Welcome to Down These Mean Streets, bringing you the best of detectives from the Golden Age of radio. We're back with down these mean streets and our star this week was called the world's greatest living radio

actress by Orson Wells. She's Academy Award winner Mercedes McCambridge and we'll

hear her today in defense attorney.

McCambridge began her career on radio.

She'd earned an NBC contract in 1937 when she graduated from college.

She worked on soap operas and mysteries and her performances brought her to

Hollywood. She won her Oscar in 1949 for her breakout film role in all the Kings Men and she was at the height of her film career when defense attorney

launched in 1951.

The series was developed by writer Cameron Blake, and she wrote many of the early episodes.

McCambridge played Martha Ellis Bryant known as Marty to her friends.

A former district attorney, Marty made the switch to defense work and started her own firm. She was often

assisted in her cases by her boyfriend, newspaper reporter Judd Barnes, played by Howard

Culver. We heard him last month as Elery Queen. The show was packaged by producer Don Sharp and pitched to NBC as a summer replacement series for 1951.

NBC wanted the show, but they wanted it to be produced in their New York studios.

McCambridge and Culver, both Los Angeles natives, weren't interested in traveling across the country for a short run in the summer.

Sharp repackaged the show and sold it to ABC.

Under the direction of Dwight Houser, Defense Attorney premiered on July 6, 1951.

Each week, Marty Bryant took on a new case, or listeners found her fighting to appeal an

earlier conviction.

Her friendly adversary on the police department was Lieutenant Ed Leibis, played by Tony Barrett, and the

two frequently met at crime scenes or over the course of her investigation.

Judd Barnes was Marty's occasional assistant and bodyguard,

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