Speaker 1: Welcome to the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio from Boise, Idaho.
This is your host, Adam Graham. In a moment, we're
going to bring you this week's episode of Broadway's My Beat.
But first I want to encourage you, if you're enjoying
this program, to using your favorite podcast software. And today's
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per month. Just go to Patreon dot Great Detectives dot net.
But now, from December fifteenth, nineteen fifty one, here is
the Lucille Baker murder Case.
Speaker 2: Broadways My Beach from Times Square to Columbus Circle, the gaudiest,
the most violent, the lonesomest mile in the world.
Speaker 3: Broadways My Beach with Larry Thor as Detective Danny Clover.
Speaker 2: From Somewhere Beyond the Threshold of Neon, the Happy Holidays,
Beckoned a Broadway and the Wilderness of Plastic and Chrome
dons its ribbons of tinsel, garlands of evergreen are hung
against the shriek of subways, and behind plate glass puppets
with shrewd mechanisms perform their frenetic dance. The metallic music
flows out of the horns of loudspeakers, the women walk
slow sway gently to its holiday rhythms, and everywhere the
image of gayety is reflected in spangles that whirl on
winter's wind. So paint the grin the crossia mouth, kid,
it's the merry time, And somewhere within it a phone call,
a drunken voice that pleads you into a desolate, wind
glittered street, into a tenement scarred with shadows, into a
room also desolate. A man sprawled on the floor in drunkenness,
his arm flung toward the woman who lies away from him,
his fingers reaching trying to touch her dead face. And
the other man, who clings to ear lapel, has waited
there only so he could tell you about it.
Speaker 4: That proves I had nothing to do with it, doesn't it?
Speaker 2: I called it in.
Speaker 4: I waited here for you, me along with those two,
just so as I could tell you about it. Pruse,
Bob Robert Colker. I got a wife and a good name.
I don't want to get mixed up in this mister woman.
That's Missus Baker, Charlie's wife. Boys, that boy got a
hangover waiting for him when he comes to Imagine you
and Charlie, you enjoying yourself. You get invited in for
a little night cap. You walk in and there's Missus
Baker lying on the floor, head hold twisted like that. Yeah, yeah,
that's how I figured it too. When we walked in,
saw I said, look, Charlie boy, look at your missus,
and Charlie kind of yelped like a dog or something.
Tried to make it to her, but he passed out
on the way. I never touched the mister, honest, I didn't.
Speaker 2: You and Baker were up together, then you came home.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but now like you think we were to the
office party, Charle and me. We got a joining desks,
big deal office party, booze and paper cups, dance alone
with the stennel you've been wanting to touch all year,
and take child boy home and look, mister, okay, if
I go home now, I've done everything could be expected.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, why, mister Culker, tell her you won't be
home for a while and wait. Then watch the barrier
of faces form at the doorway, the same faces that
gather always when sudden death is done. Face is tempered
only by the quality of shirts, neckpies and hairdoes quality
this time tenement fraid And in a while the medical
examiner the nod toward the dead. The black santchell opened,
and the steath is sculpted. Hears no heartbeat, the official
pronouncement that a woman named Lucille Baker, age about thirty two,
marry no children, have been strangled to death, and the
other nod to the two men who had been found
with her. Take them along, get out, go and back
to the office, and give orders to interview everyone at
the party. Turn mister Baker over to the officer whose
extracurricular duty includes the sobering of suspects. Question mister Culker again.
His story sticks. Then a door opens and a very
sober man walks in.
Speaker 5: I believe they just told me. I don't put it.
What are you doing, himp hop.
Speaker 4: I just told him what happened.
Speaker 6: I told him we came back to you here.
Speaker 2: You wait outside, mister Coulker.
Speaker 4: Sure, sure, whatever you say, just take it easy.
Speaker 1: Chilie boy.
Speaker 2: Sit on, mister Baker, your wife is dead. See, I
want you to try to tell me just what happened
to me.
