A cold winter’s night

I listened to a pair of interesting shows this evening—interesting in that both programs are dated March 9, 1949 and were broadcast over NBC’s WMAQ in Chicago, one right after the other. According to First Generation Radio Archives, the two programs came from opposite sides of two 16-inch transcription disks. (Transcription disks are large records from where most of the old-time radio broadcasts that are still around today originate.)

First off the bat, at 9:30pm (8:30pm Central), is Mr. District Attorney, a long-running NBC crime drama (it debuted on April 3, 1939) about an unnamed D.A. (usually referred to by his associates as either “Boss” or “Chief”), a fearless crusader devoted to justice and truth. (The character was loosely modeled after real-life 1930s New York racket-buster Thomas E. Dewey.) During its nearly fifteen-year run on radio, Mr. District Attorney was one of the most popular—if not the most—crime dramas on the air. According to John Dunning, “It was a year-round operation. In the summers, when such comics as Jack Benny and Bob Hope were on vacation, Mr. DA often soared to the top of the ratings; it was seldom out of the top ten, even in midseason.” (Doesn’t sound like Mr. DA had much time for Mrs. DA, does it?)

Mr. District Attorney also had one of radio’s most memorable openings:

ANNOUNCER: Mister District Attorney! Champion of the people! Defender of truth! Guardian of our fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!

(Orchestra up full)

VOICE OF THE LAW (from echo chamber): …and it shall be my duty as district attorney not only to prosecute to the limit of the law all persons accused of crimes perpetuated within this county but to defend with equal vigor the rights and privileges of all its citizens…

Pretty strong meat there, no? The program was sponsored for many years by Bristol-Myers (1940-52); in fact, at the time of this broadcast, the Bristol-Myers people were footing the bill for a whole hour (9-10pm) on NBC’s Wednesday nights—the show preceding Mr. District Attorney being the popular comedy series Duffy’s Tavern. It’s also rare to find a network broadcast (complete with commercials) of Attorney; for a long-running series, it would seem that most of the episodes in circulation are from the 1952-53 syndicated version produced by Ziv Productions.

The episode I listened to was “The Case of Murder a la Carte,” a drama about a restaurant headwaiter named Nicky Sylvania who is operating a robbery racket with two accomplices, husband-and-wife Stanley and Hannah Price. Nicky is able to glean information from the customers he is serving as to whether they will be away from the house for an extended period of time; then he calls Hannah to tip her off as to their absence and she and her husband "liberate" the customers' furs, jewelry, etc.

Stanley is kind of an amiable dolt who’s obsessed more with building birdhouses than embarking on a life of crime; even Nicky is convinced that the three of them should lay low for a while. But Hannah is a real bad egg; a greedy, manipulative rhymes-with-witch who insists on committing more and more burglaries. She has a bit of a gambling jones, and has lost much of the robbery take betting on horses; Stanley is outraged by this (he sort of had his heart set on a trailer for the two of them, where he could build birdhouses to his heart's content) and in the ensuing struggle between him and Hannah she manages to strangle him in what she politically-incorrectly refers to as a “Jap choke.” She and Nicky then dump poor Stanley's corpse near the railroad yards. (I should also point out here that there is a very strong implication that Nicky and Hannah are starting to…well, know one another in the biblical sense. They don’t come right out and say it, of course—but the two of them share a cigarette, and it’s not too hard to figure out where that is going.)

In the meantime, our heroic D.A. (Jay Jostyn) and his associates, Len Harrington (Len Doyle) and Edith Miller (Vicki Vola) are investigating the robberies, and the crafty public servant has put 2-and-2 together, realizing that the common thread in the capers is that the victims all dined at the swanky Regency Club--and were waited on by the same headwaiter. Nicky attempts to warn Hannah that the heat is on, but the audience is pretty much onto her by now; she wants more, more, more. A robbery attempt at a residence owned by a couple named Phillips goes awry when Hannah is surprised by their butler; backed into a corner, she puts the same choke-hold on Jeeves and kills him, too. So Mr. D.A. sets a trap for the two villains by having Harrington and Miller pose as a couple of society swells and when Hannah breaks into their apartment, catches both her and Nicky red-handed (“Well, a clean sweep, eh, Harrington? Looks like this time they’ve ordered the full meal…” Oh, I'll bet he's a riot at the annual office Christmas party.).

Mr. District Attorney is, despite my occasional forays into snarkiness, a pretty entertaining crime drama that—for reasons I can’t quite fathom—apparently has to recap what took place in the half-hour, apparently for the slower people in the listening audience:

MILLER: Golly, that was one assignment I liked, Chief…I’ve never eaten such good food in my life…

HARRINGTON: Yeah! And oh boy, did you look swell in all those furs that you rented, Miss Miller!

MILLER: Why thank you, Harrington…but of course, I look good in just anything…

D.A.: Well, it was certainly good work, Miss Miller…you and Harrington sent Hannah right to the apartment where I was waiting, simply by displaying those furs…

HARRINGTON: And when we got there, we picked up Nicky right in front of the joint, Chief…

D.A.: Yes…actually, it was Hannah’s peculiar method of choking her victims that helped, Harrington…

HARRINGTON: Yeah…that’s the Japanese choke…brother, that one’s the works!

D.A.: Yes…it nearly always kills and without much effort as is sometimes needed…fortunately, it leaves a characteristic discoloration on the neck as well as abrasions on the lower jaw…

MILLER: You saw those in the morgue, Chief…

D.A.: Yes, I did, Miss Miller…on both Stanley and the butler…and that’s why I was ready for Hannah when she tried the Japanese choke on me…

HARRINGTON: Yeah…and you can thank the Army service for that, huh, Chief?

