The Last week on the podcast we heard an adventure of Frank Race, a wartime spy who became a private

eye in peacetime. Our detective this week also came home from the war and embarked on a career of crime solving.

He was former GI George Valentine, an enterprising young man with a novel means of supporting himself. He ran a newspaper ad where he offered

his services for any job, particularly jobs that were dangerous or risky. His ad invited potential clients to save themselves the trouble and let George do it.

That advertisement gave Radio one of its longest-running detective dramas.

When it premiered in 1946, longest running detective dramas.

When it premiered in 1946, however, let George do it was more comedy than Crime Caper.

George's misadventures were often played for laughs, and those early shows even

sported laughter from the studio audience. In early episodes, George helped a

love-struck farmer find true love, and he helped a cowboy overcome a fear of horses, hardly the work

of Sam Spade or Philip Marlow. In these early episodes George Valentine was

surrounded by a colorful cast of regulars who might have been more at home on a sitcom.

There was elevator operator Caleb, office boy Sunny Brooks, and Sunny's sister

Claire. As the series evolved into a light-hearted

mystery, Claire, aka Brooksie, was the only supporting player to make the

transition. For nearly the entire eight-year run of the show,

George was played by Bob Bailey.

Bailey may be best known to old-time radio fans for his five-year stint

as yours truly Johnny Dollar, a gig he picked up not

long after he signed off of Let George do it.

The trades that made Bailey Radio's best Johnny Dollar served him well as George Valentine.

He could play lighter fair and serious stuff with equal skill,

...