The Shadow Without a Shadow, Part 3: Murder at Midnight!

For my final entry of "Shadow Without a Shadow," I'm visiting the Shadow episode "Death Keeps a Deadline" (November 1, 1942) by writer Max Ehrlich, which was re-written for Murder at Midnight as "Trigger Man" (May 17, 1946). As I indicated in my Radio Recap of Murder at Midnight, this is just one of several instances where Murder at Midnight repurposed an episode of the Shadow.

As with Wednesday episode of Suspense, this is a script where the Shadow's role had be written out for the revised script. So, let's examine how that was accomplished!

A massive difference between the two from the top is that while the Shadow has a brief bit of narration to set the stage, Murder at Midnight tells its story from the perspective of "Chicken" Charlie Nix, who narrates frequently through the drama. "Trigger Man" starts with Charlie telling us he's dying from a gunshot wound as he thinks back to how it all happened.

The Shadow opens with Lamont Cranston escorting Margo Lane to her apartment after a date night. As Lamont parts ways, a man asks him for a match, then draws a gun on him. It's mostly the same on Murder at Midnight, although the couple are simply walking together when the stick-up occurs. In both cases, Lamont and his counterpart - John Riley - startle the hold-up man by calling him by his nickname. On the Shadow, the gunman is dubbed "Rabbit" Eddie Burke; on Murder at Midnight, it's "Chicken" Charlie Nix. Lamont/Riley confidently asserts that Rabbit/Chicken doesn't have the nerve to use the gun. Lamont/Riley easily disarms and knocks out the hold-up man. Lamont/Riley explains to their female counterpart that they were aware of the hold-up man's psychological profile, knowing the man had never been able to use a gun (Riley is a plainclothes policeman).

After a musical transition, we learn a year has passed. Rabbit/Chicken meets up with the boss of his gang, Tony Morello/Angelo Dinelli. Rabbit/Chicken bears a deep grudge against Lamont/Riley and insists he'll get back at him. Tony/Angelo tells Rabbit/Chicken that he looks sick and tells him to see his own doctor, Dr. Bryan/Leonard. Amazingly, this scene plays out mostly word for word aside from the name changes!

In the next scene, Tony/Angelo accompanies Rabbit/Chicken on his visit to Dr. Bryan/Leonard. The doctor claims Rabbit/Chicken has a bad heart condition - a severe aneurysm; he gives Rabbit/Chicken six months to live. Another near-identical scene!

Next scene: Rabbit/Chicken meets again with Tony/Angelo and muses that he's like a man standing around in a death house "waiting for the hot seat." Tony/Angelo gives him a drink and suggests that if it were him, he'd use his last six months to paint the town red, do everything he'd always wanted to do before but never had the nerve. He observes that now Rabbit/Chicken has the chance to be a real trigger man and get revenge on Lamont/Riley. At that point, the scenes diverge; in the original script, Tony points out a policeman named Donovan, who was the first one to arrest Rabbit and suggests he start by killing him. Rabbit kills the man, then the Shadow cuts to a commercial. On Murder at Midnight, the scene changes as Angelo leads Chicken to where Riley is and convinces him to kill him (although the dialogue in which Angelo drives Chicken to kill is mostly the same). Afterward, Angelo calls him Charlie because he's not a chicken any more.

In other words, Murder at Midnight has just killed off their version of the Shadow! At this point the two shows become very different.

On the Shadow, Lamont and Commissioner Weston confront Tony, convinced the trigger man committing murders is one of his men but Tony plays dumb (there's no equivalent scene on Murder at Midnight since Riley is dead). In the next scene, Lamont's cab driver buddy Shrevvy shares some gossip with Lamont and Margo about Rabbit's heart condition. This leads Lamont to deduce Rabbit is the trigger man they're looking for. In the following scene, Rabbit meets with Tony and insists he be given the chance to kill Lamont now. When Tony refuses, Rabbit kills him.

In the next scene, the Shadow confronts Dr. Bryan and asks for the truth about Rabbit's condition. Dr. Bryan explains Tony ordered him to lie to Rabbit about his heart. Lamont returns to Shrevvy to find he's lost track of Margo. Rabbit telephones Lamont to inform him he's kidnapped Margo and he'll kill her in one hour, then he'll hunt down Lamont and kill him; Rabbit ends the phone call. In the next scene, Lamont telephones the police for information to help him find Rabbit. We then switch scenes to where Rabbit is holding Margo as his prisoner. Before he can kill her the Shadow enters the room and tells him the truth about his heart condition. The Shadow notes the police are coming and he'll be arrested but Rabbit turns his gun on himself, killing himself just six months after the doctor's fake diagnosis. The story then ends on a typical Shadow wrap-up scene where Lamont and Margo relax after the episode's drama, Lamont explaining how the police guided him to Rabbit's location.

Murder at Midnight continues through Chicken's narration guiding the story, including a scene where he kills a fellow mobster named Tommy Devine for calling him "Chicken." One night Charlie is robbing a warehouse with Mike when they're surprised by the police and flee in their car. Charlie is nicked by a bullet and Mike brings him to a doctor. The doctor fixes him up and remarks Charlie has a good heart; this surprises Charlie, who realizes Angelo's Dr. Leonard had lied to him. In the next scene, Charlie goes looking for Dr. Leonard but finds he moved his practice to another location. In the next scene, Charlie goes home and receives a call from Angelo, telling him he's got another job for him. In the following scene, Charlie goes to Angelo's apartment and reveals he knows the truth about his heart. Angelo and Charlie shoot at each other; Angelo dies immediately. A policeman arrives and calls him "Chicken Charlie," easily slapping him around and disarming him. It looks like he's a chicken again and going back to prison (or maybe the electric chair?).

