The Let George Do It episode of Christmas Day, 1950 is called "Santa Claus in Glass" and opens with a gentle send-up of a typical detective scene as the supposed "victim" is George and Brooksie's Christmas duck! The drama also closes with a fine Christmas greeting from Bob Bailey.
Another Christmas radio program tomorrow!
In the December 10, 1949 episode "Jack Frost," a department store's Jack Frost goes missing. It isn't a tradition I'm familiar with, but it seems some department stores used a Jack Frost figure instead of Santa Claus himself. Anyway, Candy looks for the missing Jack Frost and finds him dead, then recruits her friend Rembrandt to assume the role of Jack Frost while she hunts the killer.
Another Christmas radio program tomorrow!
The Lone Wolf, alias Michael Lanyard, was a lot like Boston Blackie - not only a thief who turned hero but also debuted in prose then moved on to movies and radio (also television!). He was created by Louis Joseph Vance.
The Lone Wolf's radio series lasted from June 29, 1948 to January 1, 1949 on Mutual -- and the only surviving episode appears to be the final episode, which just happens to be a Christmas-themed program! The title is "The Golden Santa" and concerns the Lone Wolf (portrayed by Walter Coy) being hired by a woman who claims to have lost a golden statue of Santa Claus.
Another Christmas radio program tomorrow!
Here's another series I haven't blogged about before; 21st Precinct was one of many police procedural shows that drifted into radio through the wake of Dragnet but it was a little different - there wasn't much action or gunplay, it dealt in the humdrum daily life of a police precinct and the variety of cases that came through their doors, which didn't always mean there was a crime to be solved. It ran on CBS from 1953-1956 with Everett Sloane in the lead as Captain Canelli.
In the bittersweet Christmas episode "The Giver" (December 22, 1954), the police are called to investigate an old man who is said to be selling merchandise from his apartment. As it turns out, he's not selling it - he's giving it away - and he can't account for why it was all delivered to his apartment in the first place!
Another Christmas radio program tomorrow!
Today, let's check in on Sherlock Holmes - via the New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes! This was the series that began with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and Watson but by the time of the episode I'm featuring (December 21, 1947) the roles had been adopted by John Stanley and Alfred Shirley.
In "the Adventure of the Christmas Bride," Holmes and Watson investigate the scene where a woman was once sealed inside a trunk and died, supposedly leaving behind a ghost who haunts a bride-to-be.
Another Christmas radio program tomorrow!
Although Blackie's background was that he was a criminal with a heart of gold; the movies and radio made him a reformed criminal. Despite his good nature, Blackie was perpetually accused of being involved in whatever crime was most recently committed, thanks to the easily-befuddled Inspector Faraday, easily the dumbest of all dumb radio cops.
The episode referred to as "Stolen Rings at Christmas" (December 22, 1948) concerns a criminal who hides some stolen rings inside a street corner Santa Claus' donation pot. To get the rings back, Blackie poses as Santa himself and has to sing 'Jingle Bells' to save his life! It's not radio at it's best but it's a diverting yarn.
Another Christmas radio program tomorrow!
Here's a series I've never written about before: Casey, Crime Photographer. It was based on the pulp magazine hero and adapted to radio by Alonzo Deen Cole (best-known for the Witch's Tale) with Staats Cotsworth as Casey. It aired on CBS in the timeslot right after Suspense and apparently did very well at retaining Suspense's audience, evidently beating whatever NBC was airing in their timeslot.
There are a few episodes of Casey, Crime Photographer set during the holidays but I rather like the episode titled "Christmas Shopping" from December 19, 1946. Casey and his sidekick Ann happen to witness a man get pickpocketed - but when they confronted the man who was robbed, he denies having lost his money. Casey's convinced this is part of a scheme.
Another Christmas radio program tomorrow!
