Feb 6, 2024
Old time radio fans will recognize some of their favorite performers' voices popping up in classic Disney films, and today we'll hear three of those stars in radio mysteries. Before she was Cruella de Vil in One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Betty Lou Gerson was a faded movie star who plans to marry into money in "The Girl Next Door" from The Whistler (originally aired on CBS on August 20, 1947). And years before he menaced Peter Pan as Captain Hook, Hans Conried played Sam Spade's client - a butler whose employers have a house full of secrets - in "The Bouncing Betty Caper" (an AFRS rebroadcast from December 12, 1948). Finally, you can still hear Paul Frees as the "Ghost Host" of the Haunted Mansion, and we'll also enjoy his performance as an eccentric poet in "The Cloak of Kamehameha" from The Adventures of Philip Marlowe (originally aired on CBS on April 23, 1949).