Episode 30 - Ten a Day and Expenses (Jeff Regan, Investigator)

Down These Mean Streets (Old Time Radio Detectives)

Jack Mooney

Arts, Performing Arts, Tv & Film

4.5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2013

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jack Webb dons his hardboiled hat again as Jeff Regan, Investigator. In this short-lived series, Webb stars as Regan, private eye and operative for the penny-pinching Anthony J. Lyon. We'll hear Webb, with Wilms Herbert as Lyon, in "The Lonesome Lady," originally aired on CBS on July 24, 1948.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Down These Mean Streets, bringing you the best of detectives from the Golden Age of radio. Today on down these mean streets we'll hear again from actor Jack Webb in a series that came before Dragnet and in between his
0:36.3	runs as Pat Novak for hire. The show is Jeff Regan investigator, another private eye drama that played to Webb's understated style.
0:47.2	After Webb left Pat Novak in 1947, he went to Hollywood in pursuit of a film career.
0:53.0	When that didn't take off, he returned to his old stomping grounds of radio.
0:57.0	ABC was airing Pat Novak with Ben Morris in the title role,
1:02.0	but CBS saw a chance to duplicate ABC's success with Webb as a hard-boiled detective.
1:08.0	Jeff Regan was a similar character to Pat Novak, both were tough tough operators but seemed to wind up on the receiving end of
1:16.1	beatings more often than they delivered them. The biggest difference between the two was that Novak was a lone wolf, but Regan was an operative for the International
1:25.4	Detective Bureau in Los Angeles.
1:28.6	International was run by the penny-pinching Anthony J. Lyon, and Regan was nicknamed the Lion's Eye.
1:35.0	Their dynamic, with Reagan performing the risky legwork for Lyon's financial reward,
1:40.0	was similar to that of Nero Wolf and Archie Goodwin, if Nero and Archie couldn't stand each other.
1:46.0	For his trouble, his broken bones and his frequently bruised skull, Regan earned $10 a day and expenses as the Lion's Eye.
1:55.0	During the Run, Lion was originally played by Wilms Herbert, who we've heard as Sergeant
1:59.6	Otis on Richard Diamond.
2:01.6	Later, West Coast Radio veteran Herb Butterfield played Lyon.
2:06.0	Despite strong scripts and Webb's performance, Jeff Regan didn't hit the ratings height
2:11.0	CBS had envisioned. Webb was already looking ahead to the future
2:14.9	when the series left the air in December 1948, telling Radio Life magazine that his next
2:20.5	character might be named Joe Friday. Not as well known as Dragnet or Pat Novak. Jeff
2:27.3	Regan investigator marks a transition in Webb's career, but still finds the actor at the top of his game with another rye
2:34.4	understated performance. So now let's listen to Jack Webb as Jeff Reagan in The
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