Radio Recap: Jason and the Golden Fleece

Jason and the Golden Fleece aired for just one season on NBC radio from October 29, 1952 to July 19, 1963. The series starred MacDonald Carey as Jason, the owner of a bar in New Orleans. He also chartered a boat called the Golden Fleece and each episode he would take a patron out to sea for an adventure. His bartender and sailor was Louis, portrayed by William Conrad. At the time, Conrad had already been playing Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke for a year, yet he was still gamely taking on odd supporting jobs such as this.

We have only three episodes of Jason and the Golden Fleece. What I've described above makes the series sound like a weekly version of the Bogart film To Have and Have Not, yet that's not quite what the series was like - at least, so far as the three surviving episodes are concerned. In each episode, Jason is more-or-less an observer to the drama going on in the lives of his passengers. On each voyage of the Golden Fleece, some minor crisis emerges in which his passengers' personal dramas are tested and in some manner overcome. For instance, one episode concerns a young man who is trying to win the approval of his stern father. In another, a district attorney finds himself aboard the Golden Fleece at the same time as the sister of a woman he convicted of murder.

Jason and the Golden Fleece is definitely unusual and it's a shame we only have the three programs to judge it by. Those three shows have pretty crisp audio, well-written stories and a supporting cast of players such as Bill Johnstone, Jeanette Nolan and Herb Ellis. You can hear the 3 surviving episodes of Jason and the Golden Fleece at the Internet Archive.