“Keeper of the Book…what tale will you tell us this time?”

In 1944’s Off Mike, Arch Oboler of Lights Out fame described writing for radio as “hamburger writing,” noting that “the medium is a quicksand into which millions of words disappear without a trace. All the stories printed monthly in magazines, if assembled into one script, would not be sufficient to keep a network’s monitor loudspeakers chattering for a week.”

To be certain, radio in its Golden Age had a voracious appetite for material—George Burns once noted that while it was possible for a comedian in vaudeville to last a decade with a stage act consisting of only seventeen minutes worth of material, that could all end with one appearance on a weekly half-hour program. Therefore, it was not uncommon for shows to recycle previously broadcast material—long before the concept of recycling was considered environmentally proper.

I thought about this earlier today when I sampled a pair of episodes from The Sealed Book, a syndicated horror anthology broadcast over Mutual/WOR from March 18-September 9, 1945. The program, produced and directed by Jock MacGregor and featuring Philip Clarke as narrator, essentially recycled scripts (by Robert A. Arthur and David Kogan) previously broadcast on Mutual’s popular The Mysterious Traveler. The program would open with sinister laughter and a gong (on loan from Lights Out, no doubt), as “the Keeper of the Book” would unlock “the ponderous volume in which are recorded all the secrets and mysteries of mankind through the ages.” (You can certainly see why the book was sealed, then, since you don’t want that kind of information getting out.) The Keeper would then use the half-hour allotted to him by telling “tales of every kind, tales of murder, tales of madness, of dark deeds and events strange beyond all belief.”

It’s a pretty big buildup for a show that sounds as if it were produced for a buck ninety-eight, but it does have an enjoyable camp quality about it. In “I’ll Die Laughing” (5/27/45), John Dayton, his wife Laura, and attorney-friend Harvey go spelunking in an old cave that—according to a recently deceased prospector—contains Aztec treasure. Harvey, unbeknownst to his pal John, has an ulterior motive in this whole expedition—namely, murdering John and running off with Laura. Of course, as we have learned from a lifetime of Alfred Hitchcock Presents repeats, the best laid plans… I did learn one important thing from this episode—make damn sure your best friend isn’t a lawyer.

“Design For Death” (6/3/45) showcases the story of Carl and Dora Evans, a husband-and-wife team who are on the lam from the law and who pose as brother and sister in order to hide out in an old house where wealthy recluse Mordred Vance resides. Vance takes a shine to Dora and proposes to her, which suits her “brother” just fine, as the old man has a tidy sum of $50,000 tucked away as a dowry. The twist of the tale is, there’s something in Vance’s past that he isn’t quite forthcoming about. Both of these scripts, as stated earlier, appeared previously on The Mysterious Traveler: “I’ll Die Laughing” on May 7, 1944, and “Design” March 5 that same year.

The Sealed Book isn’t classic radio, but it’s certainly not dull; the acting is a bit melodramatic, though—particularly at the climax of “Design For Death” when both actors go back for seconds and thirds at the scenery salad/buffet bar. Though the show is cheaply done, it is of mild importance to OTR fans in one respect: it allows modern-day fans the opportunity to listen to additional episodes of The Mysterious Traveler. (All twenty-six episodes of Book are extant today.) With the advent of cassettes and CDs, of course, the repetition is noticeable now—I’m sure those members of the listening audience probably didn’t even bat an eyelash back then. Even big-budget shows like The Jack Benny Program weren’t immune to “recycling”; Jack’s stable of high quality writers weren’t shy about reworking previous scripts and gags. It reminds me of the famous remark: “Movies aren’t made—they’re remade.”

“Midnight…the witching hour, when the night is darkest…our fears the strongest…and our strength at its lowest ebb…”

While I was away at my sister’s, I scooped a handful of stray OTR CD’s to take with me, and one of them was an unfamiliar program to me: Murder at Midnight, a syndicated series that originated at WJZ in New York and was broadcast September 16, 1946 through September 8, 1947. The verdict: an undistinguished little show, not particularly memorable but easy enough to take—and some of the people involved later went on to greater triumphs.

