The Mysterious Traveler Radio Program

Background

Mysterious Traveler was the second outing for the prolific writing team of Robert Arthur, Jr. and David P. Kogan, two successful pulp fiction writers and publishers. Their first effort was a 27-program run of Dark Destiny (1942-43). Most of the Dark Destiny scripts are heard again in The Mysterious Traveler (1943), The Sealed Book (1945) and The Teller of Tales (1950).

The team of Robert Arthur, Jr., David Kogan, producer/director Sherman 'Jock' MacGregor, and actor Maurice Tarplin was a very successful one for both The Mutual Broadcasting System and Radio station WOR. Between 1944 and 1952, The Mysterious Traveler eventually became one of the sixteen highest rated Radio programs of their era. WOR and MBS took great pride in putting together a program that could rival Radio giants CBS, ABC, and NBC throughout the era. During its heyday The Mysterious Traveler spawned several similar thriller genre programs such as The Strange Dr. Wierd (1945), The Sealed Book (1945), Dark Venture (1946), Murder By Experts (1949), and The Teller of Tales (1950).

The thriller genre was not new to Radio in the 1940s. The Witch's Tale had aired from 1931 to 1938 over The Mutual Broadcasting System and WOR. CBS had tried--and failed at--their own The Witching Hour for three months in 1932. Oklahoma Radio station WKY had successfully aired their own Dark Fantasy (1941) anthology of thrillers, which was immediately picked up by NBC for a national run. But clearly, The Mutual system and WOR appear to have acquired the inside track for the thriller genre for almost two decades during The Golden Age of Radio.

This is not to discount in any way the suspense thrillers from CBS and NBC during the same period. Inner Sanctum (1941-1952) aired very successfully over NBC Blue, ABC, and CBS during much the same period as The Mysterious Traveler. Arch Oboler brought Lights Out! (1936-1952) to the air as well for NBC Red, CBS, NBC and ABC. But for much of the period during which it aired, The Mysterious Traveler was providing most of the competition to 'the big three's' more widely heard and promoted thrillers. Enough competition that the same big three networks were forced to continually shuffle their offerings back and forth on the Radio dial to continue to fend off the upstart Mysterious Traveler.

Indeed, the proliferation of such late afternoon and late night thrillers on the radio dial didn't seem to discourage the listening audience in the least. These programs were so popular that people reminiscing about the era tend to conflate Maurice Tarplin and Raymond Edward Johnson in their repsective roles as narrator for many of these scary programs from The Golden Age of Radio. The formula was indeed so popular that it played a role in the restructuring of the type of Radio programming that could be heard during prime-time. With the voluntary adoption of curfews on thrillers and crime-based mysteries by The National Association of Broadcasters, these programs were forced to air after 9:30 p.m. Eastern time from 1948 on. This is the reason behind the many anecdotal stories from the era of young children listening to their radios under the covers during the Post-World War II era. It was the only way they could continue to hear their favorite thrillers during school nights.

The Mysterious Traveler had much to recommend it for atmospherics alone. Maurice Tarplin opened each program with the following mood setter:

"This is The Mysterious Traveler, inviting you to join me on another journey into the strange and terrifying. I hope you will enjoy the trip, that it will thrill you a little and chill you a little. So settle back, get a good grip on your nerves, and be comfortable . . . if you can . . . ."

That introduction, accompanied by the now famous sound of the rushing train and its whistle served as the chilling prologue to every episode of the run. The train whistle and doppler sound seemed to improve with each new season--as did much of the foley work throughout the series. Maurice Tarplin for his part, leant a provocatively nuanced sense of anxiety to each new program, both framing the script to follow and interjecting key exposition during most episodes.

The Mysterious Traveler eventually found itself up against an even more daunting body than the National Association of Broadcasters and their programming guidelines. Both Robert Arthur, Jr. and David Kogan were activist members of the Radio Writers' Guild, a popular writer's union that was deemed subversive by the infamous House Un-American Activities Committees (HUAC) between 1945 and 1954. This was by no means unusual for the era. The HUAC systematically attacked every significant collective bargaining organization of the era for their union activities, which the predominantly right-wing Republicans in control of Congress at the time, deemed a threat to Big Business in any form. The larger, older unions managed to weather the scrutiny of the HUAC. It was only the smaller artists' trade unions that the HUAC seemed most successful at bullying throughout the era.

