The Line-Up Radio Program

Background

The Line-Up stands as one of the most well-produced crime dramas of The Golden Age of Radio. The cast is comprised of top-tier, A-List talent from top to bottom. With Elliott Lewis directing his cast of some of the finest voice talent of the era--and top-drawer sound technicians to match--this series remains one of the best examples of the Crime Drama genre. Think of Calling All Cars, minus the jingoistic flag-waving, updated to contemporary 1950s crime themes, and peppered with the more authentic radio-verité atmospherics of Unit 99, Night Watch, and Dragnet, and you have The Line-Up.

It's also been one of the most difficult series to collect over the years. The good news is that with new episodes surfacing each year, there's every possibility that we'll soon have a complete run of the series to enjoy in its entirety.

Bill Johnstone gives his usual solid performance as Lieutenant Ben Guthrie of the San Francisco Police Department. He's aided for the first year of the run by the equally solid Wally Maher, with his gritty, sardonic voice characterizations. The stellar list of non-recurring talent represents some of the most respected names in Radio--and Television: Raymond Burr, Jay Novello, Joe Kearns, Elliott Lewis, Virginia Gregg, Ed Begley, Bill Bouchey, Herb Butterfield, Barton Yarborough, Wilms Herbert, Jeanette Nolan, Ted de Corsia, Howard McNear and Bill Conrad. It just doesn't get better than that.

The premise of each episode is prefaced with a gritty, highly realistic line-up, replete with background atomospherics and actors realistically speaking over each other, but with an underlying investigation--or two--under discussion below the background noise of the introductory line-up and exposition. The subject matter of each episode was hard-hitting, often harsh, but highly realistic criminal sub-plots.

The series is also remembered for the loss of one of Radio's finest and most popular voice talents. Wally Maher, still a relatively young man, had lost a lung to a protracted illness just months before the series first aired. By just over a year into The Line-Up's run, Maher was again hospitalized and passed away during that hospitalization. Raymond Burr, who'd already been introduced in a couple of semi-recurring roles, added his talent to The Line-Up for the remainder of its run in an effort to make up for the loss of Wally Maher.

By the early 1950s, Television's own Crime Dramas were taking root and offering greater and greater competition to the Crime Drama genre, especially. Crime Dramas, as contrasted with Detective Dramas had become more and more documentary in style and substance, on Radio, Film, and Television. The public's desire for even more realistic depictions of Crime Dramas fueled their greater success on Television versus Radio, and the crime drama genre began to lose its long-standing attraction over Radio.

Detective and Mystery Dramas, by contrast, could continue to create as highly stylized and convoluted plots as ever on Radio, and thus remained a significant presence over Radio for another eight to ten years. But it was becoming clear that Television was fast learning how to capture the imagination of Radio listeners, and the days of Radio's media dominance were clearly nearing their end.

The Line-Up made its way to Television in 1954, first airing as The Line-Up, then as San Francisco Beat.

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

All above cited provenances differ in one form or another. The most helpful provenances were the log of the RadioGOLDINdex and newspaper listings.

There are several 'gotchas' laying in wait for anyone attempting to log this series.

1. The first 'gotcha' was the long-standing representation by several of the most prominent 'OTR Traders', that there were nine (9) episodes in the initial Summer Replacement run. In fact, the provenance in Episode #3, announces that the FBI In Peace and War series will resume August 31, 1950, in 'six weeks'. That being the 3rd episode, the 8th episode would therefore be the last of the Summer Replacement Run, Q.E.D.. This information is absent in all publicly available logs, with the exception of the most recently updated Jay Hickerson Guide log. Sadly, there is apparently no monetary incentive for high-volume 'OTR Dealers' to acknowledge this correction for their clients' benefit. Misinformation apparently drives naive consumers to return to the same source over and over again to obtain revised or corrected compilations--with yet another purchase.

2. The next 'gotcha' is the Suspense provenance in the 'The Harrowing Haggada Handball Case' episode. Most log creators/dealers--to this day--cite a 51-06-14 date for this episode. But as the Suspense announcement in the credits states, the 'this Thursday' episode of Suspense is to be a special Gregory Peck-hosted episode dealing with 'narcotics and teenagers'. That makes that episode the 51-06-14 episode, 'The Truth About Jerry Baxter'. Therefore, since that episode aired Thursday, June 14, 1951, then the correct date for The Harrowing Haggada Handball Case' must be the Tuesday, two days previous, or June 12, 1951.

3. The third 'gotcha' is 'The Drinkler Kidnapping' episode, previously undated. The provenance contained in intact episodes comes from the announcement at the beginning of the recording, stating that the beginning of the 1952 Democratic National Convention will be delayed a couple of hours. The 1952 Democratic National Convention took place between July 21 - 26, 1952. Since this episode ran during the 'Tuesdays at 9:00 pm or 10:00 pm' run, then the only Tuesday falling withing that window had to be the 22nd of July. Therefore the correct date for 'The Drinkler Kidnapping' has to have been 52-07-22, Q.E.D..