The first halves of these scripts are nearly word-for-word the same but they certainly do diverge, what with the Shadow's counterpart being killed. It is strange, too, that the Murder at Midnight version ends with the killer surviving - it seemed more poetic for him to die six months after the false diagnosis, as in the original script.

Thanks for following this 3-part series, I hope it was diverting. The episodes are available for your listening pleasure below:

Now on sale- Angola: Illustrated Journal!

My wife Bethany and I recently co-authored a book about our experiences in Angola; this is my second book about Angola, following the Benefit of Steel. We kept a daily journal during our visit to Angola last year and this book is drawn from what we wrote in that journal; it's also filled with paintings Bethany created based on scenes she observed during our visit.

We're working on getting the book into all the ebook and print markets that the Benefit of Steel has enjoyed, but for now you can buy the ebook directly from Bethany's store page or you can buy it on Amazon's Kindle page.

Bethany and Michael Hoskin are associate missionaries to Angola with SIM Canada. In July 2024 they travelled there for a month-long mission trip and kept a visual and written journal.

Enjoy reading about each day's activities which included repairing a mural at the CEML Hospital, leading worship at the Spiritual Life Conference at Tchincombe Farm and teaching an ESL Bible Study in Lubango.

Also included are a series of original illustrations by Bethany K. Hoskin with some original sketches, as well as poetry written by both her and Michael.

The Shadow Without a Shadow, Part 2: Suspense!

In today's "Shadow Without a Shadow," I'm looking at an episode of the Shadow titled "Nightmare at Gaelsbury" (February 2, 1941) by writer Jerry Devine. It was then retooled into the Suspense episode "the Kettler Method" (September 16, 1942), one of the earliest episodes of Suspense!

Now, the Lights Out episode we looked at was an instance where the Shadow was added to a script; this time he had to be eliminated from the script! So, let's analyze how that was accomplished:

Both scripts open in the office of the physician in charge of an insane asylum during a stormy night; in "Nightmare at Gaeslbury" it's Dr. Blair in Gaelsbury, in "the Kettler Method" it's Dr. Morriseey in Calston. The biggest difference with the Suspense version though is that it has a narrator who adds a lot of additional details at the start of each scene.

Dr. Blair is treating a difficult patient who believes he received secret knowledge from the sorcerer Cagliostro. He rants at Dr. Blair then is returned to his cell by the keeper McPherson. Dr. Blair tells his nurse that this man had been a scientist until a female patient died on the operating table. The nurse opines that Dr. Blair needs a rest and Blair mentions his friends Lamont Cranston and Margo Lane are coming for a visit. Suddenly there's a gunshot and Dr. Blair and the nurse discover they're locked inside his office. The insane patient (later named Griswold) can be heard laughing in the hall.

On Suspense, the keeper is named Caffrey and there's an added exchange where he brings the insane patient to see Dr. Morrissey. All the exposition about who the patient is (Kettler in this version) occurs between Morriseey and Caffrey instead of Morrissey and the nurse. Kettler enters and demands to see the male patient he had been operating on, a man named Benham. Kettler is convinced Benham is hidden somewhere in the asylum. Although the content of their exchange is very different, it leads to a conversation between Morrissey and his nurse that is mostly the same as the prior version. Morrissey mentions his friends Leslie and Claire Winton will be visiting him. The nurse also mentions she put some new bandage samples into his coat pocket (which become important later). Then there's a scream and a gunshot. Caffrey tries to get into the office but when Morrissey opens the door, Caffrey is near-dying and warns him Kettler is coming with the other patients. Kettler exclaims, "tables turn!"

Both scripts go to a musical transition as the scene changes. Both scripts open at a train station as the couples arrive in Gaelsbury/Calston. Mention should be made that the character of Leslie Winton will be the equivalent of Lamont Cranston in the Suspense version; he's played by John Gibson, who portrays Leslie as a very milquetoast type of character. Anyway, it's established that Margo/Claire has a headache that's bothering them. In the Shadow version, Lamont and Margo are pestered by a vendor and they agree to buy a jackknife for Margo's nephew (the jackknife is kind of a substitute for the bandages in Suspense). In both scripts, the couples are met by a man from the sanitarium - Tarfu/Kato, who speaks in a deep voice and limited vocabulary. Strangely, the descriptions of Tarfu and Kato are different - Lamont describes Tarfu as West Indian and 7 feet tall; Kato's nationality isn't given but he's guessed to be 8 feet tall!

Another musical transition as scenes change. The couples arrive at the sanitarium as Tarfu/Kato tells them to wait. They're visited by a man who warns them that the inmates are running the asylum; he's a famous musician (Sigmund Arnold on the Shadow, Arturo Alvarez on Suspense). The two scripts are much the same as the couples assume the musician is one of the patients. Dr. Griswold/Kettler then arrives and has Tarfu/Kato return the musician to his cell. Interestingly, in the first script he's called "patient number 8" but in the second he's "patient number 10." Dr. Griswold/Kettler introduces himself to the couples and claims that Dr. Blair/Morrissey is away on an emergency case, leaving him in charge of the sanitarium. When Margo/Claire mentions her headache that interests the doctor, who insists he can treat her case and invites Lamont/Leslie to enjoy some drinks or cigarettes in the office.

The Shadow then has a short scene that has no equivalent on Suspense in which supporting character Commissioner Weston receives a call from Dr. Blair who tries to inform Weston of the takeover that's going on at Gaelsbury. And that's the entirety of Weston's influence on this episode, which makes me wonder why this scene was even used.

