Alan Ladd was reportedly such a fan of Damon Runyon's columns and short stories that he was quite enthusiastic about producing this wonderful drama anthology through Ladd's own Mayfair Transcriptions label. The actual research of documenting this wonderful series was quite revealing in itself.

We weren't all that surprised to find that an alleged 'newly discovered audition' of The Damon Runyon Theatre wasn't a newly discovered anything. But in the process we not only identified it as an exemplar of another lesser known Damon Runyon program entitled 'Damon Runyon Says'.

Unraveling and explaining that mystery was as much fun as finally sequencing and provenancing the entire series for the first time.

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NBC's listening audience was clearly still quite receptive to a foreign intrigue anthology. With the memory of The Man Called X still fresh in the public memory it was a perfect time to resurrect the genre--for a short, Summer run at least, with the summer hiatus of the Judy Canova Show:

From the July 9, 1949 Daily Mail

''New York, July 9 (AP).—More summer scheduling, along with other changes, are being set up for the week-end. Included is a Norman Corwin CBS documentary, his first radio script in a couple of years. The list contains: summer shows—on NBC at 9:30 tonight Brian Donlevy in Dangerous Assignment instead of Judy Canova;''

Airing for only seven episodes, the inaugural run of Dangerous Assignment very much set the tone for the full series that followed in February 1950. The basic format of the 1949 Summer Run teased each introduction with a build-up emphasizing the international, globe-trotting nature of the adventure to follow. The numerous obvious comparisons to Herbert Marshall's The Man Called X can be excused by the facts that they were both NBC-produced, the format was time-proven, and the public was already conditioned to the format.

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Dangerously Yours was by no means a simple documentation effort. Thankfully we did manage to find newspaper provenances for almost every broadcast. In the process we finally determined and explained the relationship between Vick Chemical Company's Dangerously, Yours! and it's follow-up Vick's Matinee Theatre.

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Danny Kaye himself, was a legend in the making. Indeed it was the very showcase of The Danny Kaye Show that exposed him to 130 million potential new fans during two of the most successful and critical years of his entertainment career. How anyone in their right mind could characterize either season of The Danny Kaye Show as anything but an extraordinary success--by any measure--escapes our logic.

The Danny Kaye Show served to not only catapult Danny Kaye to even greater success, but in the process jumpstarted the careers of several other up and coming entertainers. It stands for all time as a brilliant showcase--and the only Radio showcase--of Kaye's extraordinary versatility, innovation and talent. We would hope that as more exemplars of The Danny Kaye Show enter circulation that even more Golden Age Radio historians will arrive at this same, inescapable conclusion.

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In the course of the 1937 Lloyds of London tour, the idea arose of interviewing the most successful stunt people in the business at the time, for a possible retrospective on the lives of these heroic 'daredevils.' The twenty-six Daredevils of Hollywood episodes were the result of those ancillary recorded interviews. And indeed, Lloyds ultimately gave the early stunt performers' congress a green light as to their insurability. This effectively eliminated the studios' long-standing fairy-tale about not being able to insure either the stunts or stunt people, and stunt work soon became one of the most well-prepared, trained, educated and highly respected professions of the Film Industry.

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WKY, Oklahoma City had been a highly respected and equally highly sophisticated Radio operator for over eight years by the time this series first aired, so it was no great leap for NBC to take the gamble in taking the series nationwide. NBC-Red and it's flagship station WEAF began airing Dark Fantasy in New York simultaneously with the broadcasts airing out of WKY, Oklahoma City.

WKY's talented writer, Scott Bishop, was responsible for all of the scripts. Indeed, the scripts were so chilling that both WKY and NBC felt obliged to air the program well after 1940s children had fallen soundly asleep. NBC-Red picked up Scott Bishop's Dark Fantasy series from November 14, 1941 forward. In 1943, NBC sustained Bishop's Strange Dr. Karnac series.

