Jul 30, 2017
Sam Spade - Dashiell Hammett's San Francisco shamus of The Maltese Falcon - was a hit with audiences when he came to radio in July 1946. The mix of tongue in cheek comedy with hard-boiled mystery, combined with the memorable performance of Howard Duff in the title role, made for a series that still holds up today and...
Jul 23, 2017
Planning to break the law in Texas? You'd better make other plans, because Joel McCrea is fighting crime on foot and on horseback in Tales of the Texas Rangers. As Ranger Jayce Pearson, McCrea stars in dramatizations of actual Ranger cases, presenting a combination of old west manhunting and twentieth century forensic...
Happy Birthday, William Gargan
Jul 17, 2017
William Gargan, who brought a wry cynicism to his characters on radio, was born today in 1905. Of all the actors to play private eyes and gumshoes during the Golden Age of Radio, Gargan may have been the most uniquely qualified. Ironically, while success as a detective seemed to elude him, he enjoyed a great deal of...
Jul 16, 2017
Perhaps the only radio detective star to have actually worked as a real-life private eye, William Gargan played several gumshoes on the air, as well as the big and small screens. He was most famous on radio as Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator but he gave voice to other hard-boiled private eyes with wry senses of...
"License number 137596..."
Jul 12, 2017
“I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble.” (Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett wasn’t just a writer of detective fiction; he was a real-life detective who also happened to pen some of the greatest mystery novels of the 20th century. His mind and pen brought readers the rough and...