Calling All Cars is a historically important radio series, one of the first attempts to recreate stories about true-life crimes. It was a half-hour show and presented over CBS from November 29, 1933 to February 10, 1940. It was sponsored by Rio Grande gasoline and written and directed by William N. Robson; it was the series that built Robson's reputation. Rio Grande promoted the series heavily, even handing out a free "Calling All Cars News" at their stations.
The show's cast largely went uncredited but you can recognize voices like Joseph Kearns, Lou Merrill and Gale Gordon. John Gibson was in a lot of episodes, sometimes as a cop, sometimes as a criminal. The show made use of real police officials to narrate their "crime doesn't pay" message at the start of each show. Their performances weren't exactly good, but it added credibility to the series; one certainly sees the influence on Phillips H. Lord's Gang Busters, which mimicked Calling All Cars structure, although it's never struck me as being as authentic as its predecessor.
Calling All Cars was the first police program to strive for authenticity, the sort of details that would later be expanded on by Dragnet. Robson prided himself on reacting swiftly to crime news; they adapted the death of John Dillinger to the radio just 72 hours after he was killed. Probably Robson's finest hour was "The San Quentin Prison Break" (January 22, 1935) which he dramatized just after the escapees had been captured. Robson later appeared on the Columbia Workshop on September 5, 1936 and explained how that episode came to be, a real rarity in radio!
But I think the death of Dillinger showed up a weakness in Calling All Cars' format; the kind of infamous public enemies like Dillinger were dying out; there were always crimes to adapt (even with the show's restriction on covering crimes in California) but fewer and fewer sensations. Which is a good thing! But when you consider that at the time Calling All Cars began it was trying to promote the goodness of police officers as an antidote to the Depression-era worship of criminals like Dillinger, you can see in this series the start of the trend towards what's derisively called "copaganda" programming.
The bad news about Calling All Cars is that although there are almost 300 episodes still circulating - including the earliest episodes - the first few years have often terrible audio quality, with surface noise, skips and muddy dialogue. But the quality generally improves as the series goes along. There are definitely a few episodes I can recommend, such as "The Corpse in the Shack" (June 23, 1936), which has an interesting dramatization of the killer's trial where accounts of the murder are given by the defense and the prosecution, with different details in each version, and "Three Faces West" (December 30, 1938) with a teenager who falls in with two other boys who are killers. I also truly enjoyed "The History of Dallas Egan" (February 1, 1938), in which Gerald Mohr portrayed a criminal who kept digging himself deeper and deeper; "The Shanghai Jester" (December 21, 1937) about a conman with a mania for sugar; and the very unusual "The Case of the Black Cat," (September 22, 1938), with a suspect named Markheim who invokes the famous Robert Louis Stevenson story!
You can hear the Old Time Radio Researchers' collection of Calling All Cars through the playlist below:
One last special day on the Marvel Appendix - it will be a little quieter for a while! Today is the anniversary of Steve Ditko's birth and we're celebrating at the Marvel Appendix with a lot of new profiles. I wrote 29 new profiles; I hope you enjoy them!
In my earlier recaps about Lights Out and Quiet, Please, I could easily recommend the series in general; episodes of those programs do not vary drastically in quality from one to another. I have my favourites, but there are few episodes of either show I'd recommend listeners skip.
Not so with Inner Sanctum Mysteries; there are some episodes that creak worse than their famous door. For that reason, I'm going to recommend what I think Inner Sanctum Mysteries sounded like when it was at its best; if you like these, then by all means sample the rest of the program. All of the links below lead to mp3 files at the Internet Archive's Inner Sanctum Mysteries - Single Episodes page run by the Old Time Radio Researchers Group.
"The Judas Clock" (April 17, 1945) which I've blogged about in the past, has my vote as the single greatest episode of Inner Sanctum Mysteries; it's the tale of a clock -- an evil clock -- and the death it brings with it. Other episodes I recommend are:
"Death Is a Joker" (June 10, 1944) Peter Lorre plays a man who commits a murder and tries to alibi himself.
"The Color-Blind Formula" (December 6, 1944) After a scientist disappears, a blackmailer goes after his assistant.
"No Coffin for the Dead" (February 20, 1945) The trail of a murderer leads to a bedridden man who couldn't have done it.
"The Bog-Oak Necklace" (April 10, 1945) An unearthed skeleton wearing a necklace dredges up an old love triangle.
"Song of the Slasher" (April 24, 1945) A police detective thinks a killer is one of his neighbours.
"The Girl on the Gallows" (May 1, 1945) A fortune teller predicts a woman's death on the gallows - just before her own death!
"The Black Art" (May 15, 1945) A seemingly-supernatural woman offers aid to a murderer.
"Musical Score" (May 29, 1945) After murdering a couple aboard a lifeboat, a survivor is haunted by the song they sang.
"Death Across the Board" (June 5, 1945) A maniac plays a game of chess using live people as the game pieces!
"Dead Man's Holiday" (June 19, 1945) A man awakens from a wreck to find he has a new face and a new life he doesn't remember.
"Dead Man's Debt" (June 26, 1945) A lawyer gets his client off from a murder charge but thinks his client is guilty of a different crime.
"Terror by Night" (September 18, 1945) A female motorist is alone on the highway while an escaped killer is looking for a ride.
"The Lonely Sleep" (September 25, 1945) A window dresser uses a dead body to complete his masterpiece.
"The Wailing Wall" (November 6, 1945) Boris Karloff plays a man who kills his wife then is haunted by the sound of her moans.