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"Over the minds of mortal men come many shadows. . .
Shadows of greed and hate, jealousy and fear.
Darkness is the absence of Light . . .
So in the sudden shadows which fog the minds of men and women are to be found the strange impulses which urge them on to their venture . . . in the dark."

This was the portentious original introduction to KGO's new psychological thriller program, Dark Venture. the announcer emphasized these "ventures into the dark" as portents of the drama to follow. One of the last of many KGO-originated programs, Dark Venture first aired over KGO at 9 p.m., Tuesday night, on May 29, 1945, immediately preceding KGO's equally innovative and regionally popular Murder Will Out mystery drama, with William Gargan as Inspector Burke, Chief of Homicide. Both innovative new series' aired regionally until January 1946.

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NBC and The Council For Democracy felt it might be the right time to provide the entire nation with a means to vent some of that frustration in a more public forum. Dear Adolf was conceived as a short Summer series showcasing six weekly "letters to Hitler" framed as reflections of specific segments of American society and culture and their 'open letters' to Adolf Hitler.

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Scriptwriter Richard Durham and The Chicago Defender had already partnered with CBS affiliate station WBBM to bring it's award-winning Democracy USA program to the air in 1946. Durham had also contributed to Radio's first, successful Negro-performed serial melodrama, Here Comes Tomorrow (1947), a three-a-week offering of Radio station WJJD, Chicago. In addition, two other moderately successful retrospective drmatizations, New World A'Coming (1945) and Freedom Train (1947) had preceded Destination Freedom by as many as five years.

The unfortunate, albeit starkly realistic, element of this fine early Negro-produced, directed, written and performed programming was that they were invariably aired only over either regional or local networks.

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As might be surmised from the title, The Devil and Mr. O, the 'Mr. O' refers to the diminutive genius playwright, Arch Oboler. Arch Oboler packaged several rebroadcasts of his programs between 1945 and 1970. Oboler repackaged The Devil and Mr. O in late 1969 for syndication in 1970 and beyond. The first documented broadcasts aired from May 3, 1970 through the Fall of 1970.

The twenty-six programs were predominantly Lights Out! broadcasts retitled for this The Devil and Mr. O canon. The single exception was Rocket From Manhattan, the one program in Oboler's The Devil and Mr. O canon that survives with its title intact. This is undoubtedly the reason that Rocket From Manhattan is often mischaracterized as a Lights Out! program, which of course it never was.

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Miracle Diamonds was the brand behind Sidney S. Fox's $35,000 investment in a series of twenty-six, fascinating histories of the most famous diamonds in the world, circa 1926 to 1927. Before you start thinking that Sidney S. Fox was a famous jeweler, let us disabuse you of that notion. Sidney S. Fox was an extremely wealthy man, make no mistake about it. But his fortune was based on the 'miracle salts' found in and around The Great Salt Lake of Utah. The miracle salts upon which he made his initial fortune were laxative salts. They were coined 'miracle diamonds,' due to their unique, diamond-like crystalline appearance.

The Freeman-Lang Studios was the syndicator for the original, 1926 production. The syndication first aired in the mountain time zone over radio station K-D-Y-L, Salt Lake, by prior agreement with Sidney S. Fox, the owner of the 'Miracle Diamonds' brand. The entire series aired in sequence under Miracle Diamonds sponsorship.

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Diary of Fate remains a work in progress for a bit longer. While we did manage to identify more of the 'books', 'pages' and 'the fated' in the process of provenancing almost half of the series, we had to resort to providing both our newspaper listing provenances in combination with a list of all known, named entries and their book and page, if identified.

As more thorough provenances present themselves, we'll continue to work this fine psychological drama series until it's completely provenanced and logged.

We did manage to appropriately memorialize two of Radio's unsung workhorses--the actor Herb Lytton and the producer Larry Finley.

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Mutual ultimately aired Did Justice Triumph? beginning on January 29th 1947 as weekly, late Wednesday night, 30-minute dramatizations adapted from true crime stories of the era. They were much in the vein of the 1945 through 1947 Print feature of the same name. The New York Daily News series', Did Justice Triumph and True Justice, had been tabloid crime features in the paper's Sunday gravure portion of each edition.