4. The fourth 'gotcha' is the provenance for the 'The Green Cap Case' episode, previously undated. The intact recording contains a five-minute newsbreak by Robert Trout immediately following the credits. Within that newsbreak, Trout cites two key historical news announcements:

• a.) That the Iranian Government has broken diplomatic relations with Great Britain, over a dispute about Iran's refusal to return a handbook on diplomatic relations to Great Britain
• b.) That the Coalition Government of Austria has fallen after a shakey seven-year rule.

Given the historical import of both announcements, the date of that newsbreak can be traced to October 22, 1952. This gives the 'The Green Cap Case' episode a date of 52-10-22, Q.E.D.

5. The last 'gotcha' is resolved with the provenance contained within the 'The Matthews-Murray Mish Mosh Case' episode, dated 52-11-26. The announcement within that episode states that 'The Matthews-Murray Mish Mosh Case' is the last Wednesday episode and that there will be no show the following week, with the series resuming the following Friday. This provenance gives the 'The Gasoline Bandit Case' episode, previously misdated '52-12-05' a correct date of 52-12-12, also a Friday.

6. There are at least two previously undisclosed 'rehearsals' in current circulation:

• 'Once Upon A Snow-Plow', dated either 52-12-24 or 52-12-26. Both dates are in error. The errors began circulating due to one of the members of the cast or orchestra playing a Christmas tune at the end of the rehearsal. What they failed to note is that within the script, one of the responding detectives recalls a case similar to the one they've been called out on that he remembers occuring "over a year ago". His partner reminds him that the date was January 3, 1952. That script entry would date the Once Upon A Snow-Plow rehearsal to after the New Year--either January 8, 1952 or January 9, 1953, depending on the actual rehearsal date.
• 'Cowardly Castro', dated either January 1, 1953 or January 2, 1953--perhaps even the last week of December 1952, given the New Year's celebration.

7. There remain ten 'Title Unknown' programs in our current log. We'll update them as resources present themselves.

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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.]

The Line-Up Series Log

The Line-Up [AFRTS] Log

The Line-Up Biographies

Bill Johnstone as John Martin in Season 2, Episode 7 of the original Dragnet series

Bill Johnstone is one of that handful of legendary radio actors that will always be inseparably associated with the most golden moments of the Golden Age of Radio.

Wally Maher
Alias Michael Shayne

The fellow who plays Michael Shayne every Tuesday night is no stranger to the role of crime fiction. Wally Maher figures he's been killed more times than any other actor working in radio. He's been chewed by alligators, attacked by vampires, gassed, shot and various other methods of elimination. Wally never played a tough guy until he came to California, his forte is light comedy. In only half a dozen out of 127 pictures has he played light comedy, the rest were heavies.
After starting a radio career in his home town of Cincinnati, he went to New York where he won a host of theatrical roles. Then came Hollywood in 1935 where he continued his radio work and started on pictures. Wally likes comedy, so he likes Michael Shayne. He doesn't like to play tough guys so "Shayne" is as easygoing as a sleuth can be and still keep his self-respect.
He likes to read detective stories, but his favoilte reading is American and Irish history, with, the accent on the latter. His grandparents on both sides came from Tipperary. He has three children, two girls and a boy. Two of the children look like their mother, who is of Italian decent, but Wally says all of them are Irish at heart.
Wally can speak Italian, and when he was working as baggage clerk on the Southern Pacific, he used to go out and greet ths prisoner trains loaded with Italian PWs on their way through Glendale. He talked to them in Italian and used to get a kick out of watching their faces light up.
With his extensive theatrical experience, Wally Maher is capably suited to the role of the "private eye," "Michael Shayne." His secretary-girl friend, Phyllis, is right in there pitching, too. For the best in mystery dramas, "Michael Shayne" is on the air Tuesday nights at 9 o'clock.

Wally Maher had a solid movie career under his belt long before he lent his unmistakable voice talent to Radio. Indeed his filmography reads as long as his radiography. His stocky build and expressive face provided him with regular work as a character actor, but it was his highly distinctive voice that set him apart. Though from Ohio, his uncanny ability to project a gruff, irascible, but humorous East Coast--or West Coast--'tough' earned him countless roles in Radio as a hard-boiled thug, police detective, or adventurous sidekick.

He was a pretty straight foil for Bill Johnstone in The Line-Up, but his wonderfully animated role as George Valentine's nemesis, Lieutenant Riley, in Let George Do It, was in this author's humble opinion, some of Mr. Maher's most satisfying and entertaining work.

Destined to be often confused with Herb Butterfield or Wilms Herbert, Wally Maher's distinctive chortles and grunts usually made the identification of his voice unimpeachable. He debuted as the lead in The Adventures of Michael Shayne, and would have been just as enjoyable as Jeff Chandler, had he secured that role for the entire run of the program. Indeed, the series' creator, Brett Halliday, reportedly preferred Wally Maher's depiction of his protagonist.

Sadly, Wally Maher was hospitalized while appearing in The Line-Up and Let George Do It. He'd had a lung removed shortly before the beginning of the The Line-Up, with Raymond Burr often filling in for him near the end. He passed away December 27, 1951 at St. Vincent's Hospital, in Los Angleles at the age of 43, after an all too brief career of 22 years in Stage, Film and Radio.

It's the wonder of Golden Age Radio that preserves his memory for most of us . . . and what wonderful memories they are.