Boxcars711 Old Time Radio

Fibber McGee and Molly premiered in 1935. The program struggled in the ratings until 1940, when it became a national sensation. Within three years, it was the top-rated program in America. Few radio shows were more beloved than Fibber McGee and Molly. The programâs lovable characters included Mayor LaTrivia, Doc Gamble, Mrs. Uppington, Wallace Wimple, Alice Darling, Gildersleeve, Beulah, Myrt, and...

Screen Director's Playhouse - From 01/09/49 to 09/28/51 this series was greatly enjoyed by the radio listening audience. It opened as NBC Theater and was also known as The Screen Directorâs Guild and The Screen Directorâs Assignment. But most people remember it simply as Screen Directorâs Playhouse. Many of the Hollywood elite were heard recreating their screen roles over the radio. John Wayne in...

Nightfall is the title of a radio drama series produced and aired by CBC Radio ( Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ) from July 1980 to June 1983. While primarily a supernatural/horror series, Nightfall featured some episodes in other genres, such as science fiction, mystery, fantasy, and human drama. One episode was even adapted from a folk song by Stan Rogers. Some of Nightfall's episodes were so...

The Sealed Book starred Philip Clarke as the keeper of the book, a croaking, cackling hermit, with knowledge of the black arts, who in each show unlocked the great padlock that kept the sealed book safe from prying eyes. There was a spook story each week with tales of secrets and mysteries of mankind through the ages. This MUTUAL network entry in the horror and mystery genre was far from the best...

Night Beat - Frank Lovejoy stars as Randy Stone, a toughened, street-wise Chicago Star reporter working the Night Beat in the early 1950's. Sometimes the capers are cops and robbers. Or just normal people in trouble. Sometimes they deserve it. Sometimes fate twists their arm. Sometimes they're just too scared or confused to know the difference. Lovejoy is a seasoned pro of radio and film with an h...

The Life of Riley , with William Bendix in the title role, was a popular radio situation comedy series of the 1940s that was adapted into a 1949 feature film and continued as a long-running television series during the 1950s. The show began as a proposed Groucho Marx radio series, The Flotsam Family, but the sponsor balked at what would have been essentially a straight head-of-household role for t...

In 1946 and 1950-1951 Nero Wolfe was aired on radio.  Sidney Greenstreet played Nero Wolfe in the later series.  The two earlier series have only one episode each available.  A variety of actors played Archie Goodwin. NETWORK: NBC, SPONSOR: SUSTAINED, TIME: Fridays: 8:00 - 8:30 pm STARS: Sidney Greenstreet as Nero Wolfe. Archie played by various actors  WRITER: Louis Vittes based on the stories by...

DIARY OF FATE is a mystery and horror program where âFateâ 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 âFateâ. THIS EPISODE: April 6, 1948. Program #17. Finley syndication. "The Entry Of Tyler White". Commercials added locally. Book 93, page 861. The story of Tyler White who is about to be...

TWO EPISODES FROM 1945 "The Little Gift" and "The Mad King Of Bavaria" A series of mystery and drama from the 1940's, always with a theme that surrounded some aspect of the precious gem, always the stories of admiration, smuggling, and thievery and the evil deeds of those who wished to possess them. Today we bring you two episodes.

Jeff Regan, Investigator was one of the three detective shows Jack Webb did before Dragnet (see also Pat Novak For Hire and Johnny Modero: Pier 23). It debuted on CBS in July 1948. Webb played JEFF REGAN, a tough private eye working in a Los Angeles investigation firm run by Anthony J. Lyon. Regan introduced himself on each show "I get ten a day and expenses...they call me the Lyon's Eye." The sho...

INHERITANCE - A Dramatized look into American History. NBC Networ in cooperation with the AMERICAN LEGION Sundays 4:30 - 5:00 pm PRUDUCER/DIRECTOR: Albert McCleary ANNOUNCER: John Wald MUSIC: Robert Armbruster.

The Witch's Tale was a horror-fantasy radio series which aired from 1931 to 1938 on WOR and Mutual and in syndication. The program was created, written and directed by Alonzo Deen Cole, who was born February 22, 1897 in St. Paul, Minnesota and died April 7, 1971. Cole's spooky show was hosted by Old Nancy, the Witch of Salem, who introduced a different terror tale each week. The role of Old Nancy...

