From Those Were the Days:

1935 - The radio program, Rhythm at Eight, made its debut. The star of the show was 24-year-old Ethel Merman. Though Merman would become a legend years later, she didn’t fare so well on radio. Her show was taken off the air after 13 weeks and Miss Merman returned to her first love, Broadway.
10:36:53 AM    comment []  trackback []  

“…that reckless, red-headed Irishman…”

Michael Shayne was a fictional sleuth created by Brett Halliday (a pseudonym for author Davis Dresser) who was first initiated into Kappa Delta Gumshoe (the fraternity for detectives) in the 1939 novel Dividend of Death. Dresser based the character on a “tall and rangy” brawler who once saved his life during a donnybrook in a Mexican cantina. The Shayne character would go on to appear in 69 novels, plus a long-running mystery magazine—and in 1941, was brought to the silver screen in Paramount’s Michael Shayne, Private Detective, an adaptation of Dividend that starred Lloyd Nolan as the titular sleuth and paved the way for six additional B-mysteries to follow. (The Michael Shayne character was also played by Hugh Beaumont—yes, Ward Cleaver…shamus!—in a much lower-budgeted PRC series beginning with 1946’s Murder is My Business.)

Shayne’s debut on network radio kicked off on October 16, 1944 with the Mutual-Don Lee series Michael Shayne, Private Detective, starring Wally Maher as the New Orleans-based Mike and Louise Arthur (and later Cathy Lewis) as his blonde bombshell girlfriend, Phyllis (Phyl) Knight. The program ran on Mutual’s West Coast network for two seasons, and moved coast-to-coast on October 15, 1946, running until November 11, 1947. Eight months later, a new Shayne series—appropriately titled The New Adventures of Michael Shayne—premiered on July 15, 1948 with Jeff Chandler in the part and the Phyl Knight character now history. (It always happens to the people you love, doesn’t it?) This show was a transcribed and syndicated series (though it was heard briefly over Mutual from May-July 1949 and occasionally ABC) and ran for two years (at the same time as Chandler was appearing as bashful biology teacher Philip Boynton on Our Miss Brooks). Michael Shayne returned on October 14, 1952 with ABC’s The Adventures of Michael Shayne—and so did Phyl, which found those crazy-mixed up kids out of the Big Easy and into New York. Judith Parrish was Phyl, and three actors—Donald Curtis (until November 1952), Robert Sterling and Vinton Hayworth—were all heard as Mike.

In listening to a pair of Shayne’s “new” adventures (with Chandler), I couldn’t help but notice that Mikey Boy has quite the iron constitution. He’s shot in his side in one show, receives two bullet nicks in the other—but the man is a regular Timex watch. Shayne also—in the tradition of radio’s Sam Spade, Johnny Dollar, and many others—narrates his adventures, as in this example from “The Case of the Man Who Lived Forever”:

So I was on my way across New Orleans to see Marina LaRoux, whose papa was waiting for death. 1612 Wentworth Street was a couple of minutes by cab in ordinary times—but these were not ordinary times, so it was taking me a half-hour to walk it. Yes, this had been a bad month for Little Mike—police headquarters had suspended my license for sixty days for being a shtunk. But even shtunks have stomachs…and creditors…and that last buck in my wallet was so lonely it was getting psychoneurotic. So, license or no license, I wasn’t letting Marina LaRoux get away…

Marina is a woman (with a very heavy French accent) who asks for Shayne’s assistance after her father is discovered murdered with the brand of a coiled snake on his forehead. It’s fairly standard stuff, although one of my very favorite noir actors, Charles McGraw, has a role in the drama—and Paul Frees does his superb Peter Lorre impression (the one that’s heard on the Spike Jones record, My Old Flame). The second episode I listened to, “The Case of the Hate That Killed” (10/19/49), is a much better entry: a man named Mark Sanderson (Peter Leeds) has been turned down for a policy by an insurance company, and he hires Mike to find out why. After being menaced by a thug (played by William Conrad), Mike makes short work of him—and he’s observed by Sanderson’s sister (Joan Banks, a.k.a. Mrs. Frank Lovejoy), which gives him the opportunity to be smooth with the ladies:

CELIA: Well, that was quite an exhibition…

SHAYNE: Oh….are they wearing revolvers with dinner dresses this year?

CELIA: Who are you?

SHAYNE: Mike Shayne…

CELIA: There’s a flagstone path here…let’s get around front…out of the shadows…

(SFX: rustling grass, walking)

SHAYNE: You must be Celia, Mark’s sister…do you, uh, have to keep pointing that gun at me?

CELIA: Yes…for a while…

SHAYNE: Well, anyhow, I’m glad to… (pause) oh…

CELIA: Yes?

SHAYNE: Oh my…

CELIA: What’s the matter, haven’t you ever seen a woman before?

SHAYNE: Not very often like you…is that really the color of your hair?

CELIA: My hair has been red since the day I was born... (pause) You’ve got…nice shoulders…

SHAYNE: Well, I like yours better…but you’re gonna catch cold in that outfit…

CELIA: You have what so many men lack these days…a sense of…virility and strength…

SHAYNE: That comes from eating all my vegetables…

Radio veterans Alan Reed and Eleanor Audley round out this episode’s cast, which gives this talented actor formerly known as Ira Grossel plenty of opportunity to demonstrate why a successful movie career was ultimately in the cards. Of the thirty episodes of Michael Shayne extant today, the bulk of them feature Chandler (three of them are from the Maher version and one from the 1952-53 ABC series). Like many of his radio gumshoe contemporaries—although much later than most—Michael Shayne eventually made the leap to the tube, in a NBC series than ran from September 30, 1960 to September 22, 1961. This version found the detective relocated to the beaches of Miami, a long way from his traditional "N’awlins" stomping grounds. The Shayne role was played by actor Richard Denning, who had co-starred alongside Lucille Ball in My Favorite Husband (1948-51) and was Pam North’s better half in the TV version of Mr. & Mrs. North (1952-54) (and the last season of the radio series, from 1954-55).
10:26:19 AM    comment []  trackback []