Radio Recap: ABC Mystery Time

ABC Mystery Time was a latter-day program and there's precious little written about it in online logs. As is often the case, ABC programs are among the least-examined and poorest-surviving among old-time radio shows. The series is also called simply Mystery Time, Masters of Mystery and Mystery Time Classics. The show was hosted by Don Dowd but otherwise lacked in credits. It was heard between 1956-1957 and ran five nights a week, Monday to Friday.

Even as you browse the few recordings, if you're hep to old-time radio mystery dramas you'll see some familiar titles. One is "Four Fatal Jugglers," a script first heard on Molle Mystery Theater (November 14, 1947); another is "Murder in Haste" from the Whistler (February 25, 1946 and December 17, 1947).

Many of the surviving episodes of ABC Mystery Time are actually recycled from Harry Alan Towers' syndicated shows Theatre Royal and the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Given that we can definitely identify some episodes as recycling old Molle Mystery Theater scripts, I wonder if this series is similar to the Mystery Playhouse - simply a clearing house of existing recordings from ABC's vaults rather than newly-created dramas. Perhaps some future OTR researchers will uncover more about where this series came from.

June 10, 2025 update: Fellow radio fan Mike Malloy notes that episodes of the series Mike Malloy Private Eye (no relation) were also released as episodes of ABC Mystery Time.

As it is, the audio quality of these few surviving episodes of ABC Mystery Time is not very good. As well, comparing their versions of stories to the productions done a decade earlier on Molle Mystery Theater and the Whistler does this show no favours - the earlier programs are much better produced and performed.

There's a fan collection of ABC Mystery Time programs at the Internet Archive.