Adventures by Morse: The City of the DeadAs I've said before, my appreciation for Old Time Radio was born in my elementary school days, when chronic headaches sent me to bed early to lie in a darkened room listening to our old Silvertone AM clock radio. There was a minor nostalgia fad going on and several radio stations broadcast OTR shows in the evenings. I was introduced to
The Shadow, The Green Hornet, Suspense, Have Gun Will Travel, and more. The cream of the crop was
I Love a Mystery.The serial was broadcast by some far-distant station. My memory says it was in central Canada, but I could be wrong. Listening gave me the full Golden Age experience. Huddled close to the speaker, bathed by the pale green clock back light, I strained to hear through the static, constantly adjusting the tuning knob as the signal faded in and out. I'll never forget that thrill. The serials were "Bury Your Dead, Arizona" and "The Temple of the Vampires." The finest mind candy!
(Ours was red and didn't have the day/date)While I've never been a full-on OTR collector, I've revisited ILAM occasionally. Some of the glamour has rubbed off as older me recognizes the clunky parts. Now here I am again thanks to Covid. Stuck at home with no energy and nothing to do I spend hours staring at a stupid screen. I turned to audio drama to ease my eye strain. I decided to renew my acquaintance with Carleton E Morse by listening to
Adventures by Morse, an "ILAM in everything but name" which Morse launched following the cancellation of the original program. The entire series (52 episodes) is here on CB+.
The show was packaged in groups of 13 episodes: one ten-chapter story followed by a three-chapter story. These were syndicated to local stations. Morse ran the operation himself, sending out transcriptions (phonograph records) to subscribing stations who returned them after use. Consequently, unlike most OTR shows, the entire run of
Adventures by Morse still exists in complete high-quality form. I started at the top, with
The City of the Dead.Captain Bart Friday stands in for ILAM's Jack Packard. It seems his cantankerous elderly father is "mayor" of The City of the Dead, a remote cemetery that has long since ceased getting new residents. The mayor and his friend, a country doctor who retired when the last of his patients moved into The City of the Dead, are beset by grave robbers, a bell ringing in a decaying church that has no bell, and a young couple stranded nearby when their car is hijacked. Captain Friday must sort everything out while dodging a murderous figure with animal-like claws, finding and losing several stray corpses, and being stymied at every turn because none of the others will tell the truth about what they know.
It's a typical Carleton Morse setup. He had a knack for keeping a large cast moving in a complicated story without losing the audience. All the mysteries are satisfactorily explained in the end. Unfortunately all the explanation is condensed into a final-episode lecture. I presume this was because Morse didn't want to spread the solution over two episodes. That's too bad because some of the information comes from someone we never meet. It would have been better to have heard it first hand.
Overall I enjoyed the story with a couple of exceptions. My biggest gripe is the overuse of the "we haven't time for that now" trope in which Friday refuses to answer a key question so he can get on with the story. This clumsy withholding of information was unfortunately a common shtick in OTR adventure serials. The acting is generally good though the young man needs more training and his girlfriend spends too much time crying and moaning. Sound effects are adequate.
"The City of the Dead" was worth the time spent listening despite some maddening padding in spots. By the way, in this storyline Friday's drawling sidekick Skip Turner, a clone of ILAM's Doc, doesn't appear. He shows up for the first time in the following 3-parter.
