The Crime Does Not Pay Radio Program

Background

As must be immediately noticeable from the long list of movie actors heard in Crime Does Not Pay, this was not your everyday Golden Age Radio drama. Indeed, you might be forgiven if you fail to recognize more than a couple of Radio voice talents in the entire list. The Radio program was based on a very popular series of MGM Short Subjects they produced between 1935 and 1948 under the same name, Crime Does Not Pay.

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, MGM Theatre of The Air, and Dr. Kildare, all drew on material that MGM, as a Film Studio, already had in the can. Having established MGM Transcriptions for the express purpose of transcribing, then syndicating this content, all that remained was for them to obtain a well-established radio station from which to put their programs on the air. The assumption was that once heard in a wide enough area they'd be picked up nationwide in due time. The concept seemed to be working for several years, until a change in MGM focus made their MGM Transcriptions division redundant. WMGM slowly began changing their format to remain viable to its growing local audience, and the era of MGM-produced, network-ready, syndicated content dwindled to nothing.

MGM Short Subjects had been a highly bankable asset for MGM. They also served as a 'farm club' for much of MGM's up and coming talent. Four of MGM's most popular Shorts were Our Gang, The Passing Parade, with John Nesbitt, the Oscar-winning Pete Smith Specialties, and Crime Does Not Pay. MGM made at least fifty Crime Does Not Pay short subjects. Beginning with 1935's Buried Loot, the first twenty-five MGM Crime Does Not Pay short subjects were:

• 1935 No. 01: Buried Loot
• 1935 No. 02: Alibi Racket
• 1935 No. 03: Desert Death
• 1935 No. 04: A Thrill for Thelma
• 1935 No. 05: Hit and Run Driver
• 1936 No. 06: The Perfect Set-up
• 1936 No. 07: Foolproof
• 1936 No. 08: The Public Pays
• 1937 No. 09: Torture Money
• 1937 No. 10: It May Happen to You
• 1937 No. 11: Soak the Poor
• 1937 No. 12: Give Till It Hurts
• 1937 No. 13: Behind the Criminal
• 1938 No. 14: What Price Safety!
• 1938 No. 15: Miracle Money
• 1938 No. 16: Come Across
• 1938 No. 17: A Criminal Is Born
• 1938 No. 18: They're Always Caught
• 1938 No. 19: Think It Over
• 1938 No. 20: The Wrong Way Out
• 1939 No. 21: Money to Loan
• 1939 No. 22: While America Sleeps
• 1939 No. 23: Help Wanted
• 1939 No. 24: Think First
• 1939 No. 25: Drunk Driving

From that point forward the order and numbering of the remaining twenty-five shorts begin to deteriorate throughout the World War II years. MGM produced Crime Does Not Pay shorts through 1948, at which time WMGM began airing the Crime Does Not Pay radio program. While some of the Film version themes found their way into the Radio version, almost all seventy-eight Radio Crime Does Not Pay topics are original to the series. Many have theorized that some or all of the Crime Does Not Pay radio scripts had been works-in-progress for the Film version, or perhaps even envisioned for Television, where many of the Film shorts were already airing from time to time.

Whatever the medium, Crime Does Not Pay seems to have touched a nerve with the American public. With another world war looming, suspected 'fifth columnists' around every corner, and scams from the post-Depression years still running their course throughout the country, there was plenty of material from which to draw for MGM's Shorts Division.

All of this prologue is by way of explaining what appears to be an anomaly in Golden Age Radio--a series of radio programs recorded almost exclusively by movie actors. With the possible exception of Ed Begley, Everett Sloane, Lionel Stander and Joan Lorring, none of the other featured actors in the series ever played a major role in Radio. We don't mention this to in any way detract from these fine performers' work in this program. We simply point out the novelty of this program in the annals of Golden Age Radio history.

"In the Interest of Good Citizenship and Law Enforcement," MGM presented these seventy-eight programs as syndicated transcriptions. There had been a glut of such civic minded programs between the 1940s and 1950s, so it's difficult to imagine how MGM thought they might milk even more public interest out of yet another such program. But it turned out to be a very successful program for both MGM and WMGM. As with most programs of the genre, each script is presented as a morality play, arcing quickly to the moral dilemma, then racing to the end where the protagonist either pays for his or her crime, or resolves to go straight and sin no more.