The series would open with a creepy voice intoning “MURRR-DERRR-A-A-AT-MIIDNIIGHT!”—the voice belonging to a Long Island minister named Raymond Morgan, who had succumbed to the excitement of radio and, in turn, relinquished his career as a man of cloth. The program showcased tales of “Midnight!...when graves gape open and death strikes!”—a polite euphemism for “Um…we went and recycled a bunch of old Inner Sanctum Mysteries scripts.” The producer was Louis G. Cowan, later the creator of television’s The $64,000 Question—and as such, implicated in the subsequent quiz show scandal. Assuming the show’s directorial reins was Anton M. Leader, who would later go on to direct “radio’s outstanding theater of thrills,” Suspense.

Most of the actors on Murder at Midnight were veterans from New York radio: Elspeth Eric, Mercedes McCambridge, Lawson Zerbe, etc. A frequent performer on the show was Berry Kroeger, best remembered by old-time radio fans as the sinister host of several radio mystery programs: he was the original voice of Suspense (June 17-December 22, 1942); a frequent pinch-hitter for “Raymond” (Raymond Edward Johnson) on Inner Sanctum; and the host of the syndicated The Haunting Hour from 1944-46. Other radio roles of Kroeger’s included The Falcon (he originated the role of detective Michael Waring) and The Shadow, where he was called upon to “fill in for Bret Morrison for a few weeks. I’ll never forget that [the director] said the reason he wanted me was because, like Bret, I had a ‘mellifluous voice.’”

Kroeger’s melodic tones are present and accounted for in the first of two Murder at Midnight programs I previewed, “The House Where Death Lived” (12/23/46). He plays Dr. Goff, a psychic researcher who buys a haunted house—haunted because the previous owner murdered his wife. It’s a surprisingly good entry, thanks to a solid script by writer Robert Newman, and appropriately eerie organ music by Charles Paul.

Unfortunately, scribe Newman strikes out with the second show, “Death Across the Board” (a undated show that was recorded but never broadcast)—in which Dr. John Strand (Eric Dressler) is admiring a chess set in a pawnshop, which its proprietor informs him is not for sale. Strand then finds himself in a living Hitchcock flick as he becomes a life-size chess piece in a deadly game of chess. It’s an interesting story premise, but its execution falls sort of flat. According to Jerry Haendiges’ log, Murder at Midnight had one more brief run on Mutual in 1950—but the programs consisted of the previously syndicated repeats.

“Bellkeeper, toll the bell!”

I whiled away the hours last night at work with a couple of Edgar Allan Poe tales on The Weird Circle, a 1940s mystery-horror series originally produced and recorded at NBC’s Recording Division and later distributed by syndicator Fredric Ziv. There’s a certain irony about Circle, in that the program itself is as mysterious as the short stories it weekly showcased. The actors on the program received no on-air credit (though some have been identified: Arnold Moss, Lawson Zerbe, Eleanor Audley, etc.), and no writing, directing or producing credits for the series exist today.

Even its broadcast history remains spotty: for example, the first of the two broadcasts I heard—Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”—is dated April 15, 1946, the date the program made its debut over New York’s WOR. Jerry Haendiges’s Weird Circle log, however, assigns an August 29, 1943 date—but according to a source I consulted the program didn’t start until November of that same year. This same source also mentions that the show had a brief run on ABC from September 15-October 6, 1947. Perhaps we’ll never really know for certain.

The Weird Circle was a low-budget affair, presenting adaptations of classic stories from literature with an emphasis on gothic tales like “Frankenstein” and “Wuthering Heights.” This was essentially a cost-cutting measure: since most of the copyrights of these tales had expired, it eliminated the need for royalty payments. Among the authors showcased on the program were Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Edgar Allan Poe was probably the author whose work was most represented on the series (“Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Tell Tale Heart,” “The Oblong Box,” etc.).

Despite its shoestring budget, I actually found the two productions I sampled fairly entertaining: “Usher” is, of course, the classic Poe tale that tells of the supernatural bond between twins Madeline and Roderick Usher—the last two branches on the Usher family tree. The second show, “The Cask of Amontillado” (11/25/46), was even better—the production fleshes out Poe’s legendary revenge tale a good deal, though the famous “bricking-the-guy-up-inside-the-wall” bit is discarded for a kindler, gentler “locking-him-up-in-a-cell-in-the-cellar” conclusion. Must have been a decree from Standards and Practices.

