The Great Radio Detectives of the 1950s
Richard Diamond, Private Detective is a tough private eye played to perfection by a former crooner Dick Powell. Before he started specializing in rugged roles such as the famous CBS sleuth, Dick had built up a world-wide reputation as a singer. Born in Mountain View, Arkansas, he was spotted in Hollywood in 1933 and spent the next 10 years starring in musicals. He wanted a change -- and got it in Murder, My Sweet, his first detective role. In 1945, Dick married June Allyson. He has two kids.
True Detective Mysteries, the popular Mutual series about a noted detective magazine, stars Richard Keith in the role of John Shuttleworth, the editor. Dick was born in New York City in 1908. His first job after graduation from the High School of Commerce was driving the ponies and carriages for children's rides in Central Park. A part in Diamond Lil' on Broadway was the beginning of a successful career behind footlights and microphones. Richard once played Santa Claus on radio.
Mickey Spillane mystery series stars Larry Haines, who hails from Mount Vernon, New York. Larry's flair for acting began to show even in grammar school, where he took the leads in class plays at the age of seven. After graduation from college, he joined the Westchester Players, a summer stock group, then turned to a small radio station on Long Island. Since that time, 36-year-old Larry has starred on every major radio and TV show in New York. His spare time is devoted to his hobby -- photography.
Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar on CBS stars that versatile gentleman John Lund. Besides being a talented actor, Lund has written many radio scripts, including Fashions in Rations and the Jack Pepper Show. For the stage, he wrote lyrics and sketches for Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1942-43. In Hollywood he collaborated on the screenplay for Appointment with Danger. John hails from Rochester, New York. In 1942, he married actress Marie Charton, with whom he appeared in New Faces.
The Top Guy on ABC stars that well-known radio racket-buster Jay Jostyn of Mr. District Attorney fame. Jay is a student of crime in his spare time, too; in Manhasset, Long Island, where he lives, he is engaged in community activities aimed at decreasing juvenile delinquency. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Jay majored in dramatics at Marquette University, then moved to Hollywood, where he made good as a radio actor. A New Yorker since the middle 1930s, Jay has done as many as 48 roles in 36 shows a week.
Squad Room, on Mutual, features as its star six-footer Joe DeSantis. New York City born, Joe attended the College of the City of New York where he majored in languages and was active in school dramatics. He started his acting career with Walter Hampden's company in 1931 and has appeared in many Broadway plays. In Hollywood, he played the Heavy in Slattery's Hurricane. Joe and his wife, radio actress Margaret Draper, live in a Manhattan apartment. In his spare time he is a fine sculptor.
Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator is another in William Gargan's long line of portrayals of the intrepid private eye. Brooklyn-born Gargan actually was a private flatfoot for a time but always longed to act. He got his chance in the stage production of Aloma of the South Seas, scored in his first film Rain, and has since made scads of movies. Bill has two sons. One boy, Leslie Howard Gardan, is named for the late British star, with whom Bill once made a movie.
Crime and Peter Chambers stars Dane Clark as the handsome crimebuster of NBC. At various times in real life, Dane's been a football player, boxer, soda jerk and radio scriptwriter. Born in New York City, he earned a law degree at St. John's but drifted into radio acting and made his movie bow in Action in the North Atlantic. His last Broadway play was The Number. Dane's married to the artist Margo and has a home in California and an apartment in New York.
FBI in Peace and War on CBS has George Petrie as head man. George, born in New Haven, has been busy in the theater, movies and radio since 1938, except for three-and-a-half wartime years in the Air Force. An old hand at stalking criminals, he's been on Gangbusters, Big Story and Counterspy. George played in Boomerang for the movies; and Cafe Crown, Winged Victory and Brighten the Corner on the stage. He's married to actress Patty Pope.
