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Down These Mean Streets (Old Time Radio Detectives)

Episode 46 - Home Sweet Homicide (Mr. and Mrs. North)

Down These Mean Streets (Old Time Radio Detectives)

Jack Mooney

Arts, Performing Arts, Tv & Film

4.51.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2014

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Joseph Curtin and Alice Frost star as Mr. and Mrs. North, a pair of amateur married sleuths who can't seem to avoid landing neck-deep in trouble.  Publisher Jerry and his wife Pam stumbled into murder and mayhem for twelve years on radio and a few more on television.  The duo star in "Dead Giveaway," an Armed Forces Radio Service rebroadcast of a show originally aired on CBS on February 19, 1952.

Transcript

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0:00.0

The This week we welcome our first husband and wife detective duo to down these mean streets.

0:28.0

There were a number of couples who solved crimes during the Golden Age of Radio,

0:32.0

but none had the longevity and popularity of Jerry and

0:35.9

Pam North, Mr. and Mrs. North, who sprang from the pages of novels and enjoyed a long career

0:42.0

on the airwaves.

0:44.0

The characters first appeared in comedic short stories written by Richard Lockridge in the New York

0:49.3

son and the New Yorker.

0:51.6

After the stories were published in a 1936 collection, Lockridge teamed up with his wife

0:56.8

Francis and cast the North's in a mystery novel titled The North's Meat Murder.

1:03.0

Published in 1940, the North's Meat Murder was a success and kicked off a series of 25 mystery

1:09.1

novels starring the North's and written by the Lockridges.

1:13.3

Though neither was a trained detective, Mr. North's day job was a book publisher, Pam and Jerry

1:19.7

North were sharp and quick-witted and eventually it seemed like they spent every waking

1:24.6

hours solving murders or thwarting robberies, much to the chagrin of their friend and ally

1:30.1

on the police force, Lieutenant Bill Wigand.

1:33.4

The Norths came to Broadway in a play starring Albert Hackett and Peggy Conklin, and the show ran

1:39.0

from January to May 1941.

1:42.4

That play was adapted into a 1941 film that starred Gracie Allen as Pam,

1:48.0

with William Post Jr. as Jerry.

1:50.0

The film was not well received, and Richard Lockridge felt Gracie Allen was miscast.

1:57.0

Following a 1941 audition program, Mystery and Mrs North came to radio in 1942 with Joseph Curtin and Alice Frost starring as Jerry and Pam.

2:08.0

The pair starred in the series on NBC until 1946 and then on CBS from 1947. DC until CBS,

...

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