Radio Recap: The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe

Rex Stout's detective character Nero Wolfe was heard a few times on the radio, the best-represented version being the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe from 1950-1951, which aired on NBC and starred Sydney Greenstreet. But there were a few other attempts to bring the character to radio prior to Greenstreet.

The first was on the Blue network from 1943-1944 as the Adventures of Nero Wolfe, a summer program run by Himan Brown of Inner Sanctum Mysteries. We have only one example remaining of that version: "The Last Laugh Murder Case" with Santos Ortega as Nero Wolfe and John Gibson as Wolfe's sidekick Archie Goodwin. The series went to Mutual in 1945 as the Amazing Nero Wolfe with star Francis X. Bushman as Wolfe and Elliott Lewis as Goodwin; the only surviving episode from that era is "The Shakespeare Folio."

That brings us to the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe and Sydney Greenstreet. Greenstreet was just terrific in the role - cantankerous, obstinante and, of course, always a step ahead of the other characters in the drama. I haven't read any of the Rex Stout stories but I do understand Wolfe didn't normally leave his home, instead using Archie Goodwin to perform the investigations while he would solve the case by expending as little effort as possible. In the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe, he did sometimes leave his home and encounter a case in the wild, much in the melodramatic means of other radio shows (such as the time Wolfe is invited to dinner and the host is murdered). But for the most part, Wolfe remained housebound, reluctant to take on a case and always haranguing Archie for arriving at conclusions too hastily. Goodwin, while performing the legwork (and often getting hit over the head, just like other radio private eyes) would also attempt to romance any woman who crossed his path, despite the alarming frequency at which they would end up dead or arrested. Rarely did Goodwin get the girl - more commonly he would be chided and mocked by Wolfe for his skirt-chasing.

For some reason, the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe seemed unable to lock down the part of Archie Goodwin, which is a shame. Still, they managed to cast three terrific actors in the part - Lawrence Dobkin, Harry Bartell and Gerald Mohr. Dobkin is my favourite Archie as he delivered his rejoinders to Wolfe with a delightful amount of sarcasm. Bartell was very good in the part as well, his voice falling somewhere between savvy and naive. I find Mohr a bit miscast, mainly because Mohr was already a leading man - indeed, he was still appearing on CBS' the Adventures of Philip Marlowe at the same time he was heard on the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe - and it's distracting to hear him demoted to sidekick on a different detective program. Mohr was a terrific radio actor but I think his distinctive voice is too distracting in this instance.

The Old-Time Radio Researchers Group has a collection of the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe on the Internet Archive.