Speaker 5: The office party. I went there.
Speaker 7: I was having a fine Yes, I was having a
wonderful time. Look, it was the end of the day.
And at first I wanted to go home, but they
wouldn't let me. They said, look at all this three booths,
lap it up and forget it, and now.
Speaker 2: Go on.
Speaker 7: But I tried to call lu seal three or foot times.
I don't know how many times till I was having
a good time not to wait up for me, But
Lyne was always busy.
Speaker 2: What else do you remember?
Speaker 7: Bob said, come on, let's go home when we got there.
The last thing I remember Lucille lying there. It's saying
to myself, just like this, I am drunk. You think
you see all sorts of things when you're drunk, and
this is one of them.
Speaker 5: Listen, not Lucial, I'm.
Speaker 8: Not even home now.
Speaker 2: I wake up and the room shorn suddenly of everything
but a man sobbing. And this is only one in
the long array of grieving that has been displayed you
over the last years. The grief, the love dead, sometimes
with laughter of strange texture, the silence, sometimes anguished, bitter,
and sometimes this like this man's, and always the walking
away from it, and release him and his friend Bob
Colker go home, sleep, and next morning back to the
tenement where a woman had been strangled. Ask questions through
inch open doors, and the children of the tenement shrivel
away from you as if you were a cold wind.
The doors that are never opened to you, the furtive
whispers and scurrying behind them, the giggles, and finally, at
the mention of the dead Missus Baker's name, a woman
who begins a weeping suitable for police callers. Invite you in, Oh.
Speaker 9: That poor poor creature taken from us, like that joke,
like that cast away. Please won't you come in? I'm
Ruthie Alexander. Let's just shut the door, shall we. My
neighbor's curious, nosy, so pathetically nosy. May I get you
something hot, chocolate tea, something with a bite too.
Speaker 2: No, thank you? You knew, missus Baker.
Speaker 9: I knew Lucille better. How awful to be a man
and have to suffer weeping women?
Speaker 2: You were saying you knew, Missus Baker, well better.
Speaker 9: Than she knew herself. The promises life offered that girl.
Although Lucille wasn't pretty, mind you, not in the real
sense of the word. But she had her qualities hidden
kind of sly. It intrigued you.
Speaker 10: Men.
Speaker 2: You're saying that she nothing of the sort.
Speaker 9: Why Lucille, the poor, unimaginative creature, And I say, the
summer and I was a best friend, mind you, and
have the right. Lucille backed away from men. I honestly
think they frightened her.
Speaker 2: She was married to a husband who loved them.
Speaker 8: Of course he did.
Speaker 9: Of course he did. Why shouldn't he. She could have
even had a man like Teddy Fletcher. Teddy was dying
for her. Lucille told me all about it. A fellow
who works at the Dorsey Company, where Lucille's husband worked.
I told her so many times. A man like that, Lucy,
they don't grow on bushes. They you know something at Lucille.
She was a deep one, sly like I said, I wonder,
I just wonder if she and Teddy? How wonerful of me?
But when you have a cigarette, at least I'll light
it for you, draw the first puff.
Speaker 2: And refuse the kind offer king sized, cock tipped gratis,
and all give her back her solitude, leave her to
her tearless sweeping. Now she'd have something really to cry about.
She'd wasted a cigarette to the officers of the Dorsey
Novelty Company Incorporated Limited, be greeted'd be given a catalog
concerning current novelties, be found that because I didn't want it,
be listened to be ushered, pass the office force and
slogans about geniuses at work and courtesy and cleanliness and accuracy,
and be shown to a cubicle. Yeah, mister Fletcher, Yeah,
what is it. I'm Danny Clover from the police.
Speaker 6: I'm expecting somebody from down there.
Speaker 2: Sit down please, thanks. So I'm trying to get some information. No,
I know, all right, you know, tell me what you know?
