Radio Detective Story Hour Episode 273 – Dead Man Control

03/27/17 • 33 min

One of the best radio mystery series in the 1940s was the Crime Club which based its plays upon stories written by actual crime writers of the times. These were writers whose works were part of the Doubleday Crime Club imprints in the forties and were usually cracker crime stories.

The Mutual Broadcasting System snapped up a radio package offered by Doubleday and began airing adaptations from the imprint in December 1946. Most of radio plays were adapted by scripter Stedman Coles with sometime help by Wyllis Cooper and James Earthine. In March 1947 the series final year, an adaptation of a story by mystery and crime writer Helen Reilly was aired. The story was based on her novel Dead Man Control. Reilly’s novels were mostly police procedurals but sometimes with a bit of pulp in the characters.

Reilly’s primary protagonist was itinerant detective Inspector Christopher McKee. McKee was a Scottish New York City inspector who author Reilly described as a single-minded detective who relied his hunches as much as the scientific tools he used when working on crimes. He was direct in his questioning of potential suspects and never worried about their feelings.

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Radio Detective Story Hour Episode 272 – The Thimble

Eleazar Lipsky was a lawyer and prosecutor in the Bronx and Manhattan until his death in 1993. In the 1940s he turned to writing novels and plays while maintaining his legal work. It was natural that most of his stories revolved around the courtroom and investigative attorneys. Probably his most famous novel was originally based upon a 100 page manuscript which became a film noir called Kiss of Death starring Victor Mature.

Lipsky wrote a number of other stories including a detective story centered around an investigator in The People Against O’Hara, which also became a film starring Spencer Tracy. Nearing the end of its long run on radio, the thriller series Suspense adapted a story by Lipsky called “The Thimble.” The story was adapted by Allan Sloane who went on to write extremely sensitive scripts for television earning him several Emmys and Peabody awards.

Given that this script came from a medium that was in its death throes in 1959, it is fast paced and holds listeners in leading up to the crime resolution. The District Attorney was played by Whitfield Connor, whose authoritarian voice works well in this story.

The radio play has a somewhat surprising ending on how the crime is committed.

Music under is created and performed by Oskar Schuster

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Radio Detective Story Hour Episode 274 – Escape: I Saw Myself Running

Antony Ellis, a remarkable writer as well as producer his work is found all over Suspense and Escape especially. Being an ex-pat Englishman, he also produced and wrote the John Dehner vehicle Frontier Gentleman, which chronicled the adventures of one J.B. Kendall, writer for the London Times, as he moved around the old west.

Ellis seemed often taken imaginatively into studies of the human psyche and produced some pretty fabulous suspense thrillers as a result. One in particular is featured with this podcast. Written by Ellis, it was first produced by him for the radio series Escape, and then later re-used in the series Suspense. The play is titled “I Saw Myself Running” and the Escape version, featured here, starred Ellis’ own real life spouse, Georgia Ellis in the role of Susan. The Suspense version featured a less emotional Charlotte Lawrence.

It is a sort of existential story about a woman who in a recurring dream encounters herself as a separate person called Sue. Sue is portrayed by actress Sammie Hill, whose voice is younger more girlish in tone but who is frightened by some unknown in the dream and welcomes the appearance of Susan. It is well performed by Georgia Ellis, who is primarily known as Kitty in the radio version of Gunsmoke, a role that rarely displayed her acting chops.

Music under is the theme from The Postman Always Rings Twice performed by Jazz at the Movies.