Episode 54 - Nick of Time (Nick Carter, Master Detective)
Down These Mean Streets (Old Time Radio Detectives)
Jack Mooney
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2014
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nick Carter is one of the detective world's oldest characters, predating Sherlock Holmes by more than a year. He thrilled fans in dime novels, pulp magazines, and movies before he came to radio. Lon Clark starred as the brilliant private eye for twelve years on the air, and we'll hear him in "The Case of Shakespeare's Ghost," originally aired on Mutual on December 30, 1945.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The We welcome another detective to the podcast this week on down these mean streets |
| 0:26.7 | and he's one of the oldest characters in Detective Fiction. He's the most famous of all |
| 0:32.3 | man hunters, Nick Carter, master detective. |
| 0:36.0 | Nick Carter debuted in September 1886, more than a year before Arthur Conan Doyle introduced the world to Sherlock Holmes. |
| 0:45.0 | Carter's first appearance came in an issue of Street and Smith's New York Weekly magazine. |
| 0:51.0 | Street and Smith was one of the leading publishers of dime novels and pulp magazines |
| 0:56.0 | and the first Nick Carter story, The Old Detective's Pupil, was written by John Russell Coriel from an idea by Ormond Gerald Smith, son of the company's co-founder. |
| 1:09.0 | Nick Carter became one of the most popular dime novel characters in America and he was spun off into his own character magazine. |
| 1:17.0 | Stories featuring Nick Carter would continue to run through the 1930s and the character enjoyed a revival in the 1960s updated for the |
| 1:25.6 | Times as a secret agent. Nick Carter was a private detective and a master of disguise |
| 1:31.5 | in addition to possessing an encyclopedic knowledge of the world, |
| 1:36.0 | he was a clean cut character. |
| 1:38.0 | He didn't smoke and he didn't drink. |
| 1:40.0 | In his earliest years, Carter was considered by some to be the American counterpart to Sherlock Holmes. |
| 1:47.0 | It's believed that the expression, in the Nick of Time, was inspired by Nick Carter's uncanny knack to arrive at the precise moment in the story in order to save the day. |
| 1:58.0 | Like other popular Pulp detectives, Nick Carter made his way to the big screen, but his first film |
| 2:04.3 | adventures came in France. The character's adventures were also being |
| 2:08.2 | published overseas and he hit the screen in French films in 1908, |
| 2:12.8 | 1909 and 1912. |
| 2:15.7 | Hollywood was late to the party, but Walter Pigeon |
| 2:18.6 | starred as Nick in three MGMB movies from 1939 until 1940. He made his radio debut just a few years later. On April 11th, 1943, the Return of Nick Carter premiered on Mutual, with Lon Clark starring as the title character. |
| 2:37.0 | Clark, a former opera singer, was a former cast made of Red Skeltons. |
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