Old Time Radio Shows

An enduring image of big-city police work is the cop walking his beat, chatting with the neighborhood folk, keeping an eye on things, carrying a billy club and carrying a shiny whistle to blow if he needed to call for help. As the urban space became larger and unrulier, police needed greater mobility. Police vehicles have evolved apace with transport technology, moving from horse-and-buggy to bicycles to motorcycles and finally cars. An automobile could quickly deliver several officers to a trouble spot, but the biggest advance in police work came in 1920 when the New York City Police began using a fleet of Radio Motor Patrol Cars. The increased mobility took such a bite out of crime that cities across the country, but few areas were as well suited to Radio Cars than sprawling Los Angeles. Phillips H. Lord's Gang Busters , which premiered as G Men in July 1935, is considered one of the first programs to use actual law enforcement cases as script inspiration, using material from...

Lurene Tuttle worked on so many shows that she was called "the most heard woman in America", and she also helped to organize the union which allowed radio actors to make a living wage. The American labor movement rose in the closing decades of the nineteenth century and gained traction in the first two of the twentieth. Although collective bargaining and the other tools of the movement would lead to the high standard of living workers expect and deserve today, the Socialist elements of these tactics gave rise to the First Red Scare in the aftermath of the Great War and the Russian Revolution. The first Scare made 'Communist' an obscenity in the American vernacular, leading almost inevitably to McCarthyism and the Hollywood Blacklist. The specter of Communism overshadows what the labor movement truly was – not workers trying to overthrow the industries and bosses they were working for but demanding workplace dignity, safety, and a living wage in exchange for the wor...