Radio Detective Story Hour

The further adventures of Jack, Doc and Jeri Booker continue in “The Pirate Loot of the Island of Skulls.” Two more episodes this week plus snippets of interviews with Carlton E. Morse and Russell Thorson. The storyline unfortunately is not complete in audio format, so I’ll try to give some summaries between various episodes to give wholeness to the complete story.

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This week I am beginning a series of podcasts featuring the A-1 Detective team of Jack Packard and Doc Long – Carleton Morse’s intrepid detectives from I Love A Mystery. The series is not a complete one as there are very few complete runs of this adventure thriller series: A twelve part series called “The Pirate Loot of the Island of Skulls” from 1942. I’ll be looking at Morse, the series and this serial adventure over the next few weeks.

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The final entry into my look at women radio detectives. This week is an example of the many husband and wife detective teams that appeared on radio. Others included Adventures of the Thin Man, Mr. & Mrs North, It’s a Crime, Mr. Collins and Front Page Farrell. This week’s series used characters from the pen of Frances Crane in which Jean Abbott is a much stronger detective than she was portrayed on radio. Claudia Morgan (right) and Les Damon starred as Jean and Pat Abbott.

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Continuing with the second part look at women radio detectives, I look at another radio detective series in which a woman was the lead private investigator. Miss Pinkerton, Incorporated starred Joan Blondell and Dick Powell (right), husband and wife in real life at the time as Mary Vance, head of the Vance Detective Agency and Police investigator Murray. The only surviving episode was the premier. This was a lighter show but clicked as both Blondell and Powell were naturals in front of a radio microphone.

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I begin a new series of podcasts focusing on radio’s “Lady Detectives.” First up is Candy Matson, probably the best of the lady detectives on radio. There are extensive sound bytes from my interview with Jack French (right) who authored Private Eyelashes, a book which looks at radio’s female detectives. Candy Matson was a production for the West Coast coming out of San Francisco beginning in 1949.

Music under is Johnny Mercer singing “Candy.”

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Part two of a look at the police procedurals of radio drama. While Dragnet was the “daddy” of procedurals, 21st Precinct was probably an example of almost pure procedure. Dragnet had characters listeners could care about. 21st Precinct was much dryer in tone even forsaking opening and closing music and musical bridges to maintain a sense of a documentary style approach. The opening voice was always the desk sergeant mostly portrayed by veteran radio and television actor, Harold Stone (right).

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Beginning a new theme – police procedurals. The detective genre’s most recent sub-genre is the police procedural. Radio followed suit with the introduction of Dragnet in 1949 created by Jack Webb (right) and its influence both on radio detectives as well as the printed word continues to be felt. I’ll provide examples of what makes a story a police procedural. Next week I’ll continue the theme.

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A look at my final entry into radio detectives born out of the pulp magazines. The Shadow was in some ways not a detective as much as a crime fighter (there is a difference), but some of the episodes did bear some aspects where Lamont Cranston did do some detective work to help come to the resolution. This episode is one of those.

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Continuing a look at radio detectives who had their beginnings in the pulps, this week a look at Jack “Flash” Casey created by George Harmon Coxe and born from the pages of Black Mask Magazine. Jack Casey came to radio first as “Flashgun” Casey, then Casey, Crime Photographer.

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This week begins a short series on radio detectives who come from the pulps. This includes pulps such as the early publications like the one on the right and Black Mask Magazine. I’ll start with one of the earliest pulp detectives who appeared on radio, Nick Carter. A look at the history of these pulps, some of the early detectives, and an early Nick Carter, Master Detective episode from 1943.

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