Radio Recap: A Salute to the Law

A Salute to the Law has been indexed online as "the Nick Harris Program" but the Old Time Radio Researchers insist a Salute to the Law is the more accurate title of this series. They also say that this program ran from 1923 until 1942 which would make it the earliest radio program I've featured in my Radio Recaps!

What we do have of the program is dated 1934-1940. It was a 15-minute syndicated show introduced by Nick Harris, a real-life private detective. Harris would present stories that were supposedly drawn from true cases, although it's always hard to know for certain with programs such as these.

A Salute to the Law, then, was a crime program. Each episode dramatized a case, sometimes from the perspective of the law, other times from the perspective of the perpetrator. It was never, however, sympathetic to lawbreakers. Indeed, one episode opens with Harris going on a virtual tirade against the release of repeat offenders, closing his speech with a call for repeat offenders to be jailed for life.

The show sounds a lot like one of its contemporaries, Police Reporter, especially when it dramatizes scenes of murder. There's one particular episode titled "the Female Ogre" about a horrific series of murders committed by a woman that sounds just as sensationalistic as anything on Police Reporter. It's early radio and often primitive - not as nuanced as even Calling All Cars, much less Dragnet or 21st Precinct.

You can hear all the surviving episodes (dated from 1934 up to 1940) of a Salute to the Law in this YouTube playlist created by the Old Time Radio Researchers.