At the end of its 1945-46 season, Mutual Radio’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes went on its summer vacation. Listeners would have to wait until fall to continue to hear the thrilling exploits of the famed sleuth, as related by trusty sidekick Dr. John Watson (Nigel Bruce) to announcer Harry Bartell—who dutifully found time during each half-hour to extol the virtues of their sponsor, Petri Wines. But starting June 3, 1946, Harry would hawk his wares by stopping by a Nob Hill flat that fronted the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, in the summer replacement series The Casebook of Gregory Hood.

This cozy flat was the residence of Gregory Hood, “that celebrated importer and man about town,” as he was described in the program’s opening every week (Hood was also an amateur composer to boot). Hood owned an import company which dealt with rare antiquities and curios, and more likely than not had a story to tell about these artifacts—such narratives usually involving murder. As author Jim Cox observes in the essential reference of on-the-air detectives, Radio Crime Fighters:

The method of retelling the preceding action employed by Hood was one of several adapted for the airwaves. For 18 years, Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons—ardent fans of that venerable series will remember—took from his files and brought to his radio audiences “one of his most widely celebrated missing persons’ cases.” Creative people in the industry sought untapped techniques on main themes to apply to their dramas, hopefully infusing them with a distinctive edge.

Writers Anthony Boucher and Denis Green, whose successful collaboration on The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes made that series a standout among radio detective fans, continued their top-notch work here on The Casebook of Gregory Hood, with tight, well-plotted mysteries and intriguing characterizations. Hood was in many ways an extension of Holmes—Gregory even had a Watson-like assistant in the form of Sanderson “Sandy” Taylor, who functioned as the importer’s friend and attorney. When the producers of the Holmes series were unable to reach agreement with the Doyle estate on royalties, Hood continued on in Holmes’ timeslot throughout the 1946-47 season, and then appeared erratically on Mutual’s schedule at various times on both the East and West Coasts until December 1949 (the show was often used as a summer replacement). The program then moved to ABC in January 1950 for a brief run, and bowed out on that network with a couple of broadcasts in October 1951.

The role of Gregory Hood was originated by Gale Gordon, and after that there was a significant turnover of actors playing the bon vivant importer: Elliott Lewis, Jackson Beck, Paul McGrath, Martin Gabel and George Petrie were all heard as Hood at one time or another. The part of “Sandy” Taylor also saw revolving-door action in actors, with Bill Johnstone, Howard McNear and Carl Harper each having a turn at the role. In a pair of episodes that I listened to last night, the spotlight falls on Lewis and McNear—the first show, “The Sad Clown” (10/7/46) involves some valuable cameos that have been smuggled into the United States, and are brought to Gregory’s attention by a melancholy clown who has to communicate via a honking horn in the tradition of Harpo Marx and Clarabell of Howdy Doody. After that, I sampled “The Eloquent Corpse” (10/14/46), which finds Hood up to his eyeballs in a murder over a 16th century Korean coin collection. The esoteric subject matter of these shows, and the fine scripting by Messrs. Boucher and Green, make this show a better-than-average entry in the radio detective sweepstakes, plus hearing a youthful Lewis, McNear and Bartell is a real hoot—Harry does a plug for Petri involving a recipe for canned peaches and muscatel that has to be heard to be believed. Eighteen episodes of the series are extant today for modern OTR audiences to enjoy.

Sherlock Holmes aficionados are no doubt aware that the famous resident of 221-B Baker Street was based on an actual individual—Dr. Joseph Bell, a professor that taught Sir Arthur Conan Doyle while the future officer attended medical school. The fictional Gregory Hood also had a real-life counterpart: a San Francisco importer named Richard Gump (there’s a brief mention of a “Dick Gump” in “The Sad Clown”), who often assisted Boucher and Green whenever the two scribes needed a clarification on certain aspects of the import business.
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