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...

Tuska cited Ellery Queen, Master Detective (1940) and Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery (1941) as the best of the Bellamy-Lindsay pairings. "The influence of The Thin Man series was apparent in reverse", Tuska noted about Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery. "Ellery and Nikki are unmarried but obviously in love with each other. Probably the biggest mystery... is how Ellery ever gets a book written. No...

Hollywood Startime - Return Of Frank James Frank James, the brother of Jesse James, has been laying low, living as a farmer and taking care of Clem, the son of one of the members of the James gang. He gets word that Jesse was killed by Bob and Charlie Ford, he hoped that the law would deal with them but when he learns that the railroad man whom he and Jesse terrorized contracted them to kill Jesse...

The Jack Benny Program is a classic comedy that is truly one of the best-loved programs from the Golden Age of Radio. It started life as The Canada Dry Program in 1932 on the Blue Network and finished off as The Lucky Strike Program on CBS in 1955. In between, it kept the audience in stitches and established Benny as one of America's all-time great comedians. The format of the show, and the person...

Little Luke's Education (Aired February 6, 1958) A happy-go-lucking West Virginia mountain family picks up stakes and moves to a ranch in California's San Fernando Valley. Center of the action, and undisputed star of the show, was Grandpa, a porch-rockin', gol-darnin', consarnin' old geezer with a wheezy voice who liked to meddle in practically everybody's affairs, neighbors and kin alike. His kin...

FAVORITE STORY aired from September 1947 through December of 1949 hosted by Ronald Colman. This is an excellent dramatic series of great stories from classic literature brought to radio. It's popularity was so high and with such well done stories, it was rebroadcasted for many years. Wuthering Heights is Emily BrontÃ's only novel. It was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, and...

Was a Communist for the FBI was an American espionage thriller radio series with 78 episodes syndicated by Ziv to more than 600 stations in 1952-54. Made without FBI cooperation, the series was adapted from the book by undercover agent Matt Cvetic, who was portrayed by Dana Andrews. The series was crafted to warn people about the threat of Communist subversion of American society. The tone of the...

The CBS Radio Mystery Theater - As you walk through the creaking door you enter into another world, the world of imagination. This world is inside you, a part of you, and you take this journey alone. Each person hears and then sees with his or her mind's eye the events portrayed within these dramas. All of us interprets what they hear differently. The images we see is unique to ourselves. A voice...

I Love Adventure was a 30-minute weekly adventure series which only appeared in the summer of 1948. The show continued the adventures of the I Love A Mystery series CAST: Michael Raffetto, Tom Collins, Barton Yarborough, Russell Thorson, Lillian Buyeff, Earl Lee, Harry Lang, Janet Logan, John McIntire, Jeanette Nolan, Rolfe Sedan, Donal Morrison, Luis Van Rooten, Lal Chand Mehra, Alma Lawton, Barb...

SHOW TWO OF TWO When Dragnet hit its stride, it became one of radioâs top-rated shows. While most radio shows used one or two sound effects experts, Dragnet needed five; a script clocking in at just under 30 minutes could require up to 300 separate effects. Accuracy was underlined: The exact number of footsteps from one room to another at Los Angeles police headquarters were imitated, and when a t...

The Hollywood Star Playhouse , well written and performed, presented many original plays and popular Hollywood stars. Some of those who accepted roles in this great series included Jimmy Stewart, William Conrad, Deborah Kerr, Vincent Price, Harry Bartell and Betty Lou Gerson.  Highlights included an episode entitled The Six Shooter and which later became itâs own series staring James Stewart.  In...

Dragnet was a long-running radio and television police procedural drama about the cases of a dedicated Los Angeles police detective, Sergeant Joe Friday, and his partners. The show takes its name from an actual police term, a "dragnet", meaning a system of coordinated measures for apprehending criminals or suspects. Dragnet debuted inauspiciously. The first several months were bumpy, as Webb and c...

"THE HOUSE OF DESPAIR" (SHOW THREE OF THREE) Dark Shadows is a Gothic television soap opera that originally aired weekdays on the ABC television network, from June 27, 1966 to April 2, 1971. The show was created by Dan Curtis, who tells of a dream he had in which a girl takes a long train ride to visit a large mansion. The story "bible", which was written by Art Wallace, does not mention any super...