Welcome to Down These Mean Streets, bringing you the best of detectives from the Golden Age of radio. Welcome to down these mean streets. Today we'll hear again from actor Bob Bailey, who we first heard back in May as Johnny

Dollar. But today we're going to hear an episode from his first run as a radio detective as

freelance sleuth George Valentine in Let George do it.

George wasn't a cop or a private eye.

He was a GI back from World War II who, like several of his fellow former soldiers, found himself

in need of work, and he found it by running a newspaper ad where he offered to take on jobs

that would be too dangerous for the average man. As he put it,

danger was his stock and trade, and he invited potential clients to let George do it.

It's a similar premise to Dan Hollidays' ad seeking adventure on Box 13,

though Let George do it beat Box 13 to the air by two years. It premiered in 1946 and it had a decidedly lighter touch

than most mystery shows. In fact the early years of the show were more sitcom than

sloothing with George Powellowing around with office boy Sunny Brooks and his sister

Claire aka Brooksy George's Gal Friday in those early episodes George might find himself taking any number of odd jobs usually more for comedic effect than drama.

As the series evolved, the out-and-out comedy faded, but the show never lost its light-hearted style, even as the stories became more traditional mysteries.

Sunny left two, leaving George and Brooksey as a duo.

George Valentine was stumbling over dead bodies a little more often,

but always with a quip or some flirtatious banter at the ready.

During their cases, George and Brooksey frequently worked with Lieutenant Riley of the police

played by radio veteran Wally Mayer. A listener would never mistake the adventures of

George Valentine for those of Philip Marlow, but let George do it was a good balancing

act for the majority of tough guy hard-boiled radio detectives, and anchoring it all was Bob Bailey, an actor who was still a few years away from his biggest success on radio,

but one who was proving he had the vocal chops as a leading man, adept at getting laughs and throwing punches, often in the same 30 minutes.

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