The Crime and Peter Chambers Radio Program

Background

It was tough sledding for most 1950s mystery programs over Radio. The emerging Golden Age of Television was noticeably eclipsing the Golden Age of Radio. The only way to successfully launch--sustained or sponsored--a new detective, crime or mystery program over 1950s Radio was to top it with a big name Film star. Some typical exemplars of the genre during the mid-1940s to 1950s were as follows:

• 1944 The Star and the Story starring Walter Pidgeon
• 1944-1952 The Man Called X starring Herbert Marshall
• 1945-1951 The Saint with Brian Aherne,Vincent Price, Tom Conway and Barry Sullivan
• 1949-1953 Richard Diamond Private Detective with Dick Powell
• 1949-1954 Dangerous Assignment with Brian Donlevy
• 1950 T-Man with Dennis O'Keefe
• 1950 Christopher London with Glenn Ford
• 1950-1951 The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe with Sydney Greenstreet
• 1950-1952 Tales of the Texas Rangers with Joel McCrea
• 1950-1952 The Lives of Harry Lime with Orson Welles
• 1951 Rocky Jordan with George Raft
• 1951 The Private Files of Rex Saunders with Rex Harrison
• 1951-1952 Bold Venture with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall
• 1951-1955 Barrie Craig Confidential Investigator with William Gargan
• 1952-1954 I Was a Communist for the FBI with Dana Andrews
• 1953-1954 Rocky Fortune starring Frank Sinatra
• 1954 Crime and Peter Chambers with Dane Clark

While not all-inclusive, the above list demonstrates the fact that 1950s Radio had necessarily moved toward "name" actors to lead most of their more successful 1950s mystery, detective and crime programs. These names were essential to go head to head with early popular Television. In fact several of the above Radio programs transitioned to Television during the late 1940s and 1950s--in some instances concurrent with, or on the heels of, their Radio counterparts.

NBC rushes Crime and Peter Chambers into the Spring 1954 lineup

One of the above cited name star mystery and adventure vehicles for NBC was Rocky Fortune (1953-1954) starring Frank Sinatra. The abrupt departure of Frank Sinatra and his Rocky Fortune during the Spring of 1954 left a big hole in NBC's Tuesday night mystery lineup. Mystery novelist Henry Kane approached NBC to pitch his 'Peter Chambers' character from eight of his detective novels as a candidate Radio program. He'd wisely enlisted the interest of popular Film tough guy Dane Clark prior to pitching the concept to NBC.

Presenting NBC with a fait accompli was the right combination for all parties. NBC quickly regained a name Film talent for their Tuesday night mystery lineup to follow Dragnet, and Henry Kane got full control over the production, credits as creator, writer and producer, and the chance to promote his Peter Chambers character even further. First teased in the trade papers as The Affairs of Peter Chambers, much in the vein of The Affairs of Peter Salem (1949-1953), cooler heads prevailed and the production ultimately debuted--sustained--late Tuesday night, April 6, 1954 as Crime and Peter Chambers.

A New York based private detective, Peter Chambers was promoted as a detective that, rather than always at odds with local police counterparts, actively participated with and supported the detectives of the NYPD, much in the mold of Philip Marlowe (1947-1951) over Radio. Peter Chambers apparently lived quite comfortably in the upper east side of Manhattan. Detective Lieutenant Louie Parker (William Zuckert) had not only a respectful professional relationship with Peter Chambers but the two had apparently become friends of some seventeen years. Peter Chambers (Dane Clark) had no particular love interest during the comparitively short-lived series, so he was free to play the field with many of the more attractive females he encountered during the series.

There'd been little time to interest potential sponsors in the project but NBC, as was its practice throughout the period, heavily employed Crime and Peter Chambers to promote other programs in NBC's lineup throughout the Spring and Summer of 1954. With only three professionals on the production side--Director Fred Weihe, Announcer Fred Collins, and Creator, Writer and Producer Henry Kane--the production remained fairly tight and lean throughout the run. Crime and Peter Chambers also supported Dane Clark with New York's finest voice talent including Elaine Rost, Everett Sloane, Leon Janney, Patricia Wheel, Roger De Koven, William Griffis, Donald Buka, Joe de Santis, Bryna Raeburn, Ralph Bell, Guy Repp, Lawson Zerbe, and Nelson Olmsted among many others. As with many of the late 1940s through 1950s productions featuring a major Film star headliner, most networks spared little expense obtaining the finest supporting talent they could acquire to support their star(s).

