Night Time shows and Schedule
Bold
Venture was a transcribed syndication by Ziv Corporation. There
were 78 thirty minute episodes produced for release with the premiere
of 26 March 1951.
This was the first radio program staring
Humphrey Bogart who resisted doing live radio shows because of the
time involved. Since this series was transcribed he accepted the
offer.
Humphrey Bogart plays the part of Slate Shannon hotel
owner and owner of a boat called the "Bold Venture". He was
ready to rescue a friend in need or hunt down and enemy. The setting
for the series is Havana, Cuba.
Other regular cast members
include his wife Lauren Bacall, who plays the part of Sailor Duval,
and Jester Hairson who plays the part of King Moses, a calypso
singer.
Music was supplied by David Rose and his Orchestra and
scripts were written by Morton Fine and David Friedkin. Each script
was a pure Bogie and Baby script style.
Lights Out
Lights
Out was one of the most famous—and infamous—series of all time.
Even those not interested in OTR have generally heard of Lights
Out! Created by Wyllis Cooper (of Quiet, Please) in
1934, and passed on to Arch Oboler in 1936, the series went through
several incarnations and reincarnations throughout its long life,
lasting until 1947.
The exact number of episodes is a nebulous
issue, since Oboler frequently renamed episodes several times over
for rebroadcast, expanded the length of some of Cooper's shows, and
freely moved shows back and forth between Lights Out! and
his other projects with re-edited intros, making it very difficult to
identify episode origins with any degree of certainty. To make
matters worse, many shows have been lost over the years. Therefore,
this is by no means a definitive listing (if such a thing can
actually exist), only a partial one based purely on personal bias as
to what properly fits the parameters of this site and what does not.
Episodes vary in length from 15 min to 60 min.
This
series went on the air on July 7, 1943 and lasted until April 22,
1955. A total of 431 episodes were broadcast.
Casey,
Crime Photographer had more history than substance. It was a
B-grade radio detective on a par perhaps with The
Adventures of the Falcon, better than Mr
Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, but lacking the style and
polish of The
Adventures of Sam Spade.
Originally appearing in
the pages of Black Mask, under the watchful eyes of
then-editor Joseph Shaw, Flashgun Casey was the originally
fast-talking crime photographer, a big, hot-tempered Boston Mick with
a gift for gab and a nose for trouble. No "artiste", Casey
kept a bottle of hooch and a .38 in his desk drawer, and boasted of
being able to put a "slug where he aimed" and having "two
big fists he knew how to use". He appeared in several short
stories in the pulps and several novels.
Casey, whose first
name was never revealed, was the major crime photographer at the
fictional Morning Express newspaper. With the help of reporter Ann
Williams, he tracked down criminals and solved numerous crimes on
this popular mystery-adventure series. Often a picture snapped at a
crime scene led Casey to play detective.
Created in 1953 by writer George Lefferts and starring Frank Sinatra in the lead, Rocky Fortune
followed the exploits of a marginally employed jack-of-all-trades Rocko
Fortunato, or Rocky Fortune. Considered a second-rate show even when it
aired, the series found Sinatra at the nadir of popularity after his
1940s crooning heights and just before his career was rekindled with his
role in From Here to Eternity.
The scripts, mostly by George Lefferts and Ernest Kinoy, often stretched
the limits of believability, taking Fortune from jobs as a social
director at a Catskills resort to transporting a truck of nitroglycerine
across the country. Sinatra's cool, somewhat flippant persona brought
the audience along for a fun ride and made it easier to overlook
sometimes absurd situations.
Rocky Jordan was a 1948 CBS radio program sponsored by Del Monte Foods. It focused on the story of Rocky Jordan, a banished American detective who owns a restaurant in Cairo, Egypt. There, he continued to fight thieves, scoundrels, murderers, ex-Nazis, scallywags, and countless beautiful ladies who always put him into trouble. Jack Moyle was the first one to take the role of Rocky Jordan, but when the show returned from its 9-month break, George Raft became the new lead star. Rocky Jordan was always compared to another program called A Man Named Jordan due of some similarities; however, the setting of the former was in Cairo while the latter was in Istanbul. The show was held its goodbye in September 10, 1950.
Having carved out a career as the master of the macabre and cinema’s leading scare merchant in a series of 1960s-lensed Gothic chillers, and having played a rogues gallery of villains, scoundrels and madmen on the big screen in the 1940s and 1950s, Vincent Price was ripe to get his own horror series in the 1970s – especially on radio, which had always been the perfect medium for the veteran actor’s magnificent, mellifluous voice.
A foreboding music theme, a blood-curdling scream, and Price intoning ‘Hello, there…’ welcomed listeners to The Price of Fear, BBC Radio’s late-night serial in which he brought his own elegant eeriness to a series of dramatizations that were sometimes horrific, sometimes with a macabre sense of humor, but always with an inescapable element of fear. They were guaranteed to send a shiver down the spine of the listener just before they turned out the lights.
A detached brain, medieval torture, high-street cannibalism and a bad night in a chamber of horrors were just some of the many curious incidents told by Price, and all were drawn from talented writers – both well-known and new. But just as each story had a deliciously wicked twist, so did the series, as each tale was re-written as though Price had actually experienced the chilling adventure himself. So, let us now turn the light down low, relax and enjoy every moment of it.
Walk Softly, Peter Troy Detective Drama aired on Springbok
Radio from December 10, 1963 to February 21, 1964. This series was
produced in the Durban Studios of Herrick Merril Productions. It starred
Tom Meehan, John Simpson, and Merle Wayne. It was sponsored by Irving
& Johnson, who also sponsored the Gunsmoke series which Walk Softly, Peter Troy replaced.
