Encore - Heflin for Hire (Adventures of Philip Marlowe)

Down These Mean Streets (Old Time Radio Detectives)

Jack Mooney

Arts, Performing Arts, Mystery, Detectives, Old, Radio, Time, Tv & Film, Oldtimeradio

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2025

⏱️ 158 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this encore presentation, we go back to the summer of 1947 when Philip Marlowe came to the air in his own weekly series with Van Heflin playing Raymond Chandler's private eye. The NBC series featured a mix of original mysteries as well as adaptations of Chandler stories, including the show's premiere episode "Red Wind" (originally aired on NBC on June 17, 1947). A year later, Gerald Mohr would put his own stamp on the character, but these Heflin shows offer a different take on Marlowe and a compelling portrayal in its own right. Along with "Red Wind," we'll hear "The Daring Young Dame on the Flying Trapeze" (July 1, 1947); "The King in Yellow" (July 8, 1947); "Trouble is My Business" (August 5, 1947); and "Robin and the Hood" (August 19, 1947).

Transcript

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0:00.0	Get this and get it straight.
0:02.1	Crime is a sucker's road.
0:03.9	And those who travel it wind up in the gut of the prison of the grave.
0:12.3	The story you were about to hear is true.
0:15.3	Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
0:18.7	The Adventures of Sam Spade, Detective.
0:21.8	The Adventures of the Saint,
0:23.5	starring Vincent Price.
0:25.6	Bob Bailey, in the exciting adventures
0:27.8	of the man with the action-packed expense account.
0:30.6	America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator.
0:33.3	Yours truly, Johnny Dollar.
0:37.4	Music Yours truly, Johnny Dollar. Hello and welcome to Down These Mean Streets and more old-time radio detectives and crime fighters.
1:03.2	75 years ago this month, Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, one of fiction's all-time great private eyes, came to radio in his own weekly
1:14.0	series. The Adventures of Philip Marlowe premiered on NBC as a summer replacement for the Bob
1:20.1	Hope Show, and for 13 weeks, big-screen actor Van Heflin starred as the detective.
1:28.0	Now, normally, when we listen to Philip Marlowe on this podcast, the episodes come from the second and longer-running Marlowe series starring Gerald Moore.
1:38.7	That show went on the air in 1948, and it was a big hit for CBS.
1:48.3	It also led director Norman MacDonald to create gunsmoke after CBS President William Paley asked McDonald for a Philip Marlowe in the Old West.
1:55.9	The Gerald Moore Philip Marlowe is one of my favorite old-time radio shows. But when I think of the Marlowe
2:02.8	from Raymond Chandler's novels and short stories, including some that were adapted for the
2:08.5	Van Hefflin series, I think the Heflin shows get closer to the source material. Milton Geiger
	...

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