High Adventure, Mutual Mystery, stars movie villain and cynic George Sanders. George was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, of English parents who fled during the revolution. In England he took a stab at industry until the Depression inclined him to the stage and a singing role with Edna Best. His portrayal of a villain in Hollywood's Lloyds of London was the first of many hits. George once patented three inventions for industry. He's the ex-husband of luscious Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Mickey Spillane Mystery stars Ted de Corsia as Mutual's Mike Hammer. It was back in 1922 that Ted got his start in radio as one of the Monticello players on WOR New York in his home town. Other parts helped Ted complete his schooling in the next five years. He went to Hollywood as a member of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. His films include Naked City, Enforcer and A Place in the Sun. He is married with two daughters and lives quietly in the San Fernando Valley.
Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, the gentle but relentlessly thorough investigator, is played at CBS by Philip Clarke, who made his stage bow as a toddler in his home town of London. In the late 1920s he served as a British army officer in India. His American debut was in Joseph and His Brethren, an elaborate stage spectacle. He has since played in both New York and London, solving his cases with military thoroughness, acting with a quiet, gentle dignity.
Mystery Theatre stars Inspector Mark Saber -- otherwise known to one and all at ABC as that dashing, debonair gent, Les Damon. Les began acting in high school in his home town of Providence, Rhode Island. In 1934-35 he went to England to act with the Old Vic. Back in the U.S. he played in the original production of Dead End. Less is currently heard on three daytime radio serials. He's married, lives in Califon, New Jersey, and his hobbies include raising Boxers and making furniture.
Nick Carter, Master Detective is the impressive role created by Lon Clark over Mutual. A triple-threater, Lon is a musician and singer too. He blew his way through college on a sax, later played the piano and sang on radio in Chicago. While performing for WLW he sang with the Cincinnati Summer Opera. Born in Frost, Minnesota, he's lived in New York since 1941 with his wife and two sons. His New York apartment is packed with antiques and American history books.
Nightmare on Mutual has as its chief spine-tingler that master villain of Hollywood, Peter Lorre. Before he began scaring babies and adults, Peter left his hometown of Rosenberg, Hungary, to make his way in the theater. Minor roles led to a lead in a Berlin production, after which he scored in the German film M. Appearances in Hitchcock thrillers paved the way to Hollywood in 1935. Peter once worked as a bank clerk and he has designed stage sets and written.
Official Detective is portrayed over Mutual by Craig McDonnell, who's now in his 28th year as one of radio's top character voices. He's been heard in some of radio's best-known roles, such as David Harum and as Peter in The Greatest Story Ever Told. Born and raised in Buffalo, New York, Craig had early ambitions of becoming a singer, but soon switched to acting. Married, he has two kids. The McDonnell family goes heavily for gardening in Westchester County.
The Shadow on Mutual gets his eerie laugh from Bret Morrison, who began specializing in flesh-creepers back in 1930 with the Dracula series. Although radio mysteries are his meat, Bret is a quiet fellow out of Evanston, Illinois, who sang in the church choir, went to Northwestern University, then acted and sang on radio, including Chicago's Theatre of the Air. Bret's made four movies and he once specialized as a dialectician. He aims to fill a Broadway singing-acting role.
Twenty-First Precinct is captained by Everett Sloane on CBS. Everett's been in constant demand as an actor since he left the University of Pennsylvania to study with the Hedgerow Reparatory Theater. He's appeared in The Desert Fox Way of a Gaucho and such plays as Room Service and A Bell for Adano, meanwhile making radio his second home. He is married. He was the first director hired by George Abbott and hopes to do more directing.
From a reprint in Memories, Fall 1982
Last Call for Radio's Grand Central Station on CBS
After more than 16 years of good entertainment, the voice of Grand Central Station on CBS is no longer heard in the land. What stilled it was not any sudden drying up of human interest drama in Manhattan's great railroad terminal, but rather the fact that Grand Central on the radio just couldn't compete any longer with the overwhelming force of TV playhouses.
No doubt about it, the radio theaters are dwindling. Which is too bad because many of them deserved longer life, and because the very fact that they were heard and not seen enabled them to appeal to the listener's imagination in ways that TV cannot, and to achieve dramatic effects that TV rarely can match.
The oldest radio playhouse of all, 20-year-old Lux Radio Theatre, is still going strong, however, and the big news this year is its switch from CBS to NBC, where it continues to present Hollywood's big names and big stories.
