The Eno Crime Club Radio Program

Background

Monthly or quarterly 'crime club' literary selections were a staple of popular literary interest during the first half of the 20th century. Doubleday was the first to form a literary Crime Club in 1928. Doubleday's distinctive 'Crime man' (left sidebar) was strategically imprinted on their Doubleday Crime Club selections. The Collins Publishing House in England launched their Collins Crime Club in 1930, issuing Agatha Christie's first novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, as one of their first selections. The Collins Crime Club imprint (left sidebar) announced its Crime Club selections as "The sign of a good detective novel."

Crime or mystery book clubs joined other monthly or quarterly selected book clubs for all manner of literary interests. Science fiction book clubs had been popularized as early as the 1920s, as well as romance fiction book clubs, supernatural thriller book clubs, and of course, childrens' book clubs.

Given the ravenous appetite for Radio programming variety from the late 1920s to 1930s, it seems natural--in retrospect--to expect that a Radio series based in whole or part on a popular literary subscription club might well provide compelling Radio dramatizations. Such was the case with the earliest The Shadow programs that aired within the Romance series mounted by Street and Smith during the mid to late 1930s--and beyond. The long running Front Page Drama series adapted and dramatized over 800 Hearst newspaper feature articles for Radio. And indeed several Radio programs based on or derived from popular pulp fiction provided a ready source of adaptation to Radio novellas or dramatic anthologies. Other popular examples were the comic strips adapted for Radio, such as Radio Orphan Annie, Jungle Jim, Tarzan, the later Captain Midnight, the Popeye comics, and any number of popular juvenile adventure serials of the 1930s.

But as must also be apparent, the early Radio networks depended in large part on sponsors to bring the larger percentage of Radio programming to the airwaves. As commercial Radio began to explode throughout the Great Depression years, a great number of these sponsors were food, beverage, cleaning product, and over the counter pharmaceutical concerns. Indeed the adoption of the term 'soap operas' stemmed from the overwhelming representation of bath and laundry soap sponsors of the era. Also well-represented were the several competing purgative and laxative vendors of the era, such as Miracle Diamonds salts, Dr. Caldwell's Syrup Pepsin, Carter's Pills, Ex-Lax, Bromo-Seltzer, and Eno Fruit Salts to name just a few. We might well surmise that the competition for these products in a post Wall-Street Crash and the following Great Depression era, stemmed from the perennial intestinal discomfort those two great events engendered in a significant segment of the listening audiences of the 1930s.

As might also be apparent, the expansive and usually florid claims of the vast majority of the laxative and purgative manufacturers of the era, food and drug laws--and their enforcement--throughout the first forty years of the 20th century tended to be either lax (no pun intended) or at the least poorly enforced or prosecuted. Most of the copy these manufacturers supplied to the newspapers and magazines of the era promised cures along the lines of those touted by the thousands of 'snake-oil' purveyors of the wild wild west. And indeed, as simply a purgative, simple table salt and water generally promoted all the regularity anyone with a temporary intestinal disturbance could demand. That didn't stop the manufacturers of the era from attributing any number of 'value added' characteristics to their particular concoctions of various mineral and fruit salt-based curatives they advertised. As with most successful advertising, the more it's repeated and drummed into a naive or gullible population, the more veracity such advertising acquires after time.

Eno's Fruit Salt

Eno's Fruit Salt was a british import, first concocted in the early 1850s by James Crossley Eno of Newcastle. Marketed initially to sailors and seagoers alike, the preparation promised intestinal regularity, healthy liver function, an immediate cure to biliary excess, and as a curative for the consumption of alcohol, sherberts, ales, port wine and a host of other popular libations of the era. As the preparation became more popular over time, the expansive claims of the concoction became even more florid and encompassing.

Eno's Fruit Salts plowed a great deal of its profit back into print advertising of the era--throughout the world, soon becoming one of the most popular purgatives in the world. A 1906 analysis of Eno's Fruit Salts by a German pharmaceutical regulatory agency disclosed the makeup of Eno's Fruit Salts as simply 50% sodium bicarbonate, 15% sodium bitartrate and 35% free tartaric acid. The 'fruity-salty' aftertaste of the preparation owes itself to the combination of citric acid and salt, much like any number of very similar popular over the counter purgatives.

