From Those Were the Days:

1936 - The Lux Radio Theater moved from New York City to Hollywood. Cecil B. DeMille, the program’s host on the NBC Blue network, introduced Clark Gable and Marlene Dietrich in The Legionnaire and the Lady.

1961 - There was a new sound in the air this day. FM multiplex stereo broadcasting was enjoyed for the first time by listeners to FM radio in Schenectady, NY, Los Angeles and Chicago. The FCC adopted the standard a year later.
11:09:29 AM    comment []  trackback []  

“Saints preserve us, Mr. Keen! He’s got a gun!”

Jim Cox, whose authoritative and exhaustively-researched books on OTR have made him the James Boswell of Radio’s Golden Age, announced on the Old-Time Radio Digest a few says ago that his eagerly-awaited tome Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons: A Complete History and Episode Log of Radio's Most Durable Detective has finally hit the bookstores. And so, I feel it’s only fitting to take a cursory glance at this series—one of the longest-running detective dramas in the history of radio.

I may have mentioned this before, but my interest in old-time radio began to take root when I was about thirteen or so, and I quickly learned that asking my parents to reminisce about their listening experiences was an exercise in futility. My mother remembers early television more so than radio (though she does look back rather fondly on those times when she listened to The Lone Ranger at her grandmother’s—Great-Grandmother didn’t own a TV set), and my father would often react to my radio-related questions with a disgust that seemed to intimate that radio was merely an invention of the many idle hands at The Devil’s Workshop, Inc. (No, he’s not Amish—he just doesn’t remember having time for radio when he was busy walking three miles in a blizzard uphill sans shoes. Seriously, some of the stories he tells would give Charles Dickens sleepless nights.) But for some unexplained reason, he remembered Mr. Keen—I don’t know if it was a favorite of the family or because it’s a series not easily forgotten, but he was able to provide many a detail, even the show’s theme song (Someday I’ll Find You).

When Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons first debuted over the Blue Network on October 12, 1937, the show’s title accurately described Keen’s stock-in-trade; the “kindly old investigator” tracked down individuals who had mysteriously vanished, leaving behind their families, homes, jobs and other day-to-day activities. Keen (he never had a first name, unless it was “Peachy”) was assisted in these duties by an Irishman named Mike Clancy. Mike wasn’t much of a brainiac (the quote that comprises the title of this post was a semi-catchphrase that he seemed to use on the show every week) but he could use the necessary brawn when the situation called for it. Bennett Kilpack played kindly ol' Keen throughout most of the program’s run, as well as Philip Clarke and Arthur Hughes, while Jim Kelly took the role of Clancy. The series originally aired as a thrice-weekly fifteen-minute serial from 1937-43 (the show moved to CBS in 1942), providing more than ample time for Keen to solve even the most baffling of disappearances.

Beginning November 11, 1943, the program changed its format to that of a half-hour weekly offering—and though the title and theme song remained, Keen branched out into investigating murders. (OTR historian John Dunning jokingly observes, “The half-hour series was strictly murder.”) I listened to an April 23, 1952 broadcast (“The Mother’s Plea Murder Case”) at work last night, and you can sort of get the gist of the series in this episode, in which a wronged wife angrily confronts her husband’s secretary—who’s a bit of a homewrecker:

(SFX: doorbell rings, door opens)

SHIRLEY: Yes?

AGNES: Are you Miss Shirley Spears?

SHIRLEY: Yes, but…

AGNES: I’m Mrs. Gilbert Gray…

SHIRLEY: Mrs. Gilbert Gray? (icily) Come in… (SFX: door closes) Well? What do you want with me?

AGNES: Miss Spears…I threw away pride…self-respect…all the things I value to come here and plead with you…for the sake of my children and my home…

SHIRLEY: Okay, you did…so what?

AGNES: This morning my husband Gilbert asked me for a divorce…so he could marry you…

SHIRLEY: I told him that was the only way he could get me…I’ve got some pride of my own…

AGNES: You’re young and attractive…I can’t believe you’re in love with my husband…

SHIRLEY: Maybe we both love him for the same reason, Mrs. Gray…to slice it cold, I mean dollars…

AGNES: I love him because he’s my husband…because he’s the father of my children…who adore him…

SHIRLEY (heavy sarcasm): Oh, don’t make me cry…it ruins my makeup…

AGNES: If it’s money you want, I’ll give you everything I have…

SHIRLEY: How much is that?

AGNES: Twenty thousand dollars…

SHIRLEY (laughing) Twenty thousand against his cool million? Don’t make me laugh…

AGNES: You’re cheap! And vulgar, and horrible!!!

(SFX: gunshot, scream, body falls to floor)

AGNES: She’s…she’s dead…I’ve got to get out of here…without being seen… (SFX: door open, footsteps running) But how? How???

Now, to be perfectly honest—I applauded the moment that Shirley got shot because…well, because she’s cheap! And vulgar, and horrible! But let me allow Jim Cox to explain the show’s set-up, via an entry from Radio Crime Fighters:

The scriptwriter was cautious enough to avoid having the target release the name of the killer before he died, however, or else there would have been little for Keen to do. Someone close to the victim would subsequently visit Keen’s office to plead for his assistance in solving the homicide. That friend or relative’s effusive gratitude to Keen for taking the case had a hollow ring to it—after all, that was the job he was engaged by clients to do, and since he was readily able to drop everything and visit the crime scene at once, it habitually appeared that he was awaiting a new case to provide his bread and butter.

