Showing results by author "Original Radio Broadcast" in All Categories

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar debuted in 1948 and endured for 14 years as one of the most popular programs of latter day radio drama. In fact, it became the last network drama when it ultimately signed off the air in 1962. An eminently appealing character, Dollar was pragmatic, flirtatious, and sympathetic (to a point) - better at reserving judgment than he was at restraining his impulses. This set brings you the voices of all eight men who took on the role of "America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator" - from the well-known to the obscure.

Fred Allen specialized in literate wordplay, lacerating satire, and a squinty-eyed critique of the passing scene. His style was entirely his own: the slate-pencil whine of his voice, the ludicrously-named supporting characters, and the small-town-cum-big-city rattle of his dialogue. Join him in a promenade through parody, along with co-stars Portland Hoffa, Alan Reed, Kenny Delmar, Minerva Pious, John Brown, Charlie Cantor, and Parker Fennelly. Even Fred’s guest stars jump into the jest!

Here comes the cowboy hero who took 1950 by storm - thundering across the West of your own wild imagination! Dressed in his famous black suit and riding his trusty horse Topper, it’s Hopalong Cassidy in 16 original radio adventures! William Boyd stars as Hoppy, with Joseph Duval as California Carlson. Though most of their adventures are in the general vicinity of the Bar 20 ranch, our heroes do venture out on occasion for exploits in the wider world. Listen in as they encounter scoundrels and schemes from the frontier to the formidable streets of New York!

Doses of concentrated thrills and pure, raw excitement are delivered directly on the heels of the most explosive musical theme in radio - a crashing rendition of Mussorgsky's "Night On Bald Mountain." Produced and directed by William N. Robson, Norman MacDonnell, and Antony Ellis - and featuring stories by Rudyard Kipling, Ambrose Bierce, and more - Escape is capable of chilling spines as expertly as it accelerates heartbeats.

Walk the streets of Dodge City with William Conrad as Marshal Matt Dillon in 20 masterpieces of western storytelling. Dillon was not a straight-backed rider with a steely jaw. He was a man who had seen too much, a survivor of conflicts he'd rather have avoided…a man who knew only too well what errors of judgment could cost on the frontier. Parley Baer played Dillon's sidekick Chester, a seemingly naive yokel who was nevertheless as cold-blooded as Dillon when occasion demanded.

Jim French, the producer-director of Imagination Theatre, kept the tradition of great radio drama alive for nearly 40 years. He combined old-time skills with new-time production values - and here are 17 thought-provoking thrillers to prove it! In this collection, you'll hear favorites from his stock company, actors from radio's "Golden Age", and performers better known for their television work. You'll even hear a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who guest stars as a writer of horror novels!

For gamblers, burlesque queens, murderers and innocents, comedy and tragedy were found in equal measure on the streets of Damon Runyon's Manhattan. Runyon, one of the most popular and widely-read figures of the Golden Age of the American Short Story, found his work was cut to measure for success in the most verbal medium of all: radio drama. John Brown stars as the glib Broadway, whose scene-setting brings a distinctive unifying touch to these fourteen digitally remastered episodes of the classic Damon Runyon Theatre radio series.

Presented here are Western stories of unparalleled realism and uncompromising emotional complexity. Marshal Matt Dillon (William Conrad) doesn't revel in violence, but he uses it because he lives in a violent place at a violent time, where only the violent can survive.

The ultra-realistic crime dramas of Dragnet were tight, tense, and always on target. Guided by Jack Webb from its radio premiere in 1949 right through to the series' end, the medium's most memorable police procedural never cut corners in its meticulous recreation of crime, investigation, and punishment. Follow LAPD Sgt. Joe Friday and his partners, Sgts. Ben Romero and Frank Smith, in 20 real-life cases from both the early weeks of the program's run and its later years!

By the 1956-57 season, Gunsmoke had reached the peak of its dramatic power as radio’s foremost adult western, with its powerful scripts and careful characterizations. William Conrad leads the cast as Marshal Matt Dillon, along with Parley Baer as Chester, Howard McNear as Doc, and Georgia Ellis as Kitty. The citizens of Dodge City, Kansas emerged as living, breathing embodiments of frontier America in radio dramas that represent the medium at its most potent. Experience 27 hard-hitting adventures from this landmark season in this collection!