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This article might well have been titled ''Out of This World''. That's the name NBC first selected for its new science fiction drama anthology for an adult audience, destined to transport its listeners to ''a million could-be years on a thousand may-be planets.'' We won't quibble about the fact that NBC fell about 954 may-be planets and 9,999,954 could-be years short of it's stated goal. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Apparently NBC Television had other plans for the title Out of This World, since within 48 hours of teasing the title for the new sci-fi program in local newspapers, NBC announced the final title for its new Radio program: Dimension X. To help kick off the new sci-fi series, NBC also assembled a special presentation directed towards science junkies, to precede the first Dimension X broadcast on April 8, 1950. Titled ''Preview to the Future'', the 15-minute prequel proposed to bounce radio signals off of the moon, then record the sound of their impact on the moon as the speed of sound reflected them back to sensitive recorders here on Earth.

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The common theme underlying both The Doctor Fights and The Encore Theatre was the selfless, idealistic, altruistic and often heroic contributions of medical professionals throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. With The Doctor Fights, the focus was narrowed even further to the extraordinary efforts and sacrifices of the estimated 60,000 medical doctors serving Allied Forces throughout the world during World War II.

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The Marcus Loew Booking Agency had owned radio station call sign WHN since 1946. In September of 1948, WHN changed their call sign to WMGM, in part to capitalize on a series of MGM programming projects they were attempting to introduce to a national audience. Programs such as The Adventures of Maisie, Crime Does Not Pay, The Hardy Family, M-G-M Theatre of The Air, and The Story of Dr. Kildare, all drew on material that M-G-M, as a Film Studio, already had in the can. Having established Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Radio Attractions for the express purpose of transcribing, then syndicating this content, all that remained was for M-G-M to obtain a well-established radio station from which to broadcast their programming packages. The assumption was that once heard in a wide enough area they'd be picked up nation-wide in due time. The concept seemed to be working for several years, until a change in M-G-M focus made their M-G-M Radio Attractions division redundant. WMGM slowly began changing their format to remain viable to its expanding local audience, and the era of MGM-produced, network-ready, syndicated content dwindled to nothing.

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The Doris Day Show premiered over CBS in a 25-minute format on Friday, March 28th 1952. Doris Day, one of Hollywood's least starstruck Film stars made her first solo outing in a Radio series a family affair. Drawing on the many artists and friends that had helped her during her meteoric rise to stardom, The Doris Day Show's guests for her premiere program were Danny Thomas, her co-star from I'll See You In My Dreams (1952) and Mrs. Gus Kahn, the wife of prolific songwriter Gus Kahn. I'll See You In My Dreams was based on the life of Gus Kahn and his wife Grace. Danny Thomas had portrayed Gus Kahn and Doris Day portrayed Grace Kahn.

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Douglas of The World was probably recorded at the Capitol Records Tower building in Hollywood during 1952 to 1953. The production featured durable West Coast Radio actor and narrator Jack Moyles in the role of Bradford 'Brad' Douglas, a globetrotting foreign correspondent for 'The New York World,' a fictious New York-based newspaper with bureaus in Paris, Stockholm, and London.

Bradford Douglas' portfolio encompassed the major geopolitical hotspots of the era, ranging around the world from Moscow to Indonesia and everywhere in between. Brad Douglas' assignments were usually provided by Mike Shaughnessy, the Managing Editor of The New York World.

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"Across the rugged Indian Territory, rides a tall young man on a mission of mercy; his medical bag strapped on one hip and his six-shooter on the other. This is Dr. Sixgun. Grey Matson, M.D. was the gun-toting frontier doctor who roamed the length and breadth of the old Indian territory; friend and physician to white man and Indian alike, the symbol of justice and mercy in the lawless west of the 1870s."