The 12 days before Christmas "Those Old Radio Shows" would spend the first half-hour on a series they called, "The 12 Days of Christmas." These were shows they only broadcast around Christmas time and some of them represented series who had no other episodes circulating in their library. It was one of my favourite times to be tuning in! So this year, I'm going to feature a different Christmas broadcasts on the days leading up to Christmas, with the 12th program on Christmas Day - and as a further link, all of the programs featured will be detective/crime programs!
A series I haven't spotlighted before is Calling All Cars, an early CBS radio program (1933-1939). It was written and produced by William N. Robson, who'd later produce shows like the Man Behind the Gun, Shorty Bell, Beyond Tomorrow, Escape and a few years of Suspense.
As I've noted before, it took a while for radio to start offering Christmas-themed programs, especially on dramatic programs - yet Calling All Cars got in on the act December 25, 1934 with the program "Human Side of a Cop." Calling All Cars was considered a pretty violent program for it's time, so on this Christmas they spent the program highlighting stories about police officers resolving problems peacefully.
Another Christmas radio program tomorrow!
"Countdown for blast-off. X Minus Five, four, three, two. X Minus One. Fire."
There are differences, however. As I noted yesterday, X Minus One had a slightly smaller timeslot (some episodes are just 20 minutes to make room for news and commercials). Also, the tone was much more light and jocular - they added author Robert Sheckley to those they adapted from and his work was mostly humorous. The original stories told on X Minus One were also fairly humorous; when they ran up against a Dimension X script with a gruesome ending (ie, "the Veldt,") they weren't afraid to rewrite the ending into something softer. X Minus One was, generally speaking, the softer, gentler program.
I do owe X Minus One for introducing me to Robert Sheckley. Some of the episodes of the series were adapted from him, especially the hilarious "Skulking Permit" about a human colony who try to prove how Earth-like they are by hiring a town criminal. He also penned "the Lifeboat Mutiny," "a Wind Is Rising" and "Bad Medicine."
Other great adaptations on X Minus One were Tom Godwin's "Cold Equations"; Clifford Simak's "Junkyard" and "Drop Dead"; L. Sprague De Camp's "A Gun for Dinosaur"; Fritz Leiber's "A Pail of Air"; Milton Lesser's "the Sense of Wonder"; Gordon R. Dickson's "Lulungomeena"; Murray Leinster's "If You Was a Moklin"; Theodore Sturgeon's "Mr. Costello, Hero" and "Saucer of Loneliness"; Katherine MacLean's "Pictures Don't Lie"; Frederick's Pohl's "the Haunted Corpse"; and James H. Schmitz's moving story "Caretaker."
Ernest Kinoy adapted most of the stories and penned a few himself, including "Project Trojan" about an effort to fabricate inventions during World War II by using science fiction ideas; and "Real Gone" in which dee jay Al "Jazzbo" Collins portrayed himself (probably the nearest thing to a beat generation science fiction story on radio).
If you want your science fiction to learn a little on the hard side then these won't be for you - X Minus One didn't really tackle big ideas or realistic experiences with fantastic technologies - it was mostly played for fun. If it's fun you want, then X Minus One will likely deliver. I feel Dimension X was the stronger version but it's still a fine series.
Here is the Old Time Radio Researchers Group collection of X Minus One on YouTube!
"Adventures in time and space told in future tense! Dimension X!"
Tomorrow I'll be looking at X Minus One so I won't get too deeply into that series except to acknowledge that yes, the majority of Dimension X episodes were also dramatized on X Minus One, but the latter program had a shorter running time and would often truncate the Dimension X scripts, even making substantial changes to the climax of "the Veldt," for instance!
Unlike X Minus One, Dimension X (April 1950-September 1951) was sponsored for part of its run by Wheaties. Despite being an NBC series it had unique music that wasn't simply recycled from their library. And it featured a majority of programs that were adapted from recent science fiction publications, sprinkling in a mix of original stories written by NBC staffers (notably Ernest Kinoy).
In 2016 I blogged about Ray Bradbury's radio adaptations for Halloween, including "Kaleidoscope," "the Martian Chronicles," "Marionettes, Inc.," "the Veldt," "There Will Come Soft Rains," "Mars Is Heaven!," "Zero Hour," "And the Moon Be Still as Bright." They also adapted his stories "To the Future" and "Dwellers in Silence" and at that time, Bradbury was one of the biggest and best-known authors of science fiction.
