The headline in the morning newspaper proves most distressing to reformed jewel thief Horatio “Boston Blackie” Black (Chester Morris) and his sidekick The Runt (George E. Stone). Their friend Joe Kenyon has been killed in a freak automobile accident, and our heroes stop by Kenyon’s detective agency to pay their respects to Helen (Mary Currier), […]

For those of you disappointed in the Academy Award nominations announced this past Thursday, here’s a little something to chew on: one of the most beloved motion picture stars of all time (he was named by the American Film Institute as the second Greatest Male Star of all Time, right behind Humphrey Bogart)…never won a […]

Certified couch potatoes have seen today’s birthday boy guest star in a number of TV classics: Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Batman, The Andy Griffith Show, The Brady Bunch…and so many more. Classic movie fans remember the man of the hour as a leading man in several B-pictures, but he occasionally appeared in higher profile films like […]

The August 11, 1941 broadcast of CBS’ Forecast marked the first time the character of Hopalong Cassidy was offered up to radio audiences as a potential series, much in the same manner as fellow B-Western cowboy Gene Autry did with his Melody Ranch in January of 1940. Since the Forecast presentation did not feature the […]

For Nick and Nora Charles, the famed imbibing couple created by Dashiell Hammett in the 1934 novel The Thin Man, sleuthing was a walk in the park; Nick was a retired gumshoe, and knew a little bit about the in-and-outs of detecting. But Jerry and Pam North—the other well-known twosome who investigated murder and mysteries—were […]

Previously on the Radio Spirits blog, I discussed Alias Boston Blackie (1942), the third entry in the popular Columbia Pictures movie franchise—it’s a holiday-themed picture, with the events taking place during Christmas Eve/Christmas Day and centering on Horatio “Boston Blackie” Black’s (Chester Morris) attempt to recapture an escaped convict who made a successful break as […]

If you were given a name like “Ira Grossel” at birth…chances are you’d have a long career as a certified public accountant or a dentist waiting in the wings once you reached adulthood. But one particular Ira Grossel would overcome the name handicap by becoming a well-known actor—a rewarding gig that spanned both radio, TV […]

The star of radio’s The Aldrich Family, Ezra Stone, may have portrayed an endearingly awkward teenager over the airwaves…but in real life, his co-star Jackie Kelk (as best buddy Homer Brown) confessed that Stone bore not the slightest resemblance to “Henry Aldrich” in person. As Kelk reminisced in Gerald Nachman’s Raised on Radio, “It was […]