Radio Recap: Exploring Tomorrow

Exploring Tomorrow was a latter-day half-hour science fiction program heard on Mutual from December 4, 1957 to June 13, 1958, just as the program X Minus One was wrapping up at NBC. Like X Minus One's predecesor, Dimension X, it was affiliated with the magazine Astounding Science Fiction; unlike Dimension X, it featured active collaboration with the magazine as editor John W. Campbell hosted every episode (which he'd previously done for the short-lived Beyond Tomorrow)!

Exploring Tomorrow has two faults; radio being what it was at the time, it's a very truncated series (episodes tend to run about 15-18 minutes) so the drama is sped through very quickly. The other is the aforementioned Campbell. He considered himself the gatekeeper of science fiction, the tastemaker of the genre, but the man had no talent for dramatics. His unprofessional murmured introductions and outros (while "As Time Goes By" played in the background) really bring down Exploring Tomorrow; as an east coast Mutual program, the actual performances came from the same sort of east coast talent heard on shows like the Mysterious Traveler such as Larry Haines, Mason Adams, Maurice Tarplin, and Lawson Zerbe.

Stories on Exploring Tomorrow came from Astounding and included authors like Robert Silverberg, Isaac Asimov, Gordon Dickson, Philip K. Dick, Murray Leinster and Poul Anderson. Unlike X Minus One, there were no original stories.

X Minus One often had a very whimsical tone, particularly in its stories adapted from Robert Sheckley and the original scripts by Ernest Kinoy. Exploring Tomorrow, being so closely associated with Campbell, had that same Campbellian starchiness. There's precious little light-hearted content - Exploring Tomorrow took itself very seriously. There were even some barbed references to inhuman aliens called "Kinoys" in the episode "The Decision!" Campbell was unkind to people he saw as "outsiders" to the genre (such as Kinoy) dabbling in science fiction and all evidence suggests the majority of science fiction prose writers of the 50s were likewise very hostile towards radio and television people writing in the genre. Note the advertisement above, from an issue of Astounding, with its contempt towards "1930s style BEM's and ray-guns-cum-spaceships!"

Of interest is that Exploring Tomorrow featured its own adaptation of Tom Godwin's "Cold Equations," which did, after all, originate in Astounding. It's a very good adaptation, although I prefer the performances in the X Minus One version.

The first time I heard Exploring Tomorrow it was presented on my local radio station (QR77) as an episode of X Minus One, even though it still had Campbell's mumbled speeches (I didn't know what to make of Campbell's intro and outro - I assumed it was some disc jockey who talked over the original X Minus One intro and outro). The episode was "The Convict" and I wondered then why it sounded so unlike every other X Minus One I'd heard! On the other hand, "The First Men on the Moon" (January 22, 1958) featured a rocket blast that reused the introduction heard on X Minus One! Someone in the sound booth was having fun.

I do like the episode "The Mimic" (by Robert Silverberg) about an extraterrestrial who absorbs other people into its collective - it's a pretty good horror story.

Exploring Tomorrow's brief radio run had nothing to do with quality and everything to do with the diminishing stature of radio drama; when Mutual cancelled the series, it was nothing personal - they were also cancelling the entirety of their dramatic fare on radio!

You can hear the Old Time Radio Researchers' collection of Exploring Tomorrow episodes with the YouTube playlist below:

Radio Recap: Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar

"Another transcribed adventure of the man with the action-packed expense account, America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator: Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar!"

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar was a detective series that ran over CBS from February 11, 1949 until September 30, 1962. It was one of the very last old-time radio shows, ceasing its broadcast run on the same night CBS cancelled Suspense. The role of Johnny Dollar was played by Charles Russell (1949-1950), Edmond O'Brien (1950-1952), John Lund (1952-1954), Bob Bailey (1955-1960; also known for Let George Do It), Bob Readick (1960-1961) and Mandel Kramer (1961-1962). However, it should be stated up front that of them all, Bob Bailey not only had the longest-run, but today, his episodes continue to be the most thoroughly circulated among all episodes of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar; to many fans, Bob Bailey is Johnny Dollar.

In every iteration, Johnny Dollar was an insurance investigator working out of Hartford, Connecticut, who would be sent by insurance companies to investigate their clients' insurance claims. This would involve an element of mystery and usually some danger as Johnny would inevitably find someone trying to steal or destroy an insured item, kill an insured person, or commit insurance fraud. The stories were narrated by Johnny as he indicated the various expenses he incurred on his account. In the early years, he sometimes traveled to investigate clients in exotic locales in Europe, Asia or the Caribbean; but usually, he was stateside. Initially, his tagline "yours truly" came with an implied question mark and his employers would complain about how he'd pad his expense account; that was dropped in time as Johnny became increasingly virtuous; by the time of Bob Bailey, his integrity was unassailable.