Dr. Sixgun first appeared over NBC on July 1st 1956 throughout America. Given its adult western genre, Dr. Sixgun appeared during the late evening in most markets. Versatile character actor Karl Weber was featured as Dr. Grey Matson, M.D., better known as 'Dr. Sixgun.' The series was set in the Montana Territory of the post Civil War 1870s, and centered around the frontier town of Frenchman's Ford. Upon arriving and settling in Frenchman's Ford, Dr. Matson acquired the town's muse, Pablo, a "wandering Gypsy peddler" [William Griffis] as Dr. Matson's chronicler, much in the vein of Sherlock Holmes' Dr. Watson.

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Though predominantly airing Condon's own variant of Jazz, Eddie Condon's Jazz Concert played host to some of the greatest names of the Jazz World in the course of its forty-six episodes. Pianist Gene Schroeder, bassist Bob Haggart, clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, cornetist Max Kaminsky, baritone trumpeter Ernie Caceres, trombonist Benny Morton, and drummer George Wettling formed the core of Condon's Jazz ensemble. All, of course, accompanied by Eddie Condon on his tenor guitar, banjo or ukulele.

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Though predominantly airing Condon's own variant of Jazz, Eddie Condon's Jazz Concert played host to some of the greatest names of the Jazz World in the course of its forty-six episodes. Pianist Gene Schroeder, bassist Bob Haggart, clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, cornetist Max Kaminsky, baritone trumpeter Ernie Caceres, trombonist Benny Morton, and drummer George Wettling formed the core of Condon's Jazz ensemble. All, of course, accompanied by Eddie Condon on his tenor guitar, banjo or ukulele.

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Electric Theater was another starring vehicle for Helen Hayes, much the same as Textron Theatre in 1945.  It featured Miss Hayes in both original radio dramas created especially for her, as well as adaptations of stage hits for which she had already won great acclaim.  In fact, in response to a flood of listener requests, she did a repeat of a broadcast of one of her most memorable performances in Textron Theatre, "My Little Boy." 

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The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) was the first Radio network to bring Ellery Queen to a Radio audience on a recurring basis. Though still clouded in secrecy as to the true identities of either/both the creator, Ellery Queen or the actor portraying Ellery Queen, both details remaind shrouded in secrecy until the last episodes of that first CBS run of sixty-seven, CBS-produced mystery quizzes. That first series premiered in an hour-long format on the Sunday evening of June 18, 1939.

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An admittedly obscure program, there's no rational reason for it to have been overlooked all these years. With talent of the likes of Cornell Wilde, Lurene Tuttle, Paul Lukas, Ronald Colman, Robert Young, Robert Taylor, Hume Cronyn, Virginia Bruce, Maureen O'Sullivan, George Zucco, Elliott Lewis, Charles Bickford, Cathy Lewis, Franchot Tone, Lionel Barrymore, Zachary Scott, Howard Duff, Ida Lupino, and Dennis O'Keefe, one wonders how it was ever overlooked this long. And all of that talent in only thirteen episodes.

We're glad that we tackled this one and we love the result.

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First aired in January of 1952, the five-program arc was repeated throughout 1952. Great, Canadian-born character actor, Raymond Massey, served as the series' narrator for all five programs. The production showcased then cutting-edge medical technologies of the era:

• Nutrition
• Cancer Research
• Cortisone
• Treatment of Heart Disease
• Battlefield Treatment

Raymond Massey's contribution as narrator for the series was a coup for NBC. By 1946, Massey had become one of America's most respected actors and most trusted personalities. His portrayals, both on stage and big screen, of Abraham Lincoln lent Massey an air of authority vital to the narration of these five important medical technology updates.

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The Columbia Broadcasting System's Escape was first conceived as a Radio property to be titled Out of This World. The CBS Division of Program Writing produced an audition for Out of This World starring Berry Kroeger and Art Carney in an adaptation of the recently popular Ealing Studios film, Dead of Night (1945). Dead of Night was subsequently released in a less adult form for American audiences by Universal in 1946. It was the Universal release that CBS adapted for the auditions. During the ensuing month the CBS Division of Program Writing produced a second audition adapting Dead of Night as a proposed Escape! canon, again starring Berry Kroeger and Art Carney. The second audition announced an adaptation of F. Scott Fitgerald's 1922 Smart Set story, The Diamond As Big as The Ritz [announced as "A Diamond As Big as The Ritz"], for the following week.

