Episode 220 - Diamond is Forever (Richard Diamond, Private Detective)

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

🗓️ 23 April 2017

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For one hundred dollars a day plus expenses, Richard Diamond will tackle any case. By the time it’s over, he’ll have used his fists, his gun, his wits, and his pipes as he croons a tune to his girlfriend. Dick Powell stars as the singing detective in one of radio’s best mystery shows. We’ll hear him in a pair of episodes – “The Betty Moran Case” (originally aired on NBC on May 29, 1949) and “The Cathy Victor Case” (originally aired on January 15, 1950).

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Welcome to Down these mean streets where this week we have a song in our heart as we bring Dick
0:25.5	Powell back to the podcast as Richard Diamond, Private Detective.
0:31.5	The Adventures of the Gumsesh who Can Solve Any Case while he carries a tune premiered on radio
0:37.0	68 years ago this week on April 24, 1949.
0:42.0	Richard Diamond wasn't the first detective Dick Powell. 4th, 1949.
0:42.6	Richard Diamond wasn't the first detective Dick Powell had played.
0:46.3	He'd reinvented his career when he started as Philip Marlow in 1944's Murder My Sweet,
0:52.3	and he started on radio as private eye Richard Rogue in Rogue's
0:55.8	gallery. But Diamond is the detective role that suited him best. He was a tough glib ex-cop with a good friend on the force and a girlfriend on Park Avenue.
1:07.0	The show and the role allowed Powell to play to his strengths as both a late comedian and a noir tough guy.
1:14.3	The series was created for Dick Powell by Blake Edwards,
1:17.7	the writer and director who would return to the P.I.
1:20.4	game with Peter Gunn on television. A show that adapted several Richard Diamond radio
1:26.3	scripts for the small screen. Of course, Edwards may be best known today
1:31.0	for the popular series of Pink Panther films he made with
1:34.2	Peter Sellers, but he really set the tone for the exploits of Richard Diamond
1:38.6	with his witty clever mystery stories. He put Richard Diamond in the middle of a New York city filled
1:44.2	with colorful criminals and dangerous dames and he gave Dick Powell some of the
1:48.5	best sarcastic retorts on radio. Today in honor of his radio anniversary we'll hear two of Richard Diamond on the Betty Moran case from May 29th, 1949.
2:04.5	Diamond's case in this show is a suicide that smells like murder
2:08.2	with a touch of blackmail in the mix.
2:11.3	Herb Butterfield, Jack Petruzzi, and Toll Avery, co-star in this episode directed by
	...

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