Returning to the sanitarium, we have near-identical scenes in which Lamont/Leslie discover there are no drinks or cigarettes in the office. Turning on the radio they hear a broadcast mentioning Arnold/Alvarez's concert has been cancelled, causing Lamont/Leslie to realize the musician they met was the real person. Just as they try to confront the doctor they instead run into Tarfu/Kato, who informs them that Margo/Claire is going to receive a special operation. Lamont/Leslie object and the doctor enters and is quite put out when Lamont/Leslie "demands" to see her. Tarfu/Kato knocks out Lamont/Leslie from behind and the doctor gloats over his fallen body.

I should mention at this point that the Shadow episode is half-over and at the commercial break, yet the Suspense program, which has no commercials, is 2/3rds through their script!

Lamont/Leslie find themselves sealed in a room with Dr. Blair/Morrissey. There's some exposition as Blair/Morrissey explains what happened. We also learn Blair had his leg broken after being caught telephoning Commissioner Weston (no such injury was performed on Morrissey). It's after the big exposition scenes that the scripts diverge quite a bit. On the Shadow, Lamont remembers he still has a jackknife in his pocket. Lamont gives the knife to Dr. Blair and he waves it around at Tarfu, fascinating his simple mind as a diversion while Lamont escapes the basement.

Lamont escapes the sanitarium by climbing over the wall but is spotted by a pair of Irish cops who are passing by. Lamont tries to explain the situation to them but they assume he's an escaped mental patient and lead him back inside. Dr. Griswold even shows off Arnold to the policemen; when Lamont correctly identifies Arnold, the policemen believe the doctor's story, doubting a famous musician would be in the sanitarium. Griswold claims he doesn't want the responsibility of holding Lamont any longer and tells the police to take him away (apparently it's that easy! the police go along with this!). Fortunately, while leaving the facility they find Tarfu menacing Dr. Blair. The police drive off Tarfu with their bullets and apologize to Lamont for how they treated him.

Now, on Suspense Leslie gets the idea to masquerade as Benham, Kettler's deceased patient. Morrissey covers Leslie's face with bandages so that he won't be immediately recognized. In both scripts, Lamont/Leslie interrupt the procedures on Margo/Claire's headaches but the procedures and circumstances are quite different; Griswold wants to use insulin on Margo while Kettler wants to cut Claire's head open. Lamont appears to Griswold as the Shadow, claiming to be the ghost of Cagliostro to play on his mind, while Leslie enters the room in bandages claiming to be Benham.

On the Shadow, Griswold tries to flee the sanitarium and, in fear, shoots Tarfu with his gun; Tarfu stabs Griswold to death with the jackknife. On Suspense, Kettler realizes Leslie isn't Benham and is about to stab him when a sudden shot rings out; it turns out Claire stole Kettler's pistol and shot him with it.

Both close with Dr. Blair/Morrissey enjoying a quiet evening with Lamont/Leslie and Margo/Claire, listening to the music of Arnold/Alvarez while they recap how the plot was foiled thanks to their quick thinking. And as a closing line, Margo/Claire notes: "My headache-- it's completely gone!"

If you'd like to hear and compare these episodes for yourself, here you go:

Friday: Murderrrrr aaaat Midnight!

The Shadow Without a Shadow, Part 1: Lights Out!

This week I'm doing something instead of my usual Radio Recaps. I'm going to look at three radio plays that were heard on the radio adventure series the Shadow but were also heard on other programs without the Shadow - hence, the Shadow without a Shadow!

Our first examples are the Arch Oboler scripts "Nobody Died" (first heard on Lights Out December 9, 1936) and the Shadow version "Fountain of Death" (from November 27, 1938). Because the Shadow version came second it means that Oboler had to add the hero to his script from whole cloth - there was no hero in "Nobody Died."

In "Nobody Died" we open on an old woman calling for Dr. Miller. The two men attending to this 84-year old woman are soon joined by the female physician Dr. Miller who goes alone to see the woman, Adelina.

Whereas "Fountain of Death" begins in a motorcar as Lamont explains to Margo they're going to meet Dr. Anna Marla. It soon transitions to the two greeting the female physician Dr. Marla, who explains there's a 95-year old woman in the next room named Mrs. Cronin. Dr. Marla, Lamont and Margo go to see the woman together.

From there the two are very similar as Dr. Miller/Marla speaks to the old woman and promises to help her. Dr. Miller/Marla injects the woman with a serum which causes her to grow younger. While in the Lights Out version Dr. Miller created her formula while testing on mice to cure cancer, in the Shadow Dr. Marla was trying to cure aging itself - but the exposition is very similar. In both, the youthened woman makes the same exclamations as she realizes she's young again.

Both scripts then have a musical transition to indicate the passage of time. In Lights Out one of the two men from the opening scene is revealed to be the mayor and brings "His Excellency" (later named Joseph Brown) to meet with Dr. Miller. Brown investigates Dr. Miller's laboratory and when she refuses to explain how she youthened the old woman, Brown forces her to inject the mayor with her formula, despite her objections that she doesn't completely understand the formula yet. The mayor becomes a young man

In the Shadow, three days after the injection Dr. Marla is confronted by Gorlan, who is someone she recognizes from her home country.

Then the two reach a similar point as Brown/Gorlan muses how the formula could create an "invincible" army of young men. Dr. Miller/Marla objects "you cannot make men young to kill-- make them young to live!"

In the Lights Out version, Brown sends an underling to take the woman's notebook from her; a gunshot is heard, suggesting the underling has shot Dr. Miller to death. In the Shadow, Gorlan wants Dr. Marla to hand him a vial of the formula so that he can replicate it; when she refuses, he shoots her himself. In both versions, Brown/Gorlan declares the doctor has committed suicide.

