The Speed Gibson of The I.S.P. Radio Program

Background

Throughout the earliest days of broadcast Radio, the incredible demand for new and innovative programming kept both the early networks and independent syndicators attempting all manner of Radio productions to feed the insatiable demand for something to fill the early airwaves as long as possible throughout the day and night.

Among the most popular early drama genres were the juvenile adventures, usually serial in nature. A list of some of the typical fare of the era follows:

1929 Polly Preston’s Adventures
1929 The Adventures of Helen and Mary
1930 Radio Orphan Annie
1930 Aunt Lulu’s Adventures
1930 Mark Trail
1930 Rin–Tin–Tin [Francis X. Bushman]
1931 Red Goose Adventures [International Shoe]
1931 The Adventures of Detectives Black and Blue [Folgers Coffee]
1932 Buck Rogers and The Space Rangers
1932 Captain Diamond’s Adventures
1932 Captain Jack
1932 Chandu, the Magician
1932 Strange Adventures in a Strange Land
1932 Tarzan
1932 The Adventures of The Safety Soldiers
1932 The Orange Lantern
1932 Thurston, the Magician
1933 The Adventures of Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy
1933 Dick Daring’s Adventures
1933 The Stamp Adventurer’s Club [Louden Packing]
1933 The Adventures of Admiral Byrd
1933 The Adventures of Alley Oop
1933 The Air Adventures of Jimmy Allen
1933 Trobriand The Adventurer
1934 Captain Tim’s Adventures
1934 Dick Steele, Boy Reporter
1934 Og, Son of Fire
1934 Robinson Crusoe Jr.
1934 The Adventures of Babe Ruth
1934 The Adventures of Frank Merriwell
1935 The Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon
1935 Jungle Jim
1935 Omar, the Mystic
1935 Red Trails [American Tobacco]
1935 The Adventures of Sonny and Buddy
1935 The Adventures of Terry and Ted
1935 The Desert Kid
1935 Magic Island
1935 Tony and Gus
1936 The Cruise of the Poll Parrot
1936 Renfrew of the Mounted [Wonder Bread]
1936 The Adventures of Dari–Dan [Dari-Rich]
1936 The Adventures of Jack Masters
1936 The True Adventures of Junior G-Men
1936 Time Flies [Frank Hawkes]
1937 Bicycle Party
1937 Don Winslow of The Navy
1937 Speed Gibson of the International Secret Police
1937 Terry and the Pirates
1937 The Adventures of Ace Williams
1937 The Phantom Pilot [Howard Duff]
1937 Vagabond Adventures
1937 Your Adventurers
1937 The Cinnamon Bear
1938 Sergeant Preston of the Yukon [Challenge of The Yukon]
1938 The Adventures of Superman
1938 The Story of Jonathan Thomas and His Christmas On The Moon
1939 Captain Midnight
1939 The Adventures of Pinnochio
1939 The Order of Adventurers
1939 The Sky Blazers [Wonder Bread]
1940 Mandrake The Magician
1941 Lew Loyal and Betsy True
1941 The Adventures of Frank Farrell
1941 Tailspin Tommy
1942 The Adventures of The Sea Hound
1943 Ann of the Airlanes
1950 The Adventures of Danny Marsdon [Canadian]
1951 Lady In Blue

This list is by no means all-inclusive and we've undoubtedly left out any number of popular favorites from the era. We included a few of the later juvenile adventures for the purpose of clarifying a few that have long been reported to have appeared in the 1930s but actually appeared much later, such as the Canadian production, The Adventures of Danny Marsdon (1950), Ann of the Airlanes (1943), The Adventures of The Sea Hound (1942) and Lady in Blue (1951).

What we hoped to portray was a rich tapestry of 1930s juvenile adventure serials sufficient to sate the appetites of children from the age of pre-adolescents to those in their 90s. Those we highlighted in the above list are most representative of juvenile air adventures. Air adventures were all the rage in the wake of barnstormers and the tremendous advances in airplane technology throughout the 1920s to 1940s.

