Halloween Radio Recap #2: The Mysterious Traveler

"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.
• "Death Comes for Adolf Hitler" (March 24, 1945): Hitler takes an ill-advised submarine ride.
• "Death Is the Visitor" (August 18, 1946): A man tries to get rid of his mother-in-law for good.
• "If You Believe" (December 29, 1946): A scientist's experiments in protoplasm are hyped up as a menace by the media.
• "New Year's Nightmare" (January 5, 1947): After a drunken New Year's, a man discovers he lived an entire year under another alias.
• "The Woman in Black" (March 9, 1947): A reporter trails a woman in black who appears at the time of murders.
• "The Locomotive Ghost" (July 6, 1947): A killer is haunted by a ghostly train.
• "The Man the Insects Hated" (July 27, 1947): Exactly what it claims to be.
• "Murder Is My Business" (June 8, 1948): A radio writer wants to kill his producer.
• "Death Has a Cold Breath" (March 29, 1949): A talent agent plots his client's murder.
• "S.O.S." (May 2, 1950): A heist with a surprising finish.
• "Strange New World" (February 19, 1952): Giant radioactive crabs; 'nuff said?

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:

Next Thursday: Lights Out!

Halloween Week, Day 5: "Behind the Locked Door"

"Behind the Locked Door" is one of the best-known old-time radio horror episodes among fandom, yet I've never featured it in any of my previous Halloween blog posts. Let's repair that now! It was an episode of the Mysterious Traveler written by Robert A. Arthur and David Kogan, who wrote most of the episodes of the series.

In "Behind the Locked Door," Cathy Evans confronts her boyfriend Martin, an archaeologist who just returned from an expedition but gone into hiding. Disheveled, Martin tells Cathy what he and his professor found on their expedition - an underground civilization of humans who adapted to life without sunlight and the hideous result of their changes. This episode is famous primarily for how it ends - when the titular locked door is opened!

"Behind the Locked Door" was originally aired on the Mysterious Traveler on May 24, 1949 but the surviving version we have was aired November 6, 1951. You can download this episode from the Internet Archive here.

Tomorrow: "Don't worry. Everything's okay."

OTR Halloween Day 18: The Mysterious Traveler

The Mysterious Traveler has come up on this blog many times - either the radio program or the comic book spin-off. This was one of the longest-running radio horror anthologies running from December 1943 to September 1952. However, the series was shuffled around the schedule which probably didn't help it find a following. Still, those fans who complain that Inner Sanctum Mysteries never committed to the supernatural can't issue that grievance against the Mysterious Traveler.

Here, for instance, we could take the December 29, 1946 episode "If You Believe." A scientist is working with some protoplasm but a senasationalist newspaper makes it sound as though he's a monster-maker. Unfortunately due to the power of belief, the imagined monster becomes real!

Believe it or not, you can hear "If You Believe" at the Internet Archive!

Radio Recap: The Strange Dr. Weird

The Strange Dr. Weird was a horror anthology program that ran for 29 episodes from late 1944 until early 1945 on Mutual. It was a 15-format, which is a little unusual for that type of program. It was created by Robert A. Arthur of the Mysterious Traveler and was likewise hosted by Maurice Tarplin, the host of that program, using the same manner of presentation that he did on the earlier show.

Beyond its delightfully goofy name, the Strange Dr. Weird is very much like the Mysterious Traveler in miniature. With commercials, intro and outro removed the shows have only about 10 minutes of actual drama. That doesn't leave a lot of time for suspense - the plots move terribly quickly as situations are introduced, the complications arise, then the surprise ending hits like a freight train.

The plots move at such breakneck speed that I've long assumed that the Strange Dr. Weird recycled and abridged scripts from the Mysterious Traveler, similar to the Sealed Book. Maybe they did, but looking at episode titles of the lost broadcasts of the Mysterious Traveler, I don't see any matches. But Robert A. Arthur was a very prolific author - they might be recycled from somewhere else in his massive bibliography.

So, the Strange Dr. Weird feels a little clipped, but it does mean it's never dull. Sometimes the twist endings work well because you haven't had much time to consider where the plot is going - it simply reaches the climax so quickly. Of course, since there's very little fat in the scripts, it also means that all the details which remain are important, so if you do like to predict where stories are going you'll recognize the foreshadowing very easily.

If you like the supernatural, there's plenty to find in this series in episodes like "The Man Who Talked with Death," "the Knife of Death" and "Murder Will Out." There's also lots of great mad science episodes like "The Man Who Lived Twice" and "Murder, One Million B.C."