But the Shadow has to add another scene before we continue -- after all, Lamont is the hero of this version! Lamont arrives at Dr. Marla's lab and finds her dying; she tells him Gorlan has the formula and he vows he'll track him down. After a commercial break, Lamont is trying to find Gorlan but none of his sources have ever heard of the man. Lamont gets so excited that he starts to flub a line but very quickly corrects himself! Fortunately for Lamont he's telephoned by Tom Brady, the foreign correspondent of the Examiner. Brady tells Lamont he saw Gorlan booking a trip at a travel agency. Lamont assumes Gorlan is going to skip the country aboard a boat but Margo notes that due to a strike there are no ships sailing. Lamont finally realizes Gorlan is going to take a clipper ship back to Europe.

After a musical transition, Margo and Lamont arrive at the clipper ship and Lamont boards the craft. A steward directs Lamont to Gorlan's cabin.

Back in the Lights Out original, Brown arranges for the military to begin receiving the formula. Brown intends to overthrow his country's true leader (strongly implied as Hitler) as he schemes with his top general. Having tested the formula on 50 of his men, Brown finally injects himself with the formula, becoming younger and stronger. Just then he's visited by the other villager from the opening who has brought Adelina with him. The man reveals the formula has caused Adelina's mind continue to grow younger, leaving her very simple-minded. Brown is agitated as he begins to realize the implications for him, given the extremely large dose he took.

In the Shadow, Lamont invisibly enters Gorlan's cabin and mentally tricks him into revealing where he's hidden the formula. The Shadow confronts Gorlan and demands he give him the formula. Although Gorlan can't see him, he feels certain he can shoot the Shadow with his gun, given the cabin isn't that large. The Shadow points out a stray bullet could hit the gasoline. Realizing the truth, Gorlan reveals he already analyzed the formula and memorized it. Gorlan offers an alliance with the Shadow and suggests they drink a toast of wine to celebrate their partnership. The Shadow refuses but Gorlan drinks his wine. The Shadow notes that Gorlan drugged his glass with the rejuvenation formula but he switched the two glasses, forcing Gorlan to drink the formula.

Now, in the Lights Out version, Brown is overwhelmed by the effects of the formula, growing younger and younger (replaced by younger actors) until he's an infant (and possibly youthens out of existence- hence the title, "Nobody Died").

Whereas in the Shadow, the Shadow suggests that Gorlan is growing younger. Gorlan goes insane with terror and jumps out of the clipper to his death. In a wrap-up scene, Lamont explains to Margo that he stole the sample of the formula and instead poured a stimulant into Gorlan's wine that caused him to think he was getting younger. Lamont decided to destroy the sample of the formula so that no one could use the formula for evil.

Here are the two episodes in case you'd like to compare them for yourself:

On Wednesday: The Shadow and Suspense!

Radio Recap: Rogue's Gallery

The detective program Rogue's Gallery started under the banner of "Bandwagon Mysteries" as it was a summer subsitute for the Fitch Bandwagon. It ran on NBC from September 27, 1945 until September 22, 1946 with Dick Powell as the titular hero, Richard Rogue. At the time, Powell was changing his image from a "juvenile" leading man (as he'd been since the start of his career in film) to that of a tough guy, taking on the role of Philip Marlowe in 1944's Murder My Sweet to prove he could play other types of characters. Rogue's Gallery helped continue that new trend.

Rogue's Gallery is not a very hard-boiled detective show, however. There's a certain lightness in Powell's voice that seldom goes away and a lightness in the detective stories that keep it from being too serious. Rogue's Gallery is mostly good fun.

The most distinctive factor of Rogue's Gallery is that Richard Rogue would usually get hit on the head once per episode, resulting in a dream sequence in which Richard would visit "Cloud Eight" and encounter his other self, Eugor (Peter Leeds), a cackling imp. Early on in the series, Eugor would often appear around the half-way mark and provide some exposition to remind Richard how he wound up in the situation he was in. As the show progressed, however, they played around with the format; one episode closed with Eugor complaining that Rogue wasn't knocked out - the following week Richard was knocked out about one minute into the drama! In another episode, Richard met Eugor's girlfriend at Cloud Eight instead of Eugor; that led to other episodes where Eugor and his girlfriend both greeted Richard and one where the girlfriend's father was forcing Eugor to marry her.

The Eugor scenes are more than a humorous diversion - they indicate that circa 1945, the trope of a detective getting hit on the head from behind was horribly cliche. What's amazing is that even post-Rogue's Gallery, so many detective shows continued to use that tropes; shows like the Adventures of Philip Marlowe and the Man from Homicide usually deployed a bludgeon to their hero's head once per episode!

Anyway, the Eugor scenes set Rogue's Gallery apart as they sound nothing like what you'd hear on any other detective series (and there were certainly plenty of competing detective shows on the air during its original run). As late as 1951, you can hear an episode of Mickey Rooney's the Hardy Family where Andy Hardy performs a Eugor impression as part of a private eye parody.

After a year in the role, Dick Powell exited the series; after a stab at playing Johnny Dollar in the pilot episode of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, he found a home on Richard Diamond, Private Detective which aired from 1949-1953, initially on NBC. The two shows invite many comparisons: Richard Diamond had no Eugor equivalent but overall had a larger supporting cast; while Richard Rogue had his girlfriend Betty Callahan (Lurene Tuttle), a newspaper reporter who was often involved in his investigations, Richard Diamond dated the wealthy socialite Helen Asher (Virginia Gregg) who almost never got involved in his cases; while Richard Rogue occasionally showed off Dick Powell's marvelous singing voice, it was enshrined on Richard Diamond as every episode featured at least one ditty sung by Powell; while Rogue's Gallery was pretty easy-going, Richard Diamond, Private Detective tended to be even more humorous (although some episodes steered strongly into hard boiled material).

