Radio Recap: Counterspy

Counterspy - also called David Harding - Counterspy was a spy drama; unlike the majority of radio spy shows that started after World War II, this was a series that started while the war was underway! It aired on the Blue network (which changed its name to ABC) from 1942-1950 (frequently heard twice per week), then NBC (1950-1953) and finally Mutual (1953-1957). It appears only 2 episodes from the Mutual version still exist. Pepsi-Cola sponsored the show 1949-1950 (representing the majority of surviving episodes), with Gulf Oil taking over in 1952.

The hero, David Harding, was portrayed by a lot of different actors but Don MacLaughlin lasted the longest; others were Phil Sterling, Lawson Zerbe and House Jameson. Although Harding was the central protagonist at the start of the series run, by post-war he always accompanied by agent Harry Peters (Mandel Kramer; also Lawson Zerbe and Phil Sterling), who did most of the undercover work on the show.

The series was produced by Phillips H. Lord, best-known as the creator of Gang Busters but also creator of Mr. District Attorney. Lord was apparently inspired by current events, looking to the USA's entry into World War II as an opportunity to tell espionage tales featuring Nazi spies.

Strangely, Counterspy became less of a spy program after the war ended. While the wartime version of the series featured plenty of Axis agents, you'd expect they'd turn to communist agents post-war; and yet, the post-war episodes I've heard were concerned primarily with breaking up crime rackets, resulting in a show that sounds almost identical to Lord's Gang Busters. When the series moved to NBC, communists did indeed pop up as adversaries, but Counterspy's agents seemed mostly interested in breaking up criminal gangs. They're very well-known to the public too, who are constantly exclaiming, "It's the Counterspies!"

Thanks to the show's twice-a-week format during the Pepsi-Cola years there were even a few two-part Counterspy episodes, like the story titled "The Case of the Cold-Blooded Professor" (August 30/September 1, 1949) in which the first part detailed the capture of a murderer, then saw him escape in part two, resulting in a pursuit to recapture him. Another two-parter was "The Case of the Postal Pirates" (September 20 and 22, 1949).

As the show went on, I noticed the Pepsi-Cola advertisements were integrated with the plot. Very frequently, Harding and Peters would specifically pause to enjoy a cool, refreshing Pepsi-Cola and comment to each other what a fine beverage it was. If the writers thought this was subtle they were mistaken.

Counterspy isn't bad-- those earliest episodes where Harding would recruit ordinary people as spies against the Axis is very different from other espionage radio shows. However, as the show went on, I felt it became a bit more juvenile (maybe it's just those cheerful Pepsi-Cola jingles). It was never a very sophisticated program but those earliest broadcasts are interesting as a wartime spy programmer.

Counterspy spawned two movies: David Harding, Counterspy (1950) and Counterspy Meets Scotland Yard (1950), both starring Howard St. John as David Harding.

The Old Time Radio Researchers have a YouTube playlist of Counterspy.

Radio Recap: That Hammer Guy

"The number one selling mystery character in all fiction is on the air!The hard-hitting private eye Mike Hammer!"

That Hammer Guy was a Mutual radio program that ran from December 20, 1952 to October 5, 1953. It was an adaptation of Mickey Spillane's character Mike Hammer. Larry Haines performed as Mike Hammer during most of the run, with Ted de Corsia apparently taking over near the end, while Jan Miner portrayed Hammer's secretary Vera. In some places the show was advertised as Mickey Spillane Mysteries, which has a little more dignity than That Hammer Guy. The show was written by Edward Adamson (the Shadow, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, Counterspy, the Private Files of Rex Saunders) and directed by Richard Lewis (Adventures of the Falcon, Quick as a Flash).

Adamson did his best to write dialogue as lurid as that of Spillane, such as: "You watch her walk down the park path, swinging her hips like a basketball player taking a pivot shot." But I've never read a Mike Hammer story - my knowledge of the character is mostly restricted to the 1955 movie Kiss Me Deadly - so I can't say whether the writing and characterization are correct. I do prefer Larry Haines' performances as Hammer simply because Haines had a great radio voice (he was in a lot of Inner Sanctum Mysteries).

The show is seriously held back by the recycled music; I was surprised to learn it was a Mutual program as it used the same music heard on NBC shows like Rocky Fortune, Barrie Craig, the Private Files of Rex Saunders, Cloak and Dagger and the Chase that I've complained about so often on this blog; so, apparently these music cues weren't owned by NBC because they were used on more than one network. Perhaps they were cues used by the same syndication company.

Audio quality on many of the surviving episodes is very poor; married with the low production values and rote storytelling, I can't recommend That Hammer Guy on any level; there are far better detective programs out there.

There's a collection of That Hammer Guy episodes at the Internet Archive.

