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Superhero - Old Time Radio Shows
The Adventures of Superman
 | | Show Name: | The Adventures of Superman | | Episodes Available: | 1164 | | Latest Episode: | Adventures of Superman 36 - Airplane Disasters at Bridger Field ep3 | Uploaded: Nov 9, 2023 | | Categories: | Superhero | Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the Man of Steel first appeared in Action Comics #1 in 1938. The following year, the newspaper comic strip began and four audition radio programs were prepared to sell Superman as a radio series. When Superman was first heard on radio less than two years after the comic book appearance, the character took on an added dimension with Bud Collyer in the title role.
The Adventures of Superman originally aired from 1940 to 1951. The serial came to radio as a syndicated show on New York City's WOR on February 12, 1940. On Mutual, it was broadcast from August 31, 1942, to February 4, 1949, as a 15-minute serial, running three or, usually, five times a week. From February 7 to June 24, 1949 it ran as a thrice-weekly half-hour show. The series shifted to ABC Saturday evenings on October 29, 1949, and then returned to afternoons, twice-a-week on June 5, 1950, continuing on ABC until March 1, 1951. In all, 2068 original episodes of The Adventures of Superman were aired on American radio.
During World War II and the post-war years, the show, sponsored by Kellogg's Pep, was a huge success, with many listeners following the quest for "truth and justice" in the daily radio broadcasts, the comic book stories and the newspaper comic strip. Airing in the late afternoon (variously at 5:15pm, 5:30pm and 5:45pm), the radio serial engaged its young after-school audience with its exciting and distinctive opening, which changed slightly as the series progressed. (Source: wikipedia.org) |
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The Avenger
 | | Show Name: | The Avenger | | Episodes Available: | 26 | | Latest Episode: | The Avenger 14 - Thoroughbred Murders | Uploaded: Oct 23, 2014 | | Categories: | Crime | Science Fiction | The Avenger is a fictional character whose original adventures appeared between September 1939 and September 1942 in the pulp magazine The Avenger, published by Street and Smith Publications. Five additional short stories were published in Clues Detective magazine (1942-1943), and a sixth novelette in The Shadow magazine in 1943.
This radio version of The Avenger ran for 26 episodes from September-December 1945. It can best be described as a somewhat inferior version of "The Shadow". Like The Shadow this was written by Walter Gibson (his Street and Smith house name was Maxwell Grant). It starred James Monks as Jim Brandon, and James LoCurto (who, along with Frank Readick voiced "The Shadow" before the advent of Orson Welles and Lamont Cranston).
Jim Brandon who fought crime as the Avenger was a famous biochemist who perfected two inventions that aided him in the fight against crime: the telepathic indicator allowed him to pick up random thought flashes, and the secret diffusion capsule cloaked him in the "black light of invisibility". The only person that shares his secrets and knew that he was The Avenger, the man feared by the underworld is his beautiful assistant Fern Collier. |
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Blue Beetle
 | | Show Name: | Blue Beetle | | Episodes Available: | 24 | | Latest Episode: | Blue Beetle 35/36 - Smashing The Restaurant Racket | Uploaded: Jul 11, 2014 | | Categories: | Superhero | The original Blue Beetle, Dan Garret, first appeared in Fox Comics' Mystery Men Comics #1 (cover-dated August 1939).
The Blue Beetle had a short career on the radio, between May and September 1940. Motion picture and radio actor Frank Lovejoy was the Blue Beetle for the first 13 episodes, while for the rest of the shows, the voice was provided by a different, uncredited actor. The Blue Beetle was a young police officer who saw the need for extraordinary crime fighting. He took the task on himself by secretly donning a superhero costume to create fear in the criminals who were to learn to fear the Blue Beetle's wrath. The 13-minute segments were usually only two-parters, so the stories were often simpler than other popular programs, such as the Superman radio serial. (Source: wikipedia.org) |
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Captain Midnight
 | | Show Name: | Captain Midnight | | Episodes Available: | 80 | | Latest Episode: | Captain Midnight 897 - East of Formosa | Uploaded: Jul 15, 2014 | | Categories: | Adventure | Aviation | Sponsored by the Skelly Oil Company, the Captain Midnight radio program was the creation of radio scripters Wilfred G. Moore and Robert M. Burtt, who had previously scored a success for Skelly with their boy pilot adventure serial The Air Adventures of Jimmie Allen.
