Get this and get it straight.

Crime is a sucker's road.

And those who travel

it wind up in the gut of the prison of the grave.

The story you were about to hear is true.

Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

The Adventures of Sam Spade, Detective.

The Adventures of the Saints,

starring Vincent Price.

Bob Bailey, in the exciting adventures

of the man with the action-packed expense account.

America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator...

Yours truly, Johnny Dollar.

... Yours truly, Johnny Dollar. Hello and welcome. Hello and welcome to Down These Mean Streets and a bonus episode, as we kick off what I hope will be a recurring feature called Dollar Days, a spotlight on one of the best runs of any old-time radio series,

detective or otherwise. It's the 195 to 56 serialized installments of yours truly Johnny Dollar.

These stories that played out in 15-minute episodes, weeknights on CBS, featured top-notch writing

and performances from some of radio's best actors, chief among them Bob Bailey, who made the role

of Johnny Dollar his own. Each of these bonus shows will feature, in order, one of the serialized Johnny Dollar adventures,

and appropriately enough, we're kicking off with the shows that started it all.

But first, a little bit of Johnny Dollar background information on its early years, when it was a very good but arguably not yet great

radio drama. The show, of course, centered on Johnny Dollar, a freelance insurance investigator

whose cases took him all around the world. The show initially aired between 1949 and

...