May 29, 2023
In this month's bonus episode, we're headed to the San Francisco waterfront for my five favorite episodes of Pat Novak For Hire. Jack Webb stars as Novak - who makes ends meet by renting boats and taking odd investigative assignments, and who usually lands in hot water with the hard-headed Inspector Hellman of homicide....
Jan 22, 2023
We're catching a cable car in San Francisco with three old time radio gumshoes who live and work in the city by the bay. First, Candy Matson solves a pair of murders on an army base in "The Fort Ord Story" (originally aired on NBC on September 23, 1949). Next, Sam Spade is hired to protect a man from a vengeful ex-con...
Happy Birthday, Raymond Burr
May 21, 2021
Known to generations of television audiences as Perry Mason, Raymond Burr (May 21, 1917 – September 12, 1993) found some of his earliest successes during the Golden Age of Radio.
In a role far removed from the upstanding defense attorney he played on TV, Burr appeared as the thick-headed Inspector Hellman, a thorn in...
Apr 4, 2021
He's best known for Dragnet and Joe Friday, but there was a lot more to Jack Webb's radio career than the groundbreaking police procedural. We'll hear him in three old time radio mysteries as a trio of down on their luck detectives. First, he's Pat Novak for Hire in "Dixie Gillian" (originally aired on ABC on November...
Jack of All Trades
Apr 2, 2021
Is there anybody who doesn’t know Dragnet? Even if you don’t know the series or couldn’t pick Sgt. Joe Friday out of a line-up, chances are you know the distinct “dum-da-dum-dum” opening. Like the eerie sounds of the theme to The Twilight Zone, the opening notes of the Dragnet march have become shorthand for...