"Skeleton Bay" (February 5, 1946) A vacationing mystery writer meets a killer and offers to be his accomplice.
"Elixer Number Four" (February 12, 1946) Richard Widmark plays a man who'd kill to be immortal.
"Death Is a Double-Crosser" (March 26, 1946) An ex-con becomes a diamond cutter's apprentice in the hopes of stealing his latest commission.
"Make Ready My Grave" (April 23, 1946) Richard Widmark plays an heir who's due to succumb to a family curse of murder.
"Tempo in Blood" (January 12, 1948) A jazz pianist meets a man who seems determined to arrange his death.
"Murder by Prophecy" (September 27, 1948) An heir follows a strange prophecy in the hopes of claiming a hidden treasure.
"Death of a Doll" (October 18, 1948) A reporter investigates a woman's death and it leads him to someone claiming to be the Devil!
"Between Two Worlds" (December 20, 1948) A gangster wants to make amends for his awful life; a ghost offers him his chance!
"Mark My Grave" (January 17, 1949) A reporter visits a family who are being killed one at a time by a ghost!
"Only the Dead Die Twice" (March 21, 1949) A woman in a taxi cab discovers a corpse seated next to her.
"Death on the Highway" (June 6, 1949) A motorist kills a hitchhiker, then suffers blackmail.
"Deadly Fare" (July 18, 1949) A taxi driver picks up a murderer who intends to kill the cabbie once he's done his work.
"Death's Little Brother" (August 29, 1949) A drifter murders an heir then impersonates him, but he makes a huge wrong assumption.
"The Devil's Workshop" (October 10, 1949) A wax sculptor meets a man with no face who proposes an alliance.
"A Corpse for Halloween" (October 31, 1949) A man is hunted on Halloween night by a man he left for dead years before.
"The Hitch-Hiking Corpse" (January 23, 1950) A driver meets a woman who seems to have a supernatural hold over him.
"Birdsong for a Murderer" (June 22, 1952) Boris Karloff plays a husband who kills to protect his wife from some unpleasant business.
"Death Pays the Freight" (July 6, 1952) Everett Sloane plays a bum who kills a man in a boxcar and steals his identity.
"Murder Off the Record" (August 3, 1952) A weight machine offers a man prophecies about his fortune.
"Strange Passenger" (August 31, 1952) A motorist keeps seeing the same female hitchhiker and keeps hearing "Star Dust" on the radio.
"The Meek Die Slowly" (September 7, 1952) A cemetery caretaker adds fresh bodies to the premises.
I hope my articles have helped you find some appropriate listening material this Halloween season. Happy haunting! Good night... pleasant... dreams... hmmm?
Over at the Marvel Appendix, we're celebrating the life of our deceased colleague Ronald Byrd by completing a number of profiles he'd researched but hadn't completed. All of them are characters from the Anti-Registration Underground group seen in Civil War: Front Line. Back when those comics were published, writer Paul Jenkins gave Ronald permission to create backgrounds for all of them; Ronald wrote entire biographies for each character, but very little of what he wrote wound up in print. To celebrate his passion for these extremely obscure characters, many of us at the Marvel Appendix are completing Ronald's work; for my part, I finished the profile for Johnny Justice; there are many more available today, with others planned for tomorrow.
Inner Sanctum Mysteries ran from January 7, 1941 until October 5, 1952, appearing on NBC Blue, ABC and CBS. It had a lot of sponsors, starting with Carter's Little Liver Pills (1941-1943). They also had Bromo-Seltzer (1946-1950), with the talking train (why didn't they sponsor The Mysterious Traveler?), Mars candy bars (1951-1952) and, perhaps most memorably, Lipton Tea and Lipton Soups (1945-1946). The series was produced and directed by Himan Brown; the writers included Milton Lewis, Emile Tepperman and Robert Sloane. The series seldom adapted scripts from other sources, it was generally original scripts (even their rare adaptations, such as their version of Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" were only dimly inspired by the original stories).
Inner Sanctum Mysteries had what is genuinely one of the best and easily most memorable openings in all of old-time radio - the sound of that immense, creaky, squeaking door opening. From within this Inner Sanctum, the show's host (Raymond Edward Johnson, 1941-1945 and Paul McGrath, 1945-1952) would invite the listener inside, sharing a few morbidly bad puns about murder before starting the night's drama.
When I first got on the internet, it was fashionable in old-time radio fandom to call out Inner Sanctum Mysteries for it's "cop-out endings," which I saw referenced time and again on OTR fan pages. To this they were referring to the lack of the supernatural on the program; frequently, it would seem as though a character were threatened by a ghost or a demon or a witch, yet the climax would insist that no, they weren't. If the plot were about a dead man having come back to life then he probably faked his death to begin with, or his return was being fabricated by someone to elicit a confession from the killer.
Now, there are plenty of OTR shows where the supernatural is present - just look at Dark Fantasy - or maybe don't, because it's not a very good program. Inner Sanctum Mysteries never promised its listeners ghost stories and, although the show occasionally let the listener wonder "maybe it was a ghost" the bulk of shows landed on "maybe not." Why then, were OTR fans circa late 1990s so upset with Inner Sanctum Mysteries? My theory is that it's that creaking door's fault; it's such a terrific noise, you think it must surely belong to a supernatural program. Inner Sanctum Mysteries was a horror program, sure, but not a supernatural horror show.
