Episode 111 - Scotland Yard Sale (Pursuit)
Down These Mean Streets (Old Time Radio Detectives)
Jack Mooney
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 3 May 2015
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We head back to London for another mystery from Scotland Yard and a dangerous, relentless Pursuit. This series let listeners join in on the game of cat and mouse between cop and criminal – "when man hunts man." Ben Wright stars as the dogged Inspector Peter Black, hot on the heels of England's most dastardly criminals. We'll hear him on the job in "Pursuit of the Asiatic Killer," first aired on CBS on March 11, 1952.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Not all radio gum shoesoes walked a bead in New York or Los Angeles. |
| 0:27.0 | Several on-air detectives called London Home during the Golden Age of Radio, including one hard-working Scotland Yard inspector. |
| 0:36.0 | For 65 episodes between 1949 and 1952, Inspector Peter Black chased down the worst criminals of Great Britain in pursuit. |
| 0:47.0 | The series grew out of a 1948 audition program called The Hunters, which starred Victor Jory as Inspector Harvey of Scotland Yard, |
| 0:57.2 | and featured a script adapted from the Cornell Woolrich short story, You Take Ballistics. That series didn't take off, but producer William |
| 1:06.6 | N Robeson revised the concept of a show focused on a London detective and turned |
| 1:11.8 | it into pursuit. |
| 1:13.0 | Bucking a trend in radio crime drama, Robeson opted to have |
| 1:18.0 | original mystery stories instead of dramatized cases from actual files. |
| 1:23.6 | We first heard pursuit on the podcast back in episode 27, |
| 1:28.3 | with an episode starring Ted D'Corsia as Inspector Black. |
| 1:32.4 | Dacorsia, an actor normally known for gruff tough guy roles, affected a British accent for that first run of shows. |
| 1:40.0 | He was no stranger to the radio detective world. After pursued he would play |
| 1:45.5 | Lieutenant Levinson on Richard Diamond and he later starred on radio as Mike Hammer. |
| 1:50.3 | Dacorsia headlined Pursued from its November 1949 camera. who would later play a bread on Frontier Gentlemen, |
| 2:03.0 | filled in as Inspector Black, |
| 2:05.0 | as Pursuit finished out its run through May, |
| 2:08.0 | followed by a short 1950 summer run. |
| 2:11.0 | When Pursuit returned to the CBS Airwaves in July 1951, it had a new director in Elliot |
| 2:17.6 | Lewis, the same man behind the scenes at Broadway is my beat. It also had a new leading man. Actor Ben Wright had assumed the role of Inspector Black. |
| 2:28.0 | For Wright's accent came naturally. He was a British-born radio actor who, one year before he started |
| 2:36.4 | in pursuit, had wrapped a single season run as Sherlock Holmes. And while his clipped English accent was perfect for the Scotland Yard man of pursuit, |
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