The Adventures of The Abbotts Radio Program

Background

Beginning with The Thin Man movies of the 1930s and 1940s, husband and wife detective teams captured the imagination of both male and female viewers and readers alike. The books behind the films also gained in popularity. Though by far the most well remembered from the era, Dashiell Hammett's Nick and Nora Charles of The Thin Man series, were soon competing with other husband and wife detective teams, such as:

• Agatha Christie and her Tuppence and Tommy
• Mary Higgins Clark and her Henry Parker and Sandra Brien Britland
• Richard and Frances Lockridge and their Mr. and Mrs. North
• Dorothy L. Sayers and her Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane
• Margaret Truman and her Annabel Reed and Mac Smith
• Theodora Dubois and her Anne and Jeffrey McNeill
• Frances Crane and her Pat and Jean Abbott
• Kelly Roos and their Jeff and Halia Troy

The list is by no means all-inclusive, but is representative of many of the more popular husband and wife (or husband and wife to be) sleuthing couples of mid-20th Century fiction. Of the above represented teams, most of them eventually found their way to Film, Radio and Television.

The wildly successful Thin Man series of films inspired Radio networks to bring husband and wife detecting to Radio, beginning in the early 1940s. The long-running Adventures of The Thin Man (1941-1950) and The Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. North (1942-1955) soon found connubial company with Pat and Jean Abbott in The Abbott Mysteries (1945-1947). The Abbott Mysteries were the first appearance of Frances Crane's detective 'team' of Pat and Jean Abbott over Radio, with Julie Stevens and Chuck Webster in 1945, Les Tremayne and Alice Reinheart in 1946, and winding up with Julie Stevens and Chuck Webster in 1947 in the starring roles.

The Abbotts return to Radio in The Adventures of The Abbotts

The return of The Abbotts to Radio came at a most unpropitious time. The post-War years following the departure of The Abbott Mysteries found America turning more and more to Television for its detective and mystery drama interests.

The series premiered over NBC on Sunday, October 03, 1954 with Don Briggs as Pat Abbott and Claudia Morgan as Jean Abbott. Claudia Morgan had previously starred as Nora Charles in The Adventures of The Thin Man, often co-starring with Les Damon as Nick Charles during the series' nine year run. And in fact, beginning with 1955, Claudia Morgan began starring with Les Damon as Pat Abbott in The Adventures of The Abbotts. Damon departed the series after about thirteen episodes to be replaced by Mandel Kramer. Switching marital partners was by no means new to Claudia Morgan. During the run of The Adventures of The Thin Man, Morgan alternated between Les Damon, Les Tremayne, David Gothard and Joseph Curtin in the role of Nick Charles. This was by no means a novelty to Claudia Morgan who, herself, was married four times during her Radio career.

Claudia Morgan's roles in The Adventures of The Thin Man and The Adventures of The Abbotts inevitably invite comparisons. Nora Charles' contributions in The Adventures of The Thin Man throughout its many incarnations and formats waxed and waned between that of a comedic foil, an impediment and an inspired, intuitive contributor. But Nora was relatively equally teamed with hubby Nick Charles for most of the series.

In The Adventures of The Abbotts, by contrast, Claudia Morgan, as Jean Abbott, both frames and provides the exposition for every episode. Beginning every introduction with, "After all . . . ", Claudia Morgan would provide a provocative lament or 'teaser' to the plot of the episode to unfold for that evening. Given Frances Crane's focus on Jean Abbott throughout all twenty-six of her The Abbotts mystery novels the focus on Jean Abbott's first person recounting of each night's adventure seemed quite natural--though something of a departure for Radio mystery dramas of the era. The other feature of Frances Crane's twenty-six The Abbotts mysteries was the presence of a color in the title of each novel. The Abbott Mysteries launched in that fashion in the Summer of 1945 with "The Brown Bag." This theme was also adhered to in the titles of The Adventures of The Abbotts Radio episodes. Though only eighteen AFRTS-denatured exemplars have surfaced over the years, their announced or provenanced titles show the pattern--and quite cleverly:

The Dead-White Flame
The Canary-Yellow Sack
The Blue-Rocket Express
The Dead-White Lifeboat
The Royal-Purple Scooter
The Rickshaw-Red Lipstick
The Yellow Chip
The Blood-Red Diamond
The Clue Of The Ivory Thread
The Burnt-Copper Powder
The Blood-Red City
The Fabulous Emerald Necklace
The Pink Elephant
The Green-Eyed Divorcee
The Canary-Blonde Heiress
The Clicking Silver Pen
The Gentleman In The Nile-Green Suit
The Murder Of A Fabulous Redhead

The evolution of Claudia Morgan's voice throughout the period also merits an observation. Over the course of her prolific Film, Radio and Television career, Claudia Morgan's voice evolved from its initially perky and provocative tone and timbre to the somewhat more smokey and sultry Jean Abbott character we hear in The Adventures of The Abbotts. For Claudia Morgan fans (and we're one of them) the subtle alterations in her voice instrument over the years make it easy to see why she remained one of Radio--and Television's--busiest actresses.