NBC also continues with the year-old Royal Theatre, which Sir Laurence Olivier got off to a good start last October by presenting adaptations of the work of such eminent writers as Alexander Pushkin, William Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene.
CBS, even after relinquishing the Lux series, still has the greatest variety of shows in the field, headed by Stars Over Hollywood, which is going strong after 13 years in which dozens of others have come and gone.
Columbia's offerings range from the whodunit field (Crime Classics) and adventure (Escape and Suspense) to the Hallmark Hall of Fame which honors heroes of U.S. history, and Cathy and Elliot Lewis On Stage, starring the husband and wife team in high-quality originals and classics.
Finally, Mutual concentrates on Family Theatre, now age 7, offering a big array of Hollywood talent in stories by top radio and movie writers.
It'll be interesting to see how many of these hardy perennials can weather the fierce competition of TV for national audiences and will still be with us a year from now.
From Who's Who in TV and Radio, 1954
How Jeff Chandler Was Discovered in Hollywood
I first saw Jeff Chandler 12 years ago when he was Ira Grossel from Brooklyn. He was enrolled in the Feagin School of Dramatic Arts in New York. At the time I was a talent scout for 20th Century-Fox. It was part of my job to make the rounds of dramatic schools, searching for new talent.
To me Jeff was a big, gawky kid. He didn't seem to coordinate too well, a common failing of tall guys. But there was an arresting quality about the boy, a kind of deep sincerity. I watched him for a few minutes, then walked out.
Later I was at the Mill Pond Playhouse on Long Island when who should turn up again? Right. Only this time he was a spear-carrier or something in a costume drama entitled The Trojan Horse. His face had more character and his acting showed indications of great potential, but I still didn't think enough of the boy to recommend a screen test. I felt he was at least two or three years away. Then the war broke out and I lost track of Jeff.
When I next ran into him we were both in Hollywood, he as a radio actor on Our Miss Brooks and I as the general manager of Huntington Hartford's talent agency. We met at a Lux Radio Theatre broadcast, and when the show was over I knew at once that Ira Grossel had arrived. He had not only developed his acting, but his sex appeal, his personal magnetism, that strong-but-silent he-man attitude, seemed to overwhelm the audience. I was surprised after the broadcast to observe that more fans asked for his autograph than for the signatures of the established movie stars who headed the cast.
Although I'd seen him, Jeff and I had never met. A mutual friend introduced us. The first thing I said, looking up at the Man Mountain, was, "I saw you in stock under a different name." He furrowed his brow. "Yep," I continued, "It was at the Mill Pond Playhouse in Long Island. You were in a play called The Trojan Horse."
Jeff couldn't believe it. "But that's impossible," he said. "That was more than eight years ago."
We set up a date for the next day and Jeff came into the office to discuss representation. "Suppose I sign with you, what sort of parts do you think I'm suited for?"
"Maybe I'm crazy," I said, "but I see you as a leading man."
Jeff grinned. "Thanks," he said. "Everybody else sees me as a character."
Meyer Mishkin in Modern Screen, November 1952
How Nelson Eddy Got in Hot Water with Two Coffee Companies
They were all in a dither and it was Nelson Eddy's fault.
By "they" I mean Chase and Sanborn and Maxwell House (they make coffee, or haven't you heard), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the National Broadcasting Company, a couple of advertising firms and a round dozen lawyers. It was Nelson's fault because he really should have arranged to be two young men, each with a Voice. Then he could have sung on two rival radio programs with everything lovely. As it was, conferences raged furiously on the West Coast, the East Coast, in Chicago and elsewhere, and long-distance phone calls, telegrams and what-have-you burned up the wires.
You see, Nelson was one of the bright lights on the Chase and Sanborn coffee (it's dated) hour every Sunday evening and is also under contract to make pictures for MGM, whose weekly hour is sponsored by Maxwell House (good to the last drop). You probably can imagine, therefore, into what cement-like solidity the plot thickened when MGM, having made a picture called Rosalie starring Nelson and Eleanor Powell, proposed to present Nelson in scenes from Rosalie on the Maxwell House radio hour. Chase and Sanborn, torn by the thought of his beguiling voice Pied-Pipering coffee drinkers away from their Chase and Sanborn habits and into the waiting arms of Maxwell House, promptly had a fit.