Arthur and Kogan's very visible lobbying, organizing and picketing efforts on behalf of the Radio Writers' Guild during the late 1940s and early 1950s ultimately brought the HUAC down on Radio station WOR and the Mutual Broadcasting System. Both WOR and MBS predictably caved under the innuendoes and allegations of the HUAC and terminated The Mysterious Traveler at the arc of its national success. While simply a road-bump to MBS, the blacklisting of one of Radio's greatest writing teams effectively ended their Radio writing careers with the cancelling of The Mysterious Traveler.

While breaking up the team of Arthur, Kogan and MacGregor, Jock MacGregor appears to have weathered the storm, continuing on to a modestly successful career in Television. Arthur and Kogan for their part, launched the Mysterious Traveler Magazine with relatively little success for a year, both writing and publishing the magazine themselves. Some of Hollywood's less intimidated Television producers continued to employ Robert Arthur's services for another ten years. David Kogan continued to manage and publish the magazine.

It's worth noting that the success of the Robert Arthur/David Kogan team resulted in national awards during the early 1950s. Both The Mysterious Traveler and Murder By Experts garnered Edgar awards--Murder By Experts for 1950 and The Mysterious Traveler for 1953. In the end, the overarching influence of both The National Association of Broadcasters and the despicable HUAC ultimately disintegrated. But they did result in a premature demise for many of Radio's thrillers from the era.

Thankfully, The Mysterious Traveler remains one of the highly collected examples of the genre from the era, in many instances introducing new fans to The Golden Age of Radio for the very first time.

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

The most helpful provenances for this effort were the log of the radioGOLDINdex and newspaper listings.

Contrary to Hickerson, The Mysterious Traveler's first timeslot change occured on April 23, 1943 not the widely reported April 30, 1943.

Contrary to Hickerson, The Mysterious Traveler's next day and timeslot change moved it to Saturdays at 10:30 p.m. on October 7, 1944, not the widely reported 9:30 p.m. slot on Saturdays. The program didn't move to the 9:30 p.m. slot until November 11, 1944

We plowed through about 200 of the broadcast dates, disclosing what we suspected all along; some commercial OTR seller or collector has been deliberately salting all circulating sources with misinformation. Presumably with an eye toward a potential 'reveal all' OTR book about The Mysterious Traveler. What's patently obvious at this juncture is the following:

• ALL of the circulating episode sequence numbers beyond Episode No. 67 are flat wrong.
• None of the circulating information about time and date changes is accurate.
• Continuing the Episode numbering from December 4, 1943 to the very end of the last logged broadcast is a fool's errand. It's beyond stupid to even attempt to contiguously log the overwhelming number of program broadcasts beyond a two-year run in the first place. In the second place, it's obvious that The Mysterious Traveler, in particular, has been improperly sequenced for as long as twenty years, due to either someone's mischief during that period, or utter ignorance of historical facts--one or the other . . . probably both.

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 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.

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Mysterious Traveler Radio Log

Mysterious Traveler Radio Biographies

1950
'Edgar' for Best Radio Drama for Murder by Experts
1953
'Edgar' for Best Radio Mystery Drama for The Mysterious Traveler.

The Valedictorian for his high school graduating class, Arthur had won appointments to both Annapolis and West Point, but declined the appointments, enrolling instead at William and Mary College in 1926. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in English.