John Dehner stars as J.B. Kendall, a reporter for the London Times who writes and fights his way through the Wild West. Roaming the territories in search of "colorful and unusual accounts", he has regular brushes with both the famous and the infamous. This 10-compact disc collection features 21 episodes of the classic adult Western created, produced, written, and directed by radio legend Antony Ellis - including the series' audition recording, starring Ben Wright in the lead role.

From the late 1940s through the 1950s, in a world where space travel and nuclear annihilation were no longer merely the stuff of fantasy, science fiction began to achieve a new popularity. And the work of noted genre writers began to be adapted in movies and radio programs. Based (however implausibly) on science, these radio broadcasts reflected the depths of the nation's fears and the boundlessness of its imagination. The science fiction series presented here offer adventures that seek to find a place for humanity in a world of machines.

Phil Harris was brash, egotistical, and charming as hell. Alice Faye was regarded by George Gershwin and Cole Porter as the best female singer in Hollywood. Together, they starred in one of the most uninhibited and funny comedy series on radio. Benefiting from the likeability of its stars, a wonderfully cast group of supporting players, and one of the most prolific and clever writing teams of the mid-20th century (Ray Singer and Dick Chevillat), The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show is a complete delight. This collection features 20 digitally remastered programs.

Imagine radio noir in the grand tradition - the mystery, excitement, and adventure of the medium's Golden Age. Now imagine that this has been combined with all of the technical polish that 21st century audio theatre techniques have to offer. That's The Adventures of Harry Nile. Produced by modern-radio legend Jim French, this collection features cases set in the 1940s. A hard-boiled but gentle-souled private investigator takes to the rain-swept streets of the Pacific Northwest.

Your nerves, drawn wire-taut. Your heart, thundering in your chest. Your knuckles, drawn white against your chair. Your mind, leaving the comfort and confinement of "the four walls of today" to tempt the whims of the high seas, to venture to the frozen tundra, the mysterious east, the wild west...to travel to Istanbul, to Europe, and to nightmares. The only limit to the excitement in these 20 episodes of red-blooded adventure drama is the scope of your own imagination.

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar takes a turn towards the hardboiled as film-noir favorite Edmond O'Brien takes over the role of America's Fabulous Freelance Insurance Investigator. His gritty, driven performance is well worth rediscovering. O'Brien's harder, more cynical Dollar brought him harder and more cynical clients…and adversaries. In this collection of original radio episodes from 1950-52, Johnny finds more than his quota of murder, mystery, and malfeasance.

Life in the little town of Valley Springs isn't as quiet as you might think. Beneath the wholesome exterior roils an inner world of gossip and backbiting, crime and intrigue, and plenty of romantic frustration for the young widow Mary Foster Lord. From the golden age of the radio soap opera comes 32 consecutive episodes of this daytime favorite, featuring Kay Campbell as Mary. Parker Fennelly co-stars as her down-to-earth father, with Agnes Young, Kenneth Lynch, Elaine Rost, and William "Bill" Quinn filling out the cast.

Wherever there’s trouble - there’s Paladin. He is called on to find missing people, to find a way to protect those who have been targeted by the unscrupulous, to find criminals, and to find a resolution. John Dehner stars as the peripatetic champion of justice in twenty taut, thrilling tales of Western adventure from 1959. Ben Wright co-stars as Hey Boy, with Virginia Gregg as Miss Wong, in this series produced and directed by Norman Macdonnell.

There's nothing like The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, radio's best-written situation comedy - and here's 10 full hours to prove it! The show's sense of the absurd, its anything-goes anarchy, is as sharp and funny today as it was 70 years ago!

Radio Spirits is pleased to present 20 classic episodes of Suspense, one of radio's longest running and best mystery anthology series. This collection features programs from the early 1950s as produced and directed by Elliott Lewis. Suspense was well-known for its guest star performers and the shows presented here are no exception, featuring appearances by Dana Andrews, Joseph Cotton, Richard Widmark, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, Alan Ladd, Dennis Day, Fred MacMurray, Agnes Moorehead, William Bendix, Ronald Colman, Joan Crawford, Phil Harris and Alice Faye and more.