But as with any 'value-added' product, Eno's Fruit Salts and its colorful ads and equally colorful gibberish of the era continued to provide a world-wide demand for the product--as it does to this day. Glaxo-Smith-Kline is the current owner/manufacturer of the popular concoction. Had the product continued to advertise itself as an occasional remedy for bloat or regularity it would unquestionably continued to have made millions. But again, quite predictably, the concoction of the late 1890s and early 1900s soon promoted itself as a daily adjunct to physical health and well-being. From about 1910 to the mid-1930s, Eno's Fruit Salt recommended taking their preparation 'first thing in the morning' to promote continued good health, inner and outer beauty, and regularity.

Eno's Fruit Salts and Columbia Basic debut Eno Crime Club

Eno Fruit Salts, and the Columbia Basic Network joined forces in 1929 to air the Eno Crime Club. The program ran for three years over the Columbia Basic Network and for three years over the NBC-Blue Network. During April 1933 the program was renamed Eno Crime Clues. The program ultimately left the air at the end of September 1936 (June 1936 for most markets). The Eno Crime Club franchise was by way of a quasi Crime Club for Radio. No book tie-ins were ever explicitly associated with Eno Fruit Salts' sponsorship of the program. The program was, however, during its era viewed as a natural extension of book club phenomena--The Doubleday Crime Club, implicitly.

Prentiss Winchell (as Stewart Sterling) created the Manhunter
Mysteries subset of the Eno Crime Clues series

The Mutual Broadcasting System produced its own Crime Club series beginning in December 1946, a consequence of which the two 'Crime Club' programs are often typically conflated with each other or rolled into one long 'Crime Club' log. The two 'Crime Club' series' differed in any number of respects:

• The various Eno Crime Club programs aired over CBS and NBC. 1946's Crime Club aired over MBS.
• Many of Eno's various crime programs aired in multi-segment installments for the first year or so. Mutual's Crime Club aired once a week as a complete, stand-alone production.
• Eno's 1933 crime programs over NBC were eventually accompanied by the artifice of an Inspector Spencer Dean and his sidekick, Dan 'Danny' Cassidy, shepherding the various segments of each two-part story from beginning to denouement. The resultant ''Manhunter Mysteries'', employing Inspector Spencer Dean and Dan Cassidy exclusively, were later spun off as a West Coast production, ''Manhunter Mysteries with Stewart Sterling", airing in the early 1940s. Stewart Sterling and Arthur Miller were credited with the adaptations for most of the Eno Crime Club adaptations during the mid-1930s.
• Most self-evident of all, Eno's various crime club renditions were all sponsored--by Eno Fruit Salts. Mutual's Crime Club aired sustained for its entire run.
• While some of the Eno program serializations were inspired by or adapted from Doubleday Crime Club or Collins Crime Club selections, they were also adapted from other prominent magazine and pulp fiction serial installments of the era.
• When the Eno Crime Club moved to NBC-Blue, the production dispsensed with adaptations of pulp, magazine or book club selection material altogether. Prentiss Winchell, writing under the name, Stewart Sterling, began penning or adapting the remaining episodes of the Eno-sponsored series'.
• While initially airing over NBC-Blue as Eno Crime Club, it wasn't until its third month under the NBC banner that it changed its name to Eno Crime Clues, though most newspapers continued listing it as Crime Club for the remainder of its runs. Mutual's Crime Club retained the same name and format for the entirety of its run.
• When applicable, Mutual's Crime Club attributed every Doubleday Crime Club selection to its author, while deliberately avoiding any mention of the Doubleday Crime Club itself. The various Eno Crime Club derivations never credited any of the works they adapted on-air.

Crime fighting, and crime in general, were staples of early 1930s Radio--and beyond. Still recovering from The Great Depression, America was happy to seek diversion from the efforts to dig out of the economic turmoil of the era.

From the June 26th 1932 issue of The Radio Guide:

MEET THE ARTIST
EDWARD REESE

By NAOMI SHAW 

And from the September 25th 1932 issue of Radio Guide:

