ABC Mystery Time:
Four Time Loser (1957).
The Diary of Fate:
Walter Vincent (5/25/48).
Exploring Tomorrow:
Meddler’s Moon (5/21/8).
Police Headquarters (1932)
Laundry Trucknapping.
Edgar Pangborn Via librevox read by Gregg Margarite:
The Good Neighbors (1960).
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Segment One:
ABC Mystery Time - Four Time Loser (1957).
The first segment for today is from,”ABC Mystery Time” a show that ran from 1953 to 1958 and from which there are just a handful of surviving episodes. This show during its Run would be known under more than one name. It was also called, “Mystery Time Classics” and “Masters Of Mystery “. Or perhaps the different names actually arose because of the practice of sometimes giving to subsequent airings of a show a different name. This used to be a quite common practice. I remember that it happened to some TV programs I watched growing up.
Repeats of the kids show, “Capt. Midnight” were renamed, “Jet Jackson”. And repeats of the half-hour “Gunsmoke” were renamed, “Marshall Dillon“. This, as I remember, mostly happened when the show was still on the air. So on Friday nights, “Gunsmoke” would air once a week but each weekday afternoon we were treated to “Marshall Dillon”.
There were other examples, The Phil Silvers show, You’ll Never Get Rich suffered the ignominy of being retitled, “Sgt. Bilko” after the main character.
In the opening of this particular episode the series has the distinction of being called by both, “ABC mystery time” and “Masters of Mystery” within the first 15 seconds. Not that you’re getting two programs for one, let’s be clear about that.
The program was recorded in New York probably in 1957, and was written by Sidney Sloane. “Four Time Loser”.
It is the story of George, a man with a past, and a future, (his futures name is Elaine). And there is a real flesh and blood ghost who knows too damn much about George (That would be Matthew). There is blackmail. The usual ration of double-crossing, oh, and here lies a little bit of murder (Well, okay-quite a little bit of murder).
Also, some of these people drink and smoke!
Segment Two:
The Diary of Fate - Walter Vincent (5/25/48).
“Heed well you who listen, and remember, there is a page for you in, “The Diary of Fate.”
“The Diary of Fate” was a horror program where “Fate”, personified in the person of actor Herbert Lytton, narrates a morality tale, and woe be to the person on the wrong end. This program plays the usual stories of murder, hitchhikers, blackmail, love gone wrong, and the guilty getting their just desserts. The character of Fate plays a bit more of a role than mere observer; he creates situations to force the protagonist into a choice. For the sake of the show, they always choose badly, and the audience gets to listen to their demise unfold.
The show aired from 1947 to 1948, only 24 episodes are known to survive. The show wasn’t as successful as similar shows, like Inner Sanctum, but it did have solid stars, including Lurene Tuttle, Larry Dobkin, Hal Sawyer, Gloria Blondell, Frank Albertson, Jerry Hausner, Howard McNear, Peter Leeds, Ken Peters, Daws Butler and William Johnstone.
In this episode which originally aired on May 25 of 1948 a less than scrupulous researcher “discovers” a new way to refine oil which of coarse leads to murder somehow, oddly enough, manages to involve Pinocchio.
I do hope that Geppetto never hears about this.
Segment Three:
Exploring Tomorrow - Meddler’s Moon (5/21/8).
Segment 3 is from, Exploring Tomorrow. A neatly executed little romance called Meddlers Moon from May 21 of 1958.
Exploring Tomorrow was hosted by the longtime and extremely influential editor of Astounding Science Fiction magazine John W. Campbell Jr.
This short-lived series, ran on the Mutual Broadcasting System from late 1957 to mid 1958.
There appears to have been no actual connection to the magazine which did not sponsor the series. Campbell merely acted as host and, perhaps (this is not certain), supervised scripts.
Very few of the episodes have survived the years intact. Most copies have a lot of scratching and are in generally poor audio quality . While the series was designed to be 25 minutes in length with most episodes comprised of one story this is occasionally deviated from by the occasional presentation of two very short stories in one episode.
Once you’re born, you want to keep on being born, right?
I mean both of you!
In this excellent, very amusing episode based on a story by George Oliver Smith, a man journeys fifty years into his past to visit his grandfather-to-be before he himself was born in order to make sure he gets born.
”Meddlers Moon,” was published in “Astounding Science Fiction,” September, 1947
Segment Four:
Police Headquarters - Laundry Trucknapping(1932)
Edgar Pangborn - The Good Neighbors (1960).
Segment 4 is an episode of the 15 min. serial “Police Headquarters” involving a Laundry Trucknapping.
Police Headquarters was not the first or only show to be syndicated in 1932.
It had been only 12 years since the establishment of the first licensed radio station in the United States (KDKA of Pittsburgh, owned by Westinghouse) on November 2nd of 1920. This was 26 years after what is usually regarded as the first scheduled audio transmission that could be called a broadcast by Reginald Fessenden on Christmas Eve of 1906. Although, like everything in the world this is open to some dispute, down to the fact of whether or not the broadcast even happened. As it turns out this endeavor was preceded by other pioneers including Marconi himself. In any case, well-established is that there were no “associations” of radio stations into anything resembling a modern”Network” until the establishment of The National Broadcasting Company in 1935.
There were, however, a few “syndicators“. These folks would create programs, or sometimes record other people’s programs as they were performed live, then sell the right to air these recordings to participating independent stations involving some sort of revenue sharing arrangement with the producers. This was before Communication Satellites, Reel to Reel Tapes, Cassette Recording or Wire Recorders. Before even old-fashioned Acetate Discs.They literally scratched soundtracks into shiny aluminum or fragile glass discs . The distribution method was via the U.S.P.S.
Here is a Wikipedia link on Transcription discs
”Bruce Eells Associates” produced this 15-minute series that was then syndicated, via “Bruce Eells and Associates syndication”.
I’m sorry to say that there does not seem to be much information on the cast or the support staff. I personally am pleased that has much of early radio has survived as has. These were commercial enterprises. Just a way for the producers to make a buck, and not considered by them to have any historical prominence or importance. I think everyone involved in this production would be amazed to think that this ephemera could have survived to be of interest to people living more than three quarters of a century later, most of whom weren’t even alive when the shows were made.
That’s us folks.
Also in this segment is a short story by Edgar Pangborn read by Gregg Margarite for the LibriVox Project. The story first appeared in Galaxy Magazine for June of 1960.
“The ship was sighted a few times, briefly and without a good fix. It was
spherical, the estimated diameter about twenty-seven miles, and was in
an orbit approximately 3400 miles from the surface of the Earth. No one
observed the escape from it.
The ship itself occasioned some excitement, but back there at the
tattered end of the 20th century, what was one visiting spaceship…”
Link for E-Text