Pat Abbott, as portrayed by Les Damon and Mandel Kramer in the only currently circulating exemplars, is by contrast a spirited, analytical and romantic foil--who also, only incidentally, possesses a remarkably intuitive and brilliant knack for ferreting out the solution to all manner of crimes and espionage.

In the Frances Crane novels featuring The Abbotts, Pat Abbott is featured as both a brilliant forensic detective as well as an aspiring artist. Though we don't hear a great deal of the second attribute in the Radio canon, its possible that Pat Abbott's artistic bent may yet surface as more exemplars of the canon surface.

The Adventures of The Abbotts currently in circulation survive only as Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) denatured recordings. And indeed, as with most of the prodigious output of both the AFRS and AFRTS, the surviving recordings are bell-clear and well engineered. An NBC-sustained production for its entire run, there was little for the AFRTS to denature out. Indeed many of the NBC references were retained in the AFRTS-denatured recordings--less, of course, contemporaneous announcements as to other following programs in NBC's lineup.

The eighteen circulating episodes run a colorful gamut of Crime from murder, to Cold War espionage, to intricate who-dun-its, to industiral espionage--and everything in between. All in all, a clever mix of well-paced and cleverly crafted mysteries and crimes sufficiently compelling to leave the listener hoping against hope that the remaining epsiodes of the canon surface one day soon. Yet another of The Golden Age of Radio's sadly overlooked but highly listenable gems.

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

Marginally helpful provenances were the log of the radioGOLDINdex and newspaper listings.

There are NO currently circulating NBC Network-broadcast exemplars of The Adventures of The Abbotts. Anyone circulating, selling, or distributing the AFRTS-denatured, circulating recordings of The Adventures of the Abbotts with as-broadcast dates, passing them off as NBC Network recordings is demonstrably misrepresenting those recordings, pure and simple. In plain English, they're lying to their recipients and cheating them.

OTRisms:

While we're all painfully aware of the OTR Community's long-standing practice of mixing and matching AFRS and AFRTS recordings with as-broadcast recordings to make up as complete an as-broadcast collection as practical, that practice is unquestionably deceptive. It's wishful thinking taken to the extreme. In the case of The Adventures of The Abbotts there are no currently circulating recordings of the canon except for the AFRTS-denatured versions of the canon--period. Nor can any of those AFRTS exemplars of the canon correctly bear a date from the as-broadcast canon. There are no as-broadcast recordings to mix and match with--period. The currently circulating exemplars of The Adventures of The Abbotts are 100% AFRTS exemplars, and as such, represent an exclusively AFRTS canon, as presently circulating. To state otherwise is fraud, pure and simple.

The radioGOLDINdex serves to somewhat confuse as to the broadcast chronology of the AFRTS-denatured recordings in its database. Since its database is the only one to publish alleged AFRTS Transcription numbers, the presence of apparently 'NBC Net' dates is undoubtedly the source of much confusion regarding the order of either/both the AFRTS-transcribed/NBC-broadcast episodes:

• Claire Boothe Luce never appeared in The Adventures of The Abbotts. Claire Luce, however did appear in at least one of The Adventures of The Abbotts--The Burnt-Copper Powder on 55-02-27.
• The Adventures of The Abbotts didn't begin airing in either Europe or the Far East over AFRTS stations until 1957, which leaves us confused as to any of the dates cited throughout the radioGOLDINdex's The Adventures of The Abbotts page, none of which can possibly be for AFRTS-denatured recordings or broadcasts.
• The radioGOLDINdex has AFRTS #11 in the canon dated 55-04-17, and co-starring Mandel Kramer as Pat Abbott. The actual recording has Les Damon in the role.
• There are only five circulating Mandel Kramer exemplars. Since the series ended on June 5, 1955, and there are only five exemplars of Mandel Kramer starring as Pat Abbott, it would seem reasonably safe to say that it's those last five exemplars that represent Kramer's entire starring contribution prior to the end of the series. Kramer appeared in at least eight of the circulating exemplars, but he appeared as Pat Abbott in only five of them.
• Given the above, there could be no Mandel Kramer as Pat Abbott episodes prior to May 8, 1955 among the circulating exemplars, Q.E.D.

