From Those Were the Days:

1922 - Otto Krueger conducted the Detroit News Orchestra, the first known radio orchestra, which was heard on WWJ Radio in Detroit, MI. The Detroit News owned the radio station at the time.

1931 - WOR radio in New York City premiered The Witch’s Tale. The program was broadcast on the Mutual Broadcasting System (of which WOR was the flagship station) where it aired until 1938.
9:23:39 AM    comment []  trackback []  

“…the heavier brushless shaving cream for tender skins…”

The title of today’s post refers to the slogan for Molle (pronounced MO-LAY—accent grave, as W.C. Fields would say)—and like so many of the products from yesteryear, it’s largely forgotten today. But to old-time radio fans, it signifies a first-rate crime drama/mystery anthology entitled The Molle Mystery Theater, which debuted over NBC Radio September 7, 1943 and ruled the airwaves (through various name and format changes) until June 30, 1954.

In its original incarnation, the Molle Mystery Theater showcased “the best in mystery and detective fiction,” spanning the time frame between Edgar Allan Poe to Raymond Chandler. But it also drew upon the works of fledgling writers, providing fine adaptations in order to introduce these newcomers to the listening audience. Crime fiction connoisseur Geoffrey Barnes (the program’s host, as played by actor Bernard Lenrow) shares such a story on a May 17, 1946 broadcast that I listened to last night: “Killer Come Back to Me,” written by a novice author named…Ray Bradbury.

Before he established himself as one of the preeminent writers of the science-fiction and fantasy fields, Bradbury earned his bread-and-butter cranking out tales for detective and mystery pulps. In an introduction to a collection of his crime tales, he explained how he was influenced by author-screenwriter Leigh Brackett (The Big Sleep):

My hero and teacher was Leigh Brackett, who in my early years, met with me every Sunday at Muscle Beach, in Santa Monica, California. There to read my dreary imitations of her first rate detective tales. Most of my stories were written to please Ms. Leigh, to get an occasional “Well done!” or “This is your best yet!” I put myself on a regimen of writing one story a week for the rest of my life. I knew that without quantity there could never be any quality.

“Killer Come Back to Me” is certainly not going to make anyone forget “Zero Hour,” but it’s a fairly impressive Bradbury effort, as a young hood named Johnny Brodman (Richard Widmark) takes up with a gangster’s moll, Julie Parks (Alice Reinheart), who grooms and trains him to take the place of her deceased gangster love interest, Ricky Wolf—whom Johnny resembles in a slight fashion. (If it were a musical, it would be called My Fair Hoodlum.) The fact that Julie is still carrying a torch for a man who’s cash in his chips and is eager to make over a thug with a facial similarity has some disturbing Vertigo-like overtones—plus, Widmark gets to help himself to the scenery du jour as the young Brodman.

Widmark was, by the time of this broadcast, a certified radio veteran—with a resume that included Big Sister, Front Page Ferrell (in which he had the title role), Gangbusters, Inner Sanctum Mysteries and The Shadow. Announcer Dan Seymour mentions before the play gets underway that Widmark was wowing audiences in the stage production of Kiss Them For Me, and a year later, would be playing to packed movie houses in his over-the-top debut as the giggly, maniacal Johnny Udo ("Ya squoit!") in 20th Century-Fox’s Kiss of Death (1947).

The Molle Mystery Theater enjoyed a popular five-year run over NBC, and when it moved to CBS on June 29, 1948 the name of the program was shortened to Mystery Theater and was now sponsored by Sterling Drugs. This version of the series was produced by Frank and Anne Hummert, the formidable husband-and-wife team responsible for a veritable factory of radio programs, with a heavy emphasis on daytime serials and soaps. (For an amazing book on the history of the Hummerts, I highly recommend Jim Cox’s Frank and Anne Hummert's Radio Factory: The Programs and Personalities of Broadcasting's Most Prolific Producers.) Unfortunately, once Mystery Theater fell into the clutches of the Hummerts, the program became further and further mired in melodrama, “replete with stilted dialogue and cardboard characters” as OTR historian John Dunning relates in On the Air.

During the 1948-51 CBS run, Mystery Theater often filtered the stories through the sensibility of Inspector Hearthstone of the Death Squad, a Scotland Yard detective played by British actor Alfred Shirley. The character was tremendously popular, even appearing in a spinoff on CBS during the 1951-52 season entitled (what else?) Hearthstone of the Death Squad. Mystery Theater then jumped ship to the ABC Radio Network on October 3, 1951, where it remained until its departure in 1954. Anne and Frank supervised this series, too, with the main character being Inspector Mark Sabre (played by Robert Carroll, Les Damon and Bill Johnstone), along with sidekick Tim Maloney (Walter Burke, James Westerfield). During the 1953-54 season, the program became known as simply Mark Sabre.

According to Jay Hickerson, approximately fifty episodes of Mystery Theater are extant today to please the ear of many an old-time radio listener. I’d recommend the series very highly; especially for the catchy Molle jingle: It’s smooth/so smooth/it’s slick/so slick/it’s a smooth smooth slick slick shave you get/with M-O-L-L-E! (Thank you, and I hope I passed the audition.)
9:20:05 AM    comment []  trackback []