BONUS - Five Favorites: Pat Novak For Hire

Down These Mean Streets (Old Time Radio Detectives)

Jack Mooney

Arts, Performing Arts, Mystery, Detectives, Old, Radio, Time, Tv & Film, Oldtimeradio

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2023

⏱️ 156 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this month's bonus episode, we're headed to the San Francisco waterfront for my five favorite episodes of Pat Novak For Hire. Jack Webb stars as Novak - who makes ends meet by renting boats and taking odd investigative assignments, and who usually lands in hot water with the hard-headed Inspector Hellman of homicide. First, competing clients hire Novak to guard - and stay away from - boxer Rory Malone (originally aired on ABC on March 20, 1949). Then, a woman wants Novak to settle up her brother's debt with a notorious gambler (originally aired on ABC on March 27, 1949) and a priest asks Novak to find an Alcatraz escapee before the police do (originally aired on ABC on April 2, 1949). A scheme to scare a man backfires when a gun with blanks delivers a fatal shot (originally aired on ABC on April 16, 1949) and the search for a dead woman's handbag brings out the worst in several dangerous characters (originally aired on ABC on June 4, 1949).

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 installment of Down These Mean Streets,
1:00.7	another spotlight show where I share my five favorite episodes of an old time
1:06.2	radio detective series. This month we're heading to the San Francisco waterfront
1:12.2	with Jack Webb as Pat Novak for hire.
1:17.0	Novak wasn't a professional detective.
1:20.0	His main job was renting boats out of Pier 19, but he took on odd investigative jobs to make ends meet.
1:28.0	Those jobs usually landed him in hot water with his clients, with criminals, and with the hard-headed Inspector
1:35.2	Helmin of homicide, who was always looking for a reason to lock Novak up and throw away the key. The one man in town Novak could count on, to a point, was
1:46.2	Jocco Madigan, a doctor turned Barstool philosopher who could
1:53.7	coke him away from his drink.
1:55.4	The series began as a regional production out of San Francisco in
1:59.9	1946. Years before Webb donned Joe Friday's badge on Dragnet.
2:07.9	The show was a hit, thanks to the pulpy prose of the scripts by writer Richard Breen and with Webb's trademark style of
	...

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