VintageRadioShows.com

The Six Shooter was NBC's warm, character-driven Western, starring James Stewart as Britt Ponset, an easygoing wandering cowboy who keeps drifting into other folks' troubles. In "More Than Kin" (December 13, 1953), Britt rides into town to discover everyone is buzzing about his wedding -- a wedding he knows nothing about. Minnie Flint has decided her niece and the drifting cowboy are a perfect mat...

Step through the famous creaking door into Inner Sanctum Mysteries, radio's beloved horror anthology hosted by the droll, pun-loving "Raymond." In "No Coffin For The Dead" (CBS, February 20, 1945), Peter Frame is found murdered and all signs point to the deranged son of his housekeeper -- a man who escaped an asylum but was shot in flight and could no longer walk. If the only suspect physically co...

Sydney Greenstreet stars as Rex Stout's orchid-loving armchair genius in The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe. When banker John Blake asks Wolfe to safeguard a hastily typed will and a sealed letter for his long-estranged brother, then promptly vanishes, the great detective must sort kidnapping from murder from suicide. Behind the family secrets lies a masterfully staged deception -- and a trail of em...

Dimension X was NBC Radio's pioneering science-fiction anthology, the first to dramatize stories by the genre's leading authors. In "The Lost Race," adapted from Murray Leinster and broadcast May 20, 1950, a shipwrecked space crew stumbles onto the ruins of an ancient, long-dead spacefaring civilization -- only to discover the wreckage hides a deadly secret with the power to destroy the present as...

Step inside a busy 1950s New York station house with 21st Precinct, the documentary-style CBS police drama that follows a case from the first phone call to the final report. In "The Certified 600," a burglary and a wrecked car take a strange turn when a caller phones in claiming to hold the stolen safe -- and demanding ransom to give it back. Captain Kennelly's men work the timeline, trace the cal...

From the files of Assignments Unlimited -- the agency that does anything, anywhere, at any time. In "A Kitten for Mr Katz," chief investigator Aubrey Mason takes on a deceptively simple little errand that, true to form, refuses to stay simple. A breezy, witty half-hour of 1960s detective radio with a curious client, a tidy mystery, and Mason's cool head seeing it all through.

A Quarter Century of Swing was Armed Forces Radio's love letter to the big-band era -- a half-hour anthology of swing's golden age beamed to U.S. service members stationed overseas. Show Number 485, from September 11, 1964, gathers another set of hot, danceable big-band recordings spanning the genre's first quarter-century, bringing a warm touch of home in the form of brass, reeds, and an irresist...

Dan Holiday, the newspaperman-turned-novelist of Box 13, runs an ad promising to go anywhere and do anything for a good story -- and the letters that land in Box 13 never disappoint. In "The Professor and the Puzzle," a deceptively academic riddle pulls Holiday into real danger, where solving the puzzle and solving the crime turn out to be one and the same. Movie star Alan Ladd both produced this...

Sydney Greenstreet is Rex Stout's brilliant, orchid-loving armchair detective Nero Wolfe, who solves crimes without ever leaving his New York brownstone while legman Archie Goodwin does the footwork. In "The Case of the Lost Heir," a fortune rides on a missing heir, and Wolfe must sort the genuine claimant from the fraud amid greedy relations and convenient corpses. Aired April 20, 1951 on NBC.

The gold standard of hardboiled radio detection: Gerald Mohr stars as Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, the wisecracking, world-weary private eye of rain-slicked Los Angeles. In "Nether-Nether Land," a frightened woman wakes Marlowe in his own apartment in the dead of night, begs him for help -- and vanishes before she can explain. This is the rare REHEARSAL recording, the cast working through th...

From one of radio's earliest horror anthologies, the cackling old Hermit beckons you into his cave for a tale of a lonely house high on a windswept point of land. Newcomers arrive at the old place on Lost Lands Bluff only to find it was never truly empty -- and that whatever waits in its dark rooms does not welcome the living. Grisly sound effects, gothic dread, and a trademark twist ending. Turn...

From South Africa's Springbok Radio comes Beyond Midnight, Michael McCabe's anthology of madness, murder, and the supernatural. In "40th Birthday" (also known as "The Room"), a bitter man nearing forty grows convinced that murdering his flirtatious young wife is his only escape -- and when he uncovers a hidden bootleggers' room beneath his garage, he believes he's found the perfect place to do it....

One of old-time radio's most famous and controversial broadcasts. Three days before Christmas 1949, Sergeant Joe Friday is called out when nine-year-old Stanley Johnstone goes missing and bloodstains turn up in the backyard. What Friday uncovers -- a Christmas rifle, two boys at play, and a tragic accident -- makes for one of Dragnet's most quietly devastating stories, and a finale of unexpected g...