Speaker 6: Just one thing? You think I killed Lucile? Did you
I was in love with her? Did you kill her?
I just told you I was in love with her
for two years. Now. I built my plans around a
day to day plans. That adds up to be in
my life, doesn't it. You think I killed her to
be like kill her myself, wouldn't it?
Speaker 2: All right? We'll go on the premise you didn't kill her,
mister Fletcher, tell me about last night. I was at
the party.
Speaker 6: Everybody got loaded, not me.
Speaker 2: You don't drink her and when.
Speaker 6: It's better to say sober? Last night was such a time.
Oh why last night Charlie Baker was here, get tanked.
Last night Lucille Baker was home being lonely.
Speaker 2: Then you left the party because her husband was here
and went over to see her. And is that it?
Speaker 6: It's the way I planned. It didn't work.
Speaker 2: Gonna tell me why.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I called Lucille from here during the party a
lot of times. She said, I am a wife with
a husband. Stay where you are, admirable huh. A wife
of had killed her and it killed her.
Speaker 2: Then you gave up and went home.
Speaker 6: I needed solace. I found Isabelle by the water cooler. Isabelle,
Isabelle Mitchell, pal and buddy, sweater and skirt. We smiled
at each other over paper cups, linked dimes and went
to her place, drank and did childish things like pin
the tail of the donkey.
Speaker 2: Drank, drank, drank your alibi. Huh. I want to talk
to her.
Speaker 6: I guess she's still at home getting rid of last
night's head. She didn't show up today, nice kid?
Speaker 2: Where does she live?
Speaker 6: Two rooms on West thirty seventh, nine oh five, apartment too.
Let mister clover that Hamilton wall clock says noon and
it's never wrong. I'm going to join me for lunch.
Speaker 9: Are you?
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot? And the ride now to West thirty seventh,
to the block of the Brownstones and the low Rent
and the corner grocery store, and next to the tailor's
shop that advertised proudly how it had held the line
since nineteen fifty. Find the number nine oh five, Walk
past the door to apartment one, and a few steps
more to apartment two, apartment of Isabelle Mitchell. Knock and
get no answer, and open a door. Walk in the
living room decorated in Rowe house decor, dregs of last
night's drinks, Coolidge modern and empty, and the kitchen the
light still burning, the perpetual distance sound in the exposed
water pipes and strung from them, the girl, the girl
twisting this way and back slightly, the lifeless girl, the
murdered girl.
Speaker 3: You are listening to Broadways My Beat, written by Morton
Fine and David Freakin and starring Larry thor as Detective
Danny Clover. Confidentially, Edgar Bergen has a split personality, and
it's hard to say whether he's funny or as the
Harris Bergan or as that saucy figment of his own
imagination who does the haressing, Chotty McCarthy. We leave it
to you to figure out between the laughs. Every Sunday
night on most of these same CBS radio stations, when
you hear Edgar Bergen and Chotty McCarthy in the days
before Christmas, Broadway puts on its flashy cloths and the
flashy smile. Everybody's on his way to con Santa Claus.
The blonde who walks with you, stops to adjust hernylons
in front of the jewelry store. The brunette who tells
you to pick her up for lunch in the langury department,
the redhead who behaved all year long. And while the
reindeer dash across the thunder of the spectaculars, the recruits
from the Bowery shake their little bells and not lovingly
at tiny tots. Get out the Christmas list, kid, that's
where your friends have been all year long, and at headquarters,
consider other things official musings the dying of Lucille Baker,
a woman strangled, Consider what chain of circumstance led from
her to the murder of another Isabell Mitchell. Consider and
be interrupted by a police sergeant named Gino Tartaglia, who
sometimes had things in his mind.
Speaker 8: I got a headache, Danny.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry to hear that. Why don't you take an ask?