The series soldiered on without Powell; Barry Sullivan (best-rembered for the Unexpected became Richard Rogue for a summer series from June 8-September 28, 1947; then it made one last stab on ABC with Chester Morris (best-known as Boston Blackie) and Paul Stewart as Rogue from November 29, 1950-November 21, 1951. We have only one complete Rogue's Gallery from the Sullivan era (plus 2 fragments) and one episode from the ABC run with Stewart as Rogue. Although Eugor was gone, the series was otherwise the same with Sullivan as the lead, his patter was just as quippy as before. The Paul Stewart version comes across as much more hard-boiled than Powell or Sullivan, probably because Stewart wasn't as laid-back a performer; Eugor can be heard in the Stewart episode but he's no longer on "Cloud Eight," he's instead presented as the voice of Rogue's conscience.

Rogue's Gallery had been written by Ray Buffum up until Powell's departure. Buffum had previously written for A Man Called Jordan; after Powell left, he went on to contribute to the Casebook of Gregory Hood.

In some instances, we only have a rehearsal version of certain episodes of Rogue's Gallery. These sound very close to the broadcast versions but, well... check out the episode "Lady with a Gun" (June 30, 1946) sometime - Dick Powell flubs a line at around the 22:00 mark and emits an expletive you never hear on OTR!

You can hear most of the surviving episodes of Rogue's Gallery in this YouTube playlist created by the Old Time Radio Researchers (for some reason they lack the ABC episode with Paul Stewart, but it's easy to find online).

Radio Recap: Dark Fantasy

Of all the old-time radio horror programs, Dark Fantasy certainly stands apart. It's a series I learned of relatively late; around 1997 I bought a set of cassettes from Radio Spirits called "Old-Time Radio's Greatest Mysteries" which included 3 episodes of Dark Fantasy. I always enjoy finding another example of OTR horror and I was surprised that I'd heard nothing of it before - my local radio station QR77 never played a single episode; I had never heard it on Yesterday USA; John Dunning did not give the series an entry in his book On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old Time Radio.

Dark Fantasy was the brainchild of a writer named Scott Bishop. He was apparently a prolific author, although I've never found evidence of it. A press release for the launch of Dark Fantasy asserted he was "father of hundreds of mystery novels," yet I haven't seen any of them in bibliographies of pulp novels. An episode of Dark Fantasy titled "House of Bread" featured Bishop himself as the lead character, who is told by his publisher his books are "selling like peanuts at a circus." Mere wishful thinking? Ego-stroking? Did Bishop publish his fiction under a psuedonym? Perhaps one day I'll know.

Understanding who Bishop is and where he came from might help explain why Dark Fantasy is the series that it is. It should be noted that it aired from November 14, 1941 to June 26, 1942 over WKY, an NBC affiliate in Oklahoma City - thus, the series wasn't heard nation-wide. Airing when it did, the most obvious influences on Dark Fantasy would have been programs like the Witch's Tale and Lights Out.

How can I describe this series? I suppose you can divide Dark Fantasy into two types of episodes if you want to grossly oversimplify:

1. Episodes with consistent tones.
2. Episodes with inconsistent tones.

Those of the former are productions with very even plots. Characters and situations are introduced, a complication appears, something weird happens (usually something supernatural although occasionally sci-fi in origin) and the story ends. For example there's the episode "Resolution, 1841" in which four friends get together over the holidays; they banter together, mention is made that one woman has some financial troubles; later, one of them is possessed by the ghost of the woman's grandfather and he reveals where he hid a fortune.

In the latter, scenes lurch from one to the next with no sense of momentum. The weird things that occur are given next-to-zero build-up. For example there's the episode "The Cup of Gold" in which a golfer is killed; a woman who is supposedly responsible for the murder doesn't recall doing it; then some incense is lit and teleports the woman and her accuser to the planet Vento; a resident of Vento explains the woman is a reincarnation of a woman from Vento and she killed the golfer because they were enemies in previous lives. But when I type it like that I make it sound much more coherant than it is to hear.

Dark Fantasy was low budget; sound effects were usually limited, even small things like footsteps and doors closing were often omitted. Consequently, much of the show seems to be characters exchanging dialogue in a void - there's seldom a sense of place or atmosphere and those elements are so important in horror. Most of the drama is put over through dialogue and that becomes wearying, especially with the sotto voce style Bishop seemed to prefer from his actors. Whereas in the Witch's Tale or Lights Out characters would often scream their dialogue to convey terror, Dark Fantasy performers tend to lower their voices into whispers, as though in quiet awe of whatever was happening. It is extremely ineffective.

Dark Fantasy is camp, but not in the way Inner Sanctum Mysteries is - there's no sense that Scott Bishop meant his program to be intentionally over-the-top, even when he penned "Spawn of the Subhuman," a story about a gorilla given the voice of an opera singer by a mad scientist. Dark Fantasy took itself quite seriously, like Lights Out, but there's nothing deeper going on- while Arch Oboler liked his Lights Out stories to serve as commentaries about the world around himself (especially as commentaries on fascism), I have no idea what Scott Bishop valued nor abhorred. The man liked to write horror stories and NBC was willing to pay him for those stories.

If you want horror, Dark Fantasy does sometimes come through; "the Demon Tree" and "the Headless Dead" are both stories with a big supernatural threat tied to a plot that flows very evenly; you might get a kick out of them. Other stories are extremely pulpy, such as the sci-fi tale "Men Call Me Mad" about a visit to a micro-world, or the African adventure tale "The Thing from the Darkness."