Our Miss Brooks was radio's best-loved schoolroom comedy, starring Eve Arden as the dry-witted English teacher forever pining for bashful biology teacher Mr. Boynton. In this May 7, 1950 episode, Mr. Boynton plans a barbecue -- and Connie Brooks pulls out every trick in the book to wangle an invitation and a spot at his side. Cue misread signals, good intentions gone sideways, and the meddling Mad...

Step up to the microphone with the kings of comedy. In this March 30, 1944 broadcast of The Abbott and Costello Program, cool Hollywood tough-guy Alan Ladd drops by -- and that's all it takes for Lou to decide he was born to be a radio announcer. Cue the double-talk, the malaprops, and the mayhem as Bud tries to keep the whole radio station from falling apart. A half-hour of pure wartime escapist...

Step through the famous creaking door once more. Inner Sanctum Mysteries was Himan Brown's masterclass in radio terror, hosted by the pun-loving Raymond. In "Death Is An Artist," first broadcast January 23, 1945, an artist, his vindictive ex-wife, and a string of grisly discoveries prove that murder can have an eye for composition. A blood-chilling tale from the golden age of radio horror, starrin...

Step through the creaking door into Inner Sanctum Mysteries, Himan Brown's classic anthology of terror hosted by the sardonic Raymond. In "Death in the Depths," a deep-sea diver alone on the ocean floor lets his mind drift to murder -- fathoms down in the crushing dark, where no one can hear a scream. A claustrophobic tale of suspense from February 1945.

America's favorite cheapskate is stepping out on the town! In this March 1954 broadcast from New York, Jack Benny gets gussied up for a big date with singer Gisele MacKenzie at the swanky Acme Plaza Hotel -- but his legendary penny-pinching keeps getting in the way of romance. Comedian Frank Fontaine guest stars for an evening of classic Benny laughs from the show that defined radio comedy.

Dick Powell stars as Richard Diamond, the singing private eye, in one of the series' most playful cases. What begins as a routine investigation turns into a gleeful send-up of the whole gumshoe genre after Diamond buries his nose in a lurid pulp detective magazine -- piling cliche on cliche until even he admits the dialogue is bad. A witty, winking detective romp, capped off with a song.

From the BBC's beloved 1952-1969 Sherlock Holmes series, Carleton Hobbs is Holmes and Norman Shelley is Watson in Conan Doyle's greatest mystery. In Part 1, Dr. Mortimer lays before Holmes the legend of a spectral hound that haunts the Baskerville family across the Devonshire moor -- and the terrible death of Sir Charles Baskerville, found with the footprints of a giant hound beside him. As young...

George Burns and Gracie Allen bring their golden-age comedy to the air, and this 1940 outing finds George stuck with a pile of telephone charges -- until Gracie's wonderfully tangled logic about who really owes the money turns a simple phone bill into a full-blown comic runaround. With swing from Artie Shaw and his orchestra and close harmony from the Smoothies, it's a breezy half-hour of vintage...

From NBC's landmark science fiction series X Minus One comes Ray Bradbury's haunting Martian Chronicles tale. The Fourth Expedition lands on Mars to find its ancient civilization gone -- wiped out by chickenpox carried from Earth. As his crewmates desecrate the silent ruins, the archaeologist Spender is consumed by grief and rage, and turns against his own men to defend a dead world's beauty. Adap...

Paladin, the cultured gunfighter-for-hire of CBS Radio's Have Gun -- Will Travel, rides out on an unusual errand: to find Wylie Dawson and tell him he's no longer a wanted man. But clearing a name can be as dangerous as collecting a bounty, and the man Paladin is trying to help may not want to be found. John Dehner stars in this June 12, 1960 western.

Sydney Greenstreet stars as Rex Stout's brilliant, orchid-loving armchair detective Nero Wolfe in this 1951 NBC mystery. It's bullets on Broadway: when a prominent stage director is found murdered, Wolfe and his quick-witted legman Archie Goodwin are called in -- and the whole case turns on the riddle of the shell casings that vanished from the scene. A polished gem of golden-age radio detection.

Richard Diamond, Private Detective starred Dick Powell as a wisecracking, song-singing former NYPD cop turned Manhattan private eye. In this episode, originally heard on 8 January 1950, a worried Italian butcher and his fellow independent meat-shop owners come to Diamond for help: a vicious protection racket is squeezing them for payoffs, threatening their families and their shops if they refuse....