The Pursuit Radio Program

Background

It was almost certainly Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fascinating and quixotic character Sherlock Holmes that ignited a great deal of interest in the inner workings of Great Britain's approach to crime. And in spite of Sherlock Holmes' somewhat lackluster opinion of Scotland Yard and its methods, history has shown worldwide interest and admiration for Scotland Yard, New Scotland Yard, and contemporary Great Britain's Metropolitan Police. Throughout the Golden Age of Radio New Scotland Yard and its extraordinary history were the subject of several popular Radio programs of the era:

• Inspector White of Scotland Yard (1936) [Mutual]
• Scotland Yard's Inspector Burke (1947) [Mutual]
• Hearthstone of The Death Squad (1948-1952) [NBC/CBS]
• Pursuit (1949-1952) [CBS]
• Secrets of Scotland Yard (1950 from Radio Lourenço Marques--LM Radio--in Mozambique, 1951 to 1953 in Canada, then later in the U.S.) was also a Towers of London syndicated production. It should be noted that the first airing of Secrets of Scotland Yard, was out of the pirate station, Radio Lourenço Marques from Mozambique to South Africa. This would not have been a Scotland Yard-sanctioned production, despite the fact that the BBC would almost certainly have known the syndicated series was being broadcast in both Australia and via LM Radio to South Africa. One can only surmise that this was a 'wink-wink, nudge-nudge' means of skirting the BBC's proscriptions against commercial broadcasts of their programming.
• WHItehall-1212 (51-11-18 to 52-10-26) was a fully NBC-produced and distributed network offering.
• The Black Museum (1952 to 1953) was another Harry Alan Towers (Towers of London) syndicated production. Black Museum also aired out of a pirate station, Radio Luxembourg, beginning in late 1951, a practice that clearly would not have gained the overt support of Scotland Yard.
• Dear Margie, It’s Murder (1953) [Mutual]

Scotland Yard's exploits continued to fascinate Television audiences during Television's Golden Age as well. The three Radio programs of the era that bore the most resemblance to each other were Scotland Yard's Inspector Burke starring Basil Rathbone, the Hummerts' CBS production Hearthstone of the Death Squad, and CBS' Pursuit initially starring durable character actor, Ted DeCorsia.

CBS doubles-down on Scotland Yard

The Mutual Broadcasting System's Scotland Yard's Inspector Burke series ran throughout 1947 starring Basil Rathbone, the actor most closely associated with Sherlock Holmes up to that point. Mutual, having abandoned a Scotland Yard Inspector series with star power, left the door wide open for another network to further pursue the concept. CBS reportedly began batting around just such a concept in 1948, with Film, Stage and Radio star Victor Jory in mind as the lead. For whatever reasons, the initial concept was abandoned until the Summer of 1949 when CBS revived the concept as simply "Pursuit" set in London with a Scotland Yard Detective Inspector as the protagonist.

In the meantime, CBS had been airing its Inspector Hearthstone of the Death Squad with Alfred Shirley, another Sherlock Holmes alumnus as Inspector Hearthstone. A Frank Hummert production, Inspector Hearthstone emerged during the CBS Mystery Theatre canon. Inspector Hearthstone began appearing more frequently during CBS Mystery Theatre until by 1951 CBS spun-off Inspector Hearthstone into the character's own series. Such was the thinking at CBS Programming during 1949 that the time might be right to introduce a Scotland Yard Inspector in a series of its own.

Durable character actor Ted de Corsia was cast in the role of first Inspector Harvey of Scotland Yard, quickly changing to Inspector Peter Black of Scotland Yard by the second episode of the series. Airing sustained, Pursuit premiered on October 27th 1949 in a late Thursday night timeslot. Initially suffering the scheduling indignities of most network-sustained productions of the era, CBS moved Pursuit all over its programming schedule until Pursuit began attracting sponsors. And attract sponsors it did. . .

Over the course of Pursuit's compartively short run of sixty-five episodes, Pursuit found no less than nine national sponsors to one degree or another. Pursuit aired during a period of innovative sponsorship plans offered by all four major networks. Television was taking hold across America. Television receivers had become more affordable to middle America and the new medium was exponentially eating away at Radio's bottom line. CBS, NBC and Mutual were the most aggressive innovators in creating time-slicing or time-sharing packages for national, regional and local sponsors alike. From durable, big-name sponsors to the 'snake-oil' products of the era, CBS' own time-sharing plan--The Power Plan--provided smaller or low-budget sponsors the opportunity to participate in primetime week night programming by bundling their messages with those of other companies or sponsors. It also afforded some of the conglomerates of the era the opportunity to showcase their major lines over several primetime broadcasts during a predetermined block of popular network programming.

