The We're headed back to the Big Apple this week with two more episodes of Broadway is My Beat,

one of the greatest shows, Detective or otherwise, to air during the Golden Age of radio.

The series premiered in February 1949

with stage and radio star Anthony Ross

as Detective Danny Clover. These early shows were directed by John Deets and they

set the tone for the series that followed. Clover had a passion and introspection about his work and the lives he encountered.

This wasn't just the facts black and white police work of Joe Friday.

Clover ruminated on his work and on the world, and he poetically described

his beat as the gaudiest, the most violent, the lonesomest mile in the world.

Broadway was Danny Clover's beat, but starting in the summer of 1949, his home was

Hollywood.

CBS moved production of the series to the west coast and turned the show over to

Elliot Lewis, a veteran of the Armed Forces radio service who at the time was best

known for his acting. He co-starred as Nair duel Frankie Remley on the Phil Harris

Alice Vays show, but he was establishing himself as one of radio's premiere directors. One year later he would also take the wheel at

suspense and among his frequent collaborators were script writers Morton Fine and

David Friedkin. On Broadway is my beat, Fine and Friedkin built on the foundation

of the earlier New York broadcasts and they painted Danny Clover as a tender-hearted but determined

cop who reflected on his hometown with

lyrical descriptions.

When Broadway leaps into the nighttime, the sound is a thing compounded of trumpet and

machine and hiss and a gaudy laugh.

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