QUICK, Watson, the microphone!  In their secluded dens all over tbe globe spinners of mystery tales are doffing tbeir smoking jackets. packing their pigskin bags with the false bottoms, and flocking to the broadcasting castles of Gotham and Chicago.  In these castles they are ensconced as Kings of Crime, and great pains are taken to inspire their fertile imaginations.  They pour out scripts by the dozen.  In turn radio pours into their pockets dollars by the thousand--many more dollars than they could realize by the sale of their books.  The shades A. Conan Doyle stalk again as Sherlock Holmes; Malik, the fascinating Continental detective, always gets his man--or woman; the late Edgar Wallace makes members of the Eno Crime Club, lounging in their easy chairs, quiver with pleasant fright; the Octopus stalks his prey in the dives of Paris; and now that wily Oriental, Dr. Fu Manchu, is about to send his dread menace through the quaking ether.
     It is all because the American drama has again come to the forefront.  The executives of the network, realizing the hunger of the radio audience for plays, have finally induced sponsors to present to the listeners a new gala season of mystery dramas.  This move bas naturally doomed last year's fashionable fifteen minute program, and now the listener will be able to hear a play for a half or an hour without twisting his dial.
     The world's most brilliant writers have been called to wield their pens for the hungry microphones.  Sax Rohmer, the famed British writer of Fu Manchu; D. Thomas Curtin, author of the Lucky Strike broadcasts; Booth Tarkington, noted author and Broadway playwright, are among the latest to be recruited into radio's army.
     It is hardly necessary to state that these writers are high priced.  And the sums that they are drawing from the broadcasting moguls make the salary of the average first class singer or actor seem picyune.  There are many who say that this is as it should be--that the brains of radio have heretofore been underpaid--with the artists drawing down the Rolls-Royce and penthouse plums.
     A newly noted and curious psychological factor has entered into the building of the mystery plays which now predominate on the air.  A listener, sitting alone, is able more vividly to visualize a spooky drama than if he saw it in the theater.  Whatever Frankenstein the author has plotted is turned by the listener, into his own pet Frankenstein.  Some may picture Dr. Fu Manchu as short, fat and greasy.  To others he will be long and lean.  But in whatever shape he is imagined, you may rest assured that Mr. Average Listener will picture him as the absolute incarnatian of Orienta! villainy.  On the stage, he might not seem so fierce.
     Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu will slither out of the loud speakers and into darkened living rooms for the first time Monday, September 26th.  It will be premiered on the Columbia network.  Sax Rohmer has travelled across the Atlantic to be present when his stories are first placed on the air from Chicago.
     The series will follow the original Rohmer plots.  The characters will indude Fu Manchu, Nailand Smith, the special investigator for the Crown; Dr. Petrie, his friend; and Karemeneh, the lovely slave girl.  Each episode will be a complete drama and each will be on the air thirty minutes.
     Fred lbett, formerly associated with the British Broadcasting Corporation, will direct the microphone dramas. American executives decided that authentic Scotland Yard atmosphere was a necessity.
     It has been learned by RADIO GUIDE that Jack Daly, veteran character actor, will almost certainly take the part of Fu Manchu, one of the most ooveted roles of radio drama this year. Sunda Love will play the slave girl, and Charles Warburton, noted English actor, has been engaged to take the part of Nailand Smith.
     Not only are renowned playwrights turning their energies towards radio, but the networks are luring the finest actors from the Broadway stage.  There is the case of Richard Gordon, the Sherlock Holmes of the air.  He was once the matinee darling of the White Way.  He was the leading man and cast in important roles with such actresses as Ethel Barrymore, Judith Anderson, Violet Berning, Gertrude Lawrence, and Justine Johnstone.
     But he has reached his greatest heights in radio.  Just as William Gillette reveled in the role of Sherlock Holmes on the stage, so Richard Gordon loves the part in radio.  Scotland Yard blunders along stupidly and falls down on the job--but not Sherlock Holmes.  His breathless audience is spellbound when he disentangles baffling mysteries, and they have been able to visualize him--pipe and fore and aft checked cap--as clearly on the radio as on the stage.
     All because Richard Gordon is one of the greatest actors who has learned to concentrate all his ability into one medium of expression--the voice--to the exclusion of pantomime.
     Richard Gordon's fans take him literally as the world's most astute detective.  Whenever a sensational murder is committed, he is swamped with letters asking him to give his solution.  And people are always writing him, offering rewards if he will recover some lost heirloom.  The Holmes series will be back on the air October 5th.
     Edward Reese, the famous detective of the Eno Crime Club, is another who came from a successful Broadway career to an even more successful career in radio.  He was Margaret Wycherly's leading man in "The Verge," and
was Fay Bainter's leading man in "East is West."  New York playgoers also knew him well for his Theatre Guild productions.
     Elsie Hitz, who takes the leading role in "Evening in Paris" mysteries, played in Broadway mystery plays, most famed of which was "The Cat and the Canary."
     It's tricky, this mystery story writing, take it from John Gihon, who writes about the adventures of Detective Malik.  John thinks that it is a lot harder to write for the radio than for magazines, because, in his own words: "Your radio listeners' are sharper, catch on quicker, and are more alert for every possible clue.
     "In radio drama, the clue must be audible--it must be spoken.  There it is--cold and stark--with little chance of disguising it, since it is sound alone that conveys all action over the air.  Yes, we must give clues, otherwise we're not being fair with our listeners.  We have to point the way to them, and hope they won't seize upon it until we're ready to reveal the plot."
     "Mystery story writing is principally a matter of matching wits with your audience."
     If you can do that--and be fair with your audience too--the coffers of radio are open to you.  But there aren't many writers who can do it, or they wouldn't have to import their mystery stories from Europe.

