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 June 1936. 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 Mutual Broadcasting System produced its own Crime Club series beginning in December 1946, a consequence of which the two 'Crime Club' programs are often either 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 occasionally accompanied by the artifice of an Inspector Spencer Dean and his sidekick, Danny Cassidy, shepherding the various segments of each two-part story from beginning to denouement. The resultant ''Manhunter Mysteries'', employing Inspector Spencer Dean and Danny 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 early 1930s.
• Most self-evident of all, Eno's various crime club manifestations 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 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.
• 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 entire duration 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.

Though there was no explicit tie-ins between Eno Crime Club and the Doubleday Crime Club, we can trace many of the selections employed for Eno Crime Club from their Doubleday Crime Club selections, as follows:

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.

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 are the breadcrumbs--just follow the trail a bit further if you wish. No hobbled downloads. 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.

We continue to provide honest research into these wonderful Golden Age Radio programs simply because we love to do it. If you feel that we've provided you with useful information or saved you some valuable time regarding this log--and you'd like to help us even further--you can help us keep going. Please consider a small donation here:

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.]