Instead, the way I describe Inner Sanctum Mysteries is a "nightmare show." In this series, everything is off-kilter - no one is reliable. Now, I get truly frustrated at the episodes with unreliable narrators, which I think is an even bigger "cop-out" than the lack of a genuine ghost. But generally, on Inner Sanctum Mysteries, everyone is suspect; the casts tend to be reasonably small (usually around 5 people) and nearly all of them deliver their lines with some underlying menace, even if they aren't the episode's villain. This isn't like Suspense, where if a character enters a diner, there might be a few lines from a waitress just to establish setting and mood; on Inner Sanctum Mysteries, if a character enters a diner and the waitress has dialogue, that waitress will probably try to kill or blackmail (or be killed or blackmailed by) the lead character. Inner Sanctum Mysteries inhabited a nightmarish world of sin, crime and murder; frequently, even the police were shown to be corrupt; there were precious few authority figures one could turn to for help when they were in an episode of Inner Sanctum; if you weren't crooked, you were probably about to be murdered.
The series got its name from an imprint of books which the Sanctum's host would often promote during the show's outro (the cover to the left is one of many such examples). Mr. Host also had a lot of banter with one Mary Bennett, the spokesperson for Lipton Tea and Lipton Soups. Fans of the show bring up Mary so often, you'd think she was a major part of the series, but Lipton only sponsored the program from 1945-1946 for about 18 months; we just have so many episodes from that era that her minor presence forms a large sample of what remains. Fans are split on Mary, who would often break the tension of the play at the half-way mark ("Gracious, Mr. Host!") before launching into her Lipton commercial.
Maybe Mary's presence made the show more palatable to audiences who, in those days, got pretty upset about violence on the radio; it's why Lights Out could only get a laxative to sponsor them. I see Mary's gentle, polite banter with Mr. Host as a compromise that helped keep the show on the air, even when extremely bloody episodes were being aired under the Lipton banner ("The Judas Clock," for example, is possibly the show's goriest episode - and Lipton sponsored it).
As well, I think Mr. Host's jokes and banter at the start, middle and end of each broadcast are interesting as a kind of defensive measure taken by horror; there's a curious link between comedy and horror (just look at how many horror films of the same era had comic relief or how many comedy films of the era involve ghosts or haunted houses). In the case of Inner Sanctum Mysteries, it's a way of relieving the tension, to let the listener know, hey, they're all right, it's just entertainment. I think as well, making jokes about horror is a way for grown men to help defend their love of the genre, which is seen as either too childish or too morbid by outsiders. If you can claim it's all "camp," then you have an acceptable justification for your love of the genre.
One unusual aspect of the program is that they sometimes repeated scripts but swapped the lead character's gender (along with some other details) which made those stories come across quite differently. Compare "Dead Man's Holiday" (June 19, 1945) to "The Unburied Dead" (May 16, 1949) or "Death Demon" (July 5, 1948) to "The Magic Tile" (August 10, 1952).
Himan Brown later produced The CBS Radio Mystery Theatre (1974-1982) in the "new time radio" era. He brought the creaking door with him, but it's always deflating when instead of hearing a revolting joke by Mr. Host on the other side of the door, one hears the grandfatherly E. G. Marshall. Although he hosted some genuine ghost stories on that show, as an announcer, he did not match the door. At least Himan Brown was a faithful producer who gave work to old Inner Sanctum veterans like Paul McGrath, Larry Haines and Mason Adams.
There was also a series of six Inner Sanctum movies at Universal, each one starring Lon Chaney Jr., but they were trading on the name of the book series, not the radio show, which makes those films a bit disappointing to watch as a fan of the radio program (if you want to watch them, Weird Woman is probably the best). In 1954, Inner Sanctum Mysteries became a television series complete with the creaking door, Paul McGrath's voice as Mr. Host and a number of stories adapted right from the radio show! There are still four of these shows in existence and they're easy to find on YouTube.
I have a lot of affection for Inner Sanctum Mysteries; the plots didn't always hold up to much scrutiny but they told sensational stories that I find entertaining to this day - even the few truly bad episodes have their charm.
Here's the Old Time Radio Researchers' YouTube playlist of Inner Sanctum Mysteries:
On Halloween: My recommended listening list of Inner Sanctum Mysteries!
It's the end of the Marvel Appendix's celebration of the New Universe's 40th anniversary today... let's go out with a bang! That is, let's finish by spotlighting The Pitt by my friend Jeff Christiansen. We started with the White Event; we finish with the Black Event! I hope you enjoyed this special event, you can see all of the new profiles on the Appendix's update page.
I've written personal eulogies for a number of comic book professionals over the years. Most, I never met; others, I met in passing; a few I had some memorable interactions with. But it's a different matter to eulogize a comics person whom I knew as a peer - a collaborator - a friend.
Ronald Byrd started writing for the Marvel Appendix in 2002 when I was an editor there; although I didn't edit his work, by 2003 we had both been welcomed aboard Marvel's now-forgotten Marvel Encycloepdia project, which started our professional assocation with Marvel Comics. The following year, we were both made part of the new Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe staff of writers. That year, he and I co-wrote The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Golden Age Marvel 2004. At the time, he and I were the only two writers at the OHOTMU who had a fondness for pre-1961 Marvel comics; I think we divided that book exactly 50/50 between us.