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    The O'Neill series of four plays, starring Helen Hayes, Henry Hull, Ian Keith and Peggy Wood, were a highlight of Radio's 1937 dramatic season.  More than any other dramatist, O'Neill sensed the sharp, and at times bitter, conflict between the sensitive man and the world about him.  Filled with powerful emotion, his plays are usually tragic studies in frustration.
     Despite his ironic commentaries on American life, O'Neill has won the admiration of both critics and playgoers thruout the western world for his bold attack on the problems of modern life.  Three times he has won the coveted Pulitzer Prize and once the greatest award of all, the Nobel prize.

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A glance at the leading artist roster for the twenty-six installments of Everyman's Theater shows a breathtaking diversity and depth of talent. Showcasing some of the most respected female actors of the era, Everyman's Theater boasted no less than the aforementioned Nazimova, as well as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Mary Astor, Elsa Lanchester, Marlene Dietrich, and Norma Shearer. The male starring line-up included Raymond Massey, Boris Karloff, Walter Huston, Charles Laughton, Franchot Tone and Brian Donlevy. Also heard were several early repeat appearances by soon-to-be AFRS enlisted buddies Howard Duff and Elliott Lewis.

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Everything For the Boys was a wonderful send-up to the troops, and in a more intimate vein than Command Performance. The first twenty-five episodes were predominantly drama presentations, hosted by Ronald Colman. Ten minutes of each of the Ronald Colman-hosted programs were devoted to taking specific performance requests from soldiers, marines, sailors, airmen and nurses in the field.

The remaining sixty-five episodes were in a variety vein, hosted by popular crooner Dick Haymes.

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The calculus that brought Exploring Tomorrow to the air was reasonably well supported. Dimension X (1950) had been quite popular with its fans while suffering under several scheduling changes and almost no promotion beyond its first few episodes. 1953's Tales of Tomorrow had been spun off from its Television version. And NBC's X Minus One's fans suffered even greater indignities than those of Dimension X at the hands of NBC's schedulers.

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If you liked the Steven Spielberg movie 1941 (1979), you'll love Eyes, Aloft! equally well. Eyes, Aloft! was a fascinating time capsule of the hysteria following the Pearl Harbor attacks of December 7 1941. The West Coast of the continental United States was on high alert for well over a year following Pearl Harbor.

In charge of protecting the West Coast from enemy attack was the IV Fighter Command and its network of Air Warning System observers and Filter stations. This series introduced a new cautionary vignette each week of its run. It also honored a different group of selfless volunteers of the Air Warning System with a weekly Gold Trophy.

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An obvious effort to leverage Frank Morgan's most popular characterizations over the years, the quixotic, selectively absent-minded Doctor of Philosphy, Thaddeus Q. Tweedy seemed the perfect amalgam of Morgan's various film personae. A tenured Professor of Philosophy at his previous college, Dr. Tweedy got the boot for repeatedly flunking star players of the school's football team. The last straw was his flunking the entire backfield of Willowitz, Mankiewitz, Horowitz and Stinkowitz. The president of the college suggested that Dr. Tweedy pursue a recent opening with Potts College, in Pottsfield.

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Irrespective of the resolution of the convoluted etymology of the various The Falcon characters, April 10, 1943 launched a thirteen-year Radio and Television franchise of urbane, highly educated, and independently wealthy Michael Waring as a new nemesis of injustice and espionage, The Falcon. The Adventures of The Falcon ran off and on over the ensuing eleven years over Radio and ultimately over Television for another three years. Debuting over NBC's Blue Network (WJZ), the series appeared over The Blue Network (ABC), the Mutual Broadcasting System (MBS) and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), then ultimately over CBS as Television's The Falcon, starring Charles McGraw as 'Mike' Waring.

