Old Time Radio Shows

 Have you listened to every episode of Dragnet ? Here's some quick facts you can draw from the show. Joe Friday ... lived with his mom carries a badge was an avid smoker takes his coffee black WWII veteran liked to date a policewoman (SHE makes the first move), but his mom gives him the third degree... relationship progresses ... unknown loved talking about weather [its often "cold in Los Angeles"] was something of a sports fan including baseball and football gave his Alma mater a speech about how booze and drugs turn kids bad loves dogs, but has two cats given to him by Ben Romero asks people to repeat what they just said [maybe he is hard of hearing because or maybe just a slow writer to write down what they said in his notebook?] familiar with San Francisco and Phoenix is a total city boy. In a episode where Friday and Romero go to a farmhouse in the Valley one night, they walk behind the house and enter a darkened...

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...

March 6: Happy Birthday,  Virginia Gregg 100 Years ago in 1916, the reliable radio actress  Virginia Gregg  was born. While not particularly famous, she could be heard up and down the dial on series such as  Richard Diamond ,,  Sam Spade , and  Voyage of the Scarlet Queen .  A regular during Bob Bailey 's tenure on " Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar ".   Jack Webb used her so many times for his late Dragnet , she could almost be credited as "costar." Others might best remember her for her film and television roles: she was a hill person on the show  The Waltons , one of the "masks" in  The Twilight Zone  and the voice of "Mother" in  Psycho .    A marvelous voice, she appeared in the movie "Operation Petticoat," as the nurse that was a major and the one who used a girdle to solve a problem in the engine room.   Virginia Gregg You can hear her in a broadcast of  Frontier Gentleman  ...

At first glance these Detective Dramas seem to have little in common except that they both present crimes for the sake of entertainment. The tone of the shows is completely different. A large portion of Dragnet 's appeal is Sgt Friday's very business like, although not passionless, reporting of the fact of the case. Crime Classics ' "Connoisseur of Murder", Thomas Hyland, played by Lou Merrill, isn't as playful or flippant as Raymond from Inner Sanctum or Paul Frees' The Man in Black, but he does seem to be genuinely amused by the grisly tales he presents. Both programs use supposedly true stories.  Dragnet   famously uses the "only the names have been changed" approach; the stories on Crime Classics , while dramatized, are based on court records and historical reference, and the facts can all be checked by the listener if they so desire. Sgt Friday deals with all sort of crimes, from the spectacular such as murders, missing persons...

Harry Morgan was best known and loved for his long time roll as Col. Henry Blake  Col. Sherman T. Potter on TV's M.A.S.H. Morgan's career started as a supporting character actor in films, including To The Shores of Tripoli (1942), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), and High Noon (1952) , along with many others. Morgan was originally billed himself as Henry Morgan, and later as Henry "Harry" Morgan. Finally he took on the name Harry in order to avoid confusion with the popular radio humorist of the time . On the radio he hosted Peter Lorre 's Mystery in the Air during the 1947 season. He also made several appearances on This is Your FBI . On TV he found some success on early situation comedies before landing what would be considered his signature role and Sgt Joe Friday's partner, Bill Gannon, on TV's Dragnet . Morgan had been a guest early in the radio version of  Dragnet , only he played a jewel thief rather than a cop. Jack Webb had worked with ...