D.A.: Right.

HARRINGTON: …bring your arms down hard and you can break it…

D.A.: And break the case, I’m glad to say…

I’m guessing after this display of gratuitous back-patting the three of them head for a bar and then drink the night away, bemoaning their empty, unfulfilled lives—and in the case of Mr. D.A., bemoaning the fact that he has no real name.

Following Mr. District Attorney is The Big Story, another successful crime drama that premiered over NBC Radio April 2, 1947. (This program was so popular that in its first year it began to chisel away at Bing Crosby’s Philco Radio Time audience, since his program was on ABC opposite Story. Der Bingle ended up moving his show back a half-hour earlier as a result.) The show was created when independent radio show producer Bernard J. Prockter came across an account in Newsweek of how two reporters from the Chicago Sun-Times had cracked a 14-year-old murder case that resulted in the pardon of the man wrongly convicted of the crime. (This story would later be retold in a favorite James Stewart movie of mine—the 1948 docu-noir Call Northside 777, directed by Henry Hathaway.)

ANNOUNCER: The Big Story…here is America…its sound and fury…its joy and its sorrow…as faithfully reported by the men and women of the great American newspapers…

Pall Mall cigarettes picked up the tab for the program, awarding $500 to the reporter with “The Big Story.” The dramatizations on the show changed the names of the people involved, with the exception of the muckraker who covered it, of course. This episode features Ike McNelly of the Cleveland News, “a reporter who found that death can make a piece of fiction come to life.”

There is a report of a car explosion at a nearby dam—and it is determined that Dr. David Wagner, prominent chemist, is the victim. The only problem is—his body has not been found. It is assumed that his body may have been thrown into the river, but without a corpse, his insurance company refuses to pay off on his $50,000 policy, leaving his widow and kids in a bit of a financial pickle.

McNelly is interviewing the Widow Wagner when he gets a call from his newspaper and learns that a gentleman at a Philadelphia bank has cashed $5,000 worth of travelers’ checks, with the signature of…Dr. David Wagner. McNelly is convinced that the Doc is playing dead for some reason, but Murray, the insurance company investigator, pooh-poohs the idea. In talking with Wagner’s widow, he spies a portrait the doctor painted and, on a hunch, decides to talk to the young woman—one Jenny Logan—who posed for the painting.

Logan claims to know nothing of Wagner’s whereabouts, and in fact, clings to the conventional wisdom that Wagner is dead and that the reporter should drop the matter. But a open book on a table in Logan’s apartment makes McNelly suspicious—it’s Leo Tolstoy’s The Living Corpse, a novel about a man who fakes his own death to get away from his wife. In an investigative feat that rivals the discovery by Dallas police of Lee Harvey Oswald’s whereabouts shortly after the JFK assassination, McNelly locates Jenny at a train station, as she has bought a one-way ticket to New York.

JENNY: Well, what’s on your mind?

MCNELLY: That book, Jenny…The Living Corpse by Tolstoy…David Wagner gave it to you…

JENNY: No…

MCNELLY: He gave it to you…and now you’re leaving to meet him…

JENNY: You’re crazy…I haven’t seen him in months…

MCNELLY: You’re lying! Wagner’s in love with you…

JENNY: Why don’t you let me alone!

MCNELLY: How can I…this isn’t just between you and Wagner, he’s got a wife and kids, remember?

JENNY: What can I do about it…

MCNELLY: You can let him alone…and you can tell him to come back where he belongs…

JENNY: You don’t know what you’re asking…there’s some things you can’t stop…jump in front of a train and see if you’ll even slow it down…this is the same way…David…me…you and his wife…none of us can do anything about it…

MCNELLY: Then…you are in love with him…

JENNY: Sure…you know…this isn’t a thing I want to lie about…it’s something too good for that…

One minute you’re covering a weekly meeting of the Rotarians, and the next you’re in some bad romantic movie with equally risible dialogue. It’s a funny old world sometimes. Anyway, McNelly extracts a promise from the woman that she and Wagner will let him know where they are, and that the doctor will continue to provide for his family. But, the two-timing dame reneges on her pledge, and McNelly is put on the spot—he reluctantly informs Wagner’s widow that her husband is still alive and is shacking up with someone else; months later, the insurance company investigator is ticked at him because Wagner’s insurance premium is due to expire and there’ll be nothing for his wife and kids once it does.

Just when all seems lost, it is discovered that the chemist and his floozy have been jet-setting across Europe and are currently residing in Vienna as “Anna” and “Joseph.” The two of them exchange more bad-movie dialogue, expressing no regrets about their whirlwind affair—and then commit double suicide, leaving behind a note as to their real identities so that Wagner’s wife can cash in, insurance-wise. (If anyone can explain to me why this guy could afford to cavort around Vienna but couldn’t bother to send in a measly insurance premium payment, I’m dying to hear it.)

At the conclusion of each episode of The Big Story, the real-life reporter would often appear at the show’s tag to collect his cash incentive from the good folks at Pall Mall; here, the hard-working McNelly sends a telegram—I’m guessing he may have been a little embarrassed at how they dramatized his story. But the program enjoyed a healthy eight-year run over NBC, finally giving up the ghost on March 23, 1955; Pall Mall paying the bills until 1954, when Lucky Strike (actually the same company) took over as sponsor.

Listening to both of these shows, I got a feeling of what it might have been like to be gathered around the radio on a cold winter night in March of 1949--and that's not easy, especially when it's a balmy fall night in November 2003.