Developed at the Blackett, Sample and Hummert advertising agency in Chicago, Captain Midnight began as a syndicated show in 1938, airing through the spring of 1940 on a few Midwest stations, including Chicago's WGN. In 1940, Ovaltine, a product of The Wander Company, took over sponsorship. With Pierre Andre as announcer, the series was then heard nationally on the Mutual Radio Network where it remained until 1942. It moved to the Merchandise Mart and the NBC Blue Network in September 1942. When the U.S. Government broke up the NBC Red and Blue Networks, Ovaltine moved the series back to Mutual, beginning September 1945, and it remained there until December, 1949.
The title character, originally Captain Jim "Red" Albright, was a World War I U. S. Army pilot. His Captain Midnight code name was given by a general who sent him on a high-risk mission from which he returned at the stroke of 12. When the show began in 1938, Albright was a private aviator who helped people, but his situation changed in 1940. When the show was taken over by Ovaltine, the origin story explained how Albright was recruited to head the Secret Squadron, an aviation-oriented paramilitary organization fighting sabotage and espionage during the period prior to the United States' entry into World War II. The Secret Squadron acted both within and outside the United States. (Source: wikipedia.org) |
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Chandu the Magician
 | | Show Name: | Chandu the Magician | | Episodes Available: | 309 | | Latest Episode: | Chandu the Magician 1934-12-25 xxx - Bob Plans a Swap | Uploaded: Nov 5, 2014 | | Categories: | Superhero | Crime | Adventure | Chandu the Magician was heard on several different networks and aired in two distinctly different series, one in the 1930s and a revival 12 years later. The series was created by Harry A. Earnshaw and Raymond R. Morgan.
Launched in 1931 on KHJ in Los Angeles, the series was soon heard through the West Coast when broadcast on the Don Lee Network. It was then heard, starting in February 1932, over WOR in the East. Nationally, it aired over Mutual starting October 8, 1932. The series was sponsored by White King Soap in the West and by Beech Nut Gum in the East.
Gayne Whitman played the lead role of American-born Frank Chandler, who had learned occult secrets from a yogi in India. Known as Chandu, he possessed several supernatural skills, including astral projection, teleportation and the ability to create illusions. Chandu's goal was to "go forth with his youth and strength to conquer the evil that threatens mankind". His sister, Dorothy Regent, was portrayed by Margaret MacDonald.
In 1935, the production moved to WGN Chicago with a new cast, including Howard Hoffman in the title role and Cornelia Osgood as Dorothy.
Twelve years later, the series was revived on Mutual June 28, 1948 as a 15-minute weekday program, starring Tom Collins as Chandu and Luis van Rooten as the villainous Roxor plotting world domination. With Howard Culver as the announcer and music by organist Korla Pandit, that series continued until January 28, 1949. The serial continuity was dropped February 2, 1949 in favor of 30-minute episodes, each with a self-contained storyline, continuing in that format until April 28, 1949. Culver often read commercials with Pandit's organ music in the background.
On October 15, 1949, Chandu the Magician moved to ABC where it was heard Saturdays at 7:30pm until June and then on Wednesdays at 9:30pm. The last broadcast was September 6, 1950. (Source: wikipedia.org) |
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The Green Hornet
 | | Show Name: | The Green Hornet | | Episodes Available: | 141 | | Latest Episode: | The Green Hornet 1945-11-08 - The Hornet Drops a Hint - aka Smoothy Lawrence | Uploaded: Jul 15, 2014 | | Categories: | Crime | Masked/Mystery Men | The Green Hornet first aired January 31, 1936, on WXYZ, the same local Detroit station that originated its companion shows The Lone Ranger and Challenge of the Yukon. Beginning April 12, 1938, the station supplied the series to the Mutual Broadcasting System radio network, and then to NBC Blue and its successors, the Blue Network and ABC Network, from November 16, 1939, through September 8, 1950. It returned from September 10 to December 5, 1952. It was sponsored by General Mills from January to August 1948, and by Orange Crush in its brief 1952 run.
Distinguished by its use of classical music for themes and for bridges between scenes, The Green Hornet was "one of radio's best-known and most distinctive juvenile adventure shows". The series detailed the adventures of Britt Reid, debonair newspaper publisher by day, crime-fighting masked hero at night.
"With his faithful valet Kato, Britt Reid, daring young publisher, matches wits with the Underworld, risking his life so that criminals and racketeers within the law may feel its weight by the sting of the Green Hornet!"