An audition program from December 7, 1948 still exists but although the script would turn up on the eventual series, the production is quite different from the eventual series; it was produced by Anton M. Leader (Words at War, Murder at Midnight, Suspense) and starred Dick Powell (who was in between Rogue's Gallery and Richard Diamond, Private Detective at the time)! It's even more surreal hearing Bob Bailey as the bad guy in the 2nd version of the pilot (which was Charles Russell's audition)! Leader didn't stick around past the original pilot, with Richard Sanville producing the series in its early days.

Richard Diamond seemed to haunt the series at times; in "Murder Ain't Minor" (August 7, 1949), Dollar quipped to his client, "There's any number of good licensed private detectives that you could have gone to: Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade and Richard Diamond-- and he would not only have solved your case he would also sing you a song; why did you come to me?" In a final, strange connection, a script from Richard Diamond, Private Detective was recycled with Johnny Dollar as "The Shayne Bombing Matter" (July 14, 1953)!

The series was sustained by CBS for most of its run but Wrigley's served as their sponsor from 1950-1954.

Early episodes had very typical titles but as of "The Abel Tackett Matter" (May 2, 1950) the series set itself apart from others by using "Matter" in the title of every episode. At times in the John Lund era the show would play like a police procedural; "The Dameron Matter" (April 21, 1953) for example, featured Johnny working alongside the police to solve a crime connected to his insurance company.

Music in early episodes was by Leith Stevens, who was also scoring Escape at the time - and indeed, the two shows had very similar organ music then. Wilbur Hatch took over the music when it shifted away from the organ to orchestral; music was mostly canned by 1955 but the series did at least have its own unique music bridges and themes (unlike NBC where every dramatic show used the same music library).

Bob Bailey's initial tenure on the series saw a switch from the half-hour format to a 15-minute Monday-Friday format in 1955. In this era, Johnny would usually solve a single case over 5 days (but some cases ran into 2 weeks). The serialized Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar is probably the most-beloved version of the series (it was my introduction to the program) and these days some fans have edited them into uninterrupted dramas that run about 1 hour each. But this format change only lasted for a year before reverting to the half-hour version.

The Bob Bailey years also included the one time Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar featured a guest star - Vincent Price, who portrayed himself as Johnny's client in "The Price of Fame Matter" (February 2, 1958). It's a fun episode for us Vincent Price fans. On the completion of Bailey's fifth year as Johnny Dollar the program celebrated with "The Five Down Matter" (September 25, 1960), with appearances by most of Johnny's supporting characters.

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar didn't have a supporting cast in the way most detective programs did. There were all sorts of recurring characters but they didn't appear in every episode; in the Bailey years, Johnny had a girlfriend, Betty Lewis (Virginia Gregg, who previously starred opposite Bailey on Let George Do It), but she only appeared when it suited the plot. Similarly, Johnny had all sorts of insurance company representatives who would send him on his assignments, such as Pat McCracken (usually played by Lawrence Dobkin), but as Johnny was a freelancer he took his assignments from a variety of different companies. There were recurring clients as well, such as the wealthy eccentric Alvin Cartwright (Howard McNear).

The series was produced in Hollywood until 1960, when it moved to New York (costing them Bailey as their lead). It had benefited from CBS' terrific cast of Hollywood radio regulars, including William Conrad, Lawrence Dobkin, Parley Baer, John Dehner, Georgia Ellis, Virginia Gregg, Joseph Kearns, Howard McNear and Raymond Burr. In New York, it drew from the likes of Jackson Beck, Santos Ortega, William Redfield, Raymond Edward Johnson, Luis Van Rooten and Maurice Tarplin -- the same voices heard on Suspense in its own twilight years.

I count myself as a typical Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar fan in that I prefer the Bob Bailey years. The Edmund O'Brien years have some interest, particularly as they have longer stories (the Baily half-hours used lots of commercials), but I don't have much interest in the New York years - I found Mandel Kramer in particular to be an uninteresting Johnny Dollar.

The Old Time Radio Researchers have a YouTube playlist containing 721 episodes of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar! It includes all the audition recordings and, where the broadcast versions haven't been found uses what are clearly rehearsal versions (particularly in the Edmond O'Brien era).