The series' positioning in the Tuesday night lineup immediately following the wildly successful Dragnet with Jack Webb also helped to buoy the success of Crime and Peter Chambers throughout the Summer of 1954. For Dane Clark's part he was both believable and engaging as Peter Chambers. Most of his more memorable Film roles had been as a young, life-hardened tough. We found his role as Peter Chambers a refreshing change for Clark. He clearly established that he could carry a highly sympathetic, commanding characterization, he showed a surprising sense of humor and occasional comedic timing, and from the premiere episode forward Clark showed complete command of the role. There's little question that he could have quite easily assumed further similar leads over the following years.

About halfway through the twenty-six episode run, NBC announced its acquisition of the popular Lux Radio Theatre from CBS. Lux Radio Theatre, though having got its start over NBC in 1934, had aired continuously over CBS for eighteen years between 1936 and 1954. Reacquiring Lux Radio Theatre was a major coup for NBC and NBC used many of the programs in its Tuesday night lineup to promote Radio Theatre's return on September 14th of 1954. When September 14th finally arrived, Lux Radio Theatre took Crime and Peter Chambers' timeslot over most NBC affiliate stations though some regions of the U.S. continued to air Crime and Peter Chambers through to its twenty-sixth episode.

Dane Clark, by then running his own production company and at the peak of his professional drawing power, moved on to other projects in Film and Television. Henry Kane went on writing mystery novels and for Television. The Peter Chambers character appeared only in print after the NBC Radio production ran its course.

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

The most helpful provenances were newspaper listings.

OTRisms:

As should regrettably be expected, Crime and Peter Chambers is yet another circulating Vintage Radio canon that suffers from having been OTR-ized over the past 30 years:

• Almost 40% of the circulating episodes of Crime and Peter Chambers come from AFRTS-denatured recordings from its END-515 [ENtertainment, using Domestic Network broadcast material] series. In a rational world, one might naturally applaud and express indebtedness to the AFRTS for preserving this rare canon for posterity. Unfortunately the irrational OTR Community chooses to both ignore the AFRTS' dedicated preservation efforts and routinely employ the AFRTS-denatured recordings as 'stem cells' from which to clone or fabricate a more complete, commercial, as-broadcast run of a canon than actually exists. Misrepresenting AFRTS-denatured recordings of Crime and Peter Chambers as exemplars of as-broadcast recordings is simply fraud--not to mention the insult to the dedicated men and women of our Armed Forces who so diligently preserved this national treasure for posterity.
• Over two-thirds of the circulating exemplars have been stereo-ized. This is the abominable practice of creating counterfeit, adulterated quasi-stereo recordings from two identical monaural tracks simply to give the impression of a far higher quality encode than the original source recording.
• The circulating titles applied to the canon over the years are predominantly inaccurate. There were no announced titles during the run of Crime and Peter Chambers. All circulating titles are anecdotal, which would be fine if they were remotely accurate--or at least properly spelled. The vast majority of the previously circulating titles applied to the canon by commercial OTR vendors and OTR Groups were casually assigned using the infamous 'OTR Rule of Title Naming'--simply listening to the first two minutes of a recording to derive a title, no matter how contrived. This silly practice is not only intellectually dishonest, it's simply lazy and sloppy.
• At least three of the currently circulating exemplars appear to be sloppily edited AFRTS-denatured recordings in an attempt to disguise their orgin. The absurdity of this practice is that, for Radio historians and collectors of integrity, the AFRS and AFRTS-denatured recordings are often even more prized than their more commonly available as-broadcast counterparts. Destroying or disguising the AFRTS origins of many of these recordings is simply OTR fraud and vandalism.

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[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.]