Speaker 8: Condolences are touching, Danny, and I thank you for them. However,
my symptoms psycho semitic, psychosomatic, a word Missus Tartaglia read
to me last night from a book. It's the type
headache which is prone to deep thinkers, so science explained
to Missus t and she to.
Speaker 2: Me, you've been thinking deeply.
Speaker 8: Indeed, he as concerns the current situation and the murder
of Lucille Baker and the subsequent same of miss isabel Mitchell.
Oh a theory to wit. Mister Ted Fletcher is a killer.
Murdered the woman whom he loved, Missus Baker, then murdered
the girl he flirted with, Isabell Mitchell.
Speaker 2: But Isabelle was his alibi, Geno, why should he murder her?
Speaker 8: I cut my headache, making it sound reasonable to me, Danny.
But I think I know why he killed miss Mitchell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can think of a reason too.
Speaker 8: You mean like that so soon?
Speaker 2: Well it had figured.
Speaker 8: Gino, you tell me yours, I'll tell you mine.
Speaker 2: The way it stands now, Geno, Fletcher can't account for
his actions of last night. Nobody remembers when he left
the party. Let's just assume he left with miss Mitchell.
He took her home and left her.
Speaker 8: You've been peeking into my brain, Danny.
Speaker 2: He left her, went to see missus Baker, killed her,
came back to Miss Mitchell and asked her to be
his alibi. She refused.
Speaker 8: Indeed, Danny, indeed.
Speaker 2: So she was the only one who knew he was
a killer. She refused to help him. He killed her.
Speaker 8: Theories make a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: Don't they maybe have Fletcher picked ups? You know I'm
going on?
Speaker 8: Okay, Danny, whey can I reach you if I need you?
Speaker 2: At that novelty office. Maybe I can find out why
that happy party had so much murder in it.
Speaker 11: You're the guy told the girl you're a detective.
Speaker 2: That's right, show me, show me.
Speaker 11: Girls get impressed with guys who show them shiny badges.
Don't bother to read the small print. All they care.
Is it a muscle man with a favored ask you
threw with him? Yeah, take back your badge. I produce
novelties like that by the cayload. Just that to be
sure you weren't giving.
Speaker 2: The girl a fast shuffle some questions. I want to
ask you, mister Darley, my time.
Speaker 11: You got around to me. Huh, It just so happens.
I'm the head man this little enterprise. Maybe the personnel
didn't get around to telling.
Speaker 2: They didn't need to. I saw your publicity on the
wrapping paper.
Speaker 11: Yeah, you had a little confab with Ted Fletcher.
Speaker 2: The girls tell me sorry, it didn't occur to me.
I need your permission.
Speaker 11: Oh it's not that, kid, It's just that I got
a happy enterprise here. You walk in talk murdered talk.
It spreads gloom. Everybody gets unhappy until I think of something.
Speaker 2: The office party the other night, that was one of
your thoughts.
Speaker 11: Yeah, it was happened to be my birthday. I let
it be known in a loud voice, and before long
the personnel is pitching dimes into a kiddie. A good
time was had by all. What did you think of
who ted Fletcher personally. I can't stand the guy. Good worker,
but I can't stand him. What do you think of?
Speaker 2: Just keep talking Fletcher. Not much to look at.
Speaker 11: But oh, you kid, what he does to the emotions
of the ever loving opposite sex. You know what I mean.
You got to agree because you got him tabbed for
killing Missus Baker.
Speaker 2: I understand.
Speaker 11: I tell you it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
Speaker 2: Charles Baker works for you too. Give me your thoughts
on him.
Speaker 11: Baker's a good boy and knows to the grindstone type.
I got a lot of planning for him, been to
his homemade his impressed the bust type of food. Met
his wife, the former Missus Baker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you have an opinion.
Speaker 11: Dull woman playing boring. You know Baker's better off without
her in my opinion, I tell you because yes.
Speaker 2: And Isabelle Mitchell, who also worked for you, who was
also at your birthday party, who was strangled murdered.
