Boxcars711 Old Time Radio

Duffy's Tavern, an American radio situation comedy (CBS, 1941-1942; NBC-Blue Network, 1942-1944; NBC, 1944-1952), often featured top-name stage and film guest stars but always hooked those around the misadventures, get-rich-quick-scheming, and romantic missteps of the title establishment's malaprop-prone, metaphor-mixing manager, Archie, played by the writer/actor who created the show, Ed Gardner....

Diary of Fate is a mystery and horror program where "Fate" narrates and always wins by the end of the story. These are great suspense filled stories about average people who are subject to the mysteries of their 'Fate'. TODAY'S SHOW: May 25, 1948. Program #24. Finley syndication. "The Entry Of Walter Vincent" . Commercials added locally. Book 97, page 854. A chemist realizes he never should have b...

Burns and Allen are one of the most beloved couple in old time radio. They got started, like many of the greats of old time radio, in vaudeville, which is really just the touring popular entertainment in America prior to movies. Gracie was the sparkplug of the act, always the center of attention. George played the foil, the guy vainly trying to make sense of the ditzy world of Gracie. By the early...

Academy Award Theater - Stars and movies with Oscars were the idea - in most cases, the movie stars recreated their academy award roles for the show, or in other cases, fine actors played the parts and gave it a different character. Both ways make for great radio drama and first class Hollywood motion picture star entertainment. The Lux Radio Theater had been doing this kind of radio show in the g...

Calling All Cars was one of radio's earliest cop shows, dramatizing true crime stories and introduced by officers from the Los Angeles and other police departments. The narrator of the program was speech professor Charles Frederick Lindsley, and the only other regular voice heard on the program week after week belonged to that of Sergeant Jesse Rosenquist of the L.A.P.D., whose name and voice were...

Broadway Is My Beat , a radio crime drama, ran on CBS from February 27, 1949 to August 1, 1954. With music by Robert Stringer, the show originated from New York during its first three months on the air, with Anthony Ross portraying Times Square Detective Danny Clover. John Dietz directed for producer Lester Gottlieb. Beginning with the July 7, 1949 episode, the series was broadcast from Hollywood...

2000 AD (2000 Plus) is known as the first of the network science fiction shows, although it ran on Mutual just a month prior to the introduction of the landmark series, Dimension X. It was a half hour of science fiction wonder in an exciting package. The stories have a charm that is always present in science fiction of the future that is written in the past. "When The Worlds Met" takes place "at t...

The Avenger is an Old Time Radio show aired by the South African Broadcasting System in the 1940s. It featured a biochemist crime-fighter by the name of Jim Brandon. Mr. Brandon had two inventions which assisted him in the fight against crime. Mr. Brandon was able to pick up telpathic thought flashes and had a diffusion capsule which allowed him to become invisible. SYNDICATED by:Charles Michelson...

Box 13 The premise of the program was that Dan Holiday was an author who wrote mystery novels. To get ideas for his novels he placed an advertisement in a newspaper saying "Adventure wanted, will go anywhere, do anything, Box 13." The ads always brought fun adventures of all kinds: from racketeer's victim to psychotic killer looking for fun. Most of the episodes were based on Dan Holiday replying...

Blair of the Mounties is the story of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police -- a fictional series based on the work of the Northwest Mounted Police before the World War I. It was a fifteen minute weekly serial heard every Monday for 36 weeks beginning January 31st, 1938 and running through the 3rd of October of 1938. It may have been on the air as early as 1935, although there's no actual proof of th...

The Arthur Godfrey Show - Godfrey was born in New York City. While his family was originally well off, his mother was unsuccessful as a performer with aspirations to fame and stardom that never materialized, and his father was a failed sportswriter who left the family. With the family in sudden poverty, Godfrey tried to help them survive by going on the road accepting odd jobs, and hoboing. He ser...

The Clock , Imported from Austrailia, was a dramatic thirty-minute suspense and mystery series. It was written by Lawrence Klee and was first broadcast in November 1946. The story always began the same; "Sunrise and sunset, promise and fulfilment, birth and death … the whole drama of life is written in the sands of time". This is a great series where the main theme seems to be Retribution. Stories...

The Air Adventures Of Jimmy Allen This series included the boy wonder and pilot, Jimmie Allen, his best teenage buddy, Speed Robertson, and mechanic Flash Lewis. As a team they would solve crimes often at the hands of their enemies the corrupt Black Pete and the dishonorable Digger Dawson. Young listeners could join the very popular Jimmie Allen Flying club, complete with a "personal letter" from...