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Initially promoted as a rotating ensemble production featuring six major Hollywood movie stars, the build-up to the premiere also promised that major Hollywood Film Sextet in original dramas, whatever that hoped to convey. It was an ambitious undertaking for the era to be sure. The initial six promised Film stars were:

• Humphrey Bogart
• Bette Davis
• Gregory Peck
• Ginger Rogers
• Barbara Stanwyck
• Robert Taylor

A stunning promised line-up to be sure. All six promised actors represented some of Film's most famous and popular names of the era. But managing and scheduling such a prestigious core of feature artists ultimately proved to be--as might be expected-- more like wrangling a herd of cats, even for a sponsor with the deep pockets of The Prudential.

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While there were, indeed, five seasons of Great Plays, there were also two alleged derivatives: Famous Fireside Plays and the alleged Blue Theatre Plays extension of Great Plays, neither of which maintained either the production values or classical patina of the five seasons of Great Plays, proper. One can only surmise that, with the break up of NBC by the U.S. Justice Department, Great Plays, one of NBC's Corporately produced and sustained productions, suffered somewhat during the period of the breakup and transition.

• Famous Fireside Plays ran briefly from 42-02-08 through 42-03-29, airing on Sundays at 1:00 pm, for 55 minutes.
• Blue Theatre Plays (a completely different program, as it turns out) ran from 42-04-05 through 42-08-30, airing on Sundays at 1:00 pm or 2:00 pm, depending on time zone, for 25 minutes.

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Grantland Rice was by no means a newcomer to 1940s Radio. Beginning with 1930s Coca-Cola Top-Notchers, Grantland Rice had become as much of a fixture over Radio as he'd become in print media and Film. Along with Red Barber, Frank Graham, Bill Stern and Graham McNamee, Grantland Rice was one of a handful of Radio voices that were immediately associated with Sport.

By then in his 60s, Rice was already working on his autobiography, The Tumult and The Shouting, when he was approached by NBC to narrate a series of half-hour sports stories which had become his favorites over his extraordinary career. Co-produced by NBC's Garnet Garrison and Rice's son, Herbert, the series showcased some of the greatest popular sports authors in American history. As the series evolved, it became apparent that Ring Lardner, James Thurber, Charles E. Van Loan and Frank Graham were particular favorites.

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The earliest airings of Favorite Story originated from the KFI, Hollywood station at which the entire series was recorded. The first sponsor, Bullock's Department Stores, was the early beneficiary of what had to have been a sweetheart deal for both Bullock's and Frederick Ziv. Ziv gained a high profile local sponsor for those first crucial thirteen episodes, and Bullock's launched what would eventually become one of the most successful independent syndications in broadcasting history.

Called variously, My Favorite Story, Your Favorite Story or simply Favorite Story, those earliest broadcasts aired from as early as the Spring and late Summer of 1946. By the time that Ziv realized he had another winner on his hands, and the first fifty-two installments were pressed, Ziv fanned out his vaunted 100-man sales force throughout the U.S. and Canada. Those first sales of fifty-two installment packages resulted in another re-launch of the series throughout the U.S. and Canada during the Fall of 1947.

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The BBC's Radio fans are some of the most loyal in the world, so it seemed natural to mate The Man In Black to BBC Radio 4's new late night thriller anthology for 1988. Edward De Souza returned to present the first series of twelve spine-tinglers. The character of 'The Man In Black,' and indeed the original series of Appointment with Fear are very reminiscent of The Man in Black from our own long-running Suspense series over CBS. Joe Kearns, among others, portrayed the Man in Black as host to many of the early Suspense programs, and the theme music from Suspense seems uncannily like the introductory music for Appointment with Fear.

