I’ve continued listening to old time radio programs while I drive and I wanted to update you on my experiences. After listening to all of the extant Richard Diamond programs, I listened to Box 13 and am now listening to Broadway Is My Beat.
Box 13 ran from August 1948 to August 1949, starred Alan Ladd, and was produced by his company. Ladd is a fine radio performer and his performances are strong but, sadly, I didn’t think the writing was up to the level of his acting. The McGuffin is that Dan Halliday is a writer who gets his story ideas from the adventures he has doing the chores given to him by people responding to his newspaper ad at Box 13: “Adventure wanted, will go anywhere, do anything — write Box 13, Star-Times.” All of the episodes produced of it are extant.
Broadway Is My Beat is a police procedural that ran for five years from February 1949 to August 1954. For its first six months it was produced in New York and starred Anthony Ross as Lt. Danny Clover, NYPD, assigned to Times Square. In July 1949 the production moved to Los Angeles and Danny Clover was voiced for the balance of the show’s run by Larry Thor.
Every episode opens with the line “from Times Square to Columbus Circle — the gaudiest, the most violent, the lonesomest mile in the world.”, closing with the same line, capped with “My beat.” Apparently, only four programs from the New York run have been discovered so far but they’re brilliant. When the show moved to LA, it was missing a very important character: New York. The voices, dialects, prosody, sound effects, and music are all somehow glossier yet blander, less interesting, this despite using some of the best voice talent that radio had to offer.
