Boxcars711 Old Time Radio

The Clock 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; âSunrise and sunset, promise and fulfilment, birth and death â the whole drama of life is written in the sands of timeâ. First Broadcast November 3rd 1946 Last Broadcast May 23rd 1948

Throughout the early 1940's on American Radio, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce performed as Holmes and Watson, respectively, in several series of canonical and original Sherlock Holmes stories. When Rathbone finally departed the role before the 1947 season, Tom Conway played Sherlock Holmes opposite Nigel Bruce for one season. After a change of networks, there were two more pairings: John Stanley a...

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.

"Are you willing to undertake a dangerous mission for the United States, knowing in advance you may never return alive?" Cloak and Dagger first aired over the NBC network on May 7, 1950. It had a short run through the Summer on Sundays, changing to Fridays after its Summer run. The last show aired Oct. 22, 1950. This is the story of the WWII special governmental agency, the OSS, or Office of Strat...

Tales of the Texas Rangers, a western adventure old-time radio drama, premiered on July 8, 1950, on the NBC radio network and remained on the air through September 14, 1952. Movie star Joel McCrea starred as Texas Ranger Jayce Pearson, who used the latest scientific techniques to identify the criminals and his faithful horse, Charcoal, to track them down. The shows were reenactments of actual Texa...

Mr. and Mrs. North was a radio mystery series that aired on CBS from 1942 to 1954. Alice Frost and Joseph Curtin had the title roles when the series began in 1942. Publisher Jerry North and his wife Pam lived in Greenwich Village at 24 St. Anne's Flat. They were not professional detectives but simply an ordinary couple who stumbled across a murder or two every week for 12 years. The radio program...

Philo Vance was the detective creation of S. S. Van Dine first published in the mid 1920s. Vance, in the original books, is an intellectual so highly refined he seems he might be ghostwritten by P. G. Wodehouse. Take this quote from The Benson Murder Case, 1924, as Vance pontificates in his inimitable way: "That's your fundamental error, don't y' know. Every crime is witnessed by outsiders, just a...

"The Case Of The Restless Redhead" and "Raid On A Den Of Marijuana" Perry Mason aired from 1943 to 1955. Although it is ostensibly a crime drama, Perry Mason sounds and feels like a soap opera. With 10-minute shows every weekday for years on end, the famous defense lawyer handled a myriad of cases, each one blending into the next. the original Perry Mason, whose derivation came from radio, is a lo...

Broadcast History - October 27th, 1947 - May 25th, 1949 ABC, 30m, Mondays at 8pm Wednesdays at 9:30 from December 31st, 1947 Elgin-American bracelets, compacts, cigarette cases, dresser sets. October 5th, 1949 - June 28th, 1950, CBS 30m, Wednesdays at9pm, Elgin-American until Januar 4th, then Desoto-Plymouth October 4th, 1950 - September 19th, 1956, NBC, 30m Wednesdays at 9pm. Desoto-Plymouth Host...

The series premiered on Monday 02/05/79 and offered a different genre each weekday night.  Each genre was hosted by a different celebrity.  The program was produced on Paramount's Stage F in Hollywood.  These first 130 programs were broadcast over a six month period and then rebroadcast over the following six months.  From 02/14/80 to 12/19/81 this series was heard again, this time over Mutual, as...

Pat Novak, For Hire Ãïï 1949-1950 Pat Novak, played by Jack Webb, was a private detective working out of Pier 19, a waterfront office in San Francisco. The stories were always very similar: Someone would hire him, (if not a beautiful woman, the job would lead to a beautiful woman) someone would get murdered, he would investigate the case, get beaten up by the thugs, and then the case would be solv...

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House presented by Lux Radio Theater October 10, 1949 broadcast on CBS with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. This is a hilarious story about the trials and tribulations of building a new home. The Blandings lived in New York City and in order to get away from the hustle and bustle, they decided to build their home in Connecticut and Murphy's Law moves in. Go To GoDaddy, u...

FEAR ON 4 is the British Broadcasting Corporation's continuation of a tradition of horror shows dating back to 1943. Back then, the BBC offered APPOINTMENT WITH FEAR, the title given to ten series of programs running from 1943 to 1955. These are the most famous BBC horror series in it's history. The stories were introduced by The Man in Black, played by Valentine Dyall. In 1949, The Man In Black w...