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Taken at face value, the presentations were exceptionally persuasive and effective. The Fifth Horseman alluded to The Bible's Revelation account of the Apocalypse. Revelations tells of four 'horsemen', euphemisms for conquest, war, famine and death. The four horsemen rode four horses of distinctively varying colors: 'Conquest' rode a white mount, 'War' a red mount, 'Famine' a black mount, and 'Death' a pale [or pale green] mount.

The four horsemen were also equipped with varying armament: Conquest wielded a crown and bow, War a sword, Famine a scale, and Death a scythe.

A fifth horseman was alluded to in various publications, films, short features, animations, and pulp stories of the early to mid-20th Century--and beyond. Conjecture regarding a possible fifth horseman--imagined or prophesied--proved to be a persuasive euphemism for a number of perceived evils of the era.

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The concept for Texaco's 'Fire-Chief' programs evolved from its promotion of its Fire-Chief gasoline--and by extension its alleged adoption by most Fire Departments across America. Throughout the mid to late 1930s, the Fire-Chief brand soon became as much a household word as Coca-Cola or Jello. But in fact it was the Circus that launched Texaco's longest running series of programs; programs that would air almost continuously under one Texaco-themed name or another from 1935 till 1950.

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Dick Powell's first outing as detective Richard Rogue arrived in the Summer replacement Fitch Bandwagon Mysteries program which ran for fourteen episodes during the Summer of 1945. It jumped from NBC to the Mutual Broadcasting System after it's 1945 Summer debut when Fitch realized there was nowhere else in the NBC line-up for it except as a summer replacement for Fitch's own Bandwagon Program.

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Five After the Hour premiered sustained over WBBM on May 16, 1945, broadcasting the drama anthology throughout the Midwest. WBBM had six years earlier discovered a young writer, director and producer within its ranks with great promise for a great future at WBBM--and CBS. Wunderkind Les Weinrott's rising star with CBS was being compared to that of Norman Corwin in some of the midwestern newspapers of the era. Also variously referred to as Illinois' greatest living actor or Chicago's greatest actor, Weinrott had become a real workhorse at WBBM having directed among other projects, the launch of WBBM's long-running and popular Those Websters situation comedy in 1945 featuring Willard Waterman.

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The fascinating chronicles of Jack Casey, Crime Beat photographer, began on Radio with Flashgun Casey, Press Photographer over CBS in the Summer of 1943. Initially starring Matt Crowley, Jack Casey was subsequently portrayed by Jim Backus of 'Mr. Magoo' and Gilligan's Island fame, then Staats Cotworth who ultimately embodied the role for its remaining seasons on Radio.

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Ford Motor Company launched its Ford Theater sponsorship in the Fall of 1947 to coincide with the roll-out of their 1948 models. Their post-War model lines had met with mixed success following VE Day on May 8, 1945. But VJ Day on August 14, 1945 provided the final boost America's manufacturers needed to secure funding for domestic retooling, advertising and revised infrastructure.

During the post-War years, Ford was sponsoring:

• The Ford Sunday Evening Hour for 1945 and 1946
• The Bob Crosby Show for the first six months of 1946
• Festival of American Music in 1946
• The Dinah Shore Show [The Ford Show] from 1946 to 1947
• Meredith Wilson's Ford Showroom in 1947
• RFD America in 1948
• The Fred Allen Show from 1947 to 1949
• Can You Top This? in 1948
• Lum and Abner from 1949 to 1950
• Young Love from 1949 to 1950
• The Adventures of Philip Marlowe in 1950
• The Saint in 1950
• A Date With Judy in 1950

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Fort Laramie was blessed with all the right ingredients to create one of Radio's finest, albeit short-lived adult Western dramas. With William N. Robson producing and directing, an audition by no less than Radio star John Dehner, and forty excellent production episodes starring Raymond Burr in his first significant lead role over Radio.

We also welcomed the opportunity to memorialize these three Stage, Radio, Television and Film greats.

