Fred Allen's script writer Herman Wouk later wrote the bestsellers The Caine Mutniy and The Winds of War.
Broadcast History: 1932 - 1958
From the early 1930's to the late 1950's this popular radio show format broadcast over fifteen years of entertainment to the nation with dramatized stories adapted from "The American Weekly Magazine."
The ensemble cast entertained us with a variety of stories that included comedy, melodrama, adventure, strange-goings-on and of course crime.
Broadcasts typically were an adaptation of a story which would appear in the Magazine the following week and so the radio shows were in some way a kind of prolonged advert for the publication.
An interesting aside is that Paul W. Keyes, one of the writers, began his career here with this show, but then later in life worked as a White House consultant. What I find interesting in that is that quite a few of these shows deal with aspects of officialdom or include portions that are closely associated with how government and officials should deal with the people. In the very first episode showcased here When The Comet Strikes you'll hear exactly what I mean. When fiction writers go into politics 'life certainly can begin to imitate art'
Adventures_in_Research_55-01-11_ep623_The_Way_Of_An_Eagle
1946 Luminous Compass Magnifying Glass (back view)
Dragnet 56-10-16 (363) The Big Slip
SDP_49-09-09_ep033-The_Human_Comedy
Gunsmoke 58-06-01 (321) Quarter Horse (reused script)
