Boxcars711 Old Time Radio

ROCKY JORDAN was the title character of one of the better and more exotic radio detective series. In fact, it's one of the best detective series I have ever heard. The series had two separate incarnations. The first, A Man Named Jordan, started as a daily 15 minute show and after about six months changed to a weekly 30 minute show. It took place in Istanbul and the Cafe was described as "a small r...

"I am the Whistler and I know many things, for I walk by night. I know many strange tales, many secrets hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows. Yes, I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak..." These words followed by a whistling that was distinctive and well-remembered recalls one of the best mystery crime series of the past. Eminating for all its...

Theater Five was ABC's attempt to revive radio drama during the early 1960s. The series name was derived from its time slot, 5:00 PM. Running Monday through Friday, it was an anthology of short stories, each about 20 minutes long. News programs and commercials filled out the full 30 minutes. There was a good bit of science fiction and some of the plots seem to have been taken from the daily newspa...

Zero Hour - Desperate Witness (Aired December 14, 1973) Show 5 of A 5 Part Series The Zero Hour was a 1973-74 radio broadcast hosted by Rod Serling. The Zero Hour featured well known actors and actresses.

Inner_Sanctum Inner Sanctum Mysteries was a popular old-time radio program that aired from January 7, 1941 to October 5, 1952. Created by Himan Brown, the anthology series featured stories of mystery, terror and suspense. The tongue-in-cheek introductions were in sharp contrast to shows like Suspense and The Whistler. A total of 526 episodes are known to have been produced. Great actors, a spooky...

NBC University Theater is an unusual series that focused on reenacting novels by great authors for college classes. Many accredited American universities such as Washington State College, University of Louisville, and University of Tulsa, used this dramatic series as a supplement to correspondent college courses. The series' creators made study guides to accompany the courses. Students studying gr...

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar was a radio drama about a freelance insurance investigator that aired from February 11, 1949 to September 30, 1962 on CBS. There were 811 episodes in the 12-year run, and over 720 still exist today. Charles Russell was the first to star as Johnny Dollar, the smart and tough detective who tossed silver dollar tips to bellhops. With the first three actors to play Johnny Do...

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 th...

Zero Hour - Desperate Witness (Aired December 13, 1973) Show 4 of A 5 Part Series The Zero Hour was a 1973-74 radio broadcast hosted by Rod Serling. The Zero Hour featured well known actors and actresses.

The Screen Guild Theater boasted some of the greatest all-star casts ever assembled for radio. Nearly every major film star lined up to perform in Screen Guild's half-hour movie adaptations because they knew it was for a good cause: All talent fees went to the Motion Picture Country House for aging and indigent film actors. EPISODE: Cary Grant Katharine Hepburn James Stewart The Philadelphia Story...

Zero Hour - Desperate Witness (Aired December 12, 1973) Show 3 of A 5 Part Series The Zero Hour was a 1973-74 radio broadcast hosted by Rod Serling. The Zero Hour featured well known actors and actresses.

By age 13, Young had become a radio performer, and by age 17, he was writing and performing in his own radio show for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The show was broadcast in the U.S. and led to an invitation to New York in 1944, as a summer replacement for Eddie Cantor, which resulted in Young getting his own radio show, orininally broadcast from New York and later from Hollywood. While i...

John Brown as " Broadway " takes the listener with him to the inside world of some the Big Apple's toughest, but yet charming offenders. Solid radio professionals played the regular characters on the show with the strange sounding names. There was Harry the Horse, Dave the Dude (William Conrad, Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke), and Sorrowful Jones (Gerald Mohr, Philip Marlowe).  Anne Whitfield played Litt...

BBC SERIAL PRODUCED BY & STARS: George Edwards, complete in 52 fifteen minute episodes. Written by Warren Berry, the story line contains a mysterious Aztec necklace, pirates, intrigue, plots and counter plots. Very interesting, and is set in the Carribean.  Morgan is accused of stealing an Aztec Necklace # 1 Morgan Accused Of Stealing An Aztec Necklace # 2 Kitty, Taken By The Necklace, Wants It #...