Radio Recap: Strange Wills

"Dead men's wills are often strange; we cannot attempt to understand them, or try to find the answers; we can but tell the story."

Strange Wills was a syndicated program from Teleways that was hosted by Warren William. It was apparently aired from June 8-December 7, 1946. The show was produced by Robert Webster Light, directed by Albert Ulrich and featured the music of Del Castillo (of Escape).

Warren William had a long career in films that mostly peaked in the 1930s; I thought he was great in Employees' Entrance. He mostly starred in Warner Bros. films and played a lot of detectives, including Perry Mason, Philo Vance, the Lone Wolf and, uh, the not-Sam Spade in Satan Met a Lady.

Some of the dramas were the story of how an unusual will was written, with the will not entering the drama until the climax. In others, the will's reading would set off the drama as the inciting incident. Frequently, the emphasis of Strange Wills was on romance, only occasionally on mystery or thrills.

The episode "Madman's Diary" (August 17, 1946) features the diary of a scientist who claimed he could send people's minds backwards in time to their past lives; it plays out like an episode of the Mysterious Traveler -- it's nothing like the rest of the show!

Warren William usually portrayed a character in the drama in addition to his role as narrator; the cast included the likes of William Conrad, Lurene Tuttle, Howard Culver and Peggy Webber.

Strange Wills is a bit of odd fare; if you want to experience something well-made but off-the-wall, it might fit the bill.

You can hear the Old Time Radio Researchers' collection of Strange Wills episodes with the YouTube playlist below; it opens with the show's audition and pitch, which features a variety of clips from episodes:

Radio Recap: Let George Do It

"Personal Notice: Danger's my stock-in-trade. If the job's too tough for you to handle, you've got a job for me, George Valentine. Write full details."

Let George Do It was a half-hour detective show that starred Bob Bailey as George Valentine, who obtained his clients from an ad in the newspaper that emphasized his status as an odd-job man. His sidekick was Claire Brooks ("Brooksie") portrayed by Frances Robinson (later Virginia Gregg). George's frenemy with the police was Lt. Riley (Wally Maher). Let George Do It aired on Mutual for an impressive eight years from October 18, 1946 until September 27, 1954. It's the work Bob Bailey was best-known for prior to assuming the lead on Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. When he left to take over that series, Olan Soule became George Valentine (we have only a few of his episodes).

In the early days Brooksie was accompanied by her kid brother Sonny (Eddie Firestone Jr.). The tone of the series in the first year was originally broadly comedic; it was only in the second year that Sonny took a hike and the series became more of a traditional detective series. The show's original opening was:

"George Valentine has been out of uniform only a few weeks. Blessed with an abundance of energy and adventuresome spirit and not too much money, he has sunk his last dime in an office, renting a few pieces of furniture and an ad in the classified section of the daily paper, an ad which reads: You have a crime that needs solving? You have a dog that needs walking? You have a wife that needs spanking? Let George do it!"

That "You have a wife that needs spanking?" line was in particular timed for comedic effect. Plots of the first season are very simple, quaint... like an Archie comic book. Listening to the first year, it's amazing that they were given enough rope to retool the series into something a bit more formulaic but also better able to hold up year after year.

Let George Do It featured plenty of familiar radio actors in the supporting roles, including Luis Van Rooten, Paul Frees, Barney Phillips, Betty Lou Gerson, Tony Barrett, Herb Butterfield, Howard McNear, Pedro De Cordoba, Georgia Ellis, Lurene Tuttle, Jeff Chandler and William Conrad.

I've given grief to some other radio detective shows for how they depicted the hero's gal Friday, so I should note Virginia Gregg's Brooksie was a cut above them; she had the typical unrequited love for the hero (George always seemed to be too busy to focus on his relationship with Brooksie) but she wasn't bitter or manipulative, nor was she a flaky airhead. She took part in George's investigations and accepted risky assignments.

I find Let George Do It to be a decent enough program. I can't say that any episodes really stand out to me, but Bob Bailey's performances hold up well. If you like Bailey on Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, you probably enjoy Let George Do It too.

The Old Time Radio Researchers have a YouTube playlist of 243 episodes of Let George Do It - the syndicated versions are at the end of the list, some are available in both network and syndicated versions; the syndicated versions have a somewhat irritating mumbling announcer:

RIP: Sal Buscema

"Our Pal" Sal Buscema passed away last Saturday, just 2 days shy of his 90th birthday. He was the brother of the legendary comics artist John Buscema and got his start inking his brother. He wound up toiling as a penciler and inker at Marvel Comics from 1969 up to 2011. In his time, he worked on just about every major Marvel property, everything from Rom to Spectacular Spider-Man.