Several ill-informed 'OTR' sites seem to conflate the situation comedy, We, The Abbotts, The Abbott Mysteries and The Adventures of The Abbotts as of the same family of programs [Well gosh, they all have the name 'Abbotts' in them, no?]. Only The Abbott Mysteries and The Adventures of The Abbotts bear a common link--the author, Frances Crane. One might well assume that the spot ads themselves, for We, The Abbotts might serve to disabuse that continuing conflation. Apparently not.

The contributors to the Hickerson Guide seem to continue to conflate The Abbott Mysteries and The Adventures of The Abbotts as well:

• The Abbott Mysteries aired as summer replacements for Quick As A Flash during the summers of 1943 through 1947.
• The Abbott Mysteries were presented over the Mutual Broadcasting System exclusively throughout that period.
• The Abbotts were depicted as newlyweds during the three Summer runs of The Abbott Mysteries. They are a mature married couple by The Adventures of The Abbotts
• The circulating The Adventures of The Abbotts were denatured and distributed by the AFRTS not the AFRS.
• There at least eighteen circulating AFRTS-only exemplars of The Adventures of The Abbotts versus the thirteen cited in the Hickerson Guide.
• The Adventures of The Abbotts ran from October 03, 1954 to June 5, 1955 versus the January 2, 1955 to June 12, 1955 citation in the Hickerson Guide. On June 12, 1955 NBC's Monitor famously began airing on Sundays in The Adventures of The Abbotts timeslot.

The other thing that continues to confound us is the stubborn refusal by OTR loggers to recognize the historic premiere of NBC's Monitor on June 12, 1955. Monitor was one of NBC's greatest undertakings during the Radio versus Television years, and its launch was met with great fanfare. Unless one of these 'authoritative loggers' can demonstrate that one last episode of The Adventures of The Abbotts appeared within that NBC Monitor Premiere, we fail to understand their hidebound resistance to historical fact.

Just sayin' . . .

And, as in virtually every canon of circulating OTR programs, we have the usual minority cast of OTR cheaters and sleaze artists trying to pass off several as yet uncirculating titles as 'new' exemplars by simply relabeling existing, circulating recordings with eight of the currently uncirculating titles. Convenient, since eight of the circulating exemplars don't announce their titles in the introduction. Even archive.org has been suckered into this shady gambit.

Preying on the novice or casual vintage Radio collector seems to be a rapidly growing cottage industry throughout a certain morally challenged minority underbelly of 'OTR.' And of course we have the recently emerging trend of upsampling circulating lower encode exemplars from 32/22.5Mhz to 64/44.1Mhz and 128/44.1Mhz to give the appearance of a 'whole new series' of higher quality, first generation encodes.

Last but by no means least, now everyone's starting to turn monophonic recordings into stereo to accomplish that same sleazy upsizing purpose. Have a particularly marginal encode? Make it stereo, so the listener can hear the poor encode in both ears simultaneously. Brilliant, no? Oddly enough, in excess of some 60,000 such encodes have spontaneously begun to litter the OTR landscape in just the past year. Gosh, what an astounding coincidence, no? A simple gambit to place fewer recordings on a CD or gobble up download credits or quotas faster for the same price or lower? Nah, OTR wouldn't be engaging in that sleazy kinda nonsense now, would it? Say it ain't so . . .

We don't pronounce our Golden Age Radio research as 'certified' anything. By the very definition, research is imperfect. We simply tell the truth. As is our continuing practice, we provide our fully provenanced research results--to the extent possible--right here on the page, for any of our peers to review--or refute--as the case may be. If you take issue with any of our findings, you're welcome to cite any better verifiable source(s) and we'll immediately review them and update our findings accordingly. As more verifiable provenances surface, we'll continue to update the following series log, as appropriate.

All rights reserved by their respective sources. Article and log copyright 2009 The Digital Deli Online--all rights reserved. Any failure to attribute the results of this copywritten work will be rigorously pursued.

[Date, title, and episode column annotations in red refer to either details we have yet to fully provenance or other unverifiable information as of this writing. Red highlights in the text of the 'Notes' columns refer to information upon which we relied in citing dates, date or time changes, or titles.]