One relatively minor aspect of the character that tends to be given limited exposure in the actual productions is his blood relationship to the Lone Ranger, another character created by Striker. The Lone Ranger's nephew was Dan Reid. In the Green Hornet radio shows, the Hornet's father was likewise named Dan Reid, making Britt Reid the Lone Ranger's grandnephew. (Source: wikipedia.org) |
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The Green Lama
 | | Show Name: | The Green Lama | | Episodes Available: | 5 | | Latest Episode: | The Green Lama 4 - The Million Dollar Chopsticks | Uploaded: Jul 8, 2014 | | Categories: | Adventure | The Green Lama was an American pulp magazine hero of the 1940s. The Green Lama is an alias of Jethro Dumont, a rich resident of New York City, born July 25, 1903, to millionaire John Pierre Dumont and Janet Lansing. He received his A.B. from Harvard University, M.A. from Oxford, and Ph.D. from the Sorbonne; he also attended Drepung College in Tibet. He inherited his father's fortune, estimated at ten million dollars, when his father and mother were both killed in an accident while he was still at Harvard; he then spent ten years in Tibet studying to be a lama (a Buddhist Spiritual Teacher) and learning many mystical secrets in the process.
More than three years after the demise of his comic book, the Green Lama was resurrected for a short-lived CBS radio series that ran for 11 episodes from June 5 to August 20, 1949, with the character's voice provided by Paul Frees. This version of the Green Lama was also written by creator Kendell Foster Crossen, along with several co-writers. (Source: wikipedia.org) |
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Mandrake the Magician
 | | Show Name: | Mandrake the Magician | | Episodes Available: | 29 | | Latest Episode: | Mandrake the Magician 145 - The Green Mask Is Using A Submarine | Uploaded: Oct 23, 2014 | | Categories: | Crime | Superhero | Mandrake the Magician was created by Lee Falk (before he created The Phantom). Its publication began June 11, 1934. Phil Davis soon took over as the strip's illustrator, while Falk continued to script. The strip is distributed by King Features Syndicate.
Davis worked on the strip until his death in 1964, when Falk recruited current artist Fred Fredericks. With Falk's death in 1999, Fredericks became both writer and artist. The Sunday Mandrake strip ended December 29, 2002. The daily strip ended mid-story on July 6, 2013 when Fred Fredericks retired, and a reprint of D220 "Pursuit of the Cobra" from 1995 began on July 8, 2013.
On radio as a 15-minute program, Mandrake the Magician aired on the Mutual Broadcasting System from November 11, 1940, until February 6, 1942. Originally a three-day-a-week serial, it expanded to five days a week in 1941. Uttering the incantation "invovo legem magicarum" (I invoke the laws of magic) was Raymond Edward Johnson, who starred as Mandrake. Juano Hernandez portrayed Lothar, and Jessica Tandy and Francesca Lenni took the role of Princess Narda. The series was directed by Carlo De Angelo. (Source: wikipedia.org) |
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The Shadow
 | | Show Name: | The Shadow | | Episodes Available: | 239 | | Latest Episode: | The Shadow 227 - Dragon's Tongue Murders | Uploaded: Nov 12, 2023 | | Categories: | Superhero | Crime | Masked/Mystery Men | In early 1930, Street & Smith Publications hired David Chrisman and Bill Sweets to adapt the Detective Story Magazine to radio format. Chrisman and Sweets felt the program should be introduced by a mysterious storyteller. A young scriptwriter, Harry Charlot, suggested the name of "The Shadow." Thus, "The Shadow" premiered over CBS airwaves on July 31, 1930, as the host of the Detective Story Hour, narrating "tales of mystery and suspense from the pages of the premier detective fiction magazine." The narrator was first voiced by James LaCurto, but became a national sensation when radio veteran Frank Readick, Jr. assumed the role and gave it "a hauntingly sibilant quality that thrilled radio listeners."
The series disappeared from CBS airwaves on March 27, 1935, due to Street & Smith's insistence that the radio storyteller be completely replaced by the master crime-fighter described in Walter B. Gibson's ongoing pulps. But on September 26, 1937, The Shadow radio drama premiered with the story "The Deathhouse Rescue", in which The Shadow was characterized as having "the power to cloud men's minds so they cannot see him." As in the magazine stories, The Shadow was not given the literal ability to become invisible. Thus began the "official" radio drama, with 22-year-old Orson Welles starring as Lamont Cranston, a "wealthy young man about town." Once The Shadow joined Mutual as a half-hour series on Sunday evenings, the program did not leave the air until December 26, 1954.
Welles did not speak the signature line, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" Instead, Readick did, using a water glass next to his mouth for the echo effect. The famous catch phrase was accompanied by the strains of an excerpt from Opus 31 of the Camille Saint-Saëns classical composition, Le Rouet d'Omphale.
After Welles departed the show in 1938, Bill Johnstone was chosen to replace him and voiced the character for five seasons. Following Johnstone's departure, The Shadow was portrayed by such actors as Bret Morrison (the longest tenure, with 10 years in two separate runs), John Archer, and Steve Courtleigh. (Source: wikipedia.org) |
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