“In this cave by the restless sea, we are meant to call from out of the past, stories strange and weird. Bellkeeper, toll the bell—so that all may know we are gathered again in…The Weird Circle!” So went the show’s standard opening, uttered by a peculiar, otherworldly voice in the tradition of The Shadow and The Whistler. 78 episodes were produced—all extant today—and these broadcasts saw a new “weird circle” begin in the 1960s when the show was syndicated by Charles Michelson (who also reintroduced The Shadow, The Green Hornet, and The Lone Ranger to a new generation of listeners). Given its budget limitations, I must admit that the shows entertained me last night…so toll on, bellkeeper, toll on.

“I’m quietly yours, Ernest Chappell…”

Radio’s legendary Arch Oboler built his formidable reputation on the classic horror series Lights Out—to be sure, many of that program’s most memorable tales—“Cat Wife,” “Chicken Heart,” “Revolt of the Worms”—sprang from both his typewriter and fertile imagination. It seems unfair, however, that the individual who originally developed Lights Out—Wyllis Cooper—should receive such short shrift with regards to that series, though a lot of that is due to the fact that his work on the show (from 1934 to 1936) simply did not survive in the numbers that Oboler’s productions did and cannot be listened to by modern day old-time radio fans.

Still, Cooper’s splendid contributions to the Golden Age of Radio are available to OTR listeners, thanks to surviving recordings of his unsung and seldom-heard-at-the-time Quiet, Please, which debuted over Mutual Radio on June 8, 1947. Ostensibly a return to Cooper’s radio roots, the program has been heralded by radio historian John Dunning as “a potent series bristling with imagination,” in which listeners confronted a seemingly ordinary world where “the element of menace was ripe and ever present.” For me, the off-kilter nature of Quiet, Please explains why I’m such a fan of the series—rarely is anything explained or justified on the show, and this reminds me of the expression often used on Vic and Sade: “Stuff happens.”

Each week, the series would be ushered in a with an unforgettably eerie piano-and-organ theme (Cesar Franck’s Symphony in D Minor), and host/star Ernest Chappell would relate in first person (sometimes in present tense, sometimes in flashback) an unsettling tale of, as he once characterized it, an “ordinary fellow who gets all bollixed up with the supernatural.” Chappell was a long-time radio veteran—he was the announcer on Orson Welles’ Campbell Playhouse—who at one time coached first lady Eleanor Roosevelt on her broadcast commentaries. Chappell’s wonderfully understated narrative approach to the show’s stories was a directive from creator-writer-director Cooper, who disdained “acting,” preferring a more deadpan, naturalistic “here’s how it happened” style that was later used for radio’s Dragnet. Many of the show’s productions often featured Chappell and Chappell alone, though the two broadcasts I listened to last night at work are exceptions to this rule.

“The Thing On the Fourble Board” (8/9/48) was the first show I previewed, and is often cited as one of Quiet, Please’s classic broadcasts. It’s the story of an oil-drilling “roughneck” (Chappell) and his geologist friend (Dan Sutter) who discover evidence of human (?) life in soil samples taken from the Earth. This intriguing tale takes an extremely bizarre twist towards the end, and though I think its reputation is a little inflated, the mewling sounds emanating from the “thing” (Cecil Roy) are definitely bloodcurdling. In the second show, “Presto Change-O, I’m Sure” (8/16/48), a master magician (Edgar Stehli) hands a teenager (Chappell) a magic wand that bestows upon him supernatural powers. Granted, it’s no classic, but it’s still entertaining in an offbeat way—very reminiscent of an Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode (“The Magic Shop”) I saw as a kid. Ed Latimer, Peggy Stanley, and Brad Barker round out this broadcast’s supporting cast.

The strength of Quiet, Please lies in the realization that even its weakest episodes constitute prima facia evidence of Wyllis Cooper’s imaginative talent; indeed, it’s the outstanding writing in the show’s scripts that drive the action, such scripts being described by Radio Life beginning “as immediately and forceful as opening a door on a madman’s monologue.” But when Quiet, Please was good, it was very, very good—among my favorites are “Northern Lights” (“a…e…i…o…u…”), “My Son, John,” “Whence Came You,” and “Nothing Behind the Door.”

Quiet, Please spent its roughly two-and-a-half year radio run as a sustained series, mostly on Mutual before it moved to ABC Radio on September 19, 1948 and wrapping up its all-too-brief stay June 25, 1949. Although nearly all of its original 104 broadcasts are extant today, a great majority of them are in poor or substandard sound. To wrap up this essay, I echo the thoughts of the esteemed New York Herald-Tribune radio critic John Crosby: “Most of the Quiet, Please dramas are weird, ingenious and intimate affairs. Above all, they are pure radio.”