Again, I do find the character of Dr. Weird to be far, far too much like the Mysterious Traveler. When he repeats his outro reminding listeners he's in "the house on the other side of the cemetery" I half-expect to hear him say, "I take the same cemetery every week at the same time."

You can listen to the Strange Dr. Weird on the Internet Archive.

Radio Recap: The Sealed Book

The Sealed Book is a series I encountered very early on when I started listening to old-time radio but I never made a real effort to listen to every episode. For this series of posts I've been doing, I thought it would be interesting to finally give the entire series a fair shake.

The Sealed Book was a transcribed radio mystery program which aired on Mutual in 1945. It was written by Robert A. Arthur and David Kogan and seems to have been entirely recreations of scripts they wrote for the Mysterious Traveler. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since we have so few surviving episodes of the Mysterious Traveler.

Comparing the Mysterious Traveler version of the story "Out of the Past" to the later version on the Sealed Book helps highlight a problem with the series. "Out of the Past" concerns a woman being blackmailed; in the conclusion, we learn the blackmailer was her own husband, trying to drive her insane. But in the original he succeeds too well and is murdered by his wife. In the later version the husband gets away with his crime. It seems clear that the difference exists because The Sealed Book had a shorter runtime than the Mysterious Traveler and in more than one case you can tell they tried to save time by removing pages from the back of the script.

Still, the episodes I've heard all have very good audio - one of the rare times when transcribed radio dramas have an advantage over live broadcasts.

Another useful comparison is to Inner Sanctum Mysteries. The obvious difference would be that while Inner Sanctum would suggest the supernatural they never committed to genuine supernatural horror in their stories, while the Mysterious Traveler/Sealed Book had no problem using the supernatural. But it's more than that - Inner Sanctum constantly tried to maintain tension with sudden twists and surprises which often didn't make sense when the story was finally told. So I admire the Sealed Book for having strong narrative structure - when they have twist ending, the twist is always set up.

Of course, that means The Sealed Book can be a little predictable. "Murder Must Be Paid for," for instance, has a very obvious twist and beyond that, not much of interest going for it.

Still, their commitment to the supernatural - and science fiction - resulted in a few strong episodes. "Beware of Tomorrow" is a decent robot story; "the King of the World" is a great cursed-with-immortality story; and "My Beloved Must Die" wheeled out a figure who seldom appeared in radio horror programs.

I should also speak about the program's host(s). Initially the series had two hosts - the announcer, and "the Keeper of the Book," an elderly man who narrated the stories. It was a bit bizarre having two hosts talking to each other and begged the question why the stories had to be presented in that fashion; I guess someone really did ask, because after only a few episodes the Keeper became a silent figure as the announcer took over all the narration duties. It was for the best, frankly - the Keeper was just a rip-off of the Hermit from the Hermit's Cave.

You can listen or download the Sealed Book from the Internet Archive.

Unearthed: Mysterious Traveler Comics #1

Recently on this blog I've been looking back over various old-time radio horror programs which were adapted into comic books during the 1940s; I looked at Inner Sanctum Mysteries, Lights Out and Suspense. The biggest name in old-time radio horror which I haven't looked at yet is The Mysterious Traveler... so let's do that right now!

Published in November, 1948, Mysterious Traveler Comics #1 was the only issue of its series published and it was likewise evidently the only comic book published by Trans-World Publications! It's quite a little oddity in comics history, but also something of historical importance in comic book horror - after all, it predates the more famous horror comics published by EC Comics by one year.

The principal feature in this book is titled "Five Feet Down", drawn by Bob Powell. It's based on an episode of The Mysterious Traveler which had aired on February 9, 1947 and again on July 4, 1950. Unfortunately, both broadcasts are lost, but that just makes this comic an even greater collector's item for fans of the show. Powell depicts the Mysterious Traveler himself as a blank-faced figure (different from the later Ditko visualization, instead reminiscent of Ditko's Question!). The story concerns scientist Professor Dale, miner Tom and geologist Crane, who drill five miles deep into the Earth and discover a subterranean world inhabited by unseen creatures who apparently feed on humans! It's interesting that Powell never depicts the creatures beyond sets of eyes seen watching in the backgrounds. The text describes creatures with wings... it would have been neat to see Powell draw them, but leaving it to the reader's imagination seems appropriate, given the story's radio roots. It's also very interesting how much this story is reminiscent of the still-existing Mysterious Traveler episode "Behind the Locked Door" (first aired May 24, 1949), particularly the scene where the explorers find a pile of fish bones.

