I’m still listening to old radio programs. After I gave up listening to the decreasingly listenable Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, following its move to New York and cast change, I started listening to that most archetypal of hard-boiled detective radio dramas, The Adventures of Philip Marlowe. The series began as a summer replacement in 1947 with the screen actor Van Heflin as the titular character. Only a few episodes with Heflin as Marlowe are extant and two of those are the pilot and the first episode, both dramatizations of Chandler’s story Red Wind. To my ear they have slightly different casts, delivery, and music so at this point I think they’re actually different performances of the same script.
The series returned in 1948, this time moving from NBC to CBS and featuring Gerald Mohr as Marlowe. The new version also opened with that same script and there’s really no comparison. Mohr was immeasurably better than Heflin as Marlowe, arguably the best portrayal of the character. Raymond Chandler, who had little connection with the radio series other than cashing his royalty checks, was reportedly happy with Mohr’s performance and he should have been.