In 2005 I started taking on head writer duties, which meant I had a say in which writers were assigned to my projects. As head writer, I employed Ronald on my first book, Marvel Monsters: From the Files of Ulysses Bloodstone and subsequently on the Marvel Westerns: Outlaw Files, All-New Iron Manual, Iron Manual Mark 3, Dark Reign Files, Marvel Pets Handbook and Marvel Mystery Handbook: 70th Anniversary Special. This was in addition to our ongoing work collaborating on other handbooks, files books and The Official Index to the Marvel Universe. I know Ronald was disappointed that I didn't bring him in on the Marvel Atlas, but I was trying to keep the number of writers very low on that book in order to maintain consistency of style.
I recall getting very upset at Ronald over his history of Wolverine, such as appeared in Ronald's book Wolverine Saga. Ronald not only missed that a reference to Wolverine serving in the Devil's Brigade was referring to a real-life World War II unit, he thought it was a World War I reference! I couldn't budge him on this issue and it really got under my skin, as my great-uncle had served in the Devil's Brigade. I accused him of being myopic; I think it's the only time we had a serious disagreement. In retrospect, given all the nonsense that's been added to Logan's war record, maybe it's for the best that the character served in a fictional Devil's Brigade that just happened to have the same name as a real-life unit.
During the Civil War event, Ronald received permission from writer Paul Jenkins to establish backstories for a number of costumed characters who appeared in the background of Jenkins' Civil War Frontline stories. Some of Ronald's details made it into Civil War Files and the handbooks, but he really threw himself into sketching out complete biographies for those characters and they're very interesting reading with fun ideas for super-hero origin stories and explanations for why these character had been in opposition to Civil War's Superhuman Registration Act. Most of them have been written up on the Appendix - check out Canasta and Basic Black for example - the comments sections have his full biographies.
Paul Jenkins also looked to Ronald for aid in writing his mini-series All Winners Squad: Band of Heroes. As a tribute to Ronald, he named the character Sgt. Byrd after him! Unfortunately, the series was cancelled by Marvel after the 5th issue, leaving the remaining 3 issues unpublished to this day.
I quit writing for Marvel in 2012 and distanced myself from the Marvel Appendix as well. From time to time, Ronald would reach out to me to ask questions and brainstorm but I'm afraid I was often very curt with him - I wanted to make a clean break from that part of my life. I'm ashamed to say that the last time he messaged me, I didn't even respond. I was aware that Ronald's health had recently diminished but news of his death still shocked me when I received it yesterday.
Like all of us who served on the handbooks circa 2004-2012, Ronald had that particular knack for catching small details and delving into minutia. He knew we were ultimately writing about fictional universes, but he was determined to maintain versimilitude - and he had fun while he was doing it.
As long as Marvel endures, Ronald's contributions will remain a part of it, even after he - and I - have passed out of living memory. I don't know where Ronald was in terms of religious belief. But as a handbook writer, I think the most worthy words I can share are those of our patron, Mark Gruenwald, creator of the handbooks; these quotes of Gruenwald's made me think of Ronald:
Love something that's unlovable by most people's standards. It's good practice for your spirit.
Someday the universe will tire of me and will break me down into the components I came from. Right now I'd mind if that happened, but when the time comes I imagine I will welcome no longer being separate from the rest of reality.
Everything ultimately succumbs to entropy, but until it does, enjoy it.
Today is the 6th day of the Marvel Appendix's New Universe 40th Anniversary celebration! Today we're spotlighting Sponge from Mark Gruenwald and Paul Ryan's D.P.7! She was a later addition to the cast, a woman with an odd ability (absorbing moisture) and a decided interest in Dave Landers! The other new profiles today are all from D.P.7, featuring all of the patients from the Clinic for Paranormal Research who hadn't previously been profiled! Check them out on the update page!
The New Universe 40th Anniversary celebration at the Marvel Appendix continues today with profiles on the series Nightmask and Kickers Inc., including a spotlight on The All-American, alias Jack Magniconte, the lead character of Kickers Inc.! All of the new profiles can be found on the update page!
It's the 4th day of our New Universe 40th Anniversary celebration at the Marvel Appendix and today we're spotlighting Mark Hazzard, who headlined his own series! My old Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe collaborator Stuart Vandal wrote this one. We also have some more Justice and Psi-Force characters. See them all on the update page!
Today is day 3 of the Marvel Appendix's celebration of the New Universe's 40th anniversary! Today we're spotlighting Fabian Nicieza and Ron Lim's The Medusa Web, an international group of mercenaries who started out as Psi-Force enemies, then later recruited them into their ranks! I also wrote up profiles on every individual member of the Medusa Web who didn't previously have a profile at the Appendix.
Check out all of the new profiles at the Appendix update page.
Today we're continuing our celebration of the New Universe's 40th anniversary at the Marvel Appendix with a number of profiles on characters from Mark Gruenwald and Paul Ryan's D.P.7, with a spotlight on Stephanie Harrington, the energy-giving paranormal housewife who became a super-spy, natural leader and one of the cast's toughest combatants!
I wrote up profiles on D.P.7 characters Dave Landers, Randy O'Brien and Jeff Walters in the past; today I've added the rest of the book's original cast: Charlotte Beck, Lenore Fenzl and Scuzz!
Check out all of the new profiles on the Marvel Appendix update page!
I've blogged many times about the supernatural anthology Quiet, Please, created by Wyllie Cooper (Lights Out); it was heard from June 8, 1947 to June 25, 1949 on Mutual and ABC; despite those being two of the worst networks in terms of preservation, most of Quiet, Please has managed to survive.
Ernest Chappell starred in each episode as "the man who spoke to you" and, indeed, each episode he would speak to you; episodes were nearly always narrated by Chappell's character to you, the audience. In time, music, sound effects and other actors would fade in, but it maintained the feel of a ghost story told by lamplight.