After a brief stint as editor of one of the Munsey Publications, he returned to the University of Michigan, receiving an M.A. in Journalism in 1932. During 1938 he met and married Susan Smith Cleaveland, a Radio soap opera actress, but by 1940 the couple divorced. He moved Greenwich Village and began writing for pulp magazines. By 1940, he'd published stories in:

• Wonder Stories
• Detective Fiction Weekly
• Mystery
• Illustrated Detective Magazine
• Street & Smith's Detective Story Magazine
• Amazing Stories
• The Shadow
• Street & Smith Mystery Reader
• Detective Tales
• Thrilling Detective
• Double Detective
• Startling Stories
• Collier's
• The Phantom Detective
• Argosy Weekly
• Black Mask

In addition, Arthur worked as a writer and editor for pulp western, fact detective, and screen magazines for Dell Publishing, becoming associate editor of Photo-Story, a ground-breaking picture magazine published by Fawcett Publications. He then conceived and edited Pocket Detective Magazine for Street & Smith, the first pocket-sized, all-fiction magazine, which published several of his stories. .

The Mysterious Traveler also aired as Adventure Into Fear and 26 of its scripts aired as The Sealed Book. From 1948 to 1951 Arthur and Kogan produced Dark Destiny, an early, well-received, television thriller series.

In 1940 he met the woman who would become his second wife, Joan Vaczek, in a class on The Short Story while attending Columbia University. Joan Vaczek was the daughter of a Hungarian diplomat and a budding science-fiction writer in her own right. During the same year that he met his future writing partner, David Kogan, with whom he eventually wrote and produced his first radio show, Dark Destiny (1942). Soon after that the team wrote and produced The Mysterious Traveler (1943), which aired over the Mutual Broadcasting System and eventually won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Mystery Radio Show of the Year for 1952 by The Mystery Writers of America. He'd also won the 'Edgar' for Best Radio Drama for 1950 for Murder By Experts.

Robert Arthur and Joan Vaczek eventually married in December 1946, moved to Connecticut and then New York, where they had two children, Robert Andrew Arthur and Elizabeth Ann Arthur.

1953 brought the end of his relationship with The Mutual Broadcasting System. He and his partner, David Kogan were both active members of The Radio Writers' Guild. The House Commitee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) had 'determined' that The Radio Writers' Guild was a 'Communist front group'.

History has shown that this was simply another of the numerous, shameful union-busting attempts by the HUAC. Their basic aim was to link a growing collective bargaining movement with Communism, so as to benefit the Radio, Television and Film industries by keeping their employees from forming collective-bargaining units--or unions. The Supreme Court of the United States, in 1937, had ruled the 1935 National Labor Relations Act to be constitutional, but when ultra-conservatives came to power during the Cold War years, they determined to find other ways to undermine the collective bargaining provisions of the Act.

The HUAC's naked fear-mongering tactics succeeded for several of the most shameful years in American history. The Committee's sham hearings were eventually brought down by the very industries they were attempting to benefit--Radio and Television.

To its shame, The Mutual Broadcasting System and its radio station WOR, caving under pressure from their affiliates and corporate sponsors, abruptly canceled The Mysterious Traveler and Robert Arthur's career as a Radio Writer effectively ended. The Mysterious Traveler had consistently been rated among the top sixteen most popular Radio programs of the era. Robert Arthur, Jr. had written and produced over five hundred radio scripts for his two shows as well as for Dark Destiny, The Sealed Book, The Shadow, and Nick Carter, Master Detective.

After 1952, Arthur worked as a co-producer for ABC's radio show Mystery Time as well as continuing to write and publish pulp fiction. In 1959, he moved to Hollywood where he worked in television, writing scripts for The Twilight Zone. He also worked as a story editor and script writer for Alfred Hitchcock's long-running Alfred Hitchcock Presents for television. Robert Arthur, Jr. is also credited with writing most of Hitchcock's droll prologues for the Alfred Hitchcock Presents programs.

He moved back to New Jersey in 1962, where he lived with his father's aunt, Margaret Fisher Arthur, until his death in 1969 at the age of 59.

Among pulp fiction fans and Golden Age Radio fans alike, Robert Arthur's stories and scripts remain some of the most rivetting, compelling fiction from the Golden Age. He and his partner, David Kogan, continue to acquire new fans with every passing generation through the enduring magic of Golden Age Radio.