Of course, it was finally straightened out as things usually are. Nelson ultimately and legally was scheduled to endorse the merits of Maxwell House coffee by participating in the Rosalie broadcast. But, withal, everybody wasn't happy. As the morning for the first Rosalie rehearsal rolled around, tension still prevailed. Victorious though they were, the Maxwell House producers found their nerves pretty well shot and their tempers short. All the legal parleying had been too much of an ordeal and had taken up too much time. They were upset.
And then, into that jaundiced situation, bright and smiling and rarin' to go, walked Nelson wearing an immaculate gray suit, blue accessories, shoes shined to dazzling brilliance -- and a sandwich board which read:
I DRINK SANKA!
Whereupon everybody laughed, the jaundiced gloom of the occasion was routed and the rehearsal was a great success.
"That guy'll be the death of me," a friend of mine at NBC told me, reminiscing about this and other gags staged by the reputedly staid and proper Mr. Eddy.
Marian Rhea in Radio Mirror, April 1938
The Tragic Death of Russ Columbo at Age 26
Russ Columbo laughed as he watched the satisfied hundreds at the preview of the movie Wake Up and Dream, in which his caressing voice had won their instant approval.
Life really began today. Just write 'Friday the 31st' in red because it starts Chapter 3 in the story of Columbo. And put it down that today Old Man Hard Luck lost my address. Everything good happened today. I made the first of my new broadcasts, I saw my first starring picture and I made four recordings on my new phonograph contract. What a lucky day this was!
And that isn't all. I found the piece of property where I'm going to build the new home for my folks. I'm going to design the house myself -- and put in all the little nooks and gadgets my mother wants.
So, I'm forgetting the bumps and disappointments in Chapters 1 and 2 and starting Chapter 3 today. And don't think I don't know I'm the lucky guy.
Less than 48 hours later, Grim Tragedy snapped that string -- and wrote "Cut!" across the picture of Columbo's success. For a tragic misadventure and an old dueling pistol had put an end to what promised to be one of the most successful careers in pictures, and left a dying mother listening for a voice she would never hear again.
So sudden and unexpected were the blazing headlines, "Columbo is dead!" that even blasé Hollywood was shocked -- and a trifle frightened. The boulevard punsters and gagmen were silent, and the wise ones offered no inside facts, but merely shook their heads in numb confusion.
Russ Columbo was so young, so handsome, so friendly, and so unselfishly devoted to his family. It just didn't seem possible that he could be lying cold and still. He had had, too, a rather unhappy life up until the day he called the beginning of Chapter 3. His first love affair went smash. His first promising success in radio petered out after a brilliant start. A cherished brother had been killed in an automobile accident. And then, when everything seemed bright and happy once more, his young life was cut short.
A wonder and fear reached every studio and was evident in the attitude of the great mass of men, women and children who stood so silently and so orderly outside the Blessed Sacrament Church where, five days before his crowning triumph, Russ Columbo's soul was considered to his Maker.
No movie cameras or autograph hunters blasphemed the simple solemnity of the occasion, and as the pallbearers, headed by Bing Crosby, carried the casket, covered with a blanket of gardenias from Carole Lombard, only the sobs of hundreds of friends broke the stillness. Carole, supported by Russ' brother John and Dr. Harry Martin, was spared the stares and crowding of the curious.
In some manner, this death hit home in Hollywood and caused the village of make-believe to cast an apprehensive glance over its shoulder. If so happy and clean a life, and so promising a career, could be struck cold without a whisper of warning, just who can tell what will happen tomorrow. Or even today, so unexpected was this blow.
And yet, in one sense, not altogether unexpected.
Two days before Russ started making Wake Up and Dream, he and this writer were driving through the hills of Hollywood, looking for a home for his family.
"I'm not satisfied with the place we just left," referring to the house he was leasing in Beverly Hills, "because I know mother would be happier where it is quieter, and a little more off the main road. So let's take a look up in Outpost."