Speaker 11: Hmm, kind girl had a kind word for everybody, but everybody.
Speaker 2: Prove it to me.
Speaker 11: Fletcher meets your at the water cooler at my party.
Isabelle give him the kind word, Fletcher takes her home.
That was a busy, busy night for Fletcher, wasn't it game?
Speaker 2: Anything else?
Speaker 11: Mister Dawson Nett cuts it. As far as I'm concerned,
you too, huh. I bet you got loads of things
to do, just like me. So goodbye, h guy.
Speaker 12: Mister Clover, Yes, is it all right if I just.
Speaker 2: Walk in here and you, of course? Won't you sit down?
Thank you?
Speaker 12: I'm Lois Nolan.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 12: I work at the Dorsey Novelty Company. In the office,
I run an IBM machine time study cards. I don't
guess you noticed.
Speaker 13: Me, did you?
Speaker 2: Seems that I do. I guess you're wearing another dress.
Speaker 12: No, I was wearing this dress. You just didn't notice,
that's all.
Speaker 2: Why have you come here, miss Nolan?
Speaker 12: I wasn't at the party last night, so your men
haven't questioned me.
Speaker 2: I see, And you want to be questioned as that.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 12: I was a friend of Isabelle's. You were, though we
had differences of opinion, as they say about friends boyfriends. Personally,
I like fellows from whom I can better myself. Isabelle
she was not the discriminate type. Life, she once said
was a laugh and a song. Look what it got
her some laugh.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, now, if you'll pardon me some laugh.
Speaker 12: You knew where I just came from, you wouldn't say
some laugh.
Speaker 2: Where did you just come from, Miss Nolan?
Speaker 12: From her uncle's house? In buckets? That's the way he
was crying. He didn't say a word. If you could
have seen his eyes those tears, then he said, Lois,
I cannot cry anymore. Isabel was a good girl, and
now she is gone.
Speaker 2: I didn't know she had a family.
Speaker 12: No one's claiming because that man is a nervous wreck.
After all Isabel did for him.
Speaker 2: Where does her uncle live in Brooklyn?
Speaker 12: Twenty twenty Stockton Street. I hope I have been of
some help. Since Isabel was a dear friend of mine,
I was always broad minded enough to forgive the thing.
Speaker 2: You've been a great help, Miss Nolan. Thank you very much.
And the house in Brooklyn, like all the other houses
in the long file, appealing paint, the sagging porch, the
parlor curtains drawn aside to reveal a Christmas wreath, then
drawn further to permit a clearer view of the man
who walks their quiet street, and, having noted your passing,
open their windows crying to see at whose door you'll knock.
Then in far away voices an answer to friends, relatives,
and neighbors, the voices drained away. Then for a moment,
the stillness is almost complete, except for the wailing of
vessels in the harbor and cry of wind trapped against
street lamps. Then break it, and the man in the
woolen sweater wonders at you with pale eyes, washed away eyes.
Speaker 14: Oh you must be from the mission, I phoned. I
have the magazines all tired and ready there.
Speaker 2: I'm from the police.
Speaker 14: But Isabel, yes, come in. You'll take your death of cord.
I haven't been to claim about it because I didn't
know if it was right. I'm just her uncle. And
Isabel moved away from me over a year ago, and
I thought maybe she'd got someone closer to her.
Speaker 2: That's not why I came. No, then, why well, I
thought maybe you could help us, Maybe you could tell
us things about her, and it'll help us find her murderer.
Speaker 14: Isabel here to live with us when her mother died.
Then my wife died and Isabelle stayed on. It was
nice when she was here, and then she went away.
Speaker 2: Tell me about it, mister Clayton.
Speaker 14: It was nice, gay, exciting young men called Anna, brought
her things, brought me cigars, sat and talked with me
while they waited for her to dress. She was pretty real,
pretty worth waiting for.
Speaker 2: You remember the men who called on her.
