Friday's Favorite OTR

Suspense: “Banquo’s Chair” 6/1/43

Scotland Yard’s best detective knows who killed wealthy, elderly Miss Ferguson, but he can’t prove it. So he comes up with a plan to frighten the superstitious killer into confessing. Anyone familiar with Macbeth can guess from the title what his plan will be.


At first, this seems like an extremely well-done but straightforward story, in which the detective explains his plan to several confederates before carrying it out. We, like the protagonist, knows exactly what is happening, even if the killer is convinced that something supernatural is going on.


It’s not until the story begins to draw to a close that we realize that there will indeed be a twist at the climax. Many listeners may deduce (as did I) exactly what that twist is a minute or so before it occurs, but it’s nonetheless a satisfying conclusion to what only pretended to be a predictable story.

Click HERE to listen or download.

North or South?

Revolt at Fort Laramie (1957) has a nifty premise. It is 1861 and the troops at the titular fort are dealing with a Sioux uprising. But the tensions among the troops might be more dangerous than the Indians--about a quarter of the men are from the South and everyone is, by now, pretty sure that war between the North and the South is coming soon.

They are right, of course. So the fort's second-in-command (Captain Tenslip--played by Gregg Palmer) is understandably worried morale and even the loyalty of his men. His situation is made even more tense by the fact that his commanding officer (Major Bradner--played by John Dehner) is from Virginia. There's a gold shipment being delivered to the fort and Tenslip now has to worry not only about the Sioux taking the gold, but his own C.O. doing so before heading off to Texas to enlist with the Rebs.




It's really neat to see John Dehner with a lead role in a movie. Of course, he did play the lead in several OTR shows (Frontier Gentleman and the radio version of Have Gun Will Travel), but his roughly 36 gazillion appearances on radio, film and TV were usually supporting or character roles. Dehner is one of those actors who--for fans of classic films & TV--can come to feel like a good friend we've known all our lives. So this movie scores points right off the bat.

It's interesting to note that about the same time this movie was being filmed, Dehner was the lead in the audition show for OTR's Fort Laramie. Though Raymond Burr was given the lead in that show when it aired, Dehner returned a number of times in various other roles. So 1956 & 57 had the actor spending a lot of metaphorical time in different versions of the fort.

The movie's plot and various character arcs unfold in various ways, with tension hitting a high point after news about Fort Sumter arrives. Major Bradner is conflicted--torn between "breaking an oath and breaking a heart" as he struggles to decide where his loyalties do lie. The Southerners among the enlisted men aren't conflicted at all--they want to make a break for Texas even if it means risking a ride across Sioux territory. They also think it would be a good idea to take the gold with them.

There is one particularly brutal scene in which the Southern troops deal with a guy who ratted them out to Captain Tenslip. That's an interesting part of the film--because it is indeed a brutal and cold-blooded act committed while the men are still officially Union soldiers. But the movie otherwise treats these guys as men who are brave soldiers loyal to the cause they've chosen. In fact, the movie's climax has them choosing to fight along side Bradner even when the major can save them by giving himself up to the Sioux. So are they murderers or are they soldiers dealing appropriately with a traitor? This is a 73-minute-long B-movie that necessarily concentrates on story and action, but I really wish a few more minutes had been added to deal with this moral issue in more depth.

Not that the film is completely without depth. The interactions between various troopers, the decisions they make, and the final battle in which they are forced to again fight together do provide a nice thematic backbone to everything.


The movie was directed by Lesley Selander, a B-movie and TV vet who knew how to churn out good stories quickly. Films like The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold show that his action scenes usually have pizzazz. This time, though the action is usually handled well, there are a few moments where the stunt work is awkward and fake-looking. (For instance, a soldier is a little too obviously sticking his knife in the ground rather than in the Sioux he's fighting.) I'm assuming time and budget restrictions can occasionally get the best of even pros like Selander. But overall, the actions sequences are fun.

