Episode 585 - Between the Rock and a Hard Place (Gang Busters & Pat Novak For Hire)

06/30/24 • 95 min

1 Listener

Down These Mean Streets (Old Time Radio Detectives)

Welcome to the Rock! Alcatraz - America's most notorious prison - is the subject of this weeks' show. First, Gang Busters presents a dramatic recreation of the most violent escape attempt in its history in "The Battle of Alcatraz" (originally aired on ABC on May 11, 1946). Then, it's a double feature of Pat Novak For Hire when the gumshoe is caught in a pair of Alcatraz escapes and the hunt for the escapees (episodes known as "Joe Feldman and Father Leahy" - originally aired on ABC on April 2, 1949, and "The Only Way to Make Friends is to Die" - originally aired on ABC on June 18, 1949).

Previous Episode

BONUS - Five Favorites: The Whistler

In this bonus episode, I'm sharing my five favorite installments of The Whistler - the anthology of mystery and murder where we follow the criminal as the commit the "perfect crime," only to be undone at the final curtain. Bill Forman is our sinister storyteller, who "knows the nameless terrors" of these killers' minds. First, a long-suffering wife plans to get rid of her husband and frame him for a series of murders in "Boomerang" (originally aired on CBS on March 11, 1946), and a carnival dancer marries - and murders - for money in "The Brass Ring" (originally aired on CBS on September 16, 1946). Radio Philip Marlowe Gerald Mohr is a mob boss with a deadly secret in "Caesar's Wife" (originally aired on CBS on June 2, 1947), and a small town's frontier festival is the backdrop for murder in "The Tell-Tale Brand" (originally aired on CBS on January 9, 1949). Finally, a newfangled gadget called a car phone may provide an airtight alibi in "A Law of Physics" (originally aired on CBS on June 10, 1951).

Next Episode

BONUS - Five Favorites: Crime Classics

In this bonus episode, I'm sharing my five favorite installments of Crime Classics - the anthology of true crime stories taken from the pages of history. "Connaisseur of crime" Thomas Hyland (played by Lou Merrill) narrated the tales that ranged from BC until recent history. A dismembered corpse stuns Boston society in "The Terrible Deed of John White Webster" (originally aired on CBS on July 13, 1953), and a woman's murder of her philandering boyfriend is only the beginning of the story in "The Incredible Trial of Laura D. Fair" (AFRS rebroadcast from August 17, 1953). A pair of enterprising young men enter the corpse procurement business in "If a Body Need a Body, Just Call Burke and Hare" (originally aired on CBS on December 2, 1953). Plus, two of history's most notorious murders are dramatized - "The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln" (originally aired on CBS on December 9, 1953) and "Twenty-Three Knives Against Caesar" (originally aired on CBS on February 10, 1954).