Dec 24, 2023

It's Christmas with The Whistler as Down These Mean Streets signs off for 2023! Radio's celebrated sinister storyteller - played by Bill Forman - narrates a quartet of mysteries set against a holiday backdrop. We'll hear "Christmas Bonus" (originally aired on CBS on December 25, 1944), "Letter from Cynthia"...

Dec 23, 2023

We need a little Christmas - and some Christmas mysteries! To celebrate the season, I'm sharing more of my favorite holiday adventures of old time radio detectives. Dr. Watson dresses as Santa and Sherlock Holmes thwarts a robbery in "The Night Before Christmas," with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in The New Adventures...

Dec 17, 2023

It's a birthday month tribute to Oscar-nominated actor Sydney Greenstreet. He made his film debut as the heavy in The Maltese Falcon, and he'd go on to appear in Casablanca, Christmas in Connecticut, and many more. He also spent a year starring on radio as Rex Stout's "gargantuan gourmet," Nero Wolfe. We'll hear him as...

Dec 3, 2023

To some, it's just a pocketful of change, but in these three old time radio mysteries, coins play central parts in the crimes. First, Philip Marlowe hunts for a coin worth a cool $37,000 in "The Collector's Item" (originally aired on CBS on August 25, 1950). Then, Orson Welles tells how a single shilling was tied to a...

Nov 27, 2023

Before the pre-holiday shopping weekend comes to a close, here's Jack Webb as Sgt. Joe Friday in three authentic police histories from Dragnet. First, Friday is on the trail of a kleptomaniac in "The Big Shoplift" (originally aired on NBC on October 11, 1951). Then, a safecracker eludes the police in "The Big Safe"...