Most people come to Quiet, Please through the episode "The Thing on the Fourble Board" (August 9, 1948) - it was my introduction to the series. It's been called the greatest horror program in the history of radio by people like Stephen King and Harlan Ellison. Now, Quiet, Please didn't aim for horror of that sort every week, so if you want more episodes like this one... well, they do exist (try "My Son, John" or "Tanglefoot") but in general, Quiet, Please was a supernatural program; there wasn't always a menace to be faced; often the series aimed for melancholy, rather than scares.
Quiet, Please has some stories which are played for laughs; "Dark Grey Magic" concerns an inept spellcaster; "Kill Me Again" has a man entering into a deal with the Devil for another chance at life, but he doesn't get to enjoy it; "Presto Change-o, I'm Sure" features a spell to make people disappear and where exactly they disappear to; and "The Man Who Knew Everything" features a know-it-all and his complicated life.
Some stories are very gentle; look to the Christmas stories Cooper told like "Berlin, 1945" and "The Time of the Big Snow," which aren't the least bit scary or unsettling. His Easter story, "Shadow of the Wings," though, has a bit of menace inside it.
Cooper was often inspired by stories from the Bible, which is pretty unusual for a supernatural program; I wrote a blog post about these stories.
I already have a list of recommended episodes here on the blog. There are definitely episodes I love more than others but I treasure every episode of the series to some extent, even a far-out one like "The Hat, the Bed, and John J. Catherine" with its lengthy soliloquy. I came to Quiet, Please looking for some scares but I stuck around because of the quality of Cooper's writing and the spellbinding way Chappell's voice drew me into the stories.
You can hear the surviving episodes of Quiet, Please and recreations of missing shows at the fan page Quiet Please dot org. They also have scripts/transcriptions so you can follow along, just in case it's a little too quiet for you.
I ran a series of posts earlier this year that told the history of Marvel's New Universe imprint; now, I'm helping to lead a celebration of the New Universe at the Marvel Appendix. My fellow writers and I are writing profiles about characters, groups, events and objects associated with the New Universe!
Today's spotlight profile is The white Event, from which the New Universe's paranormals originated.
All of the new profiles can be found on the Appendix update page! I'll be adding more profiles every day up to October 28!
"It... is... later... than... you... think... Lights Out brings you stories of the supernatural and the supernormal, dramatizing the fantasies and the mysteries of the unknown; we tell you this frankly, so if you wish to avoid the excitement and tension of these imaginative plays, we urge you calmly, but sincerely, to turn off your radio... now."
Lights Out wasn't the first radio horror program - it had been preceded by the likes of The Witch's Tale - but it offered a new level of sophistication with an emphasis on sound effects and an isolating, first-person perspective to heighten the sense of danger around the show's cast. It originated on January 1, 1934 under the eye of Wyllis Cooper, who remained with the series up until 1936 when he moved on to Hollywood (a career move he later bitterly regretted).
Arch Oboler took over the series for the rest of its initial run in 1936-1939 and quickly made it his own; Oboler ran a 1942-1943 revival on CBS by sponsor Ironized Yeast and most of the surviving episodes of the show are from that era (many scripts from that era had been first performed during Oboler's 1936-1939 run). The show had brief summer revivals on NBC and ABC from 1945-1947, mostly featuring recreations from Cooper's 1934-1936 tenure. Much later, Oboler recirculated his shows with new introductions in the 1970s as The Devil and Mr. O; Oboler also produced a 1962 record called Drop Dead which featured recreations of old Lights Out scripts.
Scholarship on Lights Out is much better now than it was when I first got into old-time radio; many people simply called Lights Out as a show "created by Arch Oboler," ignoring Cooper entirely. There was also a lot of confusion around the series Arch Oboler's Plays, where fans circulated episodes from that series as episodes of Lights Out. Further, because scripts were recycled and recirculated so many times, figuring out when a recording originated has been an error-filled process - but, as I say, current scholarship has been fixing many decades-old errors.
We still have comparatively little of the show's history; those few examples of Wyllis Cooper's scripts (and the high quality of Cooper's work on his later show Quiet, Please) suggest there are many lost treasures in the show's earliest years. But Arch Oboler's particular talents were well-employed on Lights Out; he loved stream-of-consciousness storytelling, which was extremely effective on a horror series. Many of his dramas featured characters succumbing to delusions, repeating words ("got to get away... got to get away...") and a particular penchance for anti-fascism sentiment. While it means you pick up on Oboler's idiosyncracies quickly, when the man delivered a frightening scenario, the show delivered on chills.
Part of what set Lights Out apart from what came before - and much of what would come - was the lack of a horror host. There was no "Old Nancy" like on The Witch's Tale. The nearest the series came to such a host was Arch Oboler himself during the 1942-1943 series, in which he'd make banter with the announcer before, mid-drama and after. Of course, sometimes Oboler's remarks were there to reinforce the story's themes; I guess it's possible Oboler occasionally went over his audience's heads. Both Cooper and Oboler also enjoyed getting a bit meta, as Cooper's "Coffin in Studio B" and Oboler's "Murder in the Script Department" and "The Author and the Thing" are all examples of stories set during the production of Lights Out in which horror is visited upon the show's creative staff.
