Radio Recap: Rogue's Gallery

The detective program Rogue's Gallery started under the banner of "Bandwagon Mysteries" as it was a summer subsitute for the Fitch Bandwagon. It ran on NBC from September 27, 1945 until September 22, 1946 with Dick Powell as the titular hero, Richard Rogue. At the time, Powell was changing his image from a "juvenile" leading man (as he'd been since the start of his career in film) to that of a tough guy, taking on the role of Philip Marlowe in 1944's Murder My Sweet to prove he could play other types of characters. Rogue's Gallery helped continue that new trend.

Rogue's Gallery is not a very hard-boiled detective show, however. There's a certain lightness in Powell's voice that seldom goes away and a lightness in the detective stories that keep it from being too serious. Rogue's Gallery is mostly good fun.

The most distinctive factor of Rogue's Gallery is that Richard Rogue would usually get hit on the head once per episode, resulting in a dream sequence in which Richard would visit "Cloud Eight" and encounter his other self, Eugor (Peter Leeds), a cackling imp. Early on in the series, Eugor would often appear around the half-way mark and provide some exposition to remind Richard how he wound up in the situation he was in. As the show progressed, however, they played around with the format; one episode closed with Eugor complaining that Rogue wasn't knocked out - the following week Richard was knocked out about one minute into the drama! In another episode, Richard met Eugor's girlfriend at Cloud Eight instead of Eugor; that led to other episodes where Eugor and his girlfriend both greeted Richard and one where the girlfriend's father was forcing Eugor to marry her.

The Eugor scenes are more than a humorous diversion - they indicate that circa 1945, the trope of a detective getting hit on the head from behind was horribly cliche. What's amazing is that even post-Rogue's Gallery, so many detective shows continued to use that tropes; shows like the Adventures of Philip Marlowe and the Man from Homicide usually deployed a bludgeon to their hero's head once per episode!

Anyway, the Eugor scenes set Rogue's Gallery apart as they sound nothing like what you'd hear on any other detective series (and there were certainly plenty of competing detective shows on the air during its original run). As late as 1951, you can hear an episode of Mickey Rooney's the Hardy Family where Andy Hardy performs a Eugor impression as part of a private eye parody.

After a year in the role, Dick Powell exited the series; after a stab at playing Johnny Dollar in the pilot episode of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, he found a home on Richard Diamond, Private Detective which aired from 1949-1953, initially on NBC. The two shows invite many comparisons: Richard Diamond had no Eugor equivalent but overall had a larger supporting cast; while Richard Rogue had his girlfriend Betty Callahan (Lurene Tuttle), a newspaper reporter who was often involved in his investigations, Richard Diamond dated the wealthy socialite Helen Asher (Virginia Gregg) who almost never got involved in his cases; while Richard Rogue occasionally showed off Dick Powell's marvelous singing voice, it was enshrined on Richard Diamond as every episode featured at least one ditty sung by Powell; while Rogue's Gallery was pretty easy-going, Richard Diamond, Private Detective tended to be even more humorous (although some episodes steered strongly into hard boiled material).

The series soldiered on without Powell; Barry Sullivan (best-rembered for the Unexpected became Richard Rogue for a summer series from June 8-September 28, 1947; then it made one last stab on ABC with Chester Morris (best-known as Boston Blackie) and Paul Stewart as Rogue from November 29, 1950-November 21, 1951. We have only one complete Rogue's Gallery from the Sullivan era (plus 2 fragments) and one episode from the ABC run with Stewart as Rogue. Although Eugor was gone, the series was otherwise the same with Sullivan as the lead, his patter was just as quippy as before. The Paul Stewart version comes across as much more hard-boiled than Powell or Sullivan, probably because Stewart wasn't as laid-back a performer; Eugor can be heard in the Stewart episode but he's no longer on "Cloud Eight," he's instead presented as the voice of Rogue's conscience.

Rogue's Gallery had been written by Ray Buffum up until Powell's departure. Buffum had previously written for A Man Called Jordan; after Powell left, he went on to contribute to the Casebook of Gregory Hood.

In some instances, we only have a rehearsal version of certain episodes of Rogue's Gallery. These sound very close to the broadcast versions but, well... check out the episode "Lady with a Gun" (June 30, 1946) sometime - Dick Powell flubs a line at around the 22:00 mark and emits an expletive you never hear on OTR!

You can hear most of the surviving episodes of Rogue's Gallery in this YouTube playlist created by the Old Time Radio Researchers (for some reason they lack the ABC episode with Paul Stewart, but it's easy to find online).