Jul 3, 2016
Brilliant, handsome, and foppish, amateur sleuth Philo Vance went through some character makeovers as he jumped from the pages of S.S. Van Dine’s detective novels to the big screen and later to radio. Jackson Beck played Vance as a nearly hard-boiled private eye, but his two earliest radio incarnations stuck a bit closer to the character from the source material. We’ll hear two of Philo Vance’s first on-air adventures. First, John Emery plays Vance in “The Case of the Cellini Cup” (originally aired on NBC on April 29, 1943). Then, Jose Ferrer is Philo in “The Case of the Strange Music” (originally aired on NBC on August 9, 1945).