Speed Gibson of The I. S. P. debuts for bakeries across America

Air adventures being equally appealing to boys and girls, it seemed natural to syndicated progamming house, Radio Attractions, to mount a quality juvenile air adventure. Apparently recording the feature sometime during early 1937, Radio Attractions sold the feature to bakers and mills across America. The first baker to sponsor Speed Gibson regionally was Hecht's Bakeries in Tennessee. That first run of Speed Gibson--Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, weekly--premiered on September 20, 1937.

Out on the west coast, Remar Baking Company had just aquired a new fleet of 200 Chevrolet delivery vans and wanted yet another 'vehicle' to underscore and advertise their growing success. And so it was that Remar Baking premiered Speed Gibson to San Francisco Bay audiences on October 18, 1937. They ran their serial feature four days a week, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday over KROW for at least Speed Gibson's first entire one-hundred episode adventure, "The Case of The World Vs. The Octopus."

Who was Speed Gibson and what was the I.S.P.?

"Speed" Gibson was a plucky young fifteen year old with interests in Radio, Aviation, model-building and "The International Secret Police (I.S.P.)." One might well ask how a fifteen year old would even know about an international police organization as secretive as the I.S.P. Actually he was apparently intimately familiar with it. "Speed" Gibson was the orphaned nephew of Clint Barlow, one of the I. S. P.'s most successful secret operatives. Continually described as a typical young American boy, "Speed" Gibson personified all that was exemplary in American youth of the era. If that term rings any bells it's undoubtedly due to the Jack Armstrong, The All-American Boy serial adventure so popular between 1933 and 1950. The creators of Speed Gibson of The International Secret Police were clearly attempting to leverage all manner of previous serial adventure success into the Speed Gibson canon of adventures.

"Speed's" uncle, Clint, had found Speed to be an excellent eventual candidate for the I.S.P. and had taught Speed as much about the I.S.P. as the secrecy rules of the I.S.P allowed. Clint Barlow's 'sidekick' is Barney Dunlap. Barney has a particular aptitude for resourcefullness and 'brawn' as contrasted with Clint Barlow and his multi-varied skills, mastery of disguise, and brains. Barney is also known for his oft-repeated expletive, "Sufferin' Whangdoodles!"

First Adventure: "The Case of The World Vs. The Octopus"

As with every serial adventure of the era, there must be an evil nemesis of some sort to constantly bedevil the heroes of the serial. In the case of Speed Gibson it was The Octopus Gang. The Octopus Gang was purportedly the slipperiest, most diabolical, evil organization to ever undertake crime on an international scale. Having eluded Scotland Yard, the French Sûreté, as well as America's own Secret Police, the only organization in the entire world capable of tackling and strangling the evil menace of The Octopus Gang was the little known but highly effective International Secret Police. Presumptively an early model for InterPol, the International Secret Police has a formidable international network of its own for combating crime.

Owing to a fluke of circumstance, Speed Gibson encounters Blackie Spiers, a member of The Octopus Gang, at Clint Barlow's apartment moments after Clint and Barney left to meet with The Chief. While Blackie's attempting to rifle through Clint's desk, young Speed beans Blackie with Speed's heavy China Clipper model. Blackie thus subdued, Clint and Barney return to retrieve Barney's hat and encounter Speed standing over Blackie Spiers' unconscious body. Speed's quick thinking is rewarded by the Chief of The I.S.P. with an offer to work for the secretive organization.

Clint, Barney and Speed are dispatched under false identities and disquises to the Orient to pursue The Octopus Gang; first stop, Hong Kong. Speed is officially sworn into the I.S.P. by Chief Reilly himself prior to departing with his Uncle Clint and Barney. With Speed now an official operative of The I.S.P., the three depart for Alameda and the Clipper base to await their departure for "The Case of The World Vs. The Octopus."

Created from the outset as a multipart weekly serial, the series lent itself to three-a-week, four-a-week, and even five-a-week schedules, although the overwhelming number of broadcasting stations aired it either three-a-week or four-a-week. Under either schedule the first hundred-episode story arc, "The Case of The World Vs. The Octopus," would end at about thirty-three weeks for the three-a-week broadcasts or at twenty-five weeks for the four-a-week broadcasts. This concept brought it in line with other syndications of twenty-six week or thirty-nine week 'seasons' or blocks of programming.

