Radio Recap: T-Man

T-Man was a short-lived CBS series that ran as a summer show, July-August 1950. It starred actor Dennis O’Keefe as treasury agent Steve Larsen. It was produced and directed by the fine William N. Robson, who was, of course, the man who launched my personal favourite series Escape; T-Man included many actors familiar to Escape listeners such as Paul Frees, Bill Johnstone and Ted De Corsia.

T-Man owes its existence primarily to the 1947 feature film T-Men directed by Anthony Mann which likewise starred Dennis O’Keefe in a dramatized retelling of an actual treasury office case to break up a team of counterfeiters. T-Man apparently drew from the same real-life case as T-Men, based on a dialogue exchange in the pilot that is much the same as one O’Keefe had in the film. Of course, T-Man also owed a lot to the general interest in procedurals in radio of the time; there was a huge post-war interest in how law enforcement functioned and by demonstrating how the authorities worked producers could “prove” they were citizens in good standing (William N. Robson got smeared by Red Channels because he was interested in left-wing politics but evidently had no actual ties to communism; it didn’t matter in that toxic Cold War environment, the onus was on him to prove himself a good citizen).

Robson, of course, cut his teeth in the 1930s on the radio series Calling All Cars, which dramatized true-life police accounts. Post-war audiences wanted something a little more sophisticated than what the likes of Calling All Cars or Gang Busters had presented, a vein which Jack Webb’s Dragnet tapped into and struck gold; the FBI had their turn with programs such as the FBI in Peace and War and This Is Your FBI. What did that leave? The treasury department, for one.

Although the treasury department would seem like it has limited opportunities for variety - it always seems to come down to catching counterfeiters - T-Man had a strong central performance by O’Keefe (using 1st person narration, always a plus in radio), an able cast of excellent supporting performers, good music cues and excellent sound effects, which make T-Man very easy to listen to today. The series worked in unusual circumstances to situate its counterfeiters, such as in the debut episode “There Is No Business Like Show Business” in which a lousy troupe of actors are the front men for a counterfeit operation.

T-Man is frequently connected to the Australian radio series T-Men (1956) online. It doesn’t appear as though they shared scripts, their only connection seems to be that they were both based on the U.S. Treasury Department.

T-Man certainly didn’t last very long and we have only a few remaining episodes (the pilot + 2 broadcasts) but for all that, it’s very strong. You can hear those episodes at the Old-Time Radio Researchers Library.