The Welcome back to down These Mean Streets, where this week Dane Clark stars in Crime and Peter Chambers, a

1954 NBC series drawn from the novels of mystery writer Henry Kane.

Unlike some of the other writers we've discussed such as Rex Stow, Dashlhamid, and Raymond Chandler, Henry Kane was heavily involved in the series, serving

his writer and producer, and he was his own advocate for getting his private eye on the air.

Kane first pitched the series to film starred Dane Clark, a character

actor who got his big break opposite Humphrey Bogart in 1943. Born Bernard Zanville, Clark said Bogart gave him his stage name after they worked together in the film Destination Tokyo.

He began his career as a model, and he found the theater actors he encountered to be snobs.

Clark said he tried acting, quote,

just to show them anyone could do it.

Clark was a popular big screen tough guy in the late 1940s and early 1950s,

and he was well suited for the character Kane had created.

After Clark signed on, Henry Kane presented the show to to NBC and they snatched it up. As radio

competed with early television in the 1950s, a film star like Clark was a draw for

the network and as it turned out, NBC was in need of a new series after the abrupt cancellation of Frank Sinatra's

Rocky Fortune, which we heard back in August on the podcast. Crime in Peter Chambers premiered on NBC on April 6th,

1954. Peter Chambers was a New York-based private eye who worked closely with the police department.

This put him in the camp of Richard Diamond and other radio-private detectives who had a cozy relationship

with the law.

His friend and frequent partner was Lieutenant Louis Parker played by William

Zuckard. Unlike most of the shows we've heard on the podcast, Crime and Peter Chambers

originated from New York and it drew upon a different pool of

supporting voice actors from the Hollywood-based programs. With Clark's unique

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