historians.
The cases ranged from famous assassinations (of Abraham Lincoln, Leon Trotsky, and Julius Caesar) and the lives (and often deaths) of the likes of Cesare Borgia and Blackbeard to more obscure cases, such as Bathsheba Spooner, who killed her husband Joshua Spooner in 1778 and became the first woman tried and executed in America.
The only continuing character was the host/narrator, Thomas Hyland, played by Lou Merrill. Hyland was introduced by the announcer as a "connoisseur of crime, student of violence, and teller of murders." Merrill's deadpan portrayal of Hyland provided the welcome note of tongue-in-cheek humor to the proceedings. (Source: wikipedia.org)
Crime Does Not Pay was an anthology radio crime drama series based on MGM's short film series which began in 1935 with Crime Does Not Pay: Buried Loot. The shows were transcribed at MGM's New York station, WMGM.
Written by Ira Marion and directed by Marx B. Loeb, the radio program aired in New York on WMGM for two years (October 10, 1949-October 10, 1951), including repeats. It moved to the Mutual Broadcasting System for its final run (January 7-December 22, 1952).
For the most part, actors who appeared in B-films were featured, but occasionally one of MGM's major stars would make an appearance. Actors in the series included Bela Lugosi, Everett Sloane, Ed Begley, John Loder and Lionel Stander. After the play, the actors usually returned to speak with the audience.
Composer-conductor John Gart furnished the music. (Source: wikipedia.org)
Dan Dunn was the first fictional character to make his debut in an American comic magazine, making him the forerunner of many comic book heroes. Created by Norman Marsh, he first appeared in Detective Dan, Secret Operative No. 48, a 1933 single issue one-shot by Humor Publications magazine.
Later in 1933, Dan Dunn made his newspaper debut in the Dan Dunn comic strip for Publishers Syndicate. He eventually appeared in Big Little Books, which are probably the most readily available source of the character's adventures for modern readers. In 1936, Dan Dunn became the title character of a pulp magazine that lasted for two issues. As noted by comics historian Don Markstein, the square-jawed Detective Dunn was a knock-off of Dick Tracy, blowing away evil criminals with the same no-nonsense resort to violence that fans liked seeing during an era of urban crime gangs. In newspapers, however, Dunn never approached Tracy's popularity.
In 1937, Dan Dunn was produced as a 15-minute radio program which ran for a total of 78 episodes. (Source: wikipedia.org)
Dragnet, is arguably the most influential police procedural series in media history. Long before it became a television staple, Dragnet took the radio waves by storm on NBC in 1949, forever changing how crime dramas were written and performed.
Created by and starring Jack Webb as the deadpan Sergeant Joe Friday, the show focused on the unglamorous, day-to-day grind of real police work. The meticulous tracking of clues, the repetitive interviews, and the heavy reliance on scientific crime labs and mugshot books.
Webb was a stickler for accurate details, and Dragnet used authentic touches such as the LAPD's actual radio call sign "KMA367", and the names of actual department officials, such as Ray Pinker and Lee Jones of the crime lab or Chief of Detectives Thad Brown (later LAPD Chief 1967–1969).
He also used actual closed police files as the basis for his scripts, captured authentic police slang, and insisted on using real sound effects including the exact timing of the footsteps in the hallways of the old LA City Hall!
Webb discovered how versatile his actors were, and kept them on hand week after week. Barton Yarborough was there for every episode as Webb's partner, with character roles played variously by Harry Bartell, Vic Perrin, Virginia Gregg, Herb Butterfield, Jack Kruschen, Peggy Webber, Herb Ellis, Barney Phillips, and Clarence Cassell. All these radio performers continued into the Dragnet television series. During the radio show's first year, Raymond Burr played chief of detectives Ed Backstrand.
A little bit of trivia is that although "Just the facts, ma'am" is known as Dragnet's catchphrase , the precise phrase was never actually uttered by Joe Friday. The closest lines were "All we want are the facts, ma'am" and "All we know are the facts, ma'am"! (Source: wikipedia.org)
The Lineup is an American police drama which aired on CBS radio from 1950 to 1953 and on CBS television from 1954 to 1960.
Syndicated reruns of the series were broadcast under the title San Francisco Beat.
The radio version depicted the investigations of Lieutenant Ben Guthrie (played by Bill Johnstone, one of several actors to play The Shadow on radio) and Sergeant Matt Greb (played by Wally Maher until his death on December 27, 1951), later replaced by Sergeant Pete Carger (played by Jack Moyles), detectives in the police force of an unnamed "great American city".
The television version was set specifically in San Francisco and was produced with the cooperation of the San Francisco Police Department, which received a credit at the close of each episode. It starred Warner Anderson as Guthrie and Tom Tully as Grebb. Grebb was now an inspector instead of a sergeant because at the time the series was made there was no such rank as sergeant in the Bureau of Inspectors, SFPD's investigative division, and a full inspector was the closest equivalent to the generic detective sergeant the character had been on radio. The TV version, a CBS Television production, was filmed on location, using Desilu's production facilities. (source: wikipedia)
Nick Carter, Master Detective was a Mutual radio crime drama based on tales of the famed detective from Street & Smith's dime novels and pulp magazines. A veteran radio dramatist, Ferrin Fraser, wrote many of the scripts.
With Lon Clark in the title role, the series commenced 11 April 1943, continuing in many different timeslots for well over a decade. Between October 1944 and April 1945, it was heard as a 30-minute program on Sunday afternoons at 3pm, sponsored by Acme Paints and Lin-X, with a 15-minute serial airing four or five times a week in 1944 from April to September. In April 1945, the Sunday series moved to 6pm, continuing in that timeslot until June 1946, and it was also heard in 1946 on Tuesday from March to August.
Sponsored by Cudahy Packing and Old Dutch Cleanser and later Acme Products, the series finally settled in on Sundays at 6:30pm for broadcasts from August 18, 1946 to September 21, 1952. Libby Packing was the sponsor when the drama aired on Sundays at 6pm (1952-53). In the last two years (1953-55), the show was heard Sundays at 4:30pm.
Patsy Bowen, Nick's assistant, was portrayed by Helen Choate until mid-1946; then Charlotte Manson stepped into the role. Nick and Patsy's friend was reporter Scubby Wilson (John Kane). Sgt. Mathison (Ed Latimer) was Nick's contact at the police department. The supporting cast included Raymond Edward Johnson, Bill Johnstone and Bryna Raeburn. Michael Fitzmaurice was the program's announcer. The series ended on September 25, 1955. (Source: wikipedia.org)
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