The irony of the time was how crooked and corrupt local law enforcement had become throughout the post-Depression and post-World War II years. MGM wasn't above pandering to law enforcement by any means. And no less than J. Edgar Hoover himself--who loved being pandered to, personally--encouraged such crime-fighting programs. But that was the nature of the post-World War II recovery years. With everyone racing to either keep up with the Jones' or become the Jones', the vacuum created while no one was watching, was fertile soil for law enforcement corruption.

Crime Does Not Pay was well-received during its run. The resurgence of the phrase "Crime Does Not Pay" was parodied in several contemporary radio programs and used in many monologues, newpaper articlesand editorials, and magazines of the era. The talent alone, employed during the run was noted often in the trade papers and magazines of the era. These were in many instances, some of the finest character talent in MGM's stable. For that reason alone, Crime Does Not Pay will remain an historical footnote to The Golden Age of Radio.

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

The most helpful provenance was the New York Times.

You're welcome to compare our fully provenanced research with Crime Does Not Pay log from the '1,500 expert researchers' at the OTRR. We've provided a screen shot of their current log for comparison, HERE, to protect our own due diligence:

• The program titles we cite are those contained on the MGM Transcription labels and/or as announced in the introduction of each program.
• For some time there was no apparent record of the titles of Program #'s 51 and 52. In reviewing contemporaneous newspaper listings we determined that the title of Program #51 is Sucker's Bait and the title of Program #52 is Rigger's Racket, neither of which are in current circulation.
• We've corrected all of the OTRR, Calfkiller OTR, Vintage Radio Place, old-time.com and Radio Drama inaccuracies in the log below.

Martin Gram's Radio Drama cites handsome character actor Donald Buka as the 'host' for the series. As best as we can determine, Donald Buka appeared in only two of the Crime Does Not Pay programs--and not as an announcer nor host. The announcer for the series was Bob Williams. Donald Buka never hosted Crime Does Not Pay. Where Martin Grams continues to acquire these tidbits is anyone's guess. Known more for explosive overacting, Buka remains something of a cult figure from the popular media of the era.

[Update: Donald Buka passed away on 23 July 2009 at the age of 88.]

Commercial 'otr' Fraud Alert:

• In wide circulation are various sets of Crime Does Not Pay intentionally padded out and up-encoded to deceive collectors. The characteristics of most of them are as follows:
  • Recordings of exactly 31:00 or 32:00 minutes in duration. None of the genuine recordings from the Crime Does Not Pay canon run longer than 27:30. Indeed the vast majority clock in at 25:00 or thereabouts.
  • Recordings of precisely the following file sizes:
    • 7295kb
    • 9161kb
    • 13024kb
  • Recordings encoded at:
    • 56kbps and 6.3:1
    • 40kbps and 8.8:1
• The vast majority of these intentionally altered recordings are actually 32kbps/22000hz/11:1 recordings up-encoded and padded with as much as five minutes of silence to give the impression of being either higher quality recordings or first generation encodes from M-G-M transcription discs.
• Apart from the obvious fraud, naive collectors who continue to patronize or support such sources--and employ .mp3 players to enjoy their recordings--are not only wasting as much as 40-60Mbs of storage space, they're perpetuating the dissemination of this type of fraud throughout the vintage radio community.
• Virtually all of the Crime Does Not Pay recordings on the archive.org Old Time Radio pages are from the above cited, altered canon of recordings. The source for the archive.org fraudulent recordings is the ironically commercial freeotrshows.com site. If you're a patron that site, proceed at your own risk.
• Virtually all of the commercial Calfkiller OTR recordings--which the site touts as taken directly from the OTRR collection--are from the same altered circulating canon cited above.
• The apparent common denominator in all of the sources disseminating this nonsense appears to be the OTRR collection at present, since the existing OTRR collection of Crime Does Not Pay contains virtually the same messed up encodes and misnamed files.

As to the point of even citing or logging the Mutual Broadcasting System rebroadcasts of Crime Does Not Pay, we simply don't understand the logic. The WMGM was the only run of any historic import. The Mutual rebroadcasts were but a 39-episode subset of the original full run.

What you see here, is what you get. Complete transparency. We have no 'credentials' whatsoever--in any way, shape, or form--in the 'otr community'--none. But here's how we did it--for better or worse. Here's how you can build on it yourselves--hopefully for the better. Here's the breadcrumbs--just follow the trail a bit further if you wish. No hobbled encodes. No misdirection. No posturing about our 'credentials.' No misrepresentations. No strings attached. We point you in the right direction and you're free to expand on it, extend it, use it however it best advances your efforts.

We ask one thing and one thing only--if you employ what we publish, attribute it, before we cite you on it.

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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.