"Aren't you planning to build for the family?" I asked. "Why not stay where you are 'til then -- especially when you have the worry and work of just starting a picture?"
"Maybe I'm funny about it," he replied, "but I want to grab some of the nicest things for mother right now. You know how it is. The old fellow with the scythe is always just around the corner.
"I am planning to build -- but I don't want to wait -- because you never know what might happen.
"For example," as he swung his car about an exceptionally sharp and steep turn, "suppose one of Hollywood's famous damn fool drivers happened to be coming down here just now, wide open. I'd have a great chance to build a house after that, wouldn't I? No, I have a hunch it's a good idea to get your living in today. Tomorrow is so absolutely uncertain."
Russ was the last person in the world to borrow trouble or to fear tomorrow -- and on the day of his death he had talked excitedly of his new plans -- but he did have this feeling, where his beloved family was concerned, against putting things off.
Not that trouble had overlooked him -- for he had been caused considerable loss of time and money through lawsuits and misplaced confidence. So much so, that in business he was becoming extremely cautious, and skeptical of the promises of others.
Having heard startling rumors of what Hollywood usually does to radio stars who storm its citadel, he came to the screen not grandly confident as came Rudy Vallee, nor yet boyishly eager as came Lanny Ross, but wary, alert for Hollywood's vicious left to the jaw that has sent so many of his contemporaries wobbling to the ropes.
It was an over-developed eagerness to share everything he owned that caused Russ so much trouble during his first broadcasting days, and that resulted in his paying off several thousands of dollars in debts his friends and business associates had contracted.
The first time I called on Russ, he was laid up at home with an arm crippled from too much tennis, and was eager to talk about his first picture.
He was enthused, and anxious to start it, as he felt that the grim misfortune that had dogged him and his family for years (and that had recently taken his brother Fiore in an automobile accident) had finally released its crushing grip.
I'm mighty anxious to make good here, because this town is my alma mater, so to speak. I came here from San Francisco when I was nine, and stayed until we stormed New York and radioland. I was the twelfth son of a family that was not too well off, and that gave me the feeling that it was up to me to look out for myself.
Between playing concerts, studying voice, doing bits in the movies and doubling voice for some of the best known stars in the early days of the talkies, I managed to keep busy.
Then I joined up with Gus Arnheim, and along with Bing Crosby, sang at the Cocoanut Grove -- which brings us to about four years ago, when one of my brothers got the idea of turning an automobile salon into a club where I could fill in my spare time as an entertainer.
It is at this point that Russ Columbo's life story was picked up and made into the motion picture Twenty Million Sweethearts. Jerry Wald learned Russ's story, wrote it for a magazine and then, at Dick Powell's suggestion, rewrote it into a motion picture for Warner Brothers.
It was Con Conrad, the famous composer, who discovered Russ singing at the Columbo Brothers' Pyramid Club on Hollywood Boulevard, and talked him into making a flying trip to New York to storm radio -- and then helped him skyrocket to fame.
"I'll never forget that Saturday we struck New York," smiled Russ, shifting his arm to a more comfortable position. "Once we were there Con didn't let any grass grow under his feet. I had a lot of confidence in him, but being a big kid who had been taken in before, I was a little skeptical when he announced, casually, that inasmuch as he had to make some money for us to eat on, he would give Flo Ziegfeld a buzz and have him come over and hear some of his new songs.
"But when Ziegfeld received Con's phone call, he came over, bringing Harry Richman, Jack Pearl and Mark Hellinger with him."
How Con Conrad next took him to see Earl Carroll (who instantly wanted to put him in his show and write a special part for him) and then on to the midnight audition at the National Broadcasting Company is well-known now, as is also the story of his rapid climb to fame, and the popularity of his "caressing" voice.
He started singing for the broadcasting company at no salary at all, but within two weeks' time his fan mail had grown to such volume that he was signed on a "commercial."
Russ's fan following soon became so enormous and so partial to his voice that a national tour of personal appearances was decided upon -- and after breaking box office records in theatres all over the country, he was sent on a second tour, this time appearing in the largest dance halls and other public buildings available.
