Vintage Classic Radio

This week on Tuesday Night Detectives, two very different private investigators, back to back. We open with Richard Diamond, Private Detective and "The Private Eye Test," broadcast 19 March 1950. Dick Powell stars as the wisecracking former cop turned private eye, this time sitting a formal licensing exam alongside every other private investigator in the city. It should be routine, until the staged corpse in the training exercise turns out to be a real one, and Diamond has to solve a murder from inside the exam room itself.
Then we visit The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and "The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez," broadcast 12 February 1940, starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson. Professor Coram's secretary is found stabbed to death in a locked study at Yoxley Old Place, his dying words pointing only to "the professor." The single clue left behind is a pair of golden pince-nez, and from that alone, Holmes builds one of his most purely deductive solutions in the entire canon.
Two very different detectives, working two very different continents. Visit us at vintageclassicradiopodcast.com. Please share and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SiriusXM, Pandora, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Tonight on Sunday Night Playhouse — the very first dramatization of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca in any medium, broadcast 9 December 1938 as the debut episode of Campbell Playhouse. Orson Welles stars as Maxim de Winter and Margaret Sullavan as the unnamed second Mrs. de Winter, with Mildred Natwick as the formidable Mrs. Danvers and Agnes Moorehead as Mrs. Van Hopper.
This broadcast came just weeks after Welles's infamous War of the Worlds panic, and it marks a turning point for his radio work: the unsponsored Mercury Theatre on the Air had just become the Campbell's Soup-sponsored Campbell Playhouse, bringing in guest stars from outside Welles's regular company for the first time. Rebecca itself hadn't yet been filmed — Alfred Hitchcock's celebrated adaptation was still a year and a half away — which means this broadcast isn't an echo of a film you already know. It's the story finding its voice for the very first time, anywhere. Bernard Herrmann's original score for this broadcast later became the foundation of his score for the 1943 film. The evening closed with Du Maurier herself, interviewed live from London.
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This week on Saturday Matinee, three of the finest half-hours in golden-age American comedy, back to back. We open with The Jack Benny Program's "The Racetrack" (12 March 1950), home to the most famous silence in American comedy — the pause after a mugger demands "your money or your life," which held a studio audience in laughter for nearly a minute. Then Bud gives Lou no end of grief over his sudden ambition to go to sea in The Abbott and Costello Show's "Lou Wants to Join the Merchant Marines" (25 January 1945). We close with Eve Arden's sharp-tongued Connie Brooks getting the better of Principal Conklin in a sweltering classroom, in Our Miss Brooks' "Heat Wave" (7 August 1949).
Good to be back on Saturdays. New broadcasts every week from Sunday Night Playhouse, Tuesday Night Detectives, Friday Night Noir, and Saturday Matinee.
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This week on Friday Night Noir, two broadcasts from the same landmark month of CBS's Suspense — aired one week apart in May 1943, at the moment the series was establishing itself as the finest anthology drama on American radio.
We begin with "The A.B.C. Murders," broadcast 18 May 1943, an adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1936 Hercule Poirot novel. A killer stalking England alphabetically — Andover, then Bexhill, then Churston, each victim announced in advance by a taunting letter signed only "A.B.C." — gives Christie's plot a ticking-clock urgency that suits the half-hour radio format extraordinarily well.
Then, exactly one week later, came "Sorry, Wrong Number," broadcast 25 May 1943 and starring Agnes Moorehead as Mrs Stevenson — a bedridden woman who picks up her telephone one evening to hear two men on a crossed line calmly planning a murder scheduled for eleven-fifteen tonight. Moorehead performed the role seven times between 1943 and 1960; the 1943 broadcast is the original, and to many listeners it remains the definitive version.
Two broadcasts from the same extraordinary month, when Suspense was proving what the genre could do. Settle in with the lights low.
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Tonight on Tuesday Night Detectives, two great radio detectives take on cases separated by nearly a decade of the golden age of radio.
First, Gerald Mohr stars as Raymond Chandler’s private detective Philip Marlowe in “The Panama Hat,” from The Adventures of Philip Marlowe. CBS’s Gerald Mohr series began in September 1948 and became the definitive radio incarnation of Chandler’s detective.
Then Bob Bailey takes over as America’s fabulous freelance insurance investigator in “The Royal Street Matter” from Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. By late 1956 the series had returned from its celebrated five-part serial format to weekly half-hour cases, with Bailey continuing as Johnny Dollar.
Between tonight’s two mysteries is an original Mayfield Cigarettes radio commercial, preserved here as a piece of period advertising and broadcasting history.
Settle in for another evening of mystery, hard-boiled detectives and classic radio drama on Vintage Classic Radio.
Tonight’s programmes:The Adventures of Philip Marlowe — “The Panama Hat”Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar — “The Royal Street Matter”
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After a summer's rest, Vintage Classic Radio is back on the air.
Tonight on Sunday Night Playhouse — the hour-long Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of Casablanca, broadcast 24 January 1944, a little over a year after the film's release. Hedy Lamarr stars as Ilsa Lund and Alan Ladd as Rick Blaine, with John Loder as Victor Laszlo.
Lux Radio Theatre was the most prestigious dramatic anthology on American radio — a full studio orchestra, a live audience, and a production budget that let the show stretch a film's story out to its natural hour-long shape rather than compressing it to thirty minutes. This version of Casablanca has more room to breathe than the shorter adaptations that followed it: more of Rick's café, more of the political tension in Vichy-controlled Morocco, more space for Lamarr and Ladd to build the weight of everything left unsaid between Rick and Ilsa before the story arrives at the airport.
Lamarr and Ladd were not the film's original stars, and that is precisely what makes this broadcast worth hearing on its own terms. It is not an echo of Bogart and Bergman — it is a different pair of actors finding their own way into the same story, at the height of their own careers, for an audience who mostly knew the tale already and wanted to hear it told again.
New broadcasts every week from Sunday Night Playhouse, Tuesday Night Detectives, Friday Night Noir, and Saturday Matinee. Thanks for your patience — we're glad to be back on the air.
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This week's Christmas holiday edition of Tuesday Night Detectives brings two hard-boiled mysteries with a season twist. First up is The Adventures of Sam Spade in "The 25", originally broadcast December 15, 1950, as America's most famous private eye follows a case where greed, suspicion, and a Christmas payoff collide in classic noir fashion. 
Then it's Rocky Fortune, produced by NBC and starring Frank Sinatra, in the offbeat holiday mystery, "The Plot to Murder Santa Claus" originally aired December 22nd, 1953, mixing sharp dialogue, street-level intrigue, and dark humour.
Settle in for a night of detectives, danger and vintage radio drama in this special holiday episode of Tuesday Night Detectives, only on Vintage Classic Radio.