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Crime Does Not Pay Program Log

Crime Does Not Pay Biographies

Loew's original Metro-Goldwyn logo had already incorporated Goldwyn's mascot, Leo the Lion. Mayer's name was added to the masthead, and in a further nod to the Culver City Goldwyn studios, the "Art for Art's Sake" motto--Ars Gratia Artis--was incorporated into the initial MGM logo. The resulting logo has been updated several times during the ensuing eighty years, but those basic essential elements remain.

With the merging of the three major studios, MGM soon surpassed Universal Pictures as the largest studio in the world--a title it held for the following 25 years. When Marcus Loew died in 1927, control of Loews passed to long-time associate, Nicholas Schenck. Rival mogul William Fox of Fox Film Corporation saw Loew's passing as an opportunity to expand the Fox Empire. In 1929, with Schenck's agreement, Fox purchased the Loew family's holdings. Louis B.Mayer and Irving Thalberg were understandably outraged, but they weren't shareholders at the time.

Ever resourceful, Mayer used his political connections to persuade the United States Justice Department to sue Fox Film Corporation for violating federal antitrust law. But quite serendipitously, during the summer of 1929, William Fox was badly hurt in an automobile accident. Before he'd fully recovered, the stock market crash of 1929 wiped out all but a fraction of Fox's financial holdings. This effectively ended any chance of the Loews merger going proceeding--with or without the Justice Department's powerful blessing.

This was manna from heaven for Mayer. Nicholas Schenck and Mayer had never gotten along. Indeed, Mayer, who loved assigning pet names to friend and foe alike, reportedly referred to his boss as Mr. Skunk in private. The aborted merger only intensified the animosity between Schenck and Mayer. The persistant rivalry lasted over twenty more years, becoming an East Coast/West Coast, New York/Hollywood schism in the media giant. The rivalry finally ended when Schenck finally dismissed Mayer in 1951.

In 1934 MGM began to produce a number of three-color [Technicolor] short subjects including 1935's musical La Fiesta de Santa Barbara, waiting until 1938 to film a complete feature in the three-color process--Sweethearts with Jeanette MacDonald. But in addition to a growing short subjects program of its own, MGM also released the shorts and features produced by Hal Roach Studios, including the famous comedy shorts starring Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang, and Charley Chase. MGM's distribution deal with Roach lasted eleven years, from 1927 to 1938, with MGM reaping great benefit from the success of both the popular Laurel and Hardy films and the Our Gang comedy shorts.

MGM purchased the intellectual rights to Our Gang in 1938, moving the production in-house, and continuing production of the successful series of children's comedies until 1944. Between 1929 and 1931, MGM produced a series of comedy shorts called All Barkie Dogville Comedies [a shameless play on the 'All Darkie' farces from vaudeville and the silent film era], in which trained dogs were dressed up to parody contemporary films, while voiced by human actors.

On the Animation front, in 1930, MGM purchased the rights to distribute a series of cartoons that starred a character named Flip the Frog, produced by Ub Iwerks. The first cartoon in this series--Fiddlesticks--was the first sound cartoon to be produced in two-color Technicolor.

MGM's short subjects were not to be taken lightly. MGM's Loews Theaters connection provided a ready audience throughout the Loews stronghold in the Northeast United States. While producing as many as fifty feature films a year, it was the shorts--both animated and film--that was the glue connecting a full slate of enjoyable features for their cash-strapped Depression years audiences. And on the strength of a ready-made, captive distribution outlet--the Loews Theater chain--MGM was the only major studio during the period to issue stock dividends throughout the Great Depression years. But this monopoly would resurface fifteen years later in 1954's settlement of U.S. vs. Paramont Pictures, et. al, wherein Loew's, Inc., was ordered to divest itself of MGM.

Crime Does Not Pay, in addition to MGM's Passing Parade and Pete Smith Specialties were immensely popular in their day. The Pete Smith Specialties, in particular, were nominated for Academy Awards sixteen times in various short film categories. MGM's fifty Crime Does Not Pay shorts ran from 1935 to 1948, showcasing many early appearances by what would eventually become some of MGM's finest character actors and feature film stars.

It was the Crime Does Not Pay series of short features that led to MGM's inspiration to expand into Radio Programming. The Marcus Loew Booking Agency had owned New York radio station WHN since 1946. Responding to a suggestion by MGM publicity head, Pete Smith, MGM leased studio and manufacturing space in the Broadcasters Program Syndicate headquarters building in New York, to coincide with the launch of competing NBC's first 1949 broadcasts between its new NBC Studios in Los Angeles and its flagship studios in 30 Rockerfeller Plaza in New York. MGM was granted a call sign change from WHN to WMGM, to further call attention to its ownership of one of the nation's earliest radio stations.

