Showing results for "Hollywood" in Private Investigators

Los Angeles. August 4, 1962. The city broils through a mid-summer heat wave. Marilyn Monroe ODs. A B-movie starlet is kidnapped. The overhyped LAPD overreacts. Chief Bill Parker's looking for some getback. The Monroe deal looks like a moneymaker. He calls in Freddy Otash. The freewheeling Freddy O. Tainted ex-cop, defrocked private eye, dope fiend, and freelance extortionist. A man who lives by the maxim "Opportunity is Love." Freddy gets to work.

Private investigator Jessica Shaw is used to getting anonymous tips. But after receiving a photo of a three-year-old kidnapped from Los Angeles twenty-five years ago, Jessica is stunned to recognize the little girl as herself. Eager for answers, Jessica heads to LA’s dark underbelly. When she learns that her biological mother was killed the night she was abducted, Jessica’s determined to solve a case the police have forgotten.

It’s been twenty years since Madison James had any kind of success in Hollywood. Now she’s disappeared and a TikTok sleuth has found her purse discarded in a Los Angeles park. The news spreads like wildfire across a nation hungry for celebrity tragedy, and the struggling actress’s mysterious disappearance quickly becomes a national obsession. Detectives Sarah Delaney and Rob Moreno of the LAPD Missing Persons Unit take the case.

First heard on network radio in 1948, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar chronicled the adventures of freelance insurance investigator Johnny Dollar, "the man with the action-packed expense account."

For 14 years, it was one of the most popular detective shows on the air, lasting until the final days of network radio drama in 1962. Each story started with a phone call from an insurance executive calling on Johnny Dollar to investigate an unusual claim. His investigations usually required him to travel to distant locales and often involved murder.

Private investigator Jessica Shaw is leading a quiet life in a Californian desert community, where she spends her days working low-level cases. But when a former resident asks Jessica to help her sister, Rue Hunter - a convicted murderer whose execution is days away - Jessica can’t resist the offer. Rue doesn't remember what happened the night two high school students were killed thirty years ago, but everybody in town is certain she’s guilty.

This collection contains 12 of the greatest detective shows ever broadcast during the golden age of radio. You'll hear Sydney Greenstreet as Nero Wolfe, Howard Duff as Sam Spade, Tom Conway and Nigel Bruceas Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, Dick Powell as Richard Diamond, Edmond O'Brien as Johnny Dollar, and Les Tremayne as Nick Charles, a.k.a. "The Thin Man" - plus many more gumshoes, including Boston Blackie, Philip Marlowe, The Fat Man, and others.

Created in 1934 by American mystery author Rex Stout, Nero Wolfe is one of the most iconic private investigators in crime fiction. As Watson did for Holmes, Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's confidential assistant, narrates the cases of the detective genius. Wolfe was an armchair detective who rarely left his luxurious brownstone in New York, so Archie would collect the facts and report back. Wolfe would probably not have taken on many cases had he not needed his client's money to pay for his two true passions: fine food and his orchid collection.

Here are 12 episodes from the greatest detective shows ever broadcast during the golden age of radio, with the legendary stars that made them great. You'll hear Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson, Sydney Greenstreet as Nero Wolfe, Howard Duff as Sam Spade, Chester Morris as Boston Blackie, Dick Powell as Richard Diamond, and Jack Webb as Dragnet's Sergeant Joe Friday, plus more gumshoes like Philip Marlowe, Bulldog Drummond, Michael Shayne, and Johnny Dollar.

Blanche Tucker longs to escape her drop-dead dull life in tiny Boynton, Oklahoma. Then dashing Graham Peyton roars into town. Posing as a film producer, Graham convinces the ambitious but naive teenager to run away with him to a glamorous new life. Instead, Graham uses her as cruelly as a silent-picture villain. Taking charge of her life, she makes it to Hollywood. Six years later, Blanche has transformed into the celebrated Bianca LaBelle, the reclusive star of a series of adventure films, and Peyton's remains are discovered on a Santa Monica beach. Is there a connection?

