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. And the Hello and welcome to Down These Mean Streets and more crime solvers from the Golden Age of radio.

Our star this week is Frank Sinatra, but you won't hear any singing from the Chairman of the Board today.

Instead, Sinatra stars as Rocky Fortune.

Rocky was a frequently unemployed fellow whose weekly job hunts always landed him in hot water.

Sinatra starred in the series, his only regular dramatic role on radio, from October 6, 1953 until March 30th, 1954.

Though he wasn't technically a detective,

Rocky had a knack for getting to the bottom of tricky mysteries and identifying the guilty party.

Sometimes it was done out of self-preservation when Sergeant Hamilton J. Finger of the New York Police Department suspected Rocky was involved in the Crime of the Week.

The show was created especially for Sinatra, who at the time was emerging from a post-war career slump.

The year before he'd been dropped by Columbia Records

and he was smarting from his very public affair with actress Ava Gardner and his divorce from his first wife Nancy.

Rocky Fortune was part of a comeback wave that included his performance and from here to eternity, one that would win him

an Oscar in 1954, and a new contract with capital records. That was the start of a long

and fruitful partnership with his first capital album

releasing in January of 1954.

With all of that newfound success, Sinatra's schedule was suddenly too crowded for the weekly adventures of a certain

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