A sequel to this series was heard on the English Radio Service from May
19, 1964 to November 28, 1964. The sponsors, Irving & Johnson,
reportedly disliked the series, which is why it was discontinued on
Springbok Radio and moved to the English Service. This was the first
series on the English Service that came from an independent production
house, not produced by the SABC.
For over twelve years, from 1949 through 1962 (including a one year
hiatus in 1954-1955), this series recounted the cases "the man with the
action-packed expense account, America’s fabulous freelance insurance
investigator, Johnny Dollar". Johnny was an accomplished 'padder' of
his expense account. The name of the show derives from the fact that he
closed each show by totaling his expense account, and signing it "End
of report... Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar".
Terry Salomonson in his authoritative "A Radio Broadcast Log of the
Drama Program Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar", notes that the original
working title was "Yours Truly, Lloyd London". Salomonson writes "Lloyd
London was scratched out of the body of (the Dick Powell) audition
script and Johnny Dollar was written in. Thus the show was re-titled on
this script and the main character was renamed. Why this was done was
unclear – possibly to prevent a legal run-in with Lloyd’s of London
Insurance Company." Although based in Hartford, Connecticut, the
insurance capital of the world, freelancer Johnny Dollar managed to get
around quite a bit – his adventures taking him all over the world.
Dimension X was first heard on NBC April 8, 1950, and ran until September 29, 1951.
Strange that so little good science fiction came out of radio; they seem
ideally compatible, both relying heavily on imagination. Some fine
isolated science fiction stories were developed on the great anthology
shows, Suspense and Escape. But until the premiere of Dimension X
-- a full two decades after network radio was established -- there were
no major science fiction series of broad appeal to adults. This show
dramatized the work of such young writers as Ray Bradbury, Robert
(Psycho) Bloch, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Kurt Vonnegut.
In-house script writer was Ernest Kinoy, who adapted the master works
and contributed occasional storied of his own.
Dimension X was a very effective demonstration of what
could be done with science fiction on the air. It came so late that
nobody cared, but some of the stories stand as classics of the medium.
Bradbury's "Mars Is Heaven" is as gripping today as when first heard.
His "Martian Chronicles" was one of the series' most impressive
offerings.
On September 30, 1962 a major milestone in radio drama came to an end
with the final episode of the long running series, SUSPENSE.
Ironically, the episode was titled "Devil Stone" and was
the last dramatic radio play from a series that had its roots in the
golden age of radio.
What began as a "new series frankly
dedicated to your horrification and entertainment" took on a
life of its own mostly due to the talents of some outstanding
producers and adaptations and original stories from the cream of
mystery writers of the time. The golden age of radio was truly the
golden age of SUSPENSE as show after show broadcast
outstanding plays which were "calculated to intrigue...stir
[the] nerves."
The Adventures of Sam Spade. Created by Dashiell Hammett and made famous by Humphrey Bogart in the 1941 classic movie The Maltese Falcon, Spade is the quintessential hard-boiled detective.
Cloak and Dagger opened over the NBC network on May 7, 1950.
It had a short run through the Summer on Sundays, changing to Fridays
after its Summer run. The last show aired October 22, 1950.
The
series told fictional stories of OSS agents during World War II who
took dangerous missions behind enemy lines, knowing they may never
return alive.
The series was based on the 1946 book "Cloak
and Dagger: The Secret Story of the OSS" by Corey Ford and
Alastair MacBain. It was a tense half hour of patriots and traitors,
of triumph, tragedy and failure. The stories did not always end in
success -- sometimes, the hero/agent gave up his life. There were 22
episodes, broadcast in 1950.
Escape brings together everything that was good about old-time radio drama rolled into one. The title itself almost sums up the very essence of what radio drama is all about. Each of the episodes was a micro drama carefully planned to capture the listeners attention for thirty minutes. Over two-hundred episodes were made and almost all of them are as good today as they were over half a century ago. For the first few years the series was on air the announcement at the start of the show varied almost every week, but by the 1950s it had settled down to be the now famous:
Tired of the everyday grind? Ever dream of a life of romantic adventure? Want to get away from it all? We offer you ... ESCAPE!
This may give the wrong impression as Escape was far more than a swashbuckling adventure yarn. It was a brilliantly scripted and superbly produced series that brought to listeners adaptations of classic works by famous writers as well as brand new work by unknown talent.
Opening in 1875, the Crime Museum at Scotland Yard is the oldest
museum in the world purely for recording crime. The name "Black
Museum" was coined in 1877 by a reporter from "The
Observer", a London newspaper, although the museum is still
referred to as the Crime Museum. It is this museum that inspired The
Black Museum radio series, produced in London by Harry Alan
Towers.
From Jay Hickerson's "The Ultimate History of
Network Radio Programming and Guide To All Circulating Shows",
the earliest US broadcast date was January 1, 1952. Thirty nine
shows, from the full syndication of fifty two shows, aired over
Mutual stations from January 1, 1952 through June 24, 1952 and
September 30, 1952 through December 30, 1952.
X Minus One aired on NBC from 24 April 55 until 9 January 58 for a total of 124 episodes with one pilot or audition story. There was a revival of the series in 1973 when radio was attempting to bring back radio drama and it lasted until 1975. The show occupied numerous time slots through out its run in the 50's and thus was never able to generate a large following. X Minus One was an extension of Dimension X which aired on NBC from 1950-51. The first fifteen scripts used for X Minus One were scripts used in the airing of Dimension X; however, it soon found its own little niche. The stories for the show came from two of the most popular science fiction magazines at the time; Astounding and Galaxy. Adaptations of these stories were performed by Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts. They even wrote a few original stories of their own. The writers of the magazine stories were not well known then but now are the giants of today. These stories came from the minds of Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Poul Anderson to name a few.