The movie seems to have fallen into the public domain and is available to watch on YouTube. I've embedded it here, so you now have an enjoyable 73 minutes to look forward to.

Fred Flintstone---Pirate Hunter

There's a theory I once came up with--it later turned out that others had beaten me to the same theory--that The Flintstones isn't actually set in prehistoric times, but in a post-apocalyptic future. That would mean the re-emergence of dinosaurs and the fact that they can often talk is due to radioactive or germ warfare-induced mutation. That would also explain Bam-Bam's super strength.  So the society as a whole paralleling 20th Century America is a cultural or racial memory buried in the minds of the descendants of those who survived whatever disaster wiped out our civilization.

If so, then Gold Key's The Flintstones #28 (August 1965) indicates that these cultural memories stretch back even further, since Fred, Barney and their families have a run-in with a villain who is straight out of the Golden Age of Piracy.

Silly theories aside, though, "The Flintstones and the Pirates of Skull Island" is a fun read--with lots of effective humor and a script that catches Fred's personality accurately. It begins with the Flintstones and Rubbles taking a cruise on a rented boat. Naturally, Fred has gotten them lost. Then a storm hits, forcing them to look for a safe harbor.

The writer is unidentified. A knowledgeable member of Facebook's Comic Book Historians group identifies the artist as Harvey Eisenberg and accurately refers to him as "Hanna-Barbara's equivalent to Carl Barks for Disney."  We need to give both writer and artists a lot of credit. This panel below, with Fred spotting the dreaded Skull Island (a known pirate hang-out) in the distance, is yabba-dabba-do impressive.

 The boat is damaged when they land on the island and their engine gets loose and runs away. (This  is the Flintstones, remember--their engine was a dinosaur in a large hamster wheel.) They take refuge in a cave, but are captured by a large parrot who has a pirate sitting on its shoulder.









Its a funny scene, with wonderful character designs for the pirate and the parrot. It's a tragedy that these two never got their own comic book or animated series. The Misadventures of Pirate and Parrot would have been a classic.

The pirate forces Fred and Barney to take his treasure chest aboard the boat and repair a hole in the hull. But the villain doesn't realize the boat has no engine. In the confusion, Fred fires the pirate's cannon at him.




This does no damage, but allows the families to escape and get on board the boat. Bam Bam then uses his super strength to work as a replacement engine.

They still have the treasure chest aboard, but between paying for repairs to the boat and buying Wilma and Betty new dresses (their "best dresses" were ruined during the adventure), they just about break even. But Fred learns its just as much fun to play with toy boats with Pebbles and Bam Bam than it is to go on a real boat trip, so everything ends happily.


I only occasionally review a humor comic, simply because the old saying about analyzing humor is true--it's like dissecting a frog. You can do it, but the frog dies in the process. But--much like the the Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny stories I've talked about in the past, this particular story is so much fun that it deserves to be remembered.

Also, Betty is prettier than Wilma. I just thought someone should openly acknowledge that.

For next week--One of the most exciting chase scenes ever appeared in a comic strip in 1949. We'll ride along on that chase.

Cover Cavalcade

End of an era. The last Gold Key issue of Lone Ranger from 1977.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Tarzan: "Cathedral of the Congo" 9/20/51

I've been to Africa a half-dozen times as a short-term missionary, but I've been lucky. No one's ever garroted me to death.


The missionary who appears at the beginning of this Tarzan episode isn't nearly as lucky. He gets strangled by a couple of thugs about a minute into the story, caught in a dirty alley in a small town along the Nile River.





The thugs find a letter telling them who their victim is. They also learn he was planning on meeting a lady missionary just arriving in Africa--the lady is bringing funds to help build a big church in the jungle.


This leads to a nefarious plan in which one of the thugs impersonates the guy they just murdered with the hope of getting hold of the money. But their plans go awry when Tarzan takes passage on the same small river boat upon which the ersatz preacher and the lady will be traveling.


