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

The story you were 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. And the Hello and welcome to down these mean streets. Today we're saluting Howard Duff, the talented actor who donned the

fedora of Daschle Hammett Sam Spade in one of radio's greatest detective

shows.

Duff was born November 24th, 1913,

and we're throwing him an early birthday party

with two of his performances as the San Francisco Gumshoo.

Duff had been best known as a wartime announcer for the Armed Forces radio service

when he was cast as spade in 1946. He beat out future suspense director Elliot Lewis and rumor has it big screen

Michael Shane star Lloyd Nolan for the role. And while both of those men were fine

actors, it's hard almost impossible to imagine anyone other than Howard Duff in the

part.

His tongue-in-cheek tough-eye persona was perfectly suited to the show's tone, with scripts that

sent up the conventions of the hard-boiled detective genre even as they delivered solid radio

mysteries. The Adventures of Sam Spade was a one-of-a-kind radio series and in Howard Duff it had a one-of-a-kind star.

And when Duff's name was caught up in the hysteria of the Red Scare and he was fired,

the series never fully recovered.

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