The CBS Radio Mystery Theater (or CBSRMT) was an ambitious and sustained attempt to revive the great drama of old-time radio in the 1970s. Created by Himan Brown (who had by then become a radio legend due to his work on Inner Sanctum Mysteries and other shows dating back to the 1930s), and aired on affiliate stations across the CBS Radio network, the series began its long run on January 6, 1974. T...

November 1939 to May 1940, CBS Blue Network Dramatic historical recreation Imagine if CBS radio news existed when the Bastille was stormed in 1789, or if radio reporters were stationed in Ford Theater as Lincoln was assassinated, or again at the Battle of Gettysburg?  Indeed, such was the premise behind the CBS series, You Are There.  Audiences witnessed history through the present-tense accounts...

Frontier Gentleman was a radio Western series heard on CBS from February 2 to November 16, 1958. Written and directed by Antony Ellis, it followed the adventures of J.B. Kendall (John Dehner), a London Times reporter, as he roamed the Western United States, encountering various outlaws and well-known historical figures, such as Jesse James and Calamity Jane. Go To GoDaddy, use the promo code blu19...

The Whisperer was an American old-time radio show broadcast from July 8 to September 30, 1951 on NBC. It ran for only 13 episodes. The premise of the series was as improbable as its storylines. The protagonist was Philip Gault (Carleton G. Young), a lawyer who, due to some unexplained accident, lost his voice and could only speak in an eerie whisper. Gault infiltrates "the syndicate" in his native...

King Kong is the name of the fictional giant ape, from the fictional Skull Island, who has appeared in several works, most of which bear his name, including the groundbreaking 1933 film, the film remakes of 1976 and 2005, and numerous sequels and paraphernalia. In the original film, the character's name is Kong -- a name given to him by the inhabitants of "Skull Island" in the Indian Ocean, where...

Lights Out was originally a 15 minute program created by Wyllis Cooper, but it was eventually expanded to 30 minutes (Buxton, 140). Cooper was a magnificent horror writer, but he moved to Hollywood in 1936 to try his hand at script writing (Dunning, 399). Cooper wrote Son Of Frankenstein and other screenplays, but nothing as remarkable as his radio stories. Arch Oboler took over the show and Light...

The Falcon. April 29, 1951. NBC net. "The Case Of The Big Talker". Sponsored by: Kraft, Kraft Dinner. A bigmouthed loser from St. Louis is murdered, and Michael Waring is forced to come up with a false alibi. Les Damon, Ken Lynch, Ed Herlihy (announcer), Drexel Drake (creator), Bernard L. Schubert (producer), Richard Lewis (director), Eugene Wang (writer), Arlo (music). 30:12 Go To GoDaddy, use th...

Our Town is a story of character development that details the interactions between citizens of an everyday town in the early 20th century through their everyday lives (particularly the lives of George Gibbs, a doctor's son, and Emily Webb, the daughter of a newspaper editor). Our Town was first performed at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, New Jersey on January 22, 1938. It next opened at the Wi...

Bold Venture was a 1951-1952 syndicated radio series starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Morton Fine and David Friedkin scripted the taped series for Bogart's Santana Productions. Salty seadog Slate Shannon (Bogart) owns a Cuban hotel sheltering an assortment of treasure hunters, revolutionaries and other shady characters. With his sidekick and ward, the sultry Sailor Duval (Bacall), taggi...

Screen Director's Playhouse. May 26, 1950. Program #20. NBC net origination, AFRS rebroadcast. "Flamingo Road". A carnival woman is determined to enter high society, by traveling through the mud of a small town's secrets. Joan Crawford, David Brian, Michael Curtiz (guest screen director). 25:16. Carnival dancer Lane Bellamy finds herself stranded in a southern town ruled by corrupt political boss...

First heard on Mutual featuring Elliott Lewis, who as Leonard Maltin writes in "The Great American Broadcast, "âwore every hat imaginable-actor, producer, and director-also penned a good number of scripts for series he supervised, including Suspense." And Maltin says of this show, "On the terrific late-1940's high-adventure series The Voyage of the Scarlet Queen he held down both jobs simultaneous...

This was ABC's attempt to recapture some of what radio was. The effort was not the best, but at least an effort was made. The stories ranged from science fiction, comedy, social drama and human interest drama, to detective mystery, psychological drama, melodrama and suspense drama. News programs help fill out the remaining time left in the 30 minute time spot from 5 - 5:30 p.m. Go To GoDaddy, use...