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Radio detective on radio detective crime!

Tuesday 3/12/24

This is pretty neat.


Here we have an episode of Tales of the Texas Rangers from February 18, 1951, called "Sweet Revenge." Texas Rangers was, as we've discussed, a modern Western, as well as a detective program. Not all detectives are detectives by title or private investigators. For instance, in Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, drawing master Walter Hartright is a detective. In Texas Rangers, our lead detective is Jace Pearson, and in this episode--whose title is a pun--he solves a crime by noticing a detail about sugar in a jar and a crack in the roof. It's a very Sherlockian deal of deduction by smallest detail. Everyone--including Jace--thinks the murder happened in a particular spot, but it turns out it didn't.



Now we come to another detective: Johnny Dollar from Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, as played by Bob Bailey in the first half hour episode he did during his time on the program after doing five-part episodes for thirteen months. This episode, which aired November 11, 1956, is called "The Big Scoop Matter," and, what do you know, the crime is solved because our man notices something about sugar in a bowl that has gotten wet on account of a crack in the roof. It's the same thing! Right on the nose!



This is rare. Stories were certainly used again and again, but under the same title. Any classic radio buff can tell you about the various iterations of "Three Skeleton Key," "Sorry, Wrong Number," "The Hitch-Hiker," "Back for Christmas," "Ghost Hunt," and so forth. But here we have a straight-up pilfering. The story moves from Texas to New England, and sure, there are new bits and angles, a different set-up, but the solution comes down to this specific and singular clue.


Both good episodes. Which do you like better? I'd say that the Texas Rangers episode is tighter. The villain of the Johnny Dollar episode keeps pushing his luck when he doesn't have to--it's like he's egging Johnny on to catch him--and the murdered guy--he of the big scoop--is kind of annoying. I like the setting quite a bit, though, and the atmosphere. It's a New England vacation retreat in the off-season, with stormy weather.


Russell Hughes wrote the Texas Rangers episode. He went on to adapt 1954's Them!. Robert Ryf wrote the Johnny Dollar episode and did the purloining. He wrote a number of the Johnny Dollar multi-parters, had a nice run in the early 1950s on a program called Dangerous Assignment, and did a Suspense adaptation of "Leiningen Versus the Ants" in 1957.

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