About this time the famous Columbo-Crosby feud was being exploited by the different radio broadcasting chains. Bing and Russ had worked together in the same orchestra and, because of the similarity of their voices, a good hot feud looked like excellent publicity copy.
Whenever he was asked about this feud, Russ used to merely grin and wink. He knew it was nonsense and Bing Crosby knew it was nonsense. But it so happened that, just a day before Russ Columbo's death , a newspaper ran a synthetic photograph showing Bing Crosby shooting Columbo -- to illustrate the bitter feud that existed between them. One of those silly, but nevertheless harmful, things that misguided publicity does.
I hope no one took that seriously. "I tell you it gave me an awful shock. A creepy feeling. Everybody who knew either of us intimately knew there was nothing to that feud idea at all. It was started back east, by the radio people.
After both of us settled in California we were together many times at my house and at Carole's. Russ and I were always chummy. Way back when he played a violin in Gus Arnheim's orchestra at the Cocoanut Grove and sang in one trio, while I sang in another, Russ and I used to go around together, sometimes alone and sometimes with Dixie, my wife, and Sally Blane.
We often laughed over this so-called feud of late years -- and figured it would die out when we appeared in pictures, and proved to be such entirely different types.
Russ sent a christening present to my first baby, and flowers for my twins. During Dixie's long confinement, he sent flowers often.
Few people felt Russ's loss more than I did -- because, somehow, it seemed we should be sailing along together, as we had been the last three months of his life. I was proud when asked to officiate at his funeral as a pallbearer, and to play some small part in his last rites.
Thank you, Bing Crosby, for this friendly and fitting tribute.
William French in Modern Screen, December 1934
Edgar Bergen First Performed with Charlie McCarthy at his High School
I can't remember how old I was when I found out that Charlie McCarthy wasn't a real little boy. I doubt I really believed he wasn't a kid until I saw a photograph of Edgar Bergen with Charlie sitting on his lap in one of those radio-TV magazines. No matter -- Charlie remained as real a person to me as all those other wonderful radio folks I had met in the theater of the imagination during my youth.
Charlie McCarthy was, of course, the creation of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. The son of immigrant Swedish parents, Bergen was born in Westside Chicago where his parents operated a dairy business on February 16, 1903. When Edgar was in the fourth grade, the family moved to Decatur, Michigan.
As early as the seventh grade, Bergen began to show an interest in show business. He amused his classmates with imitations of birds and people. Bergen once explained that one evening he was sitting at the kitchen table doing a distant voice when his mother went to the door to see who was outside. It was then Edgar decided he "had something" worth developing. He sent away for a 25-cent book on magic and ventriloquism and practiced every spare moment.
By the time that Edgar's father died and the family moved back to Chicago, show business was definitely in his blood. Even though his history teacher warned Bergen that he would not graduate from high school if his grades didn't improve, he still spend his time writing jokes and sketching pictures of what his first dummy should look like.
His final sketch resembled that of a ruffian named Charlie, who sold newspapers in front of the high school. Bergen gave the drawing to a local carpenter, Theodore Mack, who carved the dummy from a block of pine for about $27. He named his wooden urchin after the newsboy and the sculptor added a Celtic suffix to his name -- and Charlie McCarthy was born.
About three weeks after his teacher's warning of impending scholastic failure, Edgar appeared with Charlie in a student recital before the high school student body and faculty. Since he thought that he wasn't going to graduate anyway, he used Charlie to heckle the faculty including Miss Angel, his history teacher. The students loved it! The next day Miss Angel asked Edgar to remain after class and told him, "I didn't know you were a genius. You must give this great joy to the world ... it needs laughter." Then she told him what to study and what questions would likely be asked on the final examination. Edgar graduated and was booked on the Chautauqua circuit for that summer.
Gary A. Yoggy in Old Tme Radio Digest, March-April 1984
Maurice Zimm: Murder is My Business
The man in the coroner's office glared at me. "What gave you the idea we freeze bodies?" he demanded.
"That isn't exactly what I meant," I said hastily. "You see --."
But it wasn't easy to explain. It never is! People give you that strange look when you tell them that you're trying to figure out an interesting way of committing murder.