Other famous authors on Dimension X who received great adaptations were Kurt Vonnegut ("the Barnhouse Effect"), Jack Williamson ("With Folded Hands"), Robert Bloch ("Almost Human"), Robert A. Heinlein ("the Green Hills of Earth" and "Requiem"), Murry Leinster ("A Logic Named Joe"), Donald Wollheim ("The Embassy"), H. Beam Piper ("Time and Time Again").
Of the original scripts presented on Dimension X I most enjoyed "Perigi's Wonderful Dolls" (I recently blogged about it here); the space invasion story "No Contact'; the bittersweet "Martian Death March"; and the invasion-in-plain-sight story "The Parade."
Dimension X had a bit of humour in the shows I've listed above ("A Logic Named Joe" is a fairly wry bit of comedy) but not as much as X Minus One would. It was an early entry in the effort to prove adult audiences would listen to science fiction drama so Dimension X took itself fairly seriously; I think that paid off for the series - it still sounds good to this day.
Here's the Old Time Radio Researchers collection of Dimension X on YouTube.
Tomorrow: I fire off X Minus One.
It became a NBC program from January-March, 1945 with Edgar Barrier as the Saint. It came back on CBS for June-September, 1945 with Brian Aherne taking over. I haven't heard any surviving copies of this version.
But the Adventures of the Saint really got cooking in 1947 when CBS brought it back and gave the role of Simon Templar to one Vincent Price, who had a pretty respectable Hollywood career at the time. Price stuck with the role of the Saint up to May 1951, sticking with the series from CBS to Mutual and finally NBC.
I don't know what true blue fans of the Saint think of Vincent Price's interpretation; I know they have very particular ideas of who the character is and what they expect from an adaptation (for instance, Saint fandom really disliked the 1997 Val Kilmer movie the Saint). From where I sit, Price's Simon Templar doesn't seem to be much like the Leslie Charteris character. He's witty and clever but not much of an outlaw or a rogue. In the Price series, he simply seems to be a well-to-do bachelor who is forever heading out on taxi rides that are interrupted when someone stumbles across his path to say they're the victim of a crime.
Also unlike Simon Templar, Vincent Price wasn't an Englishman, though his posh-sounding Mid-Atlantic accent came close enough. Although he did okay in fights, he was just typical of other radio detectives - that is, he usually got hit over the head once per episode, unlike the Simon Templar of prose who seemed to be almost always in control of the situations he found himself in and usually armed with a gun.
As Vincent Price's Simon Templar was forever getting into taxis (in one early episode, the culprit turns out to be the cab driver he meets), eventually the series simply worked a taxi driver into the cast - Louie (played by Lawrence Dobkin). Even the characters would note in one episode how unlikely it was that Simon would keep getting the same taxi driver in New York, but that was typical of the show's tongue-in-cheek humour. And really, that what was the best part of the Adventures of the Saint; the mystery dramas were really just average so far as other detective programs of the time. The series was elevated by Simon and Louie's humorous banter and occasional lean upon the fourth wall. Jerome Epstein and Louis Vittes wrote many of the episodes, which were usually directed by Helen Mack.
My pick for the best of the series is the terrific Christmas episode "Santa Claus Is No Saint" (December 24, 1950) in which Simon is mistaken for a jewel thief. The banter in this episode is especially humourous; consider it an early Christmas present from me to you.
Although Vincent Price continued in the role of Simon Templar until May 1951, the series continued until July 1951 with Tom Conway assuming the lead role. I like Tom Conway in other roles but I find him too stuffy as Simon Templar; the writing is basically the same as when Price was in the part, but Conway would have been a better fit for a figure like Bulldog Drummond - he just didn't have a lilt in his voice to add the necessary humour.
You can hear the remaining episodes of the Adventures of the Saint on this YouTube playlist.