Beyond the lack of a horror host, the menace on Lights Out tended to be more subtle than on other horror shows. Often the creatures on the show didn't speak at all (such as on "Visitor from Hades"); in other instances, the point-of-view character is trapped somewhere and is driven insane while trying to escape ("Murder in the Script Department"). There were plenty of monsters on Lights Out - even the Devil himself a couple of times - but the terror tended to be psychological. In that way, Lights Out helped set the stage for television's The Twilight Zone.
I've recommended many episodes of Lights Out over the years and I can easily say, "just liten to them all." That is, if you like horror on radio, listen to them all! I most enjoyed Oboler's stories "It Happened," "Poltergeist," "Mungahra," "Come to the Bank," "Knock at the Door," "Meteor Man," "The Fast One," "Spider," "Bathysphere," "Murder Castle," "State Executioner" and "The Author and the Thing." From what we have of the Cooper era, the Boris Karloff episode "Death Robbery" is dynamite.
I've also blogged about an unusual episode of Lights Out that was re-dramatized on the Shadow in this blog post, and I blogged about the rare comic book adaptations of Lights Out in this blog post. I also had some thoughts about his story "Across the Gap" as an anti-fascism allegory in this blog post.
Lights Out had a TV show from 1949-1952 and a surprisingly large number of them are available - they're easily found on YouTube. Although the TV series had some adaptations from Cooper's radio work, there was just one adaptation of Oboler's work - Oboler hated television.
You can hear the Old Time Radio Researchers Group's collection of 65 Lights Out episodes at this link.
It's Jim Starlin's birthday today and to celebrate, I wrote up a number of characters and items he co-created on the Marvel Appendix. Happy birthday, Mr. Starlin!
"This is The Mysterious Traveler, inviting you to join me on another journey into the realm of the strange and the terrifying; I hope you will enjoy the trip, that it will thrill you a little and chill you a little. So, settle back, get a good grip on your nerves, and be comfortable... if you can..."
The Mysterious Traveler was a half-hour horror/mystery anthology program that was heard over Mutual from December 5, 1943 to September 16, 1952. Maurice Tarplin was the titular Mysterious Traveler, a man who would greet the listener from his seat aboard a train, then narrate a story. There are early episodes where he took a part in the dramas, probably because Mutual didn't have a huge budget; but mostly, he kept to his role as a horror host.
The Mysterious Traveler was different from the other horror hosts in that he didn't enter cackling like Old Nancy in The Witch's Tale or the Hermit in The Hermit's Cave, nor with the puns of Raymond on Inner Sanctum Mysteries. Tarplin made the Traveler sound somewhat menacing, but he was extremely restrained next to the rest of his siblings.
When I first got on the internet, I found many OTR fans complaining about Inner Sanctum Mysteries and it's "cop-out" endings. They were referring to the lack of the supernatural on that program; Inner Sanctum Mysteries seldom committed to the supernatural. If that's what you want from a horror program, then The Mysterious Traveler would seem to be the program you really want, because there are plenty of episodes that embrace the supernatural head-on.
...I wrote "would seem to be," though, because that's not true of every episode of The Mysterious Traveler. For example, sometimes there are ghosts; in other episodes, the ghosts are fakes. But still further, not every episode of The Mysterious Traveler was a horror story - there are science fiction stories, mystery stories and crime stories. You can't always be certain what you'll get when you tune in.
The most talked-up episode of The Mysterious Traveler is "Behind the Locked Door" (November 6, 1951), in which a young man tells his fiancee about his expedition underground and the weird creatures he met there; it is indeed a very good episode. I'm also fond of (links to the Internet Archive files):
"The Queen of the Cats" (July 2, 1944): A woman with a supernatural connection to cats haunts her lover.
The series was primarily written by Robert A. Arthur and David Kogan. They'd previously created the horror anthology Dark Destiny for Mutual in 1942, but only 1 episode of that show has survived. They also created the Mutual syndicated show The Sealed Book in 1945, which recycled scripts from The Mysterious Traveler but had to trim a few minutes to fit the shorter timeslot; we can compare some programs that exist in both The Mysterious Traveler and The Sealed Book formats and it does show The Sealed Book to be inferior, as the material they trimmed really enhanced the The Mysterious Traveler's scripts.
Robert A. Arthur had a lengthy career in radio and later television and he was never one to let a perfectly good script lie idle. He and Kogan also created the 15-minute show The Strange Dr. Weird in 1945 with Maurice Tarplin also as the host. I've long assumed stories heard on The Strange Dr. Weird were condensed from The Mysterious Traveler scripts but I've yet to prove it; anyway, Arthur went on gamely recycling The Mysterious Traveler into the latter-day of Suspense's radio run. The duo also wrote for Murder by Experts and ABC Mystery Time.
The Mysterious Traveler had a comic book that lasted just one issue in 1948; I blogged about it here. It ran its own pulp magazine for six issues in 1951-1952. Later, Charlton published a comic that lasted from 1956-1959 and featured a lot of early work by Steve Ditko; Ditko published his own reprint of those stories in 2016, which I blogged about here. There were also two Mysterious Traveler comics by Moonstone in 2003 and 2004 that were by Trevor Von Eeden; I blogged about those too.
Despite the show's 9-year run, there are presently only 69 episodes in circulation. It's also unlikely more will turn up, given most Mutual shows vanished into the ether. For that reason, do treasure the fact we have The Sealed Book to supplement The Mysterious Traveler!
You'll find the Old Time Radio Research Group's YouTube playlist of The Mysterious Traveler below:
The Giant: Orson Welles, the Artist and the Shadow is a graphic novel by Youssef Daoudi, published in English last year by First Second. It's a biography of Welles that focuses on his years in Hollywood. Much of the framing around the story is set in the 1970s while Welles was shooting The Other Side of the Wind.
