Get this and get it straight. Crime is a suckers road and those who travel it wind up in the gut of the prison of the grave.

The story you are about to hear is true, only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

The Adventures of Sam Spade Detective.

The Adventures of the Saints starring Vincent Prize.

Bob Bailey in the exciting adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account.

America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator.

Yours truly, Johnny Deller. Hello. Hello and

welcome to Down These Mean Streets, a weekly podcast trip back to the Golden Age of

Radio and its detectives and crime fighters. Today our spotlight shines not on a

detective but on a writer. She's Kathleen Hight, the first woman hired as a staff writer by CBS Radio, and this week in a special show for Women's

History Month were saluting her with three of her old time radio scripts. You may not know Kathleen Heights name, but if you're an old time

radio fan, chances are you've enjoyed her work on shows like The Whistler, Escape, Nightbeat, Rogers of the Gazette, Gunsmoke, and Fort Laramie.

Kathleen He grew up in Kansas and she was descended from pioneers who came west to settle in the new territories

of the United States.

She went west to California, where in 1943 she got a job as a secretary for CBS Radio.

At the time, the network wasn't hiring women to be staff writers.

At least they weren't until Kathleen Hight convinced her bosses to give her a shot.

Soon after, she was busy working as a script editor for several shows and writing scripts or even more. In the early 1950s she left

her staff position at CBS to become a freelance writer. It was during those years that she began a long collaboration

with producer director Norman McDonnell. You may recognize his name. He was

behind the Adventures of Philip Marlow starring Gerald Moore.

And when CBS President William Paley asked for a Philip Marlow in the Old West,

...