Vintage Classic Radio

This week on Tuesday Night Detectives, Vintage Classic Radio turns to espionage and international intrigue with two very different adventures from radio’s golden age. We begin with Counterspy in The Magic Murder, first broadcast on April 4, 1950. When agent Harry Peters is critically wounded while questioning a European scientist working on a secret American government project, David Harding begins a race to identify the gunman while Peters’ life hangs in the balance. An unusual clue soon makes the case stranger still, leading Harding into a mystery involving a dead man, a vital medical operation and a dangerous secret. Then Herbert Marshall stars as Ken Thurston in The Man Called X with Rembrandt in Rio, originally broadcast on June 26, 1947. Four valuable Rembrandt paintings have been replaced with convincing copies at a New York gallery, sending Thurston to Rio de Janeiro in search of the originals. Waiting for him are an isolated island, a suspicious household, a dead artist and a warning that the case is far more dangerous than a simple art theft. Secret agents, stolen masterpieces and murder take us from Washington intrigue to the shores of Rio in this week’s Tuesday Night Detectives from Vintage Classic Radio.

This week on Sunday Night Playhouse, Vintage Classic Radio presents Norman Corwin’s landmark 1941 broadcast We Hold These Truths, originally heard across America on December 15, 1941. Written to mark the 150th anniversary of the United States Bill of Rights, the programme took on added significance when it aired just eight days after Pearl Harbor. Jimmy Stewart leads an extraordinary cast that includes Orson Welles, Lionel Barrymore, Edward G. Robinson, Walter Huston and Walter Brennan, with music by Bernard Herrmann. Part history, part drama and part reflection, We Hold These Truths considers the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the responsibilities that come with protecting them. At a time when questions of free expression, individual rights and the limits of government power are once again part of public debate, Corwin’s words feel strikingly relevant more than eighty years after they were first broadcast. Join us for one of the most significant broadcasts of radio’s golden age, this Sunday on Sunday Night Playhouse from Vintage Classic Radio.

This week on Saturday Matinee, Vintage Classic Radio brings together comedy, romance and live jazz from the 1940s. We begin with Romance and Bringing Up Baby, starring Michael O'Shea and Joan Alexander and first broadcast on July 24, 1945, bringing the famous screwball story to radio with all the misunderstandings, complications and romantic chaos that made it such an enduring comedy. Next comes The Life of Riley in Baxter Goes to New York, originally broadcast on April 30, 1944, as Chester A. Riley once again finds everyday family life becoming rather more complicated than expected. And to close the programme, we step away from the studio for Billie Holiday live at the Embassy Theatre in Los Angeles, recorded on April 24, 1946 — a chance to hear one of the great voices of twentieth-century jazz before a live audience singing "Strange Fruit" and other classics. Romantic confusion, family comedy and Billie Holiday on stage: settle in for another Saturday Matinee from Vintage Classic Radio.

This Halloween, Friday Night Noir presents three chilling tales of supernatural terror, psychological suspense, and macabre mystery from radio's golden age. We begin with Lights Out – “Poltergeist,” written by Arch Oboler and originally broadcast on October 20, 1942. An encounter in a snow-covered graveyard leads to a series of increasingly disturbing events. Next, Suspense – “The House in Cypress Canyon,” originally broadcast on December 5, 1946, starring Robert Taylor. A mysterious manuscript reveals a terrifying secret hidden within an otherwise ordinary home. Finally, Inner Sanctum Mysteries – “Corpse for Halloween,” originally broadcast on October 31, 1949, brings the evening to a fittingly macabre conclusion with a sinister tale of murder and mystery. Dim the lights, draw the curtains, and settle in for a Halloween evening of classic radio suspense on Vintage Classic Radio.

  Tuesday Night Detectives – Halloween Edition This Halloween, Tuesday Night Detectives takes a turn towards the eerie and unexplained, with two chilling mysteries from the golden age of radio. First, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce return as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in “The Case of the Demon Barber,” from The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, originally broadcast on January 28, 1946. A sinister title, a dark mystery, and a case that calls for the keenest powers of deduction await the famous detective and his loyal companion. Then, in “The Haunted Rocking Chair,” originally broadcast on May 13, 1945, Nick Carter, Master Detective ventures into the unsettling world of the seemingly supernatural. Is something otherworldly at work, or is there a more earthly explanation behind the haunting? Nick Carter must uncover the truth. From sinister barbers to haunted furniture, this Halloween double bill offers a deliciously eerie evening of suspense, strange happenings, and classic detective intrigue. Dim the lights, draw the curtains, and settle in for a Halloween night of mystery on Vintage Classic Radio.

