From Those Were the Days:

1943 - A comic strip came to radio, as Archie Andrews was heard on the Mutual Broadcasting System for the first time. Archie, Veronica and the gang stayed on radio for about ten years.

1949 - A crowd of 35,000 people paid tribute to radio personality Mary Margaret McBride at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, (one of the five boroughs that make up New York City). McBride was celebrating her 15th year in radio.
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“Even a lady can wash her hands in blood…”

By the time writer Lawrence Klee created the dramatic suspense anthology known as The Clock in 1946, he had already established himself as a highly respected radio scribe, contributing scripts to programs like Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons and The Fat Man. The Clock, which debuted over ABC Radio on November 3, 1946, had but a brief two-year run on the Life Savers network, but its attempt to bring something a little more thought-provoking to the airwaves deserves at least a little recognition.

“Sunrise and sunset…promise and fulfillment…birth and death…the whole drama of life is written in the sands of time.” Announcer Gene Kirby introduced The Clock each week with those words, which were then followed by a ticking metronome and a deep-voiced narrator identified as “Father Time”:

From the point of view of time, the world is filled with objects that are aged…the giant redwood trees in California, for example, were full grown when Marco Polo found his way to China…there are pyramids in Mexico that were already relics when King Tut was a schoolboy…and the deep canyons and crevasses which hold the tourists spellbound in Yellowstone Park count their birthdays in the millions…these venerable landmarks may have even proceeded Father Time himself…but there is still nothing in this world that is quite so old as yesterday’s newspaper…

The above narration is from a November 13, 1947 broadcast, in which a reporter named Eddie Evans (Joe DeSantis) is sent by his editor to interview one Francine Moulton—a wealthy widow recently acquitted of her husband’s murder. Eddie falls hard for the woman he dubs “Lady Moulton,” even to the point of being fired from his paper—but he doesn’t care, and he continues to romance Francine. He eventually proposes—but there’s just one still nagging question…was she really innocent?

The Clock originally broadcast from New York early on its run, relying on the fine talent in the Big Apple’s radio pool, particularly actors like DeSantis and Frost (Alice is best-remembered as Pam North to Joseph Curtin’s Jerry North on Mr. & Mrs. North). But beginning March 4, 1948, the program relocated to Hollywood under the aegis of “the master of Suspense,” William Spier—who populated the cast of the remaining dramas with members of his repertory company (Jeanette Nolan, William Conrad, Cathy and Elliott Lewis, etc.) until the show closed its doors May 27, 1948. (An Australian version of the show—that utilized Klee’s scripts—began broadcasting not too long after, and was even syndicated to U.S. radio stations.)

Four years later, Klee created another short-lived but equally memorable anthology in The Chase, which ran over NBC Radio from April 27, 1952-June 28, 1953. The Chase also contained suspenseful elements, but its content concentrated more on the adventurous concept of “the hunter and the hunted.” “Hunt the man down!” was heard at the beginning of each broadcast, accompanied by the bugle of a fox hunt and the baying of hounds. Sadly, Lawrence Klee passed away prematurely in the mid 50s (though he did dabble in early television, creating the series Man Against Crime), but his fame was such that the New York Public Library days after his death requested a collection of his scripts from his family in tribute.
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