Old Time Radio Researchers have a YouTube playlist of Dark Fantasy.

Radio Recap: Encore Theater

Encore Theater was a dramatic anthology that featured half-hour adaptations of popular films. Yes, it's another one of those. Lux Radio Theater proved a popular series could be established on film dramatizations and eventually the likes of Academy Award Theater, Screen Directors Playhouse and MGM Theater of the Air followed in its wake.

Encore Theater aired in the summer of 1946 over CBS at the same time they were broadcasting Academy Award Theater and Lux Radio Theater! Clearly they were striking while the iron was hot!

Many of the films adapted on Encore Theater are very familiar - I think every single one had been previously adapted as a one-hour program on Lux Radio Theater. In fact, the first episode was "Magnificient Obsession," which was adapted for radio on at least seven other occasions!

But there's a special reason why they adapted "Magnificent Obsession" - Encore Theater was sponsored by the pharmaceutical company Schenley Laboratories and "Magnificent Obsession" is a story about a physician. Nearly every episode adapted a movie that related in some way to medicine, from "Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet" to "Yellowjack."

Encore Theater didn't have as many big stars as the other programs I've mentioned; in fact, a lot of the big stars who showed up were also the sort of Hollywood names you'd hear on an episode of Suspense: Ronald Colman, Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Paul Lukas, Robert Taylor. And being a CBS program that also meant the stars were supported by the finest of radio's professionals - Cathy Lewis, Elliott Lewis, Howard Duff, Lurene Tuttle, Gerald Mohr, etc.

You can hear the surviving episodes of Encore Theater on this YouTube playlist created by the Old Time Radio Researchers.

Radio Recap: Mystery in the Air

One of my absolute favourite radio series is the short-lived mystery/horror anthology program Mystery in the Air, starring Peter Lorre. It was an NBC summer 1947 replacement series sponsored by Camel cigarettes while their usual clients Abbott and Costello took a break.

Now, there was also a 1945 summer series Camel produced called Mystery in the Air and a lot of radio logs treat the two as the same show. Scholarship performed by the Digital Deli determined they were very different shows - the 1945 program was a detective show starring Jackson Beck as detective Stonewall Scott.

Lorre's Mystery in the Air lasted just 13 episodes; the first five are now lost programs: "The Tell Tale Heart," "Leiningen vs. the Ants," "the Touch of Your Hand," "the Interruption" and "Nobody Loves Me." Those are definitely some tantalizing titles - "Nobody Loves Me" was also performed by Lorre on Suspense, which we still have; and Lorre's "Leiningen vs. the Ants" aired half a year before the first adaptation performed on Escape; one wonders if they used the same script on Escape.

But let's consider the remaining 8 episodes:

1. "The Marvelous Barastro" (by Ben Hecht) in which Lorre portrays a famous magician who married a blind woman, then encountered another magician who was determined to learn Barastro's tricks and destroy his happiness.
2. "The Lodger" (by Marie Belloc Lowndes) in which Lorre is the man believed to be a serial killer dubbed 'the Avenger'; however, he's not the point-of-view character as that role falls to Agnes Moorehead as the landlady.
3. "The Horla" (by Guy de Maupassant) in which Lorre portrays the hapless man who becomes haunted by an invisible presence.
4. "Beyond Good and Evil" (by Ben Hecht) in which Lorre portrays an escaped criminal who masquerades as the new minister to a small town, challenging his own sense of right and wrong.
5. "The Mask of Medusa" (by Nelson S. Bond) in which Lorre portrays an escaped criminal who hides in a wax museum where the statues are very much alive.
6. "The Queen of Spades" (by Alexander Pushkin) in which Lorre portrays a gambler who learns the secret to win every time at cards.
7. "The Black Cat" (by Edgar Allan Poe) in which Lorre portrays the brute who murders a cat and soon becomes a killer.
8. "Crime and Punishment" (by Fyodor Dostoevsky) explicitly an adaptation of the 1935 motion picture, with Lorre reprising his role as the murderer, Raskolnikov.

The adaptations take some liberties - for instance, there isn't a single radio adaptation of "The Lodger" that uses the novel's ending and Mystery in the Air came up with its own as other shows did; "the Mask of Medusa" is a fairly brief short story and Mystery in the Air adapted it all by the 15-minute mark - their expansion is very good.

Many of these stories were heard on other radio shows (Suspense adapted both of the Ben Hect stories - Mystery in the Air used the same scripts). However, some are very seldom heard on the radio, such as "the Horla." "The Horla" was the first episode of Mystery in the Air I heard and it won me over immediately because of Lorre's intense performance as his character grows increasingly unhinged across the half-hour, until the show ends with him breaking character to assure the audience he's not really insane! This episode made me fascinated with Guy de Maupassant's fiction; I later read all of his short stories. I also recently reviewed a graphic novel adaptation of this story, le Horla.

I like all 8 episodes; "the Queen of Spades" is a terrific supernatural tale and "the Black Cat" came across very well. Perhaps "the Lodger" is the least interesting but only because the emphasis on Moorehead's point-of-view reduces the amount of time for Lorre to be heard.

Lorre was a terrific actor whose abilities seemed to be taken for granted by Hollywood for much of his career. Mystery in the Air demonstrated he was as capable as Boris Karloff in headlining his own anthology series; too bad the summer series didn't result in a regular radio series. He did later host Nightmare but hosting isn't the same as leading the production.

