Friday's Favorite OTR

 Jeff Regan, Investigator: "The Man with the Key" 10/2/48

Regan is hired to hold on to a safe deposit box key for seven hours. It sounds like an easy job. But it isn't.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Jeff Regan, Investigator: "Too Many Mrs. Rogers" 10/9/48

Regan is hired to guard a corpse and the valuable ring the dead guy is wearing. It turns out the guy had a few too many wives--one of whom might be willing to kill to get the ring. 

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Jeff Regan, Investigator: "The Lawyer and the Lady" 12/4/48

Someone is apparently trying to kill the International Detective Bureau's latest client. Regan, as usual, is caught in the crossfire.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Jeff Regan, Investigator: "Cain and Abel and the Santa Maria" 9/11/48

A case involving a stolen silver replica of Columbus' ship requires Regan to deal with a disfunctional family and--eventually--an attempted murder.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Jeff Regan, Investigator: "The Two Little Sisters" 11/16/49

A knife-throwing lady working in a carnival is being threatened by someone. Regan is hired to protect the lady, but the case soon involves a murder.

Frank Graham plays Regan in this episode--one of two actors who played the role after Jack Webb moved on. Replacing Webb in a hard-boiled show is always a thankless task, but Graham is pretty good in the part.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Jeff Regan: "The Diamond Quartette" 8/14/48

Regan has a simple job. Take a diamond necklace from a gambler (who was holding it as collateral) and return it to its owner. But in a hard-boiled universe, no simple job ever stays simple. Soon, a number of corpses are cluttering up the landscape.

Lurene Tuttle (as the heiress who owns the necklace) and Barry Kroeger (who channels Sydney Greenstreet while playing a jeweler with an agenda of his own) are particularly good in this one.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Jeff Regan: “The Lady with Too Much Hair” 11/6/48

Regan’s job is to spot a red-headed guy coming out of a house in order to recognize him later on if needed, then take a long-lost daughter out to dinner and watch out for her.  He’s not entirely sure what it's all about and it becomes even more confusing when the red-head is murdered during his dinner date.

What follows is an entertainingly convoluted story with a couple of neat twists at the end.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Jeff Regan: “The Man Who Liked the Mountains” 8/7/48

Regan’s agency is hired by one gangster to find another gangster. Regan doesn’t like it—and it soon turns out it has good reason. The missing man has a cabin in the mountains, but that cabin now contains a dead man. Before he has time to blink, Regan is hip-deep in corpses and on the run from a frame-up.

Not only is this a very good story, it also has a great cast playing the various supporting roles. Joining Jack Webb is Jeff Chandler (who would eventually play Michael Shayne) and William Conrad (the future Matt Dillon). This episode is so hard-boiled, if it were an egg you’d need dynamite to crack open its shell.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Jeff Regan, Investigator: “The Guy from Gower Gulch” 11/13/48


This was one of several hard-boiled detective shows that Jack Webb did before it turned into police procedural territory with Dragnet. It’s not as good as Pat Novak for Hire—the one-liners aren’t quite as clever. But Webb is always fun to listen to doing hard-boiled narration and the plots were generally well-constructed.


Jeff Regan is a P.I. who works for an agency owned by Anthony J. Lyon (“They call me the Lyon’s Eye”). Lyon calls him late one night to talk to a guy in jail. The guy, who is saddled with the name Davy Crockett, wants to hire Regan to pick up a package he stashed in an alley just before he was arrested on Disorderly charges.


But someone else is looking for the package as well and is willing to play rough to get hold of it. This seems to make little sense when it turns out to be a canister of film. When Regan and Lyon watch the film, they see an innocuous travelogue about Peru.


It must be more than that, though, since there is soon murder and kidnapping taking place over it. Regan muddles along and eventually manages to pin the various crimes on the appropriate suspects. There’s a nice double-twist at the end.

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