This episode sort of deviates from the normal modus operandi in that it is Agnes (Bryna Raeburn) herself who goes to Mr. Keen for help—and Keen advises her to turn herself in to the cops. With Clancy in tow, he then proceeds to pay her hubby Gilbert (Ned Wever) a social call:

KEEN: Mr. Gray…you seem as firmly convinced that your wife is guilty of murder…as I am convinced she’s not…

GRAY: Mr. Keen…I realize the position she’s in…and I will get her out myself…I know exactly how to do it, and very quickly…

KEEN: How, Mr. Gray? By confessing you are the murderer?

GRAY: What’s that?

KEEN: As I understand the situation, you asked your wife for a divorce so you could marry the murdered Shirley Spears…

GRAY: Did my wife tell you that?

KEEN: Yes…and she also informed me that the fatal shot was fired almost the instant the murdered girl made the statement that the only reason she was attempting to break up your home and marry you was…as she put it, “for your dollars”…

GRAY: What?

KEEN: If you were concealed in the apartment, and overheard that statement…

GRAY: I wasn’t in Shirley Spears’ apartment when my wife was there, Mr. Keen…so I didn’t overhear anything…and I didn’t kill her…

KEEN: The police will undoubtedly bring up that possibility, Mr. Gray…I’ve drawn no conclusions myself…

GRAY: Mr. Keen…I’m sure you rate me among the lowest of the low…and I am…my wife is the most wonderful woman in the world…and few men have children like ours…I must have been out of my mind to involve myself with a girl like Shirley…

KEEN: Remorse often comes too late…long after the harm is done…

If Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons sounds a little…soap opera-ish, it’s because it originated from the “radio fiction factory” of Frank and Anne Hummert. (Frank received on-air credit for the writing, but the scripts were actually churned out by scribes like Lawrence Klee, Bob Shaw, Barbara Bates and Stedman Coles.) John Dunning is no particular fan of the series, observing that “it employed all the stereotypes, heavy dialogue, and trite plotting of its daytime cousins” and “it appealed to a lowest common denominator.” So why is the show so popular with old-time radio fans today? Simple…it’s pretty doggone funny, in an unintentional sort of way.

My first exposure to Mr. Keen actually came about from listening to Mr. Trace, Keener Than Most Persons, a falling-down funny spoof frequently featured on Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding’s classic radio comedy show. I was curious to hear the source material, and after tucking a few Keens under my belt, I couldn’t help but marvel at the overall campiness of the series. Here’s a guy who seems to have the entire police force in awe of him—Keen’s police contact agrees to release Mrs. Gray from jail, but only on Keen’s “say-so”—when in actuality, most of his cases were solved not by top-notch investigative skills but either by coincidence, dumb luck, or a stupid remark made by the guilty party. I swear, they treat this guy with kid gloves—I’ll bet Sam Spade or Richard Diamond would have given their eyeteeth for that kind of cooperation.

And speaking of cooperation, Keen often explains away his utter disregard for police procedure by 1) tramping into crime scenes and routinely swiping fingerprinted objects that may be essential to the investigation, 2) thinking nothing of getting a search warrant to ransack a victim or suspect’s house, 3) never letting the police in on conversations he’s had with suspects nor passing on relevant info to investigative authorities and 4) arresting people without having the power to do so with “We usually work along with the police.” I hope no one tells John Ashcroft about this “kindly old investigator.”

Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons enjoyed a healthy eighteen-year stint over radio, ending its run not—as previously reported on this blog—on April 19, 1955 but on September 26 of that same year. Over the years, the series had a variety of sponsors: Bisodol, Kolynos toothpaste, Chesterfield cigarettes, American Chicle, etc., and there are nearly sixty broadcasts extant today for modern-day listeners to revel in. It’s ample evidence that not every show during the Golden Age of Radio was “golden”—but I gotta admit, it sure is fun.
11:07:09 AM    comment []  trackback []  

On the bookshelf

I’ll readily confess that I’ve yet to order Jim’s brand-spanking-new book on Mr. Keen—this is something that I hope to remedy next payday—but I would like to plug another recent old-time radio tome that I just finished reading last night, and would heartily recommend to any OTR fan: It’s That Time Again 2!: More New Stories of Old-Time Radio.

It’s a sequel to It’s That Time Again! , a wonderful collection of OTR published in 2002 by Ben Ohmart’s Bear Manor Media and edited by the Ben-meister himself. In this second book, the renowned Jim Harmon (whose seminal The Great Radio Heroes may very well have been the first book I ever read on The Hobby—I’ve even got the original paperback in storage somewhere, the one I purchased for a quarter at a library sale) rides tall in the editor’s saddle, not only contributing a pair of short stories (based on The Avenger and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) but an excellent forward to the collection that laments the fact that radio isn’t ever coming back (wryly titled “The Impossible Dream”).

Every one of the stories in this collection is a 24-karat gem, but among my favorites are Joseph Cromarty’s nifty Richard Diamond pastiche “Fall From Grace,” Jack French’s whiz-bang Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders escapade “The Adventure of the Lady Prospector,” and Martin Grams, Jr.’s Columbia Workshop tribute “A Drink For the Damned.” Donnie Pitchford, chief “zekative ossifer” of the National Lum & Abner Society has encored with another dandy L&A tale called “Murder in Pine Ridge” (Donnie’s “A Pine Ridge Christmas Carol” is in the first collection, and is one of my favorites), and there’s even a trio of first-rate horror tales: T. Wayne Clay’s “Last of the Legares” (The Hermit’s Cave), Christopher Conlon’s “Later Than You Think” (Lights Out), and Richard A. Lupoff’s “The Peltonville Horror” (The Witch’s Tale). Finally, I regaled in the pleasure of Laura Wagner’s “The Fred Allen Murder Case,” an effort that features my two radio comedy idols, Jack Benny and Fred Allen. Take my word for it—an old-time radio fan cannot be without this book.
9:51:39 AM    comment []  trackback []