As a radio mystery writer, murder has become my business. I lie awake nights devising new ways of committing the "almost-perfect" crime. The children wouldn't even look up from their cereal were I to exclaim to my wife at breakfast, "How would it be to kill a man in the private office of J. Edgar Hoover?" Friends are always dropping in to announce, "Say, I've hit on a marvelous way of killing somebody!"
Yes, murder is my business -- and business is phenomenal! The demand for escapist entertainment is so insatiable that the airlanes are literally cluttered up with criminologists hot on the trail of that elusive clue which will trap the killer just in time for the final commercial.
But it isn't so much the number of mystery series on the air as the fact that each program is broadcast weekly -- at least 39, and often as not 52 weeks a year. And each broadcast is generally a complete adventure in itself. Consider the number of plots and counter-plots -- of murders, motives, red herrings and assorted clues -- that this involves, and you'll begin to appreciate why the radio mystery writer is soon driven to Phenobarbital.
After all, A. Conan Doyle was so exhausted with Sherlock Holmes after 25 stories that he tried vainly to get rid of him over a cliff. And for all of Gilbert K. Chesterton's fabulous ingenuity, Father Brown had in toto but 50 adventures. Yet any run-of-the-mill radio hawkshaw can number his dramatic exploits in the hundreds.
So the next time you're able to pick out the murderer before the first act is over, or recognize a clue that was used on another series just the week before, please don't write to the sponsor. The poor scripter is probably having enough trouble just trying to make the next deadline. And make it they must. You have never yet tuned in to your radio to hear, "Ladies and gentlemen, we regret that The Adventures of ... will not be broadcast tonight, due to the fact that the author couldn't think of a plot."
Granted, there have been cases where the scripter staggered into the studio clutching the last few scenes when the show was already in rehearsal. But when the tense moment comes for the producer in the control room to throw the opening cue, there's always a show to go on -- and whether or not you're satisfied with the quality, you get 29 minutes and 30 seconds of quantity.
Like many another radio mystery writer, I never know from one week to another where my next plot is coming from. I have committed fictional murder in bathtubs and at bridge tables, in airplanes and amphitheatres, in subways and submarines, at New York's 42nd and Broadway, and in the most inaccessible recesses of the Himalayas. Each time I'm desperately certain that I have wrung the last possible murder situation out of my reeling brain, but somehow there's always another -- and another -- and another.
Often the advertising agency which handles the account will offer suggestions. Like the other day when a story editor called and said, "The Old Man thinks it would be cute to find a body in a freezer -- with the plot hinging on the fact that the freezing made it impossible to fix the time of death."
"But," I remonstrated, "that might be awfully tough to figure out."
"Yeah," came the callous reply. "I'll expect it by the end of the week."
So you drop the phone -- and whatever you're doing -- and rush for the library. You look up everything under "freezing," "refrigeration" and "Arctic," but all you achieve is mental confusion. Apparently, no one has ever anticipated your particular problem, or at least never bothered to write about it. Once again, research has let you down.
Next begins a tour of refrigeration plants, cold storage vaults, ice houses and kindred establishments. In some places you pose as a prospective buyer; in others, you frankly state your predicament. By the end of the day you have collected a cold, some embarrassing rebuffs, and a few -- a very few -- helpful facts.
Having tentatively decided how you're going to bring your victim to his frigid end, you start out next morning on the next phase of your problem: the brilliant deduction by which your criminologist is going to solve the case. So you call up all the doctors you know.
Most of them try to be tolerant and understanding. They'd be glad to help you -- if you'd call back, say, in a week. You reply that you'll call back in a week, all right -- about something else. But right now would they please take half a minute to tell you how fast hair grows after death?
Now the real trouble begins. Some of the medicos say that hair does not grow after death. They don't give a pink pill if you did hear it on a radio program with a high Crosley just last week; neither are they impressed by the number of books and magazines you've read it in. It's nothing more than a fable!
But mind you, only some of your doctor friends say that -- not all. A few accept the growth of hair after death as a fact. One eminent urologist is willing to stake their professional reputation on the thesis that for three days following death hair grows at a rate which is readily discernible to the eye; after three days the growth is negligible.