While his brother has earned plenty of accolades for his work, Sal hasn't received too many honours for his work (although I note my colleagues at the Inkwell Awards gave him four awards). Sal's most warmly-received run is probably his work on Defenders in the 1970s, but fans dub it "Steve Gerber's Defenders," not "Gerber and Buscema's."

I think Sal Buscema was seen as a "house style" artist - that is, people thought he imitated other artists (like his brother and Jack Kirby) rather than developing his own style. And yet, his style - especially as seen in Spectacular Spider-Man - is undeniably unique. His collaboration with writer Walter Simonson on Thor saw him shift his style to suit Simonson's own art; his long run on Incredible Hulk included a period with moody inks by Gerry Talaoc; and his Spectacular Spider-Man run included a run of stories where he was inked by Bill Sienkiewicz - it's scarcely recognizable as his old "house style."

When Sal Buscema was chosen as the cover artist for the series of Marvel Legacy handbooks we created in 2006 (he wound up drawing the covers to the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s books) I was honoured to have his art grace our cover as at the time, he was one of the last surviving 1960s Marvel artists, a genuine link to the past, which is what our books were honouring.

Rest in peace, Mr. Buscema.

Coming from Marvel in April: Annihilation Conquest TPB!

I haven't worked for Marvel in over a decade but some of my books - like Annihilation Saga - keep being reprinted. I'm always happy to see it brought back; solicit below:

ANNIHILATION MODERN ERA EPIC COLLECTION: CONQUEST PROLOGUE TPB

Volume #3 in the Annihilation Modern Era Epic Collections

Writer(s): DAN ABNETT, ANDY LANNING, CHRISTOS GAGE, KEITH GIFFEN and MORE
Pencils: MICHAEL PERKINS, MIKE LILLY, TIMOTHY GREEN II and MORE
Cover Artist(s): GABRIELE DELL’OTTO
272 PGS./Rated T+ …$37.99
ISBN: 9781302967116
Trim size: 6-5/8 x 10-3/16

Setting the stage for a sci-fi epic that will rock Marvel’s cosmos!

In the grim aftermath of the Annihilation War, a devastated universe struggles to rebuild. Gripped by fear and paranoia, civilizations have collapsed, and entire worlds are now smoking ruins. What’s next for the battle-weary hero known as Nova? What are Ronan’s plans for the once-mighty Kree Empire? And now that Peter Quill is once again Star-Lord, which cosmic characters will join his ragtag crew to guard the galaxy? Meanwhile, the new Quasar – Phyla-Vell, daughter of Captain Marvel – embarks on an epic journey, but what has happened to her home world? What classic foe of the Avengers is now hunting her? And what is troubling her lover, Moondragon? All the while, a devastating threat looms that threatens conquest – and annihilation!

Collecting ANNIHILATION: CONQUEST PROLOGUE (2007) #1, ANNIHILATION: CONQUEST – QUASAR (2007) #1-4, ANNIHILATION: CONQUEST – STARLORD (2007) #1-4 and ANNIHILATION SAGA (2007).

Radio Recap: Easy Money

"The National Broadcasting Company presents a new series of programs transcribed to expose the inside secrets of gamblers, racketeers and con men; it's called: Easy Money."
"Easy money? There's no such thing as easy money."
"Mike Trent, famous rackets detective and ex-magician has an exciting story of an Easy Money swindle for you, and here he is, that super-sleuth who makes an honest living out of fraud, Mike Trent."

Easy Money was an NBC program that appears to have aired just one year, from October 3, 1954 to June 5, 1955. The series starred Larry Haines as Mike Trent, the series' protagonist. Bill McCoy was the program's announcer. In the series, Mike Trent would go up against professional criminals and use his knowledge of magic to either solve the manner in which the crimes were performed, or equip himself to bring down the criminals.

Larry Haines had an appealing voice; he starred in a lot of episodes of Inner Sanctum Mysteries and I've always found him easy to listen to. Otherwise, the cast was comprised of a lot of familiar NBC voices (many recognizable to listeners of the Adventures of the Falcon).

The use of stage magic to solve crimes makes this show interesting, even with a mere 4 episodes to choose from. I'd be happy to hear more of this show, should they turn up.

The Old Time Radio Researchers Library has 4 episodes of Easy Money, at this link.