“…I take the same train every week at this time…”

The Mysterious Traveler, one of the Mutual Broadcasting System’s most durable series, debuted over that network on December 5, 1943 and lasted nearly a decade until it left the airwaves September 16, 1952. The show was sustained throughout its run—though it hardly mattered as the program was fairly cheap to produce—and starred Maurice Tarplin as the host-narrator who told stories of “the strange and terrifying” as he arrived weekly on a phantom train. “I hope you will enjoy the trip,” he would intone in a menacing but good-natured way, “that it will thrill you a little and chill you a little. So settle back, get a good grip on your nerves, and be comfortable—if you can!”

Tarplin was a seasoned radio veteran known for his roles on shows like The Shadow, The March of Time, Gangbusters, and a variety of soap operas to boot. (His most famous role outside The Mysterious Traveler was that of Inspector Faraday on the syndicated detective series Boston Blackie.) He landed the part of the Traveler by beating out such radio stalwarts as Lon Clark, Lawson Zerbe, Larry Haines, and Lon McAllister; according to producer-director-writer David Kogan, “Maurice was far and away the best. We’d never worked with him before, but there was no comparison.” Tarplin’s ability to “double,” or play multiple characters in one episode, was no doubt an additional enticement to hiring the talented actor.

The stories on The Mysterious Traveler ran the gamut from crime to science fiction, and the show’s best-known episode dabbled in the latter genre: “Behind the Locked Door” (November 6, 1951), which tells the tale of a pair of archaeologists trapped in a dark cave by a landslide, and of the strange creatures they discover residing there. One of my personal favorites is “The Man the Insects Hated” (July 27, 1947)—a scientist finds himself on the receiving end of being attacked by insects after he creates a formula to destroy all bug life.

I would describe The Mysterious Traveler as a low-rent Whistler, the popular CBS West Coast series (1942-55) that also featured an omnipresent host-narrator. There were, of course, some differences: most of the Traveler shows that I’ve listened to, don’t have the degree of participation in the narrative that The Whistler did. I can also say this in the Traveler’s favor—at least he had the wherewithal for train fare every week. The Whistler was always having to “walk by night.”

Last night, I listened to a pair of shows from 1948, beginning with “Murder in Jazztime” (from April 20), which tells the story of a popular singer named Vicki Saunders (Joan Alexander) who marries a man named Alexander Drake (Frank Barron). While the couple honeymoon in New Orleans, they meet up with a legendary jazz pianist named Jeff Becker (John Gibson), with whom Vicki becomes deeply infatuated. Alex, in a fit of jealous rage, kills the pianist—but soon finds himself haunted by continuous jazz music. This episode is pretty so-so, but the acting is good, and I was both surprised and pleased to learn that the music in this show was contributed by the legendary Hazel Scott.

“Murder is My Business,” originally heard June 8, 1948, is a definite improvement: David Philips (Eric Dressler), the scriptwriter for radio’s Dangerous Adventure, is hired by autocratic radio producer Basil King (Philips’ wife Julia describes him as “the most hated man in radio”) to be the new scribe on King’s hit program, Brad Barker—Private Eye. But King turns out to be a real martinet, and after several weeks David decides to…well, let’s just say he’s not gonna send him a fruit basket. A fine cast including Shirley Blanke, John Sylvester, and Richard Coogan—plus The Mysterious Traveler’s announcer Carl Caruso as…well, an announcer—makes this a pleasing entry, if not outstanding. That pretty much sums up The Mysterious Traveler in a nutshell—it’s not particularly great, but it’s not all that bad, either.

The Mysterious Traveler proved to be a rather hardy radio chestnut, particularly due to the fact that two similar shows—The Strange Dr. Weird (1944-45, which also featured Tarplin in the title role) and The Sealed Book (1945)—recycled many of the show’s scripts, as did Suspense in its later, waning years. This proves to be a good thing, since OTR historian Jay Hickerson notes that only 75 of the show’s original 370 broadcasts survive today. As for Maurice Tarplin, he was able to continue on even after the Golden Age of Radio’s demise by finding a career in dubbing soundtracks for foreign films and doing commercial voiceovers for a variety of advertised products.