Life with Luigi was a radio comedy-drama series which began September 21, 1948 on CBS. The story concerned Italian immigrant Luigi Basco, and his experiences as an immigrant in Chicago. Many of the shows take place at the US citizenship classes that Luigi attends with other immigrants from different countries, as well as trying to fend off the repeated advances of the morbidly-obese daughter of hi...

Zero Hour - Desperate Witness (Aired December 11, 1973) Show 2 of A 5 Part Series The Zero Hour was a 1973-74 radio broadcast hosted by Rod Serling. The Zero Hour featured well known actors and actresses.

The ruthless, moneyed Hubbard clan lives in, and poisons, their part of the deep South at the turn of the 20th century. Regina Giddons nÃe Hubbard has her daughter under her thumb. Mrs. Giddons is estranged from her husband, who lives in Chicago and suffers from a terminal illness. But she needs him home, and will manipulate her daughter to help bring him back. She has a sneaky business deal that...

Adventures of Sam Spade â 1946-1951 Sam Spade was a tough private investigator. Each case was unfolded as a report dictated to his secretary, Effie, who was always flustered and secretly in love with him. He always quoted his license number and referred to each investigation as a âcaperâ. Each report was dated with the actual airdate. CAST: Howard Duff, Steve Dunne, Lurene Tuttle, John McIntire, W...

Zero Hour - Desperate Witness (Aired December 10, 1973) Show 1 of A 5 Part Series The Zero Hour was a 1973-74 radio broadcast hosted by Rod Serling. The Zero Hour featured well known actors and actresses. The stories were exciting and action-packed and will keep you on the edge of you seat, as we approach the Zero Hour. The 5-part series was syndicated by Mutual and the programs were allowed to be...

Dramatic Intrigue FIRST BROADCAST: October 14, 1951 LAST BROADCAST: May 28, 1952 NBC, 30 min. "This is Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.... In a moment, it will be my pleasure to introduce to you stories of the Silent Men, the special agents of federal law-enforcement who silently, and for little material reward, daily risk their lives to protect the lives of all of us. Their tradition is long and proud, yet...

This hit radio series with Marie Wilson ran on CBS Radio from April 11, 1947 to August 23, 1954. The TV version, seen on CBS from January 8, 1952 until June 25, 1954, was the first series telecast from the CBS Television City facility in Hollywood. The movie My Friend Irma (1949) starred Marie Wilson and Diana Lynn but is mainly remembered today for introducing Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis to movie...

Whitehall 1212 is a crime drama featuring cases from New Scotland Yard's "Black Museum". Unlike the show starring Orson Welles, however, this series was done with the official support of The Yard and tries to downplay the sensational aspects of thes cases and highlight the rigorous police work that went into solving them. THIS EPISODE: Whitehall 1212. September 28, 1952. NBC net. Sustaining. The l...

The Lone Ranger was a long-running early radio and television show based on characters created by George W. Trendle, and developed by writer Fran Striker. The titular character is a masked cowboy in the American Old West, who gallops about righting injustices, usually with the aid of a clever and laconic American Indian called Tonto, and his horse Silver. He would famously say "Heigh-ho Silver, aw...

On July 31, 1930 a sinister voice came over the radio into American Homes. The voice of the Shadow appeared for the first time. In the beginning the Shadow was not a crime fighter. He was a mysterious narrator of mystery tales taken from the pages of Street & Smith's Detective Story Magazine. The publisher Street & Smith began to use radio as an advertising medium to promote their fiction publicat...

Mr. Television In 1948, NBC decided to bring Texaco Star Theater from radio to television, with Berle as one of the show's four rotating hosts. For the fall season, NBC named Berle the permanent host. His highly visual, sometimes outrageous vaudeville style proved ideal for the burgeoning new medium. Berle and Texaco owned Tuesday nights for the next several years, reaching the number one slot in...