Radio Recap: Up for Parole

"Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to sit in judgment on another human being's freedom, to decide whether he or she shall become your neighbor, your employee, perhaps your friend, or remain where you, society, have put him behind prison bars; for that human being is a social offender, a criminal now... Up for Parole

Up for Parole was a CBS program that ran from March 10 to December 8, 1950. This was another series based on true crimes that attempted to find a different angle for dramatizing these stories. What made Up for Parole different is that each episode was set before a parole board as they interrogated a criminal whose parole had come up. The criminal would start to narrate the circumstances which led him to be arrested, leading to the drama of that week's episode. Throughout, the parole board would interject whenever the narrating criminal seemed to overlook or omit something from his backstory. At the end of the half-hour, the parole board would determine whether or not parole would be granted.

One of the tensions of the show is whether the man facing the parole board is speaking the truth. Sometimes he turns out to be an unrepentant criminal who lies about certain facts-- which the parole board will then use to discredit him at the end. But in the majority of available episodes, the people up for parole are genuinely contrite and the board shows mercy upon them.

Up for Parole is pretty good - CBS dramas usually are. One episode in particular, "Clinton Foster" (September 1, 1950) is a very compelling drama about a hard-luck young man who foolishly tries to rob the bank in his home town. The music in that episode is particularly good.

The series apparently ran for 39 episode, yet strangely we only have 10 surviving examples; usually CBS programs are much better-preserved than this. Perhaps more will turn up.

There's a collection of Up for Parole episodes at the Internet Archive.

Radio Recap: Stand by for Crime

Not to be confused with Stand by for Adventure.

Stand by for Crime was a syndicated mystery program that aired in 1953. Glenn Langan starred as Chuck Morgan, a news anchor at KOP Los Angeles. Adele Jurgens (Glen's real-life wife) portrayed Carol Curtis, Chuck's blonde secretary. Other performers weren't credited, such as Chuck's news editor "Pappy." It sure sounds to me like June Foray portrays children heard on this series. Episodes of Stand by for Crime have clipped endings (often the files end at the exact moment of the last line of dialogue), indicating that if there were credits, they've been removed.

Although Chuck Morgan was supposed to be a Los Angeles news anchor, he spent a lot of time getting involved in breaking up criminal activities of all sorts, ranging far wide of L.A. Not only the police but even the FBI often kick off an episode by asking for his help. Heck, in one episode Chuck visits the South American nation of "Payola" (groan) just after a revolution has installed a dictatorship. In another episode, Pappy asks Chuck to go undercover and find out who the local communist ringleaders are; that certainly sounds like the premise of I Was a Communist for the FBI, but Chuck somehow manages to discredit himself as a communist sympathizer, find himself sought out by local communists then expose them to the authorities in what seems to be about a week's time. Credibility was not Stand by for Crime's strong suit.

The attempts at quippy dialogue between Chuck and Carol didn't always come off well. Although Carol was not portrayed as a ditzy blonde, Chuck would deride her intelligence as though she were. For example, there's this exchange:

Chuck: "Did you say something, glamourpuss?"
Carol: "No."
Chuck: "Well, why not? You're usually talking."
Carol: "I was just thinking."
Chuck: "With what? I-I mean, what about?"

Old-Time Radio misogyny!

Chuck never fails to remind you once per episode that Carol is his blonde secretary, but Carol wasn't My Friend Irma- just a seemingly average secretary who puts up with a lot of jokes at her expense.

I think Chuck is by far the series' greatest drawback; it's not just the constant put-downs delivered at Carol, he also has a way of sounding bored and laconic when people bring him their problems. A good example of that is the episode where a man being threatened by the Mafia asks Chuck for help. After the man explains his problem and why he's afraid of speaking to the police, Chuck sounds rather bored and dismissive of the man (all of this is immediately preceding another insulting remark directed at Carol). Glenn Langan just couldn't make Chuck sound like an appealing protagonist, not with dialogue and delivery like that; Dick Powell or Howard Duff could make a series lead with Chuck's qualities work just through wry and witty delivery; absent such talent, you're left with a somewhat loathsome leading man.

Fortunately, at times the writers seemed to get that; one episode, "the Clueless Crime," has Chuck behave at his most odious towards Carol during the drama, but he closes the episode with a very earnest apology, entirely devoid of his usual condescending smart-aleck tone; it's a welcome anomaly.

The Old Time Radio Researchers have all 26 episodes of Stand by for Crime at the Internet Archive.