Dani, a former actress and a personal manager to the stars of tomorrow, and her best friend A.J. Tarentella, maneuver through the puzzling and dangerous underworld of Los Angeles, finding themselves racing for survival. From the very beginning, they were destined to be a lethal and dynamic combination.

Lyon, portrayed by Wilms Herbert, ran the International Detective Bureau, a small private investigations firm in downtown Los Angeles, with often oversized ambitions. Regan handled rough assignments from Lyon, with whom he was not always on good terms. Actor Jack Webb played Regan as tough and tenacious, with a dry sense of humor. The series ended when Webb left the show in December 1948, but was resurrected in October 1949 with a new cast.

Michael Shayne, "the reckless, redheaded Irishman", was a popular hard-boiled detective created by crime novelist Brett Halliday. In the novels, Michael Shayne settled in Miami just after WWII, making crime pay by fighting it with a license and an attitude. Like Mike Hammer and Philip Marlowe, Shayne was a loner. The backstory on Mike is that he was happily married, but it hit him hard when his wife was tragically murdered. Grief stricken, Shayne loses himself in his work as a private eye, prowling the dark streets of the city.

Hollywood, 1947. Jack Shannon, a former actor whose promising career was interrupted by the war and ended by a facial scar sustained in combat, is now a studio publicist. He jokes that the only thing he knows about publicity is how to suppress it, but that, in fact, is his real job. He’s a fixer who babysits the studio’s stars and covers up their bad behavior. Everything changes for Jack when Savannah Stevens enters his life.

If you're looking for a hard-boiled detective in the mold of Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade, Dick DeWitt is not your hero. He's not very bright, oozes insensitivity, lacks class, and epitomizes what we now recognize as political incorrectness. A Tinseltown starlet wannabe needs help. She has become involved with two sleazes - a fast-talking lecherous movie agent and a mean, corrupt cop. She's kept two little black books that could ruin the men, and that's why she needs an intelligent, tough-as-nails guy to protect her.

Eddy Hart is back! The not-so-hard-boiled private investigator becomes involved in the 1940s Hollywood scene. When Eddy's old flame, now Hollywood's hottest star, needs help, Eddy finds himself investigating a blackmail scheme that involves mobsters, movie stars, corrupt politicians and businessmen, and an international assassin. Through it all, Eddy has to sort out his feelings for his old flame, keep himself and his fiancée out of the gossip columns, and make sure he isn't the assassin's next victim.

Hollywood 1922: Eigentlich hat Hardy Engel genug von der Filmbranche. Doch dann bittet ihn der Starregisseur William Desmond Taylor, dem Hardy noch einen Gefallen schuldig ist, um Hilfe. Als Hardy seine Wohnung betritt, liegt Taylor erschossen am Boden. Nun selbst Verdächtiger im Visier der Staatsanwaltschaft, hat Hardy keine Wahl: Er muss den wahren Mörder finden. Doch der Kreis der Verdächtigen ist groß, denn der stille Taylor scheint neben vielen Liebhaberinnen auch eine Menge Feinde gehabt zu haben.

Ermittlungen im Hollywood der 20er-Jahre - die Zeit der Stummfilme und der Prohibition, ein wahres Sündenbabel. Hardy Engel, deutscher Privatdetektiv, wird von der schönen und unberechenbaren Pepper Murphy beauftragt, das Starlet Virginia Rappe zu finden. Kurz darauf stirbt Virginia auf mysteriöse Weise, nachdem sie eine Party des beliebten Komikers "Fatty" Arbuckle besucht hat. Dieser wird beschuldigt, sie brutal misshandelt und tödlich verletzt zu haben.

Created by Blake Edwards of The Pink Panther fame, Richard Diamond, Private Detective came to NBC radio in 1949 starring film actor and singer Dick Powell. Powell had recently played Philip Marlowe in the popular RKO film Murder, My Sweet and jumped at the chance to play a suave detective on radio.