The second story is an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", evidently drawn by Alan Mendel. This story is a reprint from a 1945 issue of Yellowjacket Comics. It's an extremely faithful adaptation with text taken directly from Poe, but the art is quite stiff - it's more like an illustrated story than a real work of comic book art. It's a pity that The Mysterious Traveler radio show didn't do adaptations of Poe the way other horror programs did.

The last full-length story is "Raw Deal", again by artist Bob Powell. This time, strangely, the story is an adaptation of the 1948 crime film. The story draws attention to its roots by listing the cast of the film and Powell does a great job rendering the likenesses of the actors to this comic. It does feel rather odd for The Mysterious Traveler, however - this comic is already a piece of licensing from a radio program, why is it also licensing a major motion picture? The best reason for a comic book to adapt a film is to draw the attention of the film's audience, but the cover doesn't promote the inclusion of "Raw Deal" at all. Also, The Mysterious Traveler was a New York radio show which featured only radio professionals in the lead roles - Hollywood movies aren't an obvious fit for the brand.

This comic also has three short featurse: a two-page story printed in black & white on the inside front & inside back covers called "The Grand Vizier's Reward" in which an Indian vizier invents the game of chess and tricks his patron into giving him a great reward; there's a two-page text story called "The Mystery of the Five Fingers" which is told by the Mysterious Traveler character; finally, there's an odd three-page feature called "Take a Trip to India" in which the Mysterious Traveler journeys around India, revealing various facts about the country to his readers. Comic books of the time had plenty of non-fiction features like this, but it's strange to see the horror host introducing these facts.

Although this proved to be the only issue of its series (and publisher), a few years later - once the Mysterious Traveler radio series was off the air - Charlton Comics started their own Tales of the Mysterious Traveler comic book series. That series has a following of its own because it featured some of the best 1950s work by the legendary Steve Ditko. Between OTR fandom and Ditko fandom, the Mysterious Traveler still has an audience; I'm lucky enough to belong to both fandoms. I've even blogged about Moonstone's attempt to create a new Mysterious Traveler series in the 2000s and in the more recent Tales of the Mysterious Traveler revival by Ditko, just prior to his death.

You can read this comic for yourself at The Digital Comics Museum.

OTR Holiday Month Day 27: The Mysterious Traveler

Okay, we've had a lot of good warm-hearted Christmas shows with a bit of comedy mixed in up until now, but now we're nearing New Year's and radio shows were a little more cold-blooded about that holiday. Take, for instance, "New Year's Nightmare", an episode of The Mysterious Traveler from January 5, 1947. It features a man who loses a year's worth of memories and finds himself married to a different woman. What with the amnesia aspect, it's very much like an episode of Inner Sanctum Mysteries, which resorted to such devices pretty often.

You can hear "New Year's Nightmare" on archive.org here.

"Your viciousness blackened me!" Tales of the Mysterious Traveler #19 review

Steve Ditko's publisher Robin Snyder recently released another new Ditko comic, Tales of the Mysterious Traveler #19. They are currently preparing another one via Kickstarter, so check it out if you're any kind of Ditko fan.

The new book is (like all Ditko-Snyder titles) a black & white book. As the Mysterious Traveler property seems to be in the public domain now and because of Ditko's history drawing for that title at Charlton in the 1950s, he and Snyder have revived it as a series of part-new part-old stories. This issue contains seven Ditko stories, with the leading one the only new tale.

Said new tale, "Both Ways," concerns a scientist who takes out his rivals by planting a bomb in their room then confronting them while wearing bomb-proof armor so he can gloat before they die. However, one of the victims' sister vows revenge. Another recent tale is "Your Shadow Knows," in which a killer is tormented by his own shadow, which refuses to serve as a collaborator to an evil man; Ditko has a great history with living shadows, such as this fellow from his Marvel days.

Only two of the tales actually include the Mysterious Traveler, but at least there's enough to validate the book's title. One tale, "Test of a Man" features have shadows and thick lines quite unlike what Ditko is known for - different, but I like it. I wouldn't be surprised to learn he had an inker on that story

I should also note after my disappointment with Jim Salicrup's introduction in yesterday's post that Snyder's introduction opens with a proper reference to the Mysterious Traveler intro and closes by referencing the outro. See how easy it is when you put in more than a token effort?

My Kickstarter rewards included a copy of 2009's Ditko Once More. It's a collection of some of Ditko's more didatic writings about objectivism, the sort of arch straw man tales he's frequently told on his own. However, one of these is actually quite good! In it, one man (his usual straw man type) argues there are no truths; the other makes the above argument, to which the first must concede. This gentler, funnier side of Ditko should come out more often - it makes his editorials much more entertaining.