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Four for the 5th was, understandably, produced on relatively short notice, given the D-Day Offensive mounted on June 6, 1944. Written, produced and directed by either Arch Oboler or William N. Robson, both legendary radiomen virtually guaranteed a high-quality production. Developed as a series of four dramatic productions to kick start the hurriedly organized 5th War Loan Drive, the title "Four for the 5th" was a natural, as well as catchy. The Treasury, clearly privy to the date of the D-Day Offensive, produced the series about a week prior to the invasion itself.

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NBC and Cosmopolitan magazine came to an agreement to showcase twelve of Cosmopolitan's short stories starring four of Film's rising stars of the era: Rosalind Russell, Loretta Young, Robert Cummings and Fred MacMurray. Dubbed, Four Star Playhouse, the repertory alternated leading roles between the four great actors of the era.

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The years during which Maxwell Coffee sponsored its Maxwell House Coffee Time saw some of Radio's most enduring favorites airing under the Maxwell House banner: Baby Snooks, Charlie Ruggles, Frank Morgan, Topper, and Burns and Allen among others. When their prime time season headliners would take a well-earned summer break Maxwell House continued the Maxwell House Coffee Time during the summer with many well-received summer programs featuring supporting artists from their prime time season shows, such as Meredith Willson from Burns and Allen, and band singer, comedienne, and actress, Frances Langford.

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An admittedly humble first offering, the three-feature series' offered name actors, top-notch writing and high production values. The syndicate offered the following to describe its concept:

"Since its organization less than a year ago, the Broadcasters Program Syndicate has built a success story unparalleled in the history of radio.
Operating on a subscription basis exclusively, the Broadcasters Program Syndicate is essentially of, by, and for station subscriber-members.
A single weekly fee equal to the subscribing station's national one-time class A quarter-hour rate entitles the station to the Syndicate's entire output of network-calibre programs. All current programs--plus every additional series produced by the Syndicate in the future.
Currently, for a single weekly fee "PAT O'BRIEN FROM HOLLYWOOD," "FRONTIER TOWN," and "ADVENTURES OF FRANK RACE" all go to the following members of the Broadcasters Program Syndicate:"

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The Free Company was a wonderful, patriotic expression by a group of some of America's brightest Literary lights and Performing Artists and technicians. The Free Company Players all agreed to provide their services to this production without any form of compensation. What resulted was a marvelously patriotic anthology celebrating the Freedoms that all Americans were fighting for throughout World War II--both on the domestic front and on the battlefields.

This series became historic from the moment it first aired. The list of volunteers to the effort reads like a Who's Who of 20th Century American Culture.

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Frontier Fighters had long been poorly documented, primarily due to the inability to determine a first broadcast date for the syndicated series. Virtually every log--and book--in the hobby cites an approximate 1935 air date for the series. In fact the first advertised air date for the series was January 26, 1938. This is provenanced by its sponsor, the Peak-Hagedon Funeral Home in El Paso, Texas, which sponsored the entire run.

Peak-Hagedon's first spot ad for the series appeared in January 26th's El Paso Herald-Post, announcing Peak-Hagedon's sponsorship for the broadcasts airing Wednesdays at 8:45 p.m., weekly.

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Frontier Gentleman's perspective on the rough and tumble Montana and Wyoming Territories of the 1870s was a fascinating twist on the--by then--formulaic adult western. Its protagonist was Englishman J.B. Kendall, a journalist for the 'London Times' on assignment in the Northwest Territories to report on the extraordinary progress being made in settling and taming the Frontier West of the United States.

In the process we had the opportunity to memorialize both John Dehner and Ben Wright, two of Radio and Television's hardest working--and multi-talented--character actors.

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Who's 'Tex' Chandler? It was actually Jeff Chandler, then an up and coming Radio, Television and Film star who was actually billed as 'Tex' Chandler for this adult Western drama.

One of the grittier of the spate of adult Western dramas appearing on Radio in the wake of the success of Gunsmoke, Frontier Town eventually starred two of Radio and Television's most durable character actors--Jeff Chandler and Reed Hadley.

We managed to set the record straight as to the actual range of episodes starring each leading actor, as well as correcting a host of mis-titled episodes in the process.

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