It's an effective, well-constructed story with a nice bit at the end emphasizing that the size or shape of the church doesn't matter as long as the worshipers in it are faithful. I'll have to warn my friends still in Africa about dark alleys, garrotes and fake preachers, though. Or at least tell them to make sure Tarzan is hanging around if they go out for a walk.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Casting the Movie while Reading the Story

A big wolf called "Old Gray" has been killing cattle--sometimes for food and sometimes for fun--for years, but no one has ever managed to catch him. But a tracker named Brink is going to give it a try. Brink's not interested in the five thousand dollar reward being offered by local ranchers. Tracking is simply what he does.

"The Wolf Tracker," written by Zane Grey in 1930, is an atmospheric and suspenseful short story with a fascinating protagonist. Brink doesn't hate wolves or take bloodthirsty joy in killing. Instead, he's a solitary man who enjoys being alone in the wilderness, pitting his skill against the animals he tracks. Brink will spend the next six months on the trail of the wolf and not consider a second of it to be wasted time.

From the story: Brink had only dim remembrance of home and family, vague things far back in the past. He never loved a woman. He had lived apart from men, aloof even when the accident of life and travel had thrown him into camps or settlements. Once he had loved a dog. Seldom did his mind dwell on the past, and then only in relation to some pursuit or knowledge that came to him from the contiguity of the present task. 

I like Grey's novels, though I sometimes feel he can be a little too verbose in his prose. But under the discipline of a short story, his descriptive powers are excellent and, as we follow Brink in his six-month quest to find and kill the wolf, we are immediately caught up in the quest along with him.

What's neat about the story is its realism regarding Old Gray. Many "man vs animal" stories portray the animal with human-like intelligence and cunning. It's not wrong to do that if it makes a good story, but here Zane Grey takes a more realistic approach. Old Gray is smart and cunning--but he's not a person. When the hunt reaches its climax, the wolf reacts as you would expect a desperate animal to act.  There's no clever tricks to be played on the man. He's not really an equal opponent to Brink, because he can never match a human being in intelligence. "The Wolf Tracker" plays that up, but does so without losing any dramatic tension or making the conclusion any less stunning.

I don't believe "The Wolf Tracker" has ever been made into a movie or TV episode. A quick search did not turn up an episode of  the 1956-1961 Western Zane Grey Theater with that title, though I suppose it might have been adapted with a different title. While I was reading it, though, I began to picture a specific actor as Brink. It seems to be that if the story had been dramatized in the 1960s or 1970s, Charles Bronson would have been the perfect choice for the lead role.

Bronson was acting in the 1950s, of course, but I don't think he was quite grizzled enough to play Brink at that point in his career. For a 1950s Brink--maybe Randolph Scott.

If the story had been filmed soon after it was written in the 1930s, then I'm not sure. Gary Cooper, perhaps--but his natural friendliness might block him from really bringing across Brink's solitary nature. Gee whiz, the decade that brought us the best actors ever and I'm having trouble casting a specific role?  That's downright embarrassing.

Night of the Shadow

Cover art by Nick Cardy

It's well-known, of course, that one of the major influences in the creation of Batman was the Shadow. In fact, Bill Finger lifted the plot of the first Batman story from a Shadow novel that had been published a few years earlier. He wouldn't have suspected that both characters would become iconic and still be active decades later. 

When DC Comics had the license for the Shadow in the 1970s, they quite wisely kept him in the 1930s. (A later attempt to move him into contemporary times is better left undiscussed.)  It's too bad DC never did a story set on Earth-2, where we could have had a Shadow/Batman team-up with both men in their prime.  

But Earth-1 Batman had a few chances to meet his inspiration. In Batman #253 (Nov. 1973), he was helped from the sidelines by a retired Shadow. I haven't read this one myself--it's never had been reprinted and the original is always out of my price range. But a plot summary from the DC Wiki tells me the Shadow hinted he would indeed become active again.