I should also mention that the cast of Mystery in the Air included announcer Henry Morgan -- no, not the star of the Henry Morgan Show. This is the same performer who would later make his professional name "Harry Morgan," serving as Joe Friday's sidekick in the 1960s Dragnet TV show and performing as Colonel Potter on M*A*S*H. It's interesting to hear him back in the 40s - his voice never seemed to age.

Here's a YouTube playlist created by a fan of the remaining episodes of Mystery in the Air.

Radio Recap: Bob and Ray

I've written more than 100 of my Radio Recaps so far yet scarcely any have been about comedy programs. To be fair, as much of an old-time radio fan that I am, I was very slow to come around to radio comedy. Even today, there's just a small handful of comedy shows that I genuinely like, a much large list of shows I mostly like (with certain quantifiers) and a nearly as large list of shows that I don't like hearing at all.

It's not simply that comedy is subjective -- all art is. But comedy is also topical; even if the comedy doesn't rely on commentary on then-current events, it tends to use slang and cultural references that are very soon minor historical footnotes.

The comedy of Bob and Ray (performed by Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding) is, I think, somewhere between of-its-time and timeless. They satirized trends in entertainment - especially satirizing radio shows of the time (such as their parody of the soap opera Mary Noble, Backstage Wife in their recurring sketches "Myra Backstage, Noble Wife" or the One Man's Family as "One Feller's Family"). But a lot of their comedy comes from two men simply having a conversation and trying to surprise or one-up each other.

I really didn't get Bob and Ray the first time I heard it. My local radio station never broadcast Bob and Ray as part of "Those Old Radio Shows," so I only heard it when I began listening to Yesterday USA in my late 'teens. The first time I heard an episode the rebroadcaster made a big deal about the series. Listening to that episode, it didn't seem like much of a big deal. It was a late 40s iteration of their program and they sounded like a couple of disc jockeys (which is how they started) bantering with each other. Their voices were so casual they were nearly mumbling - it required a lot of my attention to follow what they were saying and after that, I wasn't so sure that it was worth my time listening to more of them.

What changed my mind was John Dunning's book On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. Dunning's entry on Bob and Ray made the series sound very funny - I was especially interested in hearing some of the parodies Dunning described, such as the Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy juvenile adventure serial parody, "Jack Headstrong, the All-American American." I'd heard plenty of Jack Armstrong episodes on Yesterday USA and I'd never enjoyed it; I thought that program was ripe for parody and, indeed, it's some of Bob and Ray's best material. The opening of "Jack Headstrong" in which Bob and Ray yell "Jack Headstrong!" at each other, dragging it out so long that (to me) it becomes funnier and funnier always placed me in the right frame of mind.

Of course, around the same time I was learning to appreciate Bob and Ray, I was also getting into improv comedy, thanks to discovering Whose Line Is It Anyway? Dunning had explained that although the series had a script, Bob and Ray would frequently veer off-script. Sometimes they'd try to confuse each other, sometimes the producers in the studio would introduce a sudden noise and see if they could incorporate it into their act. It's probably not to every taste, but once I knew what Bob and Ray was about, I was in.

The series ran on basically every network under all kinds of names. Their earliest days were as Matinee with Bob and Ray (1946-1951); then they went to network radio as Bob and Ray Present the National Broadcasting Company (1951-1953); they appeared as a segment on NBC's news show Monitor (1955-1959); Bob and Ray on Mutual (1955-1957); Bob and Ray Present the CBS Radio Network (1959-1960); decades later they popped up on NPR as the Bob and Ray Public Radio Show (1983-1987).

They portrayed every voice on their show; this meant adopting all kinds of unusual accents and speaking patterns, as well as Ray's surprisingly good falsetto which he used to portray all the female characters.

Outside of radio, they were on NBC television in 1951; we have a few episodes available to us on YouTube and although it's primitive TV, they were gamely doing a lot of their improv and adapting their characters over from radio. My favourite TV sketch is the "Frankenstein Brothers Suit" sketch:

They enjoyed a big revival in the 1970s with their stage show Bob and Ray: The Two and Only, which revisited a lot of the characters from their radio show. That also lead to a few books of their routines, which are all right as a read, but their jokes are much funnier with the two men delivering them.

A lot of the comedy on Bob and Ray is, like that "Jack Headstrong" gag, based on repetition. Many of their recurring sketches were essentially the same gag each time, such as Ray's character Webley Webster, who would introduce a dramatization of some great book that, for some reason, would turn out to be a seagoing adventure program in which a captain assaults his first mate (for me, some of the humour comes from anticipating what imagined slight will cause the captain to assault the first mate).

The Old Time Radio Researchers have 429 different Bob and Ray episodes in their library.

This is Ray Goulding reminding you to write if you get work...

...and Bob Elliott reminding you to hang by your thumbs.

Radio Recap: A Salute to the Law

A Salute to the Law has been indexed online as "the Nick Harris Program" but the Old Time Radio Researchers insist a Salute to the Law is the more accurate title of this series. They also say that this program ran from 1923 until 1942 which would make it the earliest radio program I've featured in my Radio Recaps!

What we do have of the program is dated 1934-1940. It was a 15-minute syndicated show introduced by Nick Harris, a real-life private detective. Harris would present stories that were supposedly drawn from true cases, although it's always hard to know for certain with programs such as these.

A Salute to the Law, then, was a crime program. Each episode dramatized a case, sometimes from the perspective of the law, other times from the perspective of the perpetrator. It was never, however, sympathetic to lawbreakers. Indeed, one episode opens with Harris going on a virtual tirade against the release of repeat offenders, closing his speech with a call for repeat offenders to be jailed for life.

