Encore - Night Beat Favorites

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

🗓️ 9 February 2025

⏱️ 146 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Back to new episodes next week, but for now let's celebrate the anniversary of the debut of Night Beat with my five favorite episodes. The nocturnal adventures of Chicago reporter Randy Stone premiered on February 6, 1950, and here are my picks for his best stories. We'll hear the show's first episode ("Zero," originally aired on NBC on February 6, 1950), where he helps a woman track down a man before he takes his own life, and a meeting with an unusual man who claims to have a sinister super power ("I Wish You Were Dead," originally aired on May 22, 1950). Randy meets a faded college football star in trouble with the mob ("The Football Player and the Syndicate," originally aired on NBC on June 12, 1950), and he dials a random phone number to find a woman in danger ("The City at Your Fingertips," originally aired on NBC on July 31, 1950). Finally, Randy and the police hunt for a contaminated case of butter that could unleash typhoid on the Windy City ("A Case of Butter," originally aired on NBC on September 25, 1950).

Transcript

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0:00.0	Get this and get it straight.
0:02.1	Crime is a sucker's road.
0:03.9	And those who travel
0:04.6	it wind up in the gut of the prison of the grave.
0:12.3	The story you were about to hear is true.
0:15.3	Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
0:18.7	The Adventures of Sam Spade, Detective.
0:21.8	The Adventures of the Saint, starring Vincent Price.
0:25.5	Bob Bailey, in the exciting adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account.
0:30.6	America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator.
0:33.3	Yours truly, Johnny Dollar.
1:02.6	Thank you. Yours truly, Johnny Duller. Hello and welcome to Down These Mean Streets and more old-time radio detectives and crime fighters.
1:04.0	For this bonus show, I've picked out my five favorite episodes of Nightbeat, the outstanding radio drama that starred
1:14.5	Frank Lovejoy as Chicago reporter Randy Stone. Each night, Stone walked the streets of the
1:21.9	windy city in search of stories for his column in the Chicago Star, Though he wasn't a detective, and Nightbeat
1:30.0	wasn't strictly a detective show, it featured great tales of mystery and crime as Randy encountered
1:37.4	people from both sides of the tracks at all levels of society each and every week. It had a terrific star in Frank Lovejoy,
1:47.1	a veteran radio player who found success
1:50.2	on the big screen in the late 40s and 50s.
1:54.1	He was perfectly cast as the endearing Randy Stone,
1:58.4	a reporter who tries to keep his optimism from being overwhelmed by his
2:02.3	cynicism. A version of the character was played in the show's audition episode by Edmund
	...

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