Radio Recap: Stand by for Adventure

"Stop! Don't move! I want to talk to you. Yes, you who remain in your hot little room, never venturing out beyond your neighborhood. Are you afraid? Are you afraid of the strange and turbulent things that happen in distant lands, in places outside your own ken? For example, are you afraid of the sounds that a South American swamp makes? Yes, a swamp does make noise, you know. A selfish noise. A sucking noise. As if it were anxious to draw you to it, and hold you there, forever. Or is the sound of a-- the sound of a knife, whisking across a squalid room in Baghdad? Or is the sound of the wind as it cuts through the snowy corpses kept company by a single rifle shot of a guerrilla fighter? Come now, tell me: what are you afraid of, that keeps you in your hot little room? Oh, you're not afraid at all. It's just that you haven't the time to travel, you haven't the time to become mixed-up in some adventure in Mesopotamia or Ecuador or even a county jail. Well, I can understand your not having time, but you don't have to travel, you know, to live through these adventures for they'll be brought right into your hot little room, your safe little room by means of: your radio. So, listen to a familiar voice, a voice you know well, a voice you can trust while he tells you how you can Stand by for Adventure!"

Stand by for Adventure was a syndicated 15-minute adventure anthology program. There's very little information about the series on the web, but Radio Goldindex identifies it as an NBC syndicated show from 1950; it also identifies 30 episodes that are known to still exist, yet only 16 are currently circulating online. I haven't seen a complete log of this program, but it appears there were as many as 68 episodes originally produced.

Arnold Moss was the series' narrator and it sounds like Parker Fennelly was the announcer. Otherwise, no performers were credited.

Stand by for Adventure is a lot like the World Adventurers Club in that each episode features a story of high adventure narrated amongst a group of adventurers. However, unlike that earlier show, Stand by Adventure had a rotating cast of just four men swapping stories amongst each other. The four men were: Major Gordon (a British officer), Captain Quigley (a sea captain), Richard Moore (newspaper reporter) and Dr. Avillo (a scientist and host to the others).

I found this show to be pretty good - an interesting mix of adventure, humour and the supernatural. This is a nice little diamond in the rough and I'm sure the surviving non-circulating episodes will eventually turn up online.

You can hear the 16 circulating episodes of Stand by for Adventure at the Old Time Radio Researchers Library. Note that their episodes are very disorganized; this series needs a little love from a willing and knowledgeable fan.

Radio Recap: Theatre Royal

Theatre Royal was another syndicated radio series by producer Harry Alan Towers, released in 1954. It was broadcast over NBC and episodes tend to have NBC commercials in them.

As I've noted before, Towers tended to scoop up actors who were desperate for work, but that doesn't seem quite true in this instance - Theatre Royal was hosted by Laurence Olivier, who definitely didn't need to scrape around for work. Mind you, although he hosted every episode, Olivier didn't act in all of them. The first few episodes each opened with Olivier assuring listeners that he'd eventually appear in a starring role.

So Towers might have been paying good money for Olivier, but he saved money by using public domain stories. Some of them are the same sort Nelson Olmsted or the Weird Circle dramatized (ie, Balzac's "La Grande Breteche," Stevenson's "Queen of Spades," Wells' "the Country of the Blind") but others are stories seldom heard on radio - Wilde's "Lord Saville's Crime," Gogol's "the Overcoat," Conrad's "the Black Mate."

When Olivier wasn't starring, the lead roles went to pretty good performers: Orson Welles, Robert Donat, Michael Redgrave and Alec Guinness.

In the back half of the series, Ralph Richardson took over as the host (and usually lead performer) of the series. As in other programs Towers produced, I find Ralph Richardson is underwhelming as a radio performer. He didn't enunciate clearly; the back half of Theatre Royal is consequently less-interesting to listen to.

The Old Time Radio Researchers have their collection of Theatre Royal episodes on the Internet Archive.

Radio Recap: Case Dismissed

Case Dismissed was a 13-episode program produced as an educational series on NBC from January 23 until April 17, 1954. The series was designed to educate listeners - including teenagers - about important matters of the law and especially to dispel many fictions that people spread about the law. The show was hosted by John C. Fitzgerald, the dean of Loyola University Law School.

All of this sounds it would make for dry, uninteresting radio (especially if you're familiar with my disdain for 1950s NBC dramatic programming) but Case Dismissed is surprisingly good at what it set out to achieve. It featured large casts of good radio actors and appropriate use of sound effects. You might even learn something important about the rule of law in the USA (if such a thing still exists).

The episodes create various dramatic scenarios where a protagonist makes an error (usually by thinking they don't need a lawyer to solve a problem) and lands themselves with major legal headaches. The formula is done differently depending on the particular problem, such as in "Legal Wills" in which a man dies early in the episode with no legal will for his wife; as a ghost, he observes the problems he's left for his wife.

You can hear the 12 surviving episodes in this Old Time Radio Researchers' YouTube playlist.