Radio Recap: The Silent Men

The Silent Men was an NBC program that aired for one season from October 14, 1951 to May 28, 1952. The program was hosted and starred Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Although it was an anthology program, each week Fairbanks portrayed a different character. At least, so he'd claim; all of Fairbanks' protagonists sounded alike, they just had different names and held slightly different jobs. Every episode was about the adventures of a federal agent, all allegedly based on true stories. The series drew on a lot of familiar radio performers, with William Conrad or Paul Frees sometimes appearing as Fairbanks' boss (Conrad would also double as other characters in the same episode).

The Silent Men feels representative of many other law enforcement programs of the early 1950s - programs that were inspired by Dragnet but didn't want to cover the same ground. The Silent Men is especially similar to shows like the FBI in Peace and War and This Is Your FBI, although it featured characters in government services outside of the FBI, such as treasury agents and even the mail!

What holds back the Silent Men is that it's yet another 1950s NBC dramatic show; NBC relied far too much on stock music for all their dramatic shows that resulted in nearly all of them sounding alike (Dimension X and X Minus One were happy contrasts). The music cues are particularly clumsy - they don't punctuate a significant line of dialogue or signal a scene transition - they all have the same weight so therefore nothing is given weight by the music. There aren't that many sound effects employed and although the casts are talented, they're small. Most of the heavy lifting is on Fairbanks as the narrator and star, so if you don't enjoy hearing him talk for 25 minutes, this really isn't a program for you. I found it all right, but it isn't a program to "binge" - simply listen to an episode just now and then.

There are episodes written by some great talent like John and Gwen Bagni but even then... the Bagnis' episode "Blood Money" recycles parts of the script they wrote for the Escape episode "Border Town," suggesting they didn't feel like putting in an effort for the Silent Men.

You can hear the surviving episodes of the Silent Men on the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library.