Speaker 14: No, no, just boy. He's nice, open fellow.
Speaker 2: And you haven't seen Isabelle since she left?
Speaker 14: Yes, I didn't say that. I saw her many times,
but only quickly. I'd call her and tell her to
come pick up little things I had for ah, things, presents.
They weren't really from me. They were from this nice
fellow that he must have liked Isabella a whole lot.
You know how I know?
Speaker 10: Tell me well, he'd bring her these things and make
me promise not to tell Isabelle they were from him.
He said he'd tell her when the time came, when
he was ready to And I'd say, Charlie, ain't Charlie, Charlie.
Speaker 14: Baker, nice fella. You know he made me tell Isabelle
I was giving her those things. Look at me, what
would I have to give a girl like Isabelle.
Speaker 7: This is the first time I've been on a place
like this, mister Clover, I've passed the jail many times.
Speaker 2: When these are just the detention sells, mister Baker.
Speaker 5: Detention cells, you mean they're not permanent. You're not sure
about Fletcher.
Speaker 2: Fletcher was picked up as a suspect, and that's still
all he is.
Speaker 5: He's a killer.
Speaker 2: We'll find out.
Speaker 5: I still don't know why I am here.
Speaker 2: I want to put your story together with his.
Speaker 5: How then you'll know.
Speaker 2: Uh, then we'll know. Flat you're sleeping, are.
Speaker 5: The conscience like his?
Speaker 6: Look at him?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 5: Come on, Fletcher, wake up, wake up? Killer on your.
Speaker 2: Feet, brought you a visitor. Fletcher, Hi, jolly, Hi.
Speaker 5: Charlie, Hi Charlie. That's what you gotta say to me,
you my friend, killer?
Speaker 2: Break it up? I said, break it up?
Speaker 5: Yeah? What am I crazy? Dirty? My hands on him?
You know what they got for you? Killer? A chair
and you're gonna.
Speaker 14: Sit in it.
Speaker 2: Fletcher. I told Baker how it was between you and
his wife, Lucilla.
Speaker 6: I'm glad you did. We were going to tell him
we didn't.
Speaker 2: Get a chance.
Speaker 5: Love a boy, kill a boy.
Speaker 2: I didn't kill her.
Speaker 5: Is that what he keeps telling you, mister Clover. That's
why you just keep him in the detent.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 6: Look Charlie.
Speaker 5: All right, I'm looking.
Speaker 6: You got to understand, Charlie, about Lucille and me. I
loved her, she loved me. If we could have worked
it out, I would have married.
Speaker 5: Loved her, loved Lucille.
Speaker 14: You.
Speaker 6: She wasn't a beautiful woman, Charlie. You know that she
was a gentlewoman talking with a You weren't afraid of
the world anymore.
Speaker 5: Well, Fletcher, if that's what she did to you, that's
what she did to you.
Speaker 2: Didn't she do that to you? Baker? You were pretty
broken up when she died.
Speaker 5: Did you ever have a wife who was murdered, mister Clover? No,
then don't tell me how that should feel. You and
my wife are fletch.
Speaker 6: I didn't kill her. I swear I didn't kill her.
Speaker 7: Childe Yeah, sure, sure, sure. What happened last night, Fletcher?
Lucille wave you goodbye and you let your emotions run
away with you. It was all over and you couldn't
remember a thing. So you say you didn't kill her?
Speaker 2: Is that what happened, mister Fletcher?
Speaker 6: I told you what happened. Get him out of here.
Speaker 2: Just a few more things about a girl who worked
at your office. Also murdered Isabelle Mitchell.
Speaker 5: You had your hands full last night, didn't you.
Speaker 2: Killer?
Speaker 6: I asked you get him out of here.
Speaker 2: No, I want him to hear something. There's another way
this thing adds up. You could have killed your wife, Baker.
Speaker 5: What are you talking about? Those is the party. Everybody
knows that, everybody will watch for me.