"I have no stake in this. It's just my responsibility." Review of Trevor Von Eeden's Mysterious Traveler

The Mysterious Traveler enjoyed a long life on radio from 1943-1952. It was a decent radio program, offering tales of crime with the occasional supernatural or science fiction bend. Some scripts were resued on the shows The Strange Dr. Weird and The Sealed Book, although they had to trim scenes for time. I don't believe the series is one of the greats in its genre - Suspense, Escape, Lights Out, Quiet, Please and even Inner Sanctum Mysteries outstrip it in terms of quality scripts, performances and chills. Probably the best episode is "Behind the Locked Door," which I believe was the very first episode I heard.

The most memorable part of the show were the introduction and conclusion; set aboard a train, the Mysterious Traveler would introduce himself to the listener and promise to tell them a story to "thrill you a little and chill you a little." At the end he would always be in the midst of describing some further detail about the tale just told, only to interrupt himself and say, "But you have to get off here, I'm sorry, but I'm sure we'll meet again; I take this same train every week at the same time."

However, I am not blogging about the radio show today; instead, let's talk comics: Charlton published a Mysterious Traveler comic book from 1956-1959, with many stories illustrated by the great Steve Ditko. In these, the Mysterious Traveler was no longer aboard a train but still narrated the tales within, garbed in a hat and trenchcoat. It's remained an iconic work in Ditko's bibliography and he has self-published two new issues recently with Robin Snyder (more about them tomorrow).

In-between the 1950s Mysterious Traveler and 2010s Mysterious Traveler, we have the 2000s Mysterious Traveler, published by Moonstone Books. In the early-to-mid-2000s, Moonstone published a series of "Moonstone Noir" comics, offering reinterpretations of old-time radio characters which had lapsed into the public domain. Purist and snob that I am, I ignored them at the time, but recently I came across The Mysterious Traveler: Nobody Rides for Free, a trade collection of both of their Mysterious Traveler comics. Noting the art was by Trevor Von Eeden, I decided to give it a shot.

Von Eeden reinterprets the Mysterious Traveler (here, "John Smith") as an African-American man with a mustache wearing glasses, a hat and an overcoat, appearing to be middle-aged. The coat and hat recalls Ditko's Traveler, but the cover artists seem confused about how to draw Von Eeden's figure - in one cover (by Dennis Calero), he has no glasses or mustache and looks to be in his 30s; in another (the cover above by Michael Stribling) he has the mustache but wears sunglasses which again seem to youthen him.

Within the trade are three stories, the first two drawn by Von Eeden with scripts by Joe Gentile. In both tales, John Smith confronts a person aboard a train; the person is confused about why they're there and can't recall recent events in their lives. Smith begins telling them their past and by the end, he enacts vengeance upon someone(s) who has done wrong (not necessarily the person he's speaking to). The setting is the same as the radio show, but the character is basically enacting justice in the style of the 1972 Tales from the Crypt movie.

Von Eeden was in fine form (as usual) when drawing this series. Published in black and white, there are no colouring effects to enhance his art - but he didn't need them! It seems appropriate for him to have followed in Ditko's footsteps here, what with my discovery from a recent interview how Von Eeden is, like Ditko, an admirer of Ayn Rand (back down, boys! she's taken! also, dead). Von Eeden's art is helpfully enhanced through the tones provided by Ken Wolak (1st story) and Wally Lowe (2nd story). The art of tones is not one frequently commented upon and I'm not educated to the point where I could describe it helpfully, but I will say the shadows added by tones enhance the stories' feelings of uncertainty and mystery.

The final story is also written by Joe Gentile, but the art is provided by Walter Figueroa. In this short tale, new for the trade, Smith helps another person resolve their afterlife then has a discussion with the train's engineer in which the engineer informs Smith of the reason he's aboard the train. This tale doesn't quite match the others - not only because it's not by Von Eeden, but also is printed on pages with white borders rather than the black borders found throughout the earlier tales.

There is one very unfortunate part in this collection, and that is the introduction by Jim Salicrup. Salicrup had nothing to do with the production of these stories and seems to have been given the task because he was friends with the Moonstone staff. He knows nothing about the Mysterious Traveler, openly admitting he learned about the radio show on Wikipedia and the comic from Overstreet (I think even in 2009 a bit of internet searching would lead you to online copies of the radio show and scans of the Charlton comic). He has nothing to say about Gentile or Von Eeden and instead plugs his own work. Simply disgraceful. Moonstone should have sought someone who was either well-informed on the Mysterious Traveler, or who could speak about Gentile & Von Eeden from a personal or professional perspective.

Moonstone, I know you're still out there. You know who I am. Next time you need an introduction, ask me - you can absolutely afford my rates.