M-G-M Radio Attractions recorded transcribed programs for syndication--and for broadcast over WMGM:

• M-G-M Theatre of The Air
• At Home with Lionel Barrymore
• Hollywood, U.S.A.
• The Story of Dr. Kildare
• Good News From Hollywood
• Crime Does Not Pay
• The Hardy Family
• The Adventures of Maisie
• The Passing Parade
• Woman of The Year
• The Black Museum
• M-G-M Musical Comedy Theater of The Air
• The Modern Adventures of Casanova
• The Gracie Fields Show

All fourteen programs were well received, but within seven years, MGM would be out of the radio programming and syndication business. MGM Records, however became a major label from the 1950s, on. WMGM's format changed to appeal to a broader audience--and format--and eventually reverted back to call sign WHN in 1962.

In 1932, Stander landed his first credited film roles in the Warner-Vitaphone short features In the Dough, with Fatty Arbuckle and Shemp Howard, and Salt Water Daffy (1933) with Jack Haley and Shemp Howard. He made several other shorts, the last being The Old Grey Mayor (1935) with Bob Hope. That year, he was cast in a feature, Ben Hecht's The Scoundrel with Noel Coward. He moved to Hollywood and signed a contract with Columbia Pictures. Stander was in a string of films over the next three years, most notably in Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) with Gary Cooper, Meet Nero Wolfe (1936), A Star Is Born (1937) with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, and Nothing Sacred (1937).

Stander's distinctive, gravelly voice, tough-guy appearance, comedic timing, and talent with dialects made him a very popular, respected, and successful radio actor. In the 1930s and 1940s he was on the Eddie Cantor Show, Bing Crosby's Kraft Music Hall Show, the Lux Radio Theater production of A Star Is Born, The Fred Allen Show, The Mayor of the Town with Lionel Barrymore and Agnes Moorehead, Kraft Music Hall for NBC, Stage Door Canteen for CBS, the Lincoln Highway Radio Show, and The Jack Paar Show.

Indeed, in 1941 he originated the title role of The Life of Riley for CBS, later made famous by William Bendix. He was a regular on Danny Kaye's zany comedy-variety radio show on CBS (1946–1947), playing himself as "just the elevator operator" amidst the antics of Kaye, future Our Miss Brooks star Eve Arden, and bandleader Harry James.

Strongly liberal and staunchly pro-labor, Stander espoused a variety of social and political causes, and was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild. At a SAG meeting held during a 1937 studio technicians' strike, he told the assemblage of 2000 members, "With the eyes of the whole world on this meeting, will it not give the Guild a black eye if its members continue to cross picket lines?" Stander also supported the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU) in its fight against the Mob-influenced International Alliance of Stage Employees (IATSE).

Also in 1937, Ivan F. Cox, a deposed officer of the San Francisco longshoremen's union, sued Stander and a host of others, including union leader Harry Bridges, actors Fredric March, Franchot Tone, Mary Astor, James Cagney, Jean Muir, and director William Dieterle. The charge, according to Time magazine, was "conspiring to propagate Communism on the Pacific Coast, causing Mr. Cox to lose his job." This was a common accusation throughout the 1930s and 1940s as the powerful studios were actively enlisting the support of everyone they could, to combat the growing voice of technical and performers' unions--including the support of the Mob and reactionary, 'free-trade' right-wing politicians.

In 1938, Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn allegedly called Stander "a Red son of a bitch" and threatened a $100,000 fine against any studio that renewed his contract. Despite continuing critical acclaim for his performances, Stander's film work dropped off drastically. After appearing in 15 films in 1935 and 1936, he appeared in only six films in 1937 and 1938. Then he was in just six movies from 1939 through 1943--none by major studios, and the most notable being Guadalcanal Diary (1943).

Stander was understandably unapologetic for his beliefs and causes. The Hollywood Studio System manipulated and controlled its talent like chattel, responding to any objections or union organizing by ostracizing or blacklisting any technician or performer who dared stand up to them. Stander once observed:

"We fought on every front because we realized that the forces of reaction and Faciscm fight democracy on every front. We, too, have been forced, therefore, to organize in order to combat them on every front: politically through such organizations as the Motion Picture Democratic Committee; economically through our guilds and unions; socially, and culturally through such organizations as the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League."