So now you are in a fog! Is it or isn't it true? In desperation you go to the coroner's office and explain that you are concocting a plot about a fellow being frozen to death, and you want to know whether his hair would keep growing after death -- because that's your pivotal clue.
Then it is that the man in the coroner's office glares at you and growls, "Whatever gave you the idea we freeze bodies?"
Well, 48 hours later you finally get an answer that you're ready to accept as final. Your authorities are the coroner's senior pathologist, an ex-coroner and an embalmer who has exhumed hundreds of long-interred bodies.
Hair does not grow after death! The old medical tomes which tell of coffins bursting open from the accumulation of hair on a corpse are ridiculously unscientific! There is no cellular growth after death!
Hurrah, you say to yourself. Now you've really got a story. Exploding that myth is sure to do things to your Crosley.
Feverishly you chain yourself to your typewriter -- contriving, correcting, perfecting, polishing. At last comes the triumphal moment when you stumble into the agency with the script neatly typed -- in triplicate. And what happens? The Old Man holds up the broadcast of your script for a month -- because he, himself, once heard from his grandmother, sainted be her memory, that hair does grow on a corpse.
That's the way it goes. They're always demanding something "different" -- but woe unto you if it's too different. Some of the best, most dramatically inviting clues and data I've ever come across, I haven't dared to use. Everyone would accuse me of having made it up.
Take Dhatura, for instance. It's a drug obtained from the flower of the same name, which grows wild in the fields of India, almost as generally as the daisy and buttercup in America. Dhatura can readily be mixed with food or tobacco, and a small dose of it has the extraordinary effect of robbing the victim temporarily of their memory. A person drugged with Dhatura is not conscious of what happens to them while under its influence. More than that, the victim is even unable to tell how they came to be poisoned. And as the final payoff, Dhatura leaves no trace which can be detected by chemical analysis.
Dear reader, have you ever heard of anything more made to order for the mystery writer? But you don't really believe that it exists, do you? And if I were to use it in a script, you'd take pen in hand and write the sponsor that he better dispense with such hokum -- or never again would you wash with their soap, eat their dessert or buy the economy-sized bottle of their deodorant!
Speaking of trouble, the root of all evil to the radio mystery writer is the all-knowing listener who -- no matter how frantically or effectively the poor author pummels their brain -- can always say, "I told you so" as regards the identity of the murderer.
Consider the handicaps under which the scripter labors. To begin with, the average mystery program restricts them to a maximum of seven actors. This is done for the sake of clarity, as well as budget considerations. And though it makes for better drama, you can't deny that it aggravates the author's problems grievously.
In the average printed whodunit, there is such a parade of characters that you may find yourself turning back a few pages to keep them straight in your mind. The very multiplicity of possible suspects clouds the trail and cloaks the villain. But with only seven characters to work with, well ...
First of all, there's Mr. Master Mind, your criminologist, and his stooge, male or female. That leaves five characters. Then there's the homicide inspector, whom Mr. Master Mind is always showing up. That leaves four characters. Then if the murder doesn't take place prior to the start of your story, or off scene, there's the victim. Which leaves three characters. And of this triumvirate, the smart-alecky listener simply picks the least likely suspect -- and bingo, they've got you!
Some day when I'm entitled to old age benefits, I'm going to cross up this unfair element by making the most likely suspect end up as the murderer. Ah, what a tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth this will produce!
But meanwhile, to paraphrase Lincoln, it's enough to "fool some of the people some of the time!" Besides which, to each scripter there comes occasionally a moment of sheer, unadulterated triumph.
Like the time my severest critic -- the wife, of course -- laid down a script that was hot out of the typewriter and gushed, "Why, I didn't know until the very last page who the murderer was!"
Whereupon I, like a fool, had to up and confess, "Neither did I, old girl!"
Maurice Zimm, the scripter for Hollywood Star Playhouse, Suspense and Lux Radio Theater, in Tune In, February 1946
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This blog has been published since May 29, 2020 (a span of 1,811 days).
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