BONUS - Five Favorites: Auditions
Down These Mean Streets (Old Time Radio Detectives)
Jack Mooney
4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 29 February 2024
⏱️ 155 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this bonus episode, we're going back to the beginning with the audition recordings for five old time radio detective shows - some that became regular series, some that didn't, and some that changed stars along the way. We'll hear Victor Jory as a Scotland Yard inspector in the tryout for The Hunters (recorded in November 1948) and Dick Powell - before he was Richard Diamond - as Johnny Dollar in that show's audition (recorded in December 1948). Bill Johnstone stars as Lt. Ben Guthrie in Police Line-Up, the audition for what became The Line-Up (recorded in May 1950) and Mercedes McCambridge heads to court in The Defense Rests, which premiered later as Defense Attorney (recorded in April 1951). Finally, Howard Duff - radio's Sam Spade - dons the fedora of private eye Mike McCoy in the audition for The McCoy (recorded in April 1951).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Get this and get it straight. |
| 0:02.0 | Crime is a sucker's road, |
| 0:04.0 | and those who travel it'd wind up in the gut of the prison of the grave. |
| 0:07.0 | The story you're about to hear is true. The |
| 0:12.5 | The story you were about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent. |
| 0:18.5 | The Adventures of Sam Spade Detective. |
| 0:21.5 | The Adventures of the Saints starring Vincent Prize. |
| 0:25.0 | Bob Bailey in the exciting adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account. |
| 0:30.0 | America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator |
| 0:33.2 | yours truly Johnny Deller The Hello and welcome to a bonus episode of Down These Mean Streets, where today we're going back to the beginning with the audition recordings for five |
| 1:05.9 | old-time radio detective shows. Now you may be asking what's an audition recording? |
| 1:12.2 | Well it was similar to a TV pilot. asking what's an audition recording? |
| 1:12.8 | Well, it was similar to a TV pilot episode. |
| 1:16.5 | It was a show produced to give a network and potential sponsors |
| 1:21.4 | a chance to see what a weekly series would sound like and what |
| 1:25.4 | listeners could expect to hear in subsequent episodes. |
| 1:29.1 | Sometimes the Stars themselves would record a message to accompany the program, as Jimmy Stewart did in the audition for his Radio Western, the Six Shooter. |
| 1:40.0 | Well, that ends the first act of the six shooter folks hope you're enjoying the show |
| 1:45.5 | Before we get on with it, I'd like to tell you a little bit about how I happen to be doing this program |
| 1:51.4 | I'm lucky enough to do quite a bit of radio acting before, but I've never had a program |
| 1:56.2 | of my own. The right thing that didn't seem to come along, at least not until the six-shooter. |
| 2:00.8 | You see, I've made several stories of this kind for pictures and is |
... |
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