Gee whiz, the guy apparently ages well. He was a World War I vet, which means in '73 he would have been (at best) in his late 70s. 

He next visited Batman in an issue I do own--Batman #259 (December 1974). Here we learn that the future Caped Crusader briefly met the vigilante when Bruce Wayne was still a runny-nosed brat.

It happened when a "Boy Genius of Crime"named Willy Hank Stamper robs a bank in Gotham. The Shadow shows up and blasts down several of Stamper's gang. The crook takes a hostage, but stumbles into a few more innocent bystanders on the way out of the bank--including Thomas and Bruce Wayne. Poor little Bruce is terrified by the ensuing gun battle.

That terror isn't helped much when Bruce sees his parents  gunned down in Crime Alley a few months later. 

Now lets jump ahead a few decades. Following up on information that someone is planning on stealing a priceless tiara, Batman encounters an older Willy Hank Stamper, who seems to want to get revenge on the various bystanders he blames for getting himself caught and sent to prison for most of  his adult life. Batman nearly catches Stamper fairly quickly, but the need to deal with a medical emergency prevents this. 

There's an attempt on Bruce Wayne's life soon after. Then that tiara goes missing, but someone leaves a clue that sends Batman to the scene of the bank robbery from his childhood.

He does find Stamper there. A thug with a gun wouldn't normally be a serious threat to the Dark Knight, but the location and the sound of pistol shots causes Batman to revert to crybaby mode.  It' is only the sound of spooky laughter that pulls him out of this and allows him to subdue Stamper.

Yes, that was the Shadow's laughter. He'd been around the entire time, leading Batman back to this location, where the younger hero then proved his worth.

The meeting between the two heroes is fun and insightful, especially a moment in which the Shadow offers Batman a gift of a pistol, which Batman declines. "Sure I admire him.. I've been inspired by him... But I'm my own man."

It is very possibly the first time Batman's aversion to firearms is codified as a part of his psychology rather than just a part of superhero tradition. 

The story was written by Denny O'Neil, who was also writing DC's The Shadow at the same time. That O'Neil clearly gets both characters is obvious and one of the reasons the story is so good. Irv Novick does a fine job with the interior art. 

That's it for now. Next week, we'll follow along with two of the most successful pirate hunters in history--Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble.

Cover Cavalcade

She's a ghost. He's a guy who apparently doesn't know how gravity works. It's not a good start for a relationship.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Adventures by Morse “City of the Dead” 1/8/44 – 3/11/44





























Carlton E. Morse was one of the jewels of radio’s Golden Age. A skilled writer, he is perhaps best known for creating and writing the serial I Love a Mystery, a blood-and-thunder adventure show in which a trio of adventures traveled the world solving mysteries, slugging it out with bad guys and rescuing beautiful girls. (He also created and wrote the popular soap opera One Man's Family.)


I Love a Mystery was a great show. Morse had a perfect sense of just how much information to pass on to his listeners in each episode, gradually building up tension and suspense throughout each multi-part story arc. The three protagonists were fun as well—stalwart Jack Packard; Texan and (self-proclaimed) ladies’ man Doc Long; and the very English Reggie York.


I Love a Mystery ran in the early 1940s, then had a very successful revival in 1949. Sandwiched in-between these two runs, though, was a syndicated show titled Adventures by Morse.


A half-hour show, Adventures alternated between 10-part and 3-part story arcs. The main characters were pretty much clones of Jack Packard and Doc Long. Re-named Captain Friday and Skip Turner, their personalities were exact duplicates of Jack and Doc.


But that’s okay, because they’re just as fun to hang around with. “City of the Dead” is the premiere adventure (and, in fact, doesn’t involve Skip at all). A ten-parter, it takes place in a remote cemetery, whose caretaker happens to be Captain Friday’s father. When apparently inexplicable things start happening, the old man calls in his son (a private investigator) to look into the matter.