Big Town is a radio show that aired from 1937 to 1952. Edward G. Robinson had the lead role of Steve Wilson from 1937 to 1942. Claire Trevor was Wilson's society editor sidekick Lorelei Kilbourne, with Ona Munson taking over that role in 1940. Edward J. Pawley portrayed Wilson from 1942 until 1952 when Walter Greaza was heard as Wilson in the final episodes in the radio series. When Big Town moved...

21ST PRECINCT was one of the realistic police drama series of the early- to mid-1950's that were aired in the wake of DRAGNET. In 1953 CBS decided to use New York City as the backdrop for their own half-hour police series and focus on the day-to-day operation of a single police precinct. Actual cases were used as the basis for stories. The Precinct Captain acted as the narrator for the series. The...

The Adventures of Frank Race , by Bruce Ells Productions, was first heard in May of 1949. The main character, Frank Race, was an attorney before World War II. As a result of his activities in the war, when it was over, he traded his law books for a career with the OSS. There, "Adventure" became his business. Tom Collins played the role of Frank Race initially, immediately following his stint as Ch...

Author's Playhouse - Famous stories by celebrated authors: among them, Elementals (Stephen Vincent Benet), The Piano (William Saroyan), and The Snow Goose (Paul Gallico).March 5, 1941 till June 4, 1945, NBC; Blue Network until mid-October 1941, then the Red Network. Many briefly held 30m timeslots, including Sundays at 11:30, 1941-42; Wednesdays at 11:30, 1942-44; Mondays at 11:30, 1944-45. Sponso...

ABC Mystery Time was hosted by Don Dowd and starred Sir Laurence Olivier. Great special effects will grab your attention, accented by creepy organ rips. Stories are offered such as death gathered round a card table at a local chapter of The Suicide Club, or a man who desperately tries to hire a 24 hour bodyguard all the while trying to make himself the victim of a murder, and other baffling peculi...

The Black Museum - Opening in 1875, the Crime Museum at Scotland Yard is the oldest museum in the world purely for recording crime. The name Black Museum was coined in 1877 by a reporter from The Observer, a London newspaper, although the museum is still referred to as the Crime Museum. The idea of a crime museum was conceived by Inspector Neame who had already collected together a number of items...

Burns and Allen were an American comedy duo consisting of George Burns and his wife, Gracie Allen. Burns wrote most of the material, and played the straight man. Allen played a silly, addleheaded woman. Both attributed their success to the other, to the ends of their lives. Early on, the team had played the opposite roles until they noticed that the audience was laughing at Gracie's straight lines...

Adventures of Leonidas Witherall was a radio mystery series broadcast on Mutual in the mid-1940s. Based on the novels of Phoebe Atwood Taylor (writing as Alice Tilton), the 30-minute dramas were produced by Roger Bower and starred Walter Hampden as Leonidas Witherall, a New England boys' school instructor in Dalton, Massachusetts, a fictional Boston suburb. Witherall, who resembled William Shakesp...

Barry Craig, Confidential Investigator (AKA Barry Crane" and then "Barrie Craig) is one of the few detective radio series that had separate versions of it broadcast from both coasts. Even the spelling changed over the years. It was first "Barry Crane" and then "Barrie Craig". NBC produced it in New York from 1951 to 1954 and then moved it to Hollywood where it aired from 1954 to 1955. It attracted...

The Mysterious Traveler Written and directed by Robert A. Arthur and David Kogan, the series began on the Mutual Broadcasting System, December 5, 1943, continuing in many different timeslots until September 16, 1952. Unlike many other shows of the era, The Mysterious Traveler was without a sponsor for its entire run. The lonely sound of a distant locomotive heralded the arrival of the malevolent n...

The adventures of Casey Crime Photographer for The Morning Express, were told in this series, which moved to television after a highly successful run on radio in the 1940's. Casey hung out at the Blue Note Café, where the music was provided by the Tony Mottola Trio, and was friendly with Ethelbert, the bartender, to whom he recounted his various exploits. Richard Carlyle and John Gibson portrayed...

Arch Oboler's Plays was a radio drama series written, produced and directed by Arch Oboler. Minus a sponsor, it ran for one year, airing Saturday evenings on NBC from March 25, 1939 to March 23, 1940 and revived five years later on Mutual for a sustaining summer run from April 5, 1945 to October 11, 1945. Leading film actors were heard on this series, including Gloria Blondell, Eddie Cantor, James...