The show sounds a lot like one of its contemporaries, Police Reporter, especially when it dramatizes scenes of murder. There's one particular episode titled "the Female Ogre" about a horrific series of murders committed by a woman that sounds just as sensationalistic as anything on Police Reporter. It's early radio and often primitive - not as nuanced as even Calling All Cars, much less Dragnet or 21st Precinct.

You can hear all the surviving episodes (dated from 1934 up to 1940) of a Salute to the Law in this YouTube playlist created by the Old Time Radio Researchers.

Radio Recap: The Voyage of the Scarlet Queen

"The Scarlet Queen, the proudest ship to plough the seas, bound for uncharted adventure! Every week a complete entry in the log and every week a league further in the strange Voyage of the Scarlet Queen!"

The Voyage of the Scarlet Queen was a radio adventure series that aired on Mutual from July 3, 1947 to February 14, 1948. The titular Scarlet Queen was a ketch under the command of Philip Carney (Elliott Lewis), aided by his first mate Red Gallagher (Ed Max). It was written by Gil Doud and Bob Tallman, produced by James Burton.

As the series involves a ship at sail it should be noted that this was not a historical program - it was set in contemporary times, with nearly every episode set somewhere in the Pacific, particularly at Asian ports of call.

Unusually for a non-juvenile adventure series, the Voyage of the Scarlet Queen had some continuity between episodes. The series kicked off with Carney in San Francisco, receiving an assignment from a Chinese man named Ku Chei Kang which promises to lead Carney to a fortune - however there's a rival group led by a man named Constantino who want the fortune for themselves. Constantino's people kill Carney's first mate in the first episode, resulting in Red Gallagher joining the crew; Gallagher is himself one of Constantino's agents but by the end of the pilot had swapped sides to serve faithfully under Carney's command. Interestingly, there was still a bit of friction for the first few episodes as Gallagher's allegiance to Carney was tested; but eventually the search for Kang's fortune was wrapped up, yet the series kept going with a variety of done-in-one episodes before it was cancelled. The final episode brought up Kang again, a fitting conclusion to the series.

In the audition, Lewis was Red Gallagher - Howard Duff had the role of Philip Carney. By the time it became a series, Duff was busy with the Adventures of Sam Spade, which must be why Lewis was promoted to the lead role. Listening to the audition (which was redone for the broadcast version) it is a big distracting to hear Duff as Carney as the role is played straight with none of Duff's usual sarcasm. For that matter, it's a bit hard to accept Lewis in the role of the tough and brawny Gallagher; the recasting definitely served to the show's benefit. In 1950 an attempt was made to recreate the series as the Log of the Black Parrot with Elliott Lewis again in the lead and Gil Doud writing alongside producer Antony Ellis but this time the pilot did not lead to a series.

Lead writer Gil Doud was a busy writer whose work appeared in One Out of Seven, the Adventures of Sam Spade, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, Pursuit, Escape, Suspense, Gunsmoke and Fort Laramie. His Escape credits include the episode "Port Royal," which was also set at sea (I rather like that episode). Co-writer Bob Tallman also wrote a few episodes of Escape, Suspense and the Adventures of Sam Spade.

The Voyage of the Scarlet Queen is a series I tried repeatedly to listen to over the last 2 decades yet something always held me back - I couldn't account for it. Gil Doud's writing, Elliott Lewis' acting, sea-going adventure - heck, those elements make it sound like a spin-off from Escape, right? But it wasn't until I resolved to write up the series on this blog that I made a determined effort at listening to the entire series.

There are some problems with the show, mainly that it was set primarily in Asia yet the Asian characters were all cast with white men doing bad "yellowface" accents. I like Bill Johnstone and William Conrad a lot but their Voyage of the Scarlet Queen characters are regrettable footnotes in their radio careers. Still, the series was wise enough to cast Barton Yarborough in a few episodes as a Texan, permitting him to act in the accent he did best (his first character was killed off; the series then brought him back as the first character's brother!).

Still, it is a strong series with a lot of good work being done; it's least-offensive when it steps away from the Asian characters as in the pilot and in the episode "The Jewel Thieves and The Straw Filled Dummy" in which Lewis' wife Cathy Lewis held a memorable role as a romantic interest for Carney.

The Voyage of the Scarlet Queen's run is mostly intact, which is unusual for Mutual shows; they were rebroadcast by the Armed Forces, who account for most of the surviving episodes; you can hear the Old Time Radio Researchers' collection in this YouTube playlist!

Radio Recap: Phyl Coe Radio Mysteries

Phyl Coe Radio Mysteries was a syndicated program that aired during September 6-December 20, 1937. It starred Peggy Allenby as the titular detective Phyllis Coe and none other than Bud Collyer (later of the Adventures of Superman) as her sidekick Tom Taylor. It shouldn't surprise you to learn that "Phyl Coe Radio Mysteries" was a big advertising campaign for Philco radios, similar to Majestic's Master of Mystery serving as a lengthy advertisement for Majestic radios.

Yet, Phyl Coe Radio Mysteries had a gimmick - listeners were invited to help solve the mysteries heard in each episode! Although the programs featured a complete drama that always ended with Phyl identifying the criminal, it lacked the typical radio detective scene where they would expound upon the clues which pointed to the criminal's guilt. Philco dealers provided booklets for listeners to gather the clues for themselves, then mail in their own reasoning for what tipped off Phyl to the criminal's identity, with correct responses leading to cash prizes. That's a pretty great gimmick!

The gimmick is the best part of the series; it's of interest that Phyl is an early female protagonist in the radio mystery genre but the stories themselves are very average radio mystery stories. Still, they're very breezy and easy to listen to.

12 of the 16 episodes of Phyl Coe Radio Mysteries can found in the Old-Time Radio Researchers Library.