Slotted at around 5 - 6 p.m. in most markets, Speed Gibson of The International Secret Police competed well with many of the other popular after-school fare of the period. While it's not currently known if Speed's second long-running adventure, "Lost Continent of Atlantis," was intended to span just its seventy-eight episodes or to be another hundred-episode feature, there's no indication in the second story arc that the second adventure was cut short in any way. In practice, few of the sponsors that purchased Speed Gibson aired all of both adventures. It would appear from currently available records that Remar Baking Company (cited above) aired only the first Speed Gibson adventure.

The 'hook' linking the first adventure arc with the second is The Octopus' unexpected leap from the plane transporting him back to I.S.P. Headquarters during Episode No. 100. The Octopus' leap from the plane over the Himalayas has him falling through an impenetrable cloud bank. Since no one actually saw The Octopus meet his death, his apparent 'leap to death' might not actually have resulted in his demise . . .

Second Adventure: "The Atlantian Expedition"

The premise for Speed Gibson's second adventure revolves around a syndicate of very wealthy investors who believe they've been financing an expedition in North Africa to determine if the fabled Lost Continent of Atlantis might be located somewhere in the Sahara Desert. With costs and demands for further financing continuing to rise, the Altlantian Syndicate rightly approached the International Secret Police to have them investigate the expedition.

As many of the era's young listeners may well have suspected, the I.S.P's old nemesis, The Octopus, is apparently behind the Atlantian Expedition as well. He and his gang are using the expedition as cover for his development of a 'death ray,' to further his aims of international intimidation and conquest. So it is that Speed Gibson, his Uncle Clint and Smiley Preston, filling in for Barney Dunlap, undertake their second adventure, this time on the African continent.

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

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

OTRisms:

The Speed Gibson canon has been woefully and inaccurately logged for at least fifteen years. Of the many shortcomings in the existing Speed Gibson logs in circulation are the following:

• While comprising at least 178 total programs, the Speed Gibson series breaks down into two adventure arcs: The Case of The World Vs. The Octopus comprises the first one hundred episodes and The Atlantian Expedition comprises the last seventy-eight episodes.
• We could find no original broadcasts of Speed Gibson of The International Secret Police that aired weekly--period. Whoever invented the circulating weekly log beginning January 2, 1937 and running right on through to May 25, 1940 with no pre-emptions, non-airing dates or any other schedule changes during the entire three and a half year span made that log up out of whole cloth. It's completely and entirely unsupportable by any engineering logs, newspaper listings, or script records from the era.
• The continuing practice of sequencing the broadcasts of the Speed Gibson canon straight through from "1" to "178" is also completely unsupportable. It's merely a convenience for lazy commercial otr cassette and CD hawkers. The practice bears no resemblance whatsoever to the actual broadcast history of the Speed Gibson canon. The orginal transcriptions may indeed be numbered "1" through "178", but:
  • No independent syndicator in its right mind would record one transcribed adventure per week.
  • No independent syndicator could possibly sell or market a canon of adventures that hadn't even been recorded as many as two years into the future. As best as we can determine, 'time travel' hadn't been invented between 1937 and 1950.
  • We can prove that by as early as March 24, 1939 the entire canon of 178 episodes had already been transcribed, sold, and broadcast.
  • How then could the currently circulating logs represent a production log?
  • And if it's not a production log, it most certainly is not an as broadcast log either.
• The Case of The World Vs. The Octopus is correctly sequenced from Episode No. 1 through Episode No. 100. The Atlantian Expedition is correctly sequenced from Episode No. 1 through Episode No. 78. Numbering the entire broadcast canon "1" through "178" is just plain silly in any historical context.
• No single Radio outlet or market aired all 178 episodes of both adventures from beginning to end, non-stop. Most sponsored broadcasts aired either the first adventure or the second adventure. We have yet to turn up a single sponsored or sustained broadcast of the Speed Gibson canon that aired the entire run of both adventures straight through--during its original 1937-1939 syndication.

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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.]