What follows is a convoluted but ultimately satisfying yarn involving a phantom church bell that starts ringing at irregular moments; several murders; disappearing and reappearing bodies; graves mysteriously dug open and then just as mysteriously filled in; arson, kidnapping; deadly booby-traps; and a half-million dollars worth of hidden pearls. There’s an oddly dressed man who doesn’t seem to be quite human wandering around the graveyard and letting out eerie howls. Everyone involved seems to be up to something either secretive or downright nefarious, including Captain Friday’s dad.


It’s a delight to listen to from beginning to end. As is typical in Morse’s stories, all the apparently supernatural aspects of the case turn out to have “rational” explanations, but that doesn’t make the spooky parts any less spooky. By the end, Captain Friday has it all figured out, but it actually takes him the entire last episode to explain it all to everyone. The good captain knows how to milk the suspense himself, though, so his explanation is as entertaining as the events leading up to it.


Listening to a serial such as this one requires self-discipline—not because it’s hard to listen to, but because one is tempted to go straight from one episode to another. But it’s more fun to limit yourself to one episode per day; to allow yourself to experience the pleasant suspense of a good cliffhanger. Few writers did cliffhangers better than Carlton E. Morse.


Click HERE to download or listen to the first episode of the serial.

The remaining episodes can be found HERE.

An Unusual Pairing of Guest Stars

For the second time inside of a month, I'm going to talk about a TV show. I used to whine and complain a lot about how awful television is because it killed old-time radio and usually isn't as effective a medium for good storytelling. In fact, I still whine and complain about that a lot. It think that's why I never get invited to parties anymore.

But while writing for this blog over the last decade, I have found myself from time to time obligated to admit that there occasionally was some really good stuff on the small screen.

An episode from Have Gun Will Travel's second season is evidence of this. Broadcast on December 27, 1958, it is a pure delight. And it brings us the oddest pairing of guest stars that might ever have appeared together.

 The episode begins with Paladin (Richard Boone) attending a performance of Othello in San Francisco. Impressed by the leads, he invites them to dinner. He then learns they have accepted an engagement in San Diego, which was then a rough cattle town. Paladin warns them of potential danger, but the actors are unable to recognize the fact that these dangers are real. San Francisco, after all, is a large and cultured city. So the rest of the so-called "Wild West" can't be that bad, can't it?

The actors are beautifully played by Vincent Price and Patricia Morison, who bring just the right notes to their roles. Yes, they are making a dumb decision in going to San Diego, but it's not out of stupidity. We never doubt that they are skilled actors and relatively intelligent people. But they are naive and unable to see past their own romantic view of the world.

Paladin rides to San Diego ahead of them and wrangles a job working security for the saloon at which the actors will be performing. That was actually one of the neat things about Have Gun Will Travel. Clients often came to Paladin, but just as often he would search out employment after learning of a potentially dangerous situation somewhere.

Anyway, the saloon owner is Morey Amsterdam. So we have Morey Amsterdam and Vincent Price together in the same story. For no particular reason, I just think this is way cool.

Anyway, the actors show up and are shocked--SHOCKED, I SAY--to discover that they are being advertised as cheap vaudeville performers and that the theater is actually a saloon. They initially decide to pack up and leave. But a local gunfighter (with a reputation for maybe--just maybe--being faster than Paladin) is somewhat smitten with Patricia Morison and threatens to tear up the saloon and kill the owner if the performance is cancelled. The actors, in the meantime, decide to stay and ram some culture down San Diego's throat, but only after publishing insulting remarks about the gunfighter in the local paper.

So Paladin has to see that the performance goes on--that no one gets shot--and that the saloon remains intact. It's a job that's not made any easier by the fact that the actors still refuse to accept the idea that their lives are really in danger.

It's a fun episode, with a light-hearted feel that does not distract from a real feeling of danger at the right moments. And it's got Vincent and Morey on the same screen together. That is way cool. I still can't explain why. It just is.