Speaker 2: I don't know a party like that, people coming in
and out, nobody remembers much about anything.
Speaker 5: You building something, mister Kloby.
Speaker 2: You could have left the party long enough to kill
your wife, then go back to it. No one would
have known the difference. Then play drunk, have a friend,
take your home, find your wife dead.
Speaker 6: Have a seat, Charlie, you might as well as cats.
Take a little while to get used to me.
Speaker 4: Listen.
Speaker 2: Then early the next morning, cry on my shoulder. Be released,
go around to Isabel's place and whispered, who were the
happy news about your wife's being dead?
Speaker 5: You're crazy? Why would I go to her?
Speaker 2: Because you were crazy about her? Crazy about her?
Speaker 5: Isabelle?
Speaker 6: Isabel?
Speaker 5: What are you laughing at?
Speaker 2: He's right, Fletcher, You shouldn't laugh. Mister Baker was crazy
about it. Isabel gave her present. What are you talking
about on the sly. Isabel didn't even know where they
came from. After you've gotten rid of your wife, you
could tell her how Baker, but she wouldn't have any
part of you. You killed her.
Speaker 6: Love with Isabel her a girl like that, Oh Charlie,
you stupid man, A girl like that when you had
your own wife.
Speaker 2: Shut up, shut up up.
Speaker 5: Isabel was sweetened, she was wonderful. You know how. I
know she wouldn't look at me because I was married.
That's the kind of a girl she was. She was good.
I killed my wife for her, and she took pity
on me.
Speaker 2: She was good, but she still wouldn't look at you.
So you killed her.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, that's right. I had no more to live for.
Why should she go on living? Why should somebody else
have her? Who else would have done for her what
I did for nobody?
Speaker 6: Trust me?
Speaker 13: But she didn't want me. She had to die.
Speaker 2: It's an enchanted island, this broadway, or a desert of dust.
Look at it, and it's a magician's pitch with golden
mirrors and fountains that plume with jewels. Then you blink,
it all dissolves. It's a crumbling wall. Corroded with pain.
It's Broadway, the gaudiest, the most violent, the lonesomest mile
in the world, Broadway My Beat.
Speaker 3: Broadway's My Beat stars Larry Thor as Detective Danny Clover,
with Charles Calford as Tartaglia and Jack Krushan as Muggovin.
The program was produced and directed by Elliot Lewis, with
musical score composed and conducted by Alexander Courage. Featured in
tonight's cast were William Conrad, Harry Bartel, Peggy Weber, Lou Merrill,
and Herb Butterfield. All the best fun making from Arthur
Godfrey's daytime shows on CBS Radio. That's what you hear
every Sunday afternoon on most of these stations when King
Arthur Godfrey and his Roundtable hold court. Here tomorrow afternoon.
And remember to enjoy King Arthur Godfrey and his Roundtable
every Sunday afternoon on CBS Radio. Bill Anders speaking, and
remember those lovable rascals Amos and Andy are here every
Sunday day on the CBS Radio network.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, well Uh solo performance from William Conrand. I
think this might be our first time hearing Conrad on
Broadways My Beat. I don't think he's been on before,
particularly compared to others like Butterfield and Near who are
on frequently, but he always does well with this top
of character. One thing I was thinking as I was
listening to the episode is that it's interesting how they
try to make this really connect with the audience as
real or true in a way despite some of the
over the top situations. It is really through keeping the
show grounded in time, and this is somewhat unique a
degree to which Broadways My Beat pretty much follows the
calendar of the listeners very consistently week after week. Generally,
if in an old time radio program you're going to
reference Christmas preparations, but this isn't a Christmas episode, and
it's not your last episode before Christmas, you're just gonna
kind of nod to it, make a comment about Christmas
presents or something, and move on. But really, each week,
the narration does this job of establishing the atmosphere as
this is something that is happening right now this particular case,
to bring it home to the audience. It's very different
from Dragnet, where episodes can essentially happen at any time
of the year. Now, while Dragnet did a regular Christmas
episode each year, there are quite a few episodes that
were set at Christmas when a crime occurred, where it's
not in any sense of the word, a Christmas episode,
And when you get dates, they can essentially be any
time of the year. Now, I think that doesn't create
problems for dragging that for a couple of reasons. First,
it is telling a true case, It's not necessarily following
a calendar. Events can take several months. It's also helped
by the fact that I think, particularly to people outside
of Los Angeles, it seems like a place with less
changes in weather at least you know, seasonal changes, so
no matter what time of year it is, you're not
going to be dealing with snow for example. And other
programs are often somewhat silent when it comes to weather
or seasons unless it's relevant to the plot or perhaps
to establishing atmosphere in a particular episode. You could pretty
much put most of them at any time of the year,
unless you're imagining big amounts of snow on the ground.