'Block-shared' programming wasn't particularly new for the era. All four networks had begun marketing specific blocks of primetime--and daytime--programming to share expenses between several sponsors and the respective network for as many as eleven years earlier by 1952. The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) called their version of block-sharing 'The Pyramid Plan' [an unfortunate moniker to be sure], as a further refinement of their previously failed 'Five by Five' plan. The Mutual Broadcasting System (MBS) called their's 'MBS Plus.' In a further refinement of MBS Plus, Mutual introduced an exclusive ten-program package of MGM Transcriptions programming for 1952 only.

When Ted de Corsia left the production during March of 1950, John Dehner and Herb Butterfield were heard as Inspector Black. The series undertook a 'Mulligan' of sorts during its reintroduction in 1951. Versatile character actor Ben Wright assumed the role of Inspector Black, Eddie Dunstedter's organ transitions provided the musical accompaniment, Elliott Lewis continued as the series' director and Antony Ellis took the scripting duties.

Comparisons and contrasts

Whenever a Radio series undertook a face-lift it was a natural response to compare and contrast the respective differences in the production. To our ears, Ted de Corsia's interpretation of Inspector Black was entirely authentic. De Corsia's rendition has been criticized as sounding like an imitation of Ronald Colman. We're great fans of both actors. In fact the register and timbre of Ted de Corsia's voice was very similar to that of Ronald Colman. Through no fault of his own, any attempt by de Corsia to voice a British accent would necessarily result in a Colmanesque delivery--a circumstance Ted de Corsia simply couldn't help. Ben Wright, a former British citizen, quite effortlessly delivered Scotland Yard's Inspector Black, as might well be expected.

Ted de Corsia was also aided by two great writers of the era and two of the greatest Radio directors of the era. Morton Fine and David Friedkin wrote the scripts for the Ted de Corsia broadcasts and William N. Robson and Elliott Lewis directed the de Corsia Broadcasts. The de Corsia broadcasts also enjoyed the services of Leith Stevens and his brilliant music underscores. All told, the Ted de Corsia run enjoyed far greater polish--and budget-- than the Ben Wright broadcasts.

That being said, the somewhat more streamlined Ben Wright run of Pursuit enjoyed equally superb direction from Elliott Lewis, Norm Macdonnell and Antony Ellis, and the writing talents of the team of John and Gwen Bagni, Louis Vittes, E. Jack Neuman, Les Crutchfield, Gil Doud and Antony Ellis himself. The reduced budget also resulted in the superb Eddie Dunstedter organ underscore for the Ben Wright run of Pursuit. Thus, CBS' deep West Coast talent pool allowed the slimmed down Pursuit to continue on throughout 1951-1952 with comparatively similar quality.

Both formal seasons of Pursuit suffered miserably at the hands of CBS schedulers. Depending on the season, Pursuit was tasked with opposing either NBC's Dragnet, Screen Directors Playhouse, Big Town, People Are Funny, Dimension X, American Portraits, Jack Pearl, or Fibber McGee and Molly. During its 1951-1952 Season Pursuit was also up against MBS' Mysterious Traveler. If that wasn't enough, during its last 13 episodes Pursuit also opposed New World A'Coming.

Either CBS greatly overestimated Pursuit's popularity or its scheduling decisions were influenced by Pursuit's sponsors. Whichever was the case, Pursuit never really had a reasonable chance to compete over Radio. That's truly a shame. Pursuit was a splendid production; well produced and directed, superbly written, and authentically performed.

CBS produced a Television series by the name of Pursuit in 1958. Broadcast for only one season, the CBS-TV rendition of Pursuit was redeployed as a mystery-adventure anthology with a different cast for every episode.

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

The most helpful provenances were Stewart Wright, The Thousand Oaks Library, the log of the RadioGOLDINdex and newspaper listings.

OTRisms:

We greatly enjoyed Pursuit. Sadly, as with virtually every canon several commercial misfits of the OTR Community touch, several of the surviving circulating recordings have been systematically butchered through manufactured stereoization, monkeying with the pitch and/or speed, or truncating episodes to disguise their actual AFRS or AFRTS origin.

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