Lionel Stander had been subpoenaed by the very first House Un-American Activities Committee inquisition in Hollywood during 1940, when it was headed by Texas Congressman Martin Dies. The right-wing extremist Dies Committee had succeeded in abolishing the Works Progress Administration's Federal Theatre Project as a 'left-wing menace' in 1939. The attack on the Federal Theatre Project was understandably opposed by most progressives in Hollywood. Stung by the criticism from Hollywood, the Dies Committee decided to turn its attention to Hollywood itself.

Dies' infamous HUAC compiled a long-list of "real and suspected" communists to a Los Angeles County grand jury, which also subpoenaed Lionel Stander. The testimony was leaked, and the newspapers reported that Stander, along with such prominent Hollywood progressives such as James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Frederic March and Franchot Tone, had been identified as communists. Reactionary committee chairman Dies offered all of the people named as communists the "opportunity" to "clear themselves" if they would "cooperate" with him in executive session. Stander was the only one to appear who was not "cleared" by Dies' committee. He was subsequently fired by his studio Republic Pictures.

Stander continued to work after being fired by Republic. He appeared in Hangmen Also Die! (1943), a film about the Nazi Reinhard Heydrich, who was assassinated by anti-fascists. After being blacklisted, Stander worked as a broker on Wall Street and appeared on the stage as a journeyman actor. He returned to the movies in Tony Richardson's The Loved One (1965), and he began his career anew as a character actor, appearing in many films, including Roman Polanski's Cul-de-sac (1966) and Martin Scorsese's New York, New York (1977). Other movies he appeared in included Promise Her Anything (1965), The Black Bird (1975), The Cassandra Crossing (1976), 1941 (1979), Cookie (1989) and The Last Good Time (1994), his final film.

Stander is remembered by contemporary audiences for playing Max on TV's Hart to Hart (1979-1984) with Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers, a role he reprised in a series of Hart to Hart TV movies. Stander also appeared on Wagner's earlier TV series It Takes a Thief (1968) and on the HBO series Dream On (1990).

Why take so much space describing Lionel Stander's heroic stand against the fascist Hollywood Studio system--and their right-wing supporters in Congress? Because it informs much of what we lost when we lost The Golden Age of Radio. We lost more than the wonderful entertainment. The systematic dismantiling of the tens of thousands of small radio stations that built The Golden Age of Radio, destroyed the 'voice' of political and social diversity over public airwaves--forever. The airwaves are no longer public. They're privately controlled, privately influenced, and create enormous private profits. Under the Law we still technically own the airwaves, but we've ceded our ownership of the airwaves to private corporations--by our apathy and ignorance alone.

Lionel Stander saw it coming decades before his peers. He believed in the freedom of the public airwaves and his career was systematically destroyed simply because he espoused a belief in the Freedom of Speech, the freedom to organize, and the freedom of the airwaves.

Lionel Stander died of lung cancer on November 30, 1994 in Los Angeles, California. He was 86 years old. Let us hope that as we listen and watch Lionel Stander's body of work in Film, Radio and Television, we'll remember that he was more than an actor. He was a brave, outspoken patriot at a time in Hollywood when the majority of his peers were running for cover.

The following year Joan won the coveted role of the scheming, trampish Bessie opposite Bette Davis in The Corn Is Green (1945), earning an Academy Award nomination for "Best Supporting Actress", losing to Anne Revere for National Velvet (1944.) But what she won was the attention of Warner Brothers Studio, who were quite impressed with the up-and-comer and eagerly signed her up.

Joan proved quite able in a number of atmospheric film noir roles, including Three Strangers (1946) and The Verdict (1946), both opposite the malevolent pairing of Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. Inexplicably, her film career went into a rapid decline by the end of the 1940s. As a result she sought work elsewhere and maintained with stage, radio and small screen endeavors into the next decade. On Broadway she made her debut in the prime role of budding college student Marie who sets off the explosive dramatic action in Come Back, Little Sheba (1950) starring Shirley Booth and Sidney Blackmer.

She continued with strong roles in The Autumn Garden (1951), Dead Pigeon (1953) and "A Clearing in the Woods" (1957). Among her many 1950s dramatic showcases on TV was her portrayal of convicted ax-murderess Lizzie Borden's sister Emma on an Alfred Hitchcock episode. In the 1970s, Joan made a mini-comeback in the Burt Lancaster movie The Midnight Man (1974) as Cameron Mitchell's wife. She also performed on radio soap operas and appeared for a season on the TV soap Ryan's Hope (1975) before phasing out her career once again. Long married to New York endocrinologist Dr. Martin Sonenberg, she is the mother of two daughters.