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Down These Mean Streets (Old Time Radio Detectives)

Episode 142 – The Two Franks (Jeff Regan, Investigator)

Down These Mean Streets (Old Time Radio Detectives)

Jack Mooney

Tv & Film, Arts, Performing Arts

4.51.1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2015

⏱️ 40 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When CBS resurrected Jeff Regan, Investigator in 1949, Frank Graham stepped into Jack Webb's shoes as the titular gumshoe. The versatile and talented actor created a new Regan – less hard-boiled and cynical. Joining Graham in the new series was Frank Nelson – frequent radio nemesis of Jack Benny – as Anthony J. Lyon, Regan's penny-pincher of a boss. It was a union of two of radio's most talented performers and a combination unlike any other detective duo. We'll hear them in "The Little Man's Lament," originally aired on CBS on November 11, 1949.

Transcript

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0:00.0

The The radio crime fighting career of Jeff Regan investigator looked like it would be over almost before it began.

0:30.0

Jack Webb starred as the hard-boiled gumshoe from July to December 1948, but he bid farewell to the role after 24 episodes.

0:39.0

Listeners heard nothing from Regan, the $10 a day and expenses operative working for Anthony

0:44.8

Jay Lyon, for nearly a year until the series was revived on CBS in October 1949.

0:52.6

Jeff Regan was back, though not with Jack Webb.

0:56.2

By that time he was starring on NBC in a little series called Dragnet.

1:00.6

A new actor stepped into the role and the second life of Jeff Regan began.

1:05.0

The new Regan was Frank Graham, a versatile performer and one of radio's true men of a thousand voices, Graham voiced animated characters for Disney,

1:15.8

Tex Avery, and Warner Brothers, and he could be heard all over the dial from the late 1930s

1:21.0

throughout the 1940s. One of the best showcases for his talent

1:25.2

came on the series Nightcap Yarnes, a daily broadcast where Graham voiced every

1:30.9

character. It wasn't often that anyone on Pop Martin's Ranch had a chance to talk for any length of time.

1:37.0

All the hands had been there so long it exhausted subjects for conversation years before.

1:42.0

That's why Bill Dunum, the reporter from Reno, found the

1:46.0

cowhand so willing to give him all the dope. Well, let me see. First thing I saw of Dixie Barnes was the day after she got here. Let me and

1:55.0

and Cactis was just leaving for the west end when we see this dame riding out toward the past.

2:02.0

When I says to Cactis, look, a phillotine. this dame riding out toward the past.

2:02.6

When I says the cactus,

2:04.4

look a Philly, he squints up the way he always does and he answers back.

2:10.1

My sundown, it is a dame, and would you look at her push that colt around?

2:15.0

In addition, Graham worked as a radio announcer on shows including The Romance of the Ranchos,

2:21.0

a historical drama of old California. His dynamic portrayal of Reagan was a

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