Celebrate the Christmas holidays with Sunday Night Playhouse on Vintage Classic Radio, featuring a classic Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of "Great Expectations", originally broadcast on October 13, 1947. This elegant radio production brings Charles Dickens' timeless novel to the airwaves with the rich storytelling and star-studded presentation that Lux was known for.
Follow young Pip as a single act of kindness sets him on a path from a humble childhood to unexpected riches, complicated relationships, and hard-earned wisdom. In the end, Pip learns that character and compassion matter far more than social standing or money. 
Settle in and enjoy this week's holiday edition of Sunday Night Playhouse, only on Vintage Classic Radio.

This week on Saturday Matinee, we continue the holiday festivities with three heartwarming and hilarious old time radio classics. Abbott and Costello are back in "Lou's Christmas Party" finding the duo in chaotic holiday shenanigans as they try to host the perfect party. In Ozzie and Harriet's "No Show for Christmas", we see Ozzie scrambling to save the day when plans for a quiet Christmas don't go as expected. Finally, in the Halls of Ivy, "The Snowman" tells a charming tale of campus life and a magical winter surprise that brings warmth and laughter to the holiday season. Listen to all the heartwarming holiday humour this Saturday on Vintage Classic Radio.

We continue the holidays with chills on Friday Night Noir. Joseph Cotten braves a deadly mission in "Arctic Rescue", while Raymond Burr faces a holiday night gone dangerously wrong in "Out for Christmas". Tense, gripping, and full of twists, these classic Suspense episodes bring winter's cold edge straight to your ears on Vintage Classic Radio.