And the case works with Broadways my beat, it seems
to be a decision that what they're going to try
to communicate to the audience is that this doesn't happen
in some nice sort of stage. The setting of Broadways
my Beat has a setting that's not some neat stage
for a mystery to play out. It is a real
living location with cycles and seasons and quirks that moves
just like the place you live. So it's a very
interesting approach and just to my mind, I can't think
of many other shows that quite do it this way.
All right, well, now it's time to think. Our Patreon
supporter of the day. Thank you to Sergey, Patreon supporter
since May twenty twenty, currently supporting the podcast at the
shawmus level of four dollars or more per month. Thanks
so much for your support, Surgey. That will do it
for today. If you're enjoying the podcast, please follow us
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and review the podcast wherever you download it from. We
will be back next Wednesday with another episode of Broadways
My Beat. Join us back here tomorrow for dragnetwhere let.
Speaker 2: Us check in you. Yeah, I'm back work.
Speaker 9: I find this.
Speaker 15: Would you please explain what this is about? Why you
brought me down here? We think you know what I don't.
I haven't any idea take me away from my store
on a busy day. You put a police guard on it,
you insist on bringing me down here. What's it all about?
Speaker 2: Tell me know you tell us, mister Gravey, tell you
about what jewel robbery nine months ago? That hold up?
What hold up?
Speaker 15: My store hasn't been talking about your friend Thomas Ashley?
Speaker 2: Ashley, what about him? I think you remember it nine
months ago, parking lot back of the building down on
Poy Street.
Speaker 15: Oh sure, some hold up man slugged him, stole his cases, samples.
I remember it now. Before Tom he've made a big haul,
didn't he on set diamonds twenty thousand dollars worth? I
remember it now. I don't think Tom's gotten over it yet.
It was a jewelry salesman for the same company at
the time, you know, same company Tom was working for him. Yeah,
some of the big bosses thought Tom had a hand
in it. I figured it was a put up job.
Nothing was further from the truth. So sure I know Tom.
He's a close friend of mine. He wouldn't be mixed
up in a deal like that. Tom and I worked
out of the same office for years, We've had him
over the house for dinner. We've even been on vacations together.
It's one of the most honest men I know. We're
sure of all the sun.
Speaker 2: Of course, I'm sure that isn't why you called me
down here?
Speaker 12: Is it?
Speaker 2: You don't think Tom had anything to do with it robbery?
Did you? You don't think he was in on it?
He had nothing to do with it. I think you
know that as well as we do.
Speaker 15: When why am I here? There's nothing I can tell
you about the hold up? Only what I heard from Tom,
what I read in the note. You can tell us
a lot more, Garvey. We didn't bring here just past
time a day Tom was slug and his sample cases
stones were taken. That's all I can kill a liar, mister.
Speaker 2: What you engineered? The whole thing? We know it, and
so do you.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll be with us then in the meantime.
Send your comments to Box thirteen at Great Detectives dot NN,
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This is your host, Adam Graham signing off