This Sunday Night Playhouse brings you the Campbell Playhouse presentation of Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, with Orson Welles and Gertrude Lawrence. Longfellow Deeds is a kind-hearted tuba player from a small Vermont town who unexpectedly inherits twenty million dollars and sets off for New York. There he meets lawyers who want his money, a clever reporter who pokes fun at him in print, and a city that can’t believe a man this decent exists. When he decides to give his fortune to struggling farmers, those around him try to have him declared insane, and a courtroom hearing decides whether goodness and sanity can go together. It’s a warm and funny story of an ordinary man against the greedy and the powerful.

This week on Tuesday Night Detectives, two very different private investigators, back to back. We open with Richard Diamond, Private Detective and "The Private Eye Test," broadcast 19 March 1950. Dick Powell stars as the wisecracking former cop turned private eye, this time sitting a formal licensing exam alongside every other private investigator in the city. It should be routine, until the staged corpse in the training exercise turns out to be a real one, and Diamond has to solve a murder from inside the exam room itself. Then we visit The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and "The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez," broadcast 12 February 1940, starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson. Professor Coram's secretary is found stabbed to death in a locked study at Yoxley Old Place, his dying words pointing only to "the professor." The single clue left behind is a pair of golden pince-nez, and from that alone, Holmes builds one of his most purely deductive solutions in the entire canon. Two very different detectives, working two very different continents. Visit us at vintageclassicradiopodcast.com. Please share and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SiriusXM, Pandora, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Tonight on Sunday Night Playhouse — the very first dramatization of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca in any medium, broadcast 9 December 1938 as the debut episode of Campbell Playhouse. Orson Welles stars as Maxim de Winter and Margaret Sullavan as the unnamed second Mrs. de Winter, with Mildred Natwick as the formidable Mrs. Danvers and Agnes Moorehead as Mrs. Van Hopper. This broadcast came just weeks after Welles's infamous War of the Worlds panic, and it marks a turning point for his radio work: the unsponsored Mercury Theatre on the Air had just become the Campbell's Soup-sponsored Campbell Playhouse, bringing in guest stars from outside Welles's regular company for the first time. Rebecca itself hadn't yet been filmed — Alfred Hitchcock's celebrated adaptation was still a year and a half away — which means this broadcast isn't an echo of a film you already know. It's the story finding its voice for the very first time, anywhere. Bernard Herrmann's original score for this broadcast later became the foundation of his score for the 1943 film. The evening closed with Du Maurier herself, interviewed live from London. Visit us at vintageclassicradiopodcast.com. Please share and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SiriusXM, Pandora, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

This week on Saturday Matinee, three of the finest half-hours in golden-age American comedy, back to back. We open with The Jack Benny Program's "The Racetrack" (12 March 1950), home to the most famous silence in American comedy — the pause after a mugger demands "your money or your life," which held a studio audience in laughter for nearly a minute. Then Bud gives Lou no end of grief over his sudden ambition to go to sea in The Abbott and Costello Show's "Lou Wants to Join the Merchant Marines" (25 January 1945). We close with Eve Arden's sharp-tongued Connie Brooks getting the better of Principal Conklin in a sweltering classroom, in Our Miss Brooks' "Heat Wave" (7 August 1949). Good to be back on Saturdays. New broadcasts every week from Sunday Night Playhouse, Tuesday Night Detectives, Friday Night Noir, and Saturday Matinee. Visit us at vintageclassicradiopodcast.com. Please share and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SiriusXM, Pandora, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

This week on Friday Night Noir, two broadcasts from the same landmark month of CBS's Suspense — aired one week apart in May 1943, at the moment the series was establishing itself as the finest anthology drama on American radio. We begin with "The A.B.C. Murders," broadcast 18 May 1943, an adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1936 Hercule Poirot novel. A killer stalking England alphabetically — Andover, then Bexhill, then Churston, each victim announced in advance by a taunting letter signed only "A.B.C." — gives Christie's plot a ticking-clock urgency that suits the half-hour radio format extraordinarily well. Then, exactly one week later, came "Sorry, Wrong Number," broadcast 25 May 1943 and starring Agnes Moorehead as Mrs Stevenson — a bedridden woman who picks up her telephone one evening to hear two men on a crossed line calmly planning a murder scheduled for eleven-fifteen tonight. Moorehead performed the role seven times between 1943 and 1960; the 1943 broadcast is the original, and to many listeners it remains the definitive version. Two broadcasts from the same extraordinary month, when Suspense was proving what the genre could do. Settle in with the lights low. Visit us at vintageclassicradiopodcast.com. Please share and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SiriusXM, Pandora, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.