There's a fun sequence near the end where Orson's shadow comes to life - explicitly reminding Orson how he used to portray the Shadow on the radio - and has a conversation about Orson's career. Orson's shadow basically argues that Orson has no reason to complain about how his career turned out. Orson's shadow parrots many criticisms made about Welles over the decades - Daoudi uses the shadow as a means of making these external remarks appear internal.
Since this blog is often concerned with old-time radio, I have to caution fans of The Shadow that the book doesn't actually spend more than a moment on that series; "the Shadow" appears in the book's title primarily due to the conversation between Orson and his shadow. Still, there is a fun homage to the Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" in which a Martian tripod knocks Orson's cigar from his mouth, enraging him.
This is certainly a book for Orson Welles fans, who benefit from having a fuller understanding of his life and the events The Giant: Orson Welles, the Artist and the Shadow only has time to allude to. There are some very clever ideas in how Daoudi chose to tell Orson's life story, particularly the use of the quote which ends the book. The book is very critical of Welles, but we fans of Welles are also his harshest critics, so I have no hesitation in recommending this book.
Every Thursday this October, I'm going to write a recap on an old-time radio horror program as we gear up for Halloween!
"No, stay where you are; Do not break the stillness of this moment; for this is a time of mystery, a time when imagination is free and moves forward swiftly, silently... This is: The Haunting Hour!
When I first bought John Dunning's book On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio in 1998, one of the first things I did was look up each of the horror programs I enjoyed so I could learn more about them. I was a bit annoyed that there was nothing in his book about The Haunting Hour; it was one of the first horror anthology programs I ever heard, but no one seemed to know anything about it; who produced, directed or starred in it? When did it air?
Thanks to the sorely-missed Digital Deli website, I finally got some answers. They identified it as an NBC syndicated program produced in Philadelphia. It was produced by Herbert Wood and featured Rosa Rio on the organ and music by Tilden Brown. Berry Kroeger was the show's narrator and it drew from familiar voices like Frank Lovejoy and Jackson Beck. According to the Deli, it ran for 52 episodes from June 8, 1945 to May 26, 1946.
In some ways the show reminds me of the Weird Circle, which was also from NBC syndication (1943-1945); I even wonder if The Haunting Hour were in some sense a continuation of that program - they featured many of the same actors. There's one episode of The Haunting Hour called "Revenge" that's inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Annabel Lee" which reminded me of how the Weird Circle's stories were inspired by the works of Poe and others (although they usually made drastic changes to the original texts).
It's not entirely accurate for me to call The Haunting Hour a horror program because, taken as a whole, it was simply a mystery anthology. The word "haunting" invites you to think of an underlying supernatural menace to the stories, but the supernatural seldom looms that large. Some stories are simply detective tales; others are crime stories which delve more into suspense than mystery.
When The Haunting Hour was at it's best, it was pretty good; I highly recommend the episode "The Uptown Express," which concerns a woman who suddenly finds herself living five years into her future. I also recommend "Breakdown," about a woman who seems to be losing her grip on sanity.
The most interesting story to me is "Ptolemy's Grave," about a woman haunted by a mummy whose face resembles her husband. Amazingly, this is a story I knew from a 1943 comic book adaptation! I blogged about it before at this link; but when it appeared in Super-Magician Comics, it was introduced as an adaptation from Inner Sanctum Mysteries. I'm left wondering if this episode of The Haunting Hour recycled a script from Inner Sanctum Mysteries and if so, are other stories on The Haunting Hour recycled scripts?
The Old-Time Radio Researchers have 40 episodes of The Haunting Hour at this link.
Today the Marvel Appendix wraps up it's 25-year celebration! I wound up covering nearly 400 characters for the event! As I promised at the start of September, I won't link to all of them, but there are a number I'd like to highlight...
Originally I just wanted to get in a few dozen profiles for the event; I wound up writing so many and became so deeply involved that I wound up reactivating my responsibilities as an editor for the Marvel Appendix. It feels good to be back with my old Appendix friends and no doubt I'll wind up profiling many more obscure Marvel characters in the years to come. Happy 25th anniversary, you wonderful old website!
The Adventures of Jungle Jim was the 15-minute weekly syndicated program that replaced Flash Gordon in Hearst Syndication. It proved much more successful (under whatever terms Hearst considered successful) and ran from November 2, 1935 until July 31, 1954. Alex Raymond's Jungle Jim was the "topper" to his Flash Gordon on the Sunday comics page (meaning his adventures appeared on the top of the page above Flash Gordon; toppers were sometimes omitted in newspapers whose page size was smaller than the standard).
The role of Jungle Jim was played by a few people, with Matt Crowley apparently holding the role the longest (Gerald Mohr played Jim for a few weeks). Jim Bradley was a big game hunter, but the series seldom featured him hunting big game; instead, Jim would be hired out by governments to use his wilderness skills to investigate strange goings-on around in jungle climes, usually in Asia. Accompanying Jim was Kolu (Juano Hernandez), an Indian guide-- though he spoke in the type of speech radio usually gave to American Indians.
The initial storyline where Jim investigates the "Bat Woman" cult, which proves to be led by the criminal Shanghai Lil (Franc Hale), is a pretty darn good adventure serial. Shanghai Lil would turn out to be an undercover good guy who would renounce her criminal past and accompanied Jim on many of his adventures - a sort-of Burma to his Pat Ryan. But to complicate matters, Jim also wound up with his female sidekick Kitty St. John, who would make Lil jealous.