Though Eno Crime Club inaugurated its mystery series with Doubleday Crime Club book selections, the Edgar Wallace (Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace) stories referred to in the above article comprised a cycle of twenty-six episodes that Eno Crime Club dramatized between January 5th 1932 and June 28th 1932. Wallace passed away on February 10th 1932 and Eno Crime Club's Wallace mysteries were the first to be dramatized over Radio during Wallace's life.

From the August 1934 issue of Radio Stars:

          "Eno Crime Clues" may be heard at 8 p.m. EDST Tuesdays
          and Wednesdays over the following stations:
          WJZ, WBAL, WMAL, WHZ, WBZA, WGAR, WLW, KDKA,
          KWK, WjR, WREN, WLS, KWCR, KSO, KOIL, WSYR.

From the October 20th 1935 edition of the Kingsport [TN] Times:

     Eno Crime Clues can now qualify as the most photographed broadcast on the air.  At a special performance of the manhunter series given for amateur photographers Tuesday, it was estimated that at least 6,000 pictures were made.
     Approximately seventy-five amateur cameramen were present in the studio for special picture rehearsals held just before the show went on the air.  The great majority of them used the most modern type of miniature cameras which take from sixteen to thirty-six pictures at a loading.  In almost every case the cameramen reloaded their film magazines at least twice.
     Proving the great interest in the broadcast from the cameraman's standpoint, there were photographers present in the studio from as far as Columbus, Ohio.  Among those who requested the special photographic passes for the broadcast, which was the first major air show ever opened to amateur photographers, were a Judge, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, lawyers, bankers, students, etc.  Some of the cameramen who participated were outstanding photographic workers, having had pictures exhibited in leading art and photographic salons.
     Those who attended the special broadcast were invited to submit their best pictures in a photographic contest being conducted by the Crime Clues sponsors.  Judges of the contest are Margaret Bourke-White, one of the world's outstanding photographers; Adolf Fassbender, a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and a "leader of the pictorial school of photography; and Stewart Sterling, Crime Clues author.
     During the picture-taking rehearsals, the Radio City studio from which the series is broadcast was the scene of highly unusual maneuvering.  Cameramen completely surrounded the cast, shooting pictures from all angles. Some laid on the. studio floor, others sat and still others kneeled while making their pictures.  Others swarmed over platforms and perched dangerously on top of ladders.  As one of the studio attendants remarked:  "They do everything but walk across the ceiling like flies."
     Not only was the Crime Clues cast photographed in every conceivable form, but everything on the third floor of the National Broadcasting Company was taken in by the lenses.  During an intermission, the cameramen moved around taking candid pictures of groups in the lobby, ushers, receptionists and even studio doors.  In the Crime Clues studio they photographed others taking pictures, all the paraphernalia used for sound effects, porters, control room men and broadcasting apparatus.

Given their popularity, natural tie-ins to Doubleday Crime Club imprint selections were inevitable. The second medium to capitalize on the tie-in was Film. During the late 1930s, Universal Pictures struck a deal with Prentiss Winchell and Doubleday Crime Club to employ Winchell's 'Stewart Sterling' scripts and Doubleday Crime Club's imprint for a series of mystery films. Universal ultimately produced eleven such features:

• The Westland Case (1937)
• The Black Doll (1938)
• The Lady in The Morgue (1938)
• Danger In The Air (1938)
• The Last Express (1938)
• The Gambling Ship (1938)
• The Last Warning (1938)
• The Mystery of The White Room (1939)
• Inside Information (1939)
• House of Fear (1939)
• The Witness Vanishes (1939)

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

Far and away, the most helpful provenance was the exceptional Eno Crime Club: A Log of the Radio Series, compiled by Gary Marsa.

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