I want to briefly examine Bob Bailey and Mandel Kramer in their roles as Johnny Dollar. Bailey left the show when it moved to New York due to his being turned down for a television version of the character. Jack Johnstone who successfully led Bailey to his star run as the character is also discussed with comments from Bailey’s daughter Roberta Goodwin. We’ll also hear from Mandel Kramer on radio acting.
Thanks to John Dunning for his interview with Roberta Goodwin and Dick Bertel and the Golden Age of Radio interview of Mandel Kramer.
Music under is Jason Peri performing his piece Drastic Measures.
A look at how suspense is built dramatically as described by Mitchell Wilson, novelist and critic, in 1947. This podcast will use Agatha Christie’s short story, “Philomel Cottage,” and compare it to Hitchcock’s Suspicion and Rebecca in how the initially weak protagonist reaches a level of fear in which the reader/listener empathizes before either becoming strong by the experience and completing the cycle. This version is from Suspense and stars Geraldine Fitzgerald (right) from 1943.
From the Dorothy L. Sayers collection of short stories – Hangman’s Holiday – this adapted version of 
Another look at Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, but this time with a Canadian bent. Just where did the name Nero Wolfe come from and how does this Canadian production compare? This version stars Mavor Moore and Don Francks (l-r). 
A return look at the creator of the Boston Blackie character. Little is known about Jack Boyle, who at one time probably faced obscurity were it not for the publication of a collection of his stories in 1919. You’ll hear a rarer radio version starring Chester Morris and Richard Lane. Most radio collectors know Richard Kollmar as the radio Blackie.
The final episode on the development of the American Detective as heard through radio and fiction. In the early 1920s, pulp writers Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Carroll John Daly, Erle Stanley Gardner and others were creating a new kind of detective: one who was of the streets. Their gritty street smart, tough talking detectives were the first real American detectives not spawned from the Holmesian model.