After Pearl Harbor, the show rapidly changed as Jim started fighting German and Japanese foes; he joined the Marines and was sent back to the States to ferret out undercover foreign agents (because when your speciality is hunting and tracking in Asia, obviously your greatest usefulness in World War II is to hang around stateside as a secret agent). By spring of 1942, the show's format was radically reinvented as, instead of the show's accustomed rhythm of lengthy adventures, it tended to feature Jim battling enemy agents and wrapping it all up within his 15 minutes; there were still some continued adventures, but typically they fell into no more than 2-part stories. My suspicion is that the radio show had stopped adapting the comic strip around this time. This version of The Adventures of Jungle Jim is an interesting change to witness, but it's inferior to what came before.
Because there are no shows from 1943 available I don't know when the series changed, but by 1944 Jim and Kolu (a new actor playing Kolu) were back in Asia, going on guerrilla missions against the Japanese in Malaya, which makes a lot more sense for their particular skills. They led an "Allied" team with members hailing from India, Australia, the Soviet Union and China, which meant the actors portraying those characters could use a variety of dialects.
After the war, the series shifted back into what it had been before; Shanghai Lil returned and joined Jim and Kolu on globe-trotting adventures that seemed to be based around Latin America.
Although the show didn't like to credit anyone (including Alex Raymond!) recognizable voices include Gale Gordon (who'd previously been Flash Gordon), Hanley Stafford and Elliot Lewis. The show's theme was taken from the William Tell Overture (a different part of the Overture than that used on the Lone Ranger). Up to 1942 the theme was played with a band, then it shifted to an organ.
Alex Raymond left Jungle Jim and Flash Gordon in 1944; the strip continued with John Mayo and Paul Norris and even spawned a series of movies starring Johnny Weissmuller, but the comic strip, movies and radio show ended in 1954; Weissmuller kept going with a TV show that only lasted 1955-1956. As I noted yesterday, Flash Gordon has transcended his humble origins and enjoys occasional revivals; Raymond's Flash Gordon is considered one of the greatest comic strips of all time. Jungle Jim, by contrast, is a historical artifact; today, it's mostly brought up when discussing Flash Gordon, not for its own merits. Flash Gordon had the last laugh.
The Old-Time Radio Researchers Library has 526 episodes of The Adventures of Jungle Jim; it's pretty much complete up into 1942, then gets a little spottier in later years. A clear sign that this series needs more love is that the OTRR Library files are badly missorted and misidentified. You can view their files at this link.
Flash Gordon (also called the Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon) was a 15-minute weekly juvenile adventure serial syndicated by Hearst from April 27 to October 26, 1935. It starred Gale Gordon (of all people!) as Flash Gordon and was adapted directly from Alex Raymond's famous comic strip - although Raymond received no credit in the dramas. It was apparently produced by Himan Brown, best-known for Inner Sanctum Mysteries and The CBS Mystery Theater.
The Hearst syndicate apparently released Flash Gordon on discs with Front Page Drama on the reverse. Both were designed to get listeners to buy a Hearst publication - in this instance, the Hearst's colour funnies, the Comic Weekly.
At this point I've covered Hearst's Front Page Drama and Club Car Special and they all demonstrate a kind of literal-mindedness on their part; they didn't want Flash Gordon to simply promote the comic strip, they wanted each drama to represent that week's installment of the comic strip. But first, they had to get the radio audience caught up with the strip's goings-on.
Consequently, the first 4 episodes of Flash Gordon quickly summarize everything that had happened in the comic strip up until that point. Thus, the episodes move at a dizzying pace with intense, dramatic moments simply glanced over and given absolutely no time to land. Yes, it moves fast, but there's no time spent on characters or the environment, just one peril after another.
Once the show was all caught up, from then on it moved at a more able pace, dramatizing the events of that week's installment of the comic strip. It's pretty amazing that there was a time in comics history that a single page of comic art could spawn a 15-minute drama every week!
Although the Flash Gordon comic strip lasted up until 2003 (recently revived with new strips by Dan Schkade since 2023), something clearly went wrong behind-the-scenes of the program because it was discontinued after 6 months. Maybe there was a prejudice against science fiction, because the series shifted to a different Alex Raymond series, Jungle Jim, which was then the "topper" strip above Flash Gordon. Jungle Jim continued as a weekly adaptation of the comic strip (well past Raymond's exit) up to 1954.
The closing weeks of Flash Gordon are a delightful mess. Abruptly, Flash's love interest Dale Arden demands they quit their adventures and go back to Earth at the end of the 23rd episode. In the 24th episode, the series is suddenly called The Adventures of Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim. There is no Jungle Jim in that episode, as Flash, Dale and Dr. Zarkov fly back to Earth. In the 25th episode, the action shifts entirely to Jungle Jim and appears to reference events going on in the Jungle Jim comic strip at the time. Finally, in the 26th episode, Flash, Dale and Dr. Zarkov meet Jungle Jim; Flash and Dale get married, then depart, never to be spoken of again. The following week, Jungle Jim took over. What a bizarre transition!
Of course, time has been kinder to Flash Gordon than to Jungle Jim. The Alex Raymond years of Jungle Jim have their devotees, but the rest of his considerable media presence has been forgotten; Flash Gordon, however, not only still has his comic strip but featured in